Truth Seeking: Travels in a Time of Terror, Wars and Religious Fundamentalists, 2000-2006

By George E. Lowe

Truth Seeking: Travels in a Time of Terror/Wars & Religious Fundamentalists (TS) follows, during the tumultuous Years of 2000-2005, our traipsing through Southern Britain-Guernsey/ Greece-Aegean Islands/Ireland/Tuscany/Wales/Scotland/Mexico (Copper Canyon); London/Dublin/Paris; Western Caribbean Norwegian Sky Cruise; and intensive Bird Watching Trips to Trinidad & Tobago (Asa Wright), Belize, Florida (Central, Merritt Island & The Lower Keys) and Port Medway, Nova Scotia (Eskimo Curlew Search). Scattered throughout the various Travel Narrative Chapters are favorite recipes, lists of Birds Seen in foreign climes, and many wonderful synchronicities. And at the end of many chapters is a Running Political-Military Commentary on candidate & President Bushs stewardship of the 43rd Presidency & of the American Peoples hopes & expectations. There are also four Appendices that are devoted to President Bushs extremist/revolutionary/radical Strategic-Political-Military policies shaped by his personal Fundamentalist, Evangelical religious beliefs and the New American Oil-Empire in Western & Central Asia of his Neo-Con/Theo-Con advisers. Also tracked in TS is the growing and worrisome influence, within the Republican Party of the Fundamentalist, Conservative Evangelists and their obsession with creating of Christian America & Evangelical Theocracy and imposing it on us within this Terminal Generation. They are convinced that our times are filled with End Time Signs & non-born again Left Behind refugees, before the impending Armageddon-WW III & the Second Coming of Their General Lord Jesus Christ.

Truth Seeking (2000-2005) is meant to be a continuation of my predictions, warnings and Fascist fears developed in It Can Happen Here: A Fascist Christian America (2000) which have greatly accelerated under George W. Bush (2001-2005) our Fundamentalist/Evangelical Commander-In-Belief and his band of fanatic Neo-Con/Theo-Con advisers.

In Vol. # 2 of It Can Happen Here I discussed the Ten Insights which inspired me to write my prophetic warnings about the grave dangers of the evolving relationships between the religious-military ideas of Protestant Fundamentalisms controlling doctrine that Armageddon-WW III was prophetically necessary to trigger the End Time Events leading to the Second Coming of THEIR General Lord Jesus Christ. AND the political right- wing doctrine of winning Thermonuclear Wars with a massive nuclear superiority, a full-blown BMD.
And in TS I now add the Rumsfeld/RAND/Neo-Cons Strategic Revolution: A modernized, transformed military (R.M.A.) capable of carving out & defending a New American Empire in the oil rich Central/Western Asia, under the cover of spreading Democracy to the Arab world. (The Bush Administrations attempt to develop a New Paradigm-GP #4 for Global Domination is discussed in Appendices # 1 & #2.)

The Travels in this book occurred from 2000-2005. Politically they cover the Presidential Campaigns of 2000 & 2004, Bushs Inaugurations of 2001 & 2005 and the Bush Administrations strategic/political-military & diplomatic responses to Terror (9-11-012005), Wars (Afghan War of 2001-2005); The Iraq War (19 March 2003-2005). And TERROR & WAR were waged within the context of growing worldwide phenomena of RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISMat home and abroad. Indeed RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISM is part and parcel of both Terror and War, that has symbolized the 21st Century, and the Third Christian Millennium to date.

During the years 2000-2005 Terror and War both evolved within the context of an increasing Fundamentalist Dimension, that seems to have taken our secular world back to the Great Religious Wars of Christian Europe. [The 100 Years War between Catholics & Protestants that ended in 1648 at the Treaty of Westphalia.] Indeed the wars of the opening years of the 21st century & Third MillenniumChechnya/Afghanistan /Iraq have elements of the Christian Crusades of 10

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 18, 2006
• ISBN: 9781462820733

George E. Lowe

GEORGE E. LOWE was born in Scranton, PA (1928) and educated in the public schools of New York/New Jersey/PA. He graduated from Grove City College (BA-1950) and U. of Chicago (MA-1953) and taught at all levels of American education (1950-93). Served over 30 years in the Federal Government (1953-88), including US Naval Air Intelligence Officer (Japan, Hawaii & the Pentagon), Foreign Service Officer (African Affairs & Paris Embassy), and Civil Servant (OE/ED). Author of The Age of Deterrence , Little, Brown (1964), It Can Happen Here: A Fascist Christian America, Xlibris, (2000), two Vols. and many articles on military policy, nuclear weapons, education, and the environment. Speechwriter in Navy Dept. (1961,65)/ Department of Education (1981-88). Married in 1954, with two daughters and three Jack Russell Terriers. Hobbies are cooking/baking, book collecting, traveling, and bird watching. Splits the year in Stuart, Florida and Port Medway, Nova Scotia.

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Contents

INTRODUCTION

PREFACE

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER 1

The Backroads of Southern England, Guernsey, and

London Town

CHAPTER 2

To Greece, the Aegean Beyond and Back:

13 October-1 November 2000

CHAPTER 3

Birding at Merritt Island NWR on Day Two of the Dubya Years

CHAPTER 4

The John Lavia Memorial Bird Trek to Trinidad and Tobago (10-20 March 2001)

CHAPTER 5

The Irish Revelations: Backroads in Ireland and

Dublin’s Streets—June 2-18, 2001

CHAPTER 6

Pearl Harbor Two:

The Slaughter of Innocents on September 11, 2001

CHAPTER 7

Meandering Under The Tuscan Moon

CHAPTER 8

Seeking Whoopers and Red-cockaded Woodpeckers

in Central Florida

(February 2, 2002)

CHAPTER 9

Wales, York, Scotland, London, and Paris

(Britain’s Legendary Heritage)

October13-November 2, 2002

CHAPTER 10

My Search for the Eskimo Curlew-Again,

September 1-October 7, 2002—at Eagle Head, Ragged Harbor and Beach Meadows, Nova Scotia

CHAPTER 11

To Mesa and Tucson, Sea of Cortez, Copper Canyon

and New Mexico

(February 1-19, 2003)

CHAPTER 12

Little Torch Key and Bush’s Preemptive War of March 19, 2003

CHAPTER 13

Norwegian Sky and GCT: Cruising To the West Indies of Legend, History and La Tourisma

(16 October-1 November, 2003)

CHAPTER 14

The Jeff Swinebroad Memorial Birding Trip to Belize, by the Levy Group 29 Jan. 2005-11 February 2005

CONCLUSION

Truth Seeking: Travels In A Time of Terror, Wars and

Religious Fundamentalists 2000-2006

EPILOGUE

POST SCRIPTS

(I. Synchronicies and II. Memes/Ideas)

APPENDICES #1-#4

On The Age of Deterrence vs. The Age of Terror and—

the Strategic-Political-Military Response (2001-2006)

of the Bush Administration

APPENDIX #5

Political-Military-Strategic Commentary at the End of

the 20th Century (June 2000/01)

APPENDIX #6

Strategic Overview of the post-9-11-01 World View on Terror, Wars, and Religious Fundamentalists on the cusp of a new Century and Millennium

APPENDIX #7

The Belize Bird List (220 Species) (Selected)

DEDICATION

To Charlotte, for putting up with my books, papers, obsessions, enthusiasms and poor spelling as we tried to create light out of darkness caused by the Age of Terror, Wars, and Fundamentalists in an increasing interdependent world revealed to us in the emerging Era of La Tourisma (1997-2005). Kudos too to our kind Jack Russell Terriers (Folly, Swishy, Moxie, Dickens, Baby Chidda, Jackie) and of course, the Bird Nation—who are always in our thoughts, sharing this seeking pilgrimage and making our journey so much more enjoyable and worthwhile.

INTRODUCTION

For over forty years, I have written up my bird narratives, with sidebars about current politics and a touch of local history and literature.

The travel narratives in this book, are a mix of what W. H. Hudson, in Afoot in England called observables (p. 12) of a place, happening, event new to me, observations of local bird life, reflections on literature and history, and a running commentary on trippers’ interpersonal relationships—all within the larger context of my obsession with national politics, military policy, deterrents and deterrence, grand strategy, and religious fundamentalists in an age of wars and terror from 2000 to 2006. Those readers who have no taste or interest for political-military matters, partisan topics (mostly Democratic) can easily skip over those specially marked Political Sections usually, but not always at the end of the various chapters.

Professional travel companies arranged most of our trips (1997-2005):

1. Grand Circle Travel (GCT) of Boston

a. Costa Rica—1997

b. Italy and Sicily—1997

c. Mexico—1998

d. Turkey—1998

e. Spain and Portugal—1999

f. Greece: the Aegean and Beyond—2000 (Chapter 2)

g. Britain, Wales, Scotland, and Paris—2002 (Chapter 9)

h. Copper Canyon (Mexico)—2003 (Chapter 11)

i. West Caribbean Cruise (Norwegian Sky and GCT)—2003 (Chapter 12)

2. Overseas AdventureTravel (OAT) Cambridge

a. Cotswold—Walking Tour—1999

b. Tuscany and Rome (and 9/11/01)—2001 (Chapter 6)

3. Back roads Inc. (England)

a. Southern England, Guernsey, and London—2000 (Chapter 1)

b. Ireland—2001 (Chapter 5)

4. Calico Nature Tours (Birding) of Key West

a. Asa Wright Nature Center—Trinidad and Tobago—2002 (Chapter 4)

b. Belize—2005 (Chapter 13)

5. Birding Adventures (Florida and Nova Scotia)

a. Shore Birding at Merritt Island (FWR)—2001(Chapter 3)

b. Hunting the Whooping Cranes, Central Florida—2002 (Chapter 7)

c. Eskimo Curlew Search (NS)—2002 (Chapter 8)

d. Little Torch Key, Key West Days and Bush’s War in 2003—(Chapter 10)

Grand Circle Travel Tours (Boston, Massachusetts) generally fill up a modern tour bus—maximum of forty-two travel mates (mostly over fifty-five), complete with a full-time tour guide and a professional driver. Without exception, GCT hotel accommodations are first class, the food excellent, and the pace of touring just right for seniors. The GCT tour leaders are uniformly good, as are their local expert guides. The home visit and meal is a great idea. Because we feel we get our money’s worth, we have taken nine GCT trips—and are planning future adventures with GCT—highly recommended for best value for your dollars.

Overseas Adventures Travel (Cambridge, Massachusetts), a division of GCT, is an upscale offshoot—no more than sixteen travelers in a midsize van. The advantage of having no more than sixteen Oaters on the tour is the ease of getting on and off the van, simply hearing the tour director’s explanations of the attractions, forced socialization—a plus or minus depending on individual personalities involved, and a greater flexibility in changing itineraries—weather, crowds, churches, and local museums.

Backroads Inc. (London, England) operates with small vans (driver-tour guide)—one to ten travelers and is true to its name—exploring the true backroads of England, Ireland, Scotland, and France. These trips were the most intensive of all the tours we took. In fact, a common observation of world-class Liz Soderstrom was that the hedgerows often obscured or blocked the views of the countryside! The size of our groups varied from five to ten, and we went places where the large buses couldn’t or wouldn’t go. The food and lodgings are above average, more quaint, with much greater local color than in the bigger tours. We are planning to take another Backroads trip to England’s Lake Country in the near future.

Caligo Nature Tours (Key West): These small-group tours, ten or less, take you to a specific nature site, and they supply the local bird guides. We got exactly what we expected—hard-core birders (HCB) and professional bird-finding guides in exceptionally good birding areas, as well as fine accommodations and excellent meals. It was birding-birding-birding all the time—just as advertised. We are planning to go on more Caligo birding trips (Panama and Costa Rica).

Personal Birding: in Central Florida, Lower Keys, and Nova Scotia. (Shore or windbirds, Whooping Cranes, Red-cockaded Woodpeckers, Sooty Terns, and perhaps even an Eskimo curlew—Allah, Elohim, Master of the Universe, Gaia, and the Bird Nation willing, of course.)

NB: Throughout the various travel narratives and often at the end of various chapters, I have included a running Bush commentary, usually at the end of the chapter and in the appendixes, on the key/main political-military-strategic policy issues facing America and the world in the age of terror (2000-2006), which occurred as I was traveling or writing up the various trips. The overarching theme is what type of grand strategy must the USA adopt in face of the challenge of Islamic Fundamentalism (Islamofascism) abroad and Christian Fascism and an Evangelical Theocracy at home. Is the Bush doctrine of Preemptive/Preventive wars, the new American empire of oil in Central and Western Asia, carved out by a transformed Pentagon, unilateralist foreign policy, featuring a massive ballistic missile defense (BMD), a new draft and $500 billion annual DOD budgets the wave of the future? Is the Iraq War a precedent for creating the new American Empire? Thus, setting the stage for Armageddon-WW III and the Second Coming of their General Lord Jesus Christ—in the final battle between the good and evil forces of the world embodied in the global battle of and between the opposing Christian, Jewish, and Islamic Fundamentalists for control of the Earth—or its death? Is this the very future of the world via a Universal Fundamentalist Crusading Christian Holy Amerikan Empire and is it in play?

The opposing vital center forces of religious moderation, modernism, rationality, science, democracy, republicanism, common law, and constitutionalism must devise a new and competing Grand Strategy that builds on deterrence, containment, and isolation or destruction of terrorists but goes beyond them by creating an effective global counterpoint to the Bush doctrine of preemption, empire, unilateralist, endless wars of aggression, America—first, last, and only—Christian Nationalism and Amerikan corporatism (Fascism).

Obviously, a new American strategic paradigm is called for, similar to the imaginative nature of America’s response to post-WW II Europe and Japan (1945-80): Marshall Plan, Point Four, USIA, USAID, Fulbright Student Exchange Programs, Peace Corps, Global Medical Corps, American Cultural Programs, IEE, etc.

It is still, even in early 2006, an open question which Paradigm will be adopted for the dangerous decade ahead. Sadly, I’m not optimistic that the Vital Center will prevail vs. the evil, dark, and growing forces of domestic, foreign fundamentalism, and Amerikan Fascism. Hopefully, Goethe was correct in saying, Be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid. Or consider McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest as he tried and failed to throw the fountain and break out of the asylum: But I tried, didn’t I? Goddamn it, at least I did that. And finally, my heroes are always Melvillian—even if the gods mean you to lose, and they do, one must still put up the toughest fight possible. (See Appendices 1-4 for a detailed analysis and aspects of the competing Grand Strategies (2006-10).

PREFACE

The Insights, Coincidences, Synchronicities that

Inspired Me (2000-2006)

In volume 2 of It Can Happen Here: A Fascist Christian America (pp. 25-58), I discussed the ten insights that inspired me to write my prophetic warnings about the grave dangers from the evolving relationships between the religious-military ideas of Protestant fundamentalism’s controlling doctrine that Armageddon-WW III was prophetically necessary to trigger the end time events leading to the Second Coming of their General Lord Jesus Christ and the right-wing doctrine of winning thermonuclear wars with a massive nuclear superiority, a full-blown BMD. And I now add, Rumsfeld’s, RAND’s, and Neo-Con’s strategic revolution: a modernized, transformed military (RMA/NCW) capable of carving out and defending a new American empire in oil-rich Central and Western Asia, under the cover of spreading democracy and ending tyranny in the Arab world, greater Mideast, and everywhere else our Empire’s writ will run and rule and ruin.

The travels in this book occurred from 2000 to 2005. Politically, they cover the election campaigns of 2000 and 2004, Bush’s inaugurations of 2001 and 2005, and the Bush political—military foreign policy responses to terror September 11, 2001, war (Afghan War of 2001-06; the Iraqi War (19 March 2003-2006). And terror and war were waged within the context of a growing worldwide phenomenon of religious Fundamentalism—at home and abroad. Indeed, religious Fundamentalism is part and parcel of both war and terror that has symbolized the twenty-first century and the Third Christian millennium to date.

During the years 2000-2005 terror/war evolved within the context of an increasingly religious dimension (Fundamentalism) that seems to have taken our world back to the great religious wars of Christian Europe (one hundred years of Catholic-Protestant wars which ended in 1648 at the Treaty of Westphalia). Indeed, the wars of the opening years of the twenty-first century and third millennium (Chechnya, Afghanistan, Iraq) have elements of the Christian Crusades of 1095-1300, between the Christian west and the Islamic world.

Some of the specific insights, coincidences, and synchronicities that helped me conceptualize and write this book are the following:

a. Belief Net: Templars and American Treasure and The Da Vinci Code (10 December 2004)

b. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Der Fuehrer Konrad Heiden (1944, pp. 1-35). I was searching for the roots of the Personal Oath that the German army officers and enlisted men took to Hitler (1934) and I found Heiden’s work by chance with its mysterious mention of how Alfred Rosenberg found The Protocols in his Moscow student’s room during the summer of 1917 (pp. 1-18).

c. The Knights Templar and the Oak Island Treasure (purchased at Big Pine Key Flea Market, 21 March 2003).

d. GCT tour leader Dave Waterman (October 2003) and his discussion of Rossyln Chapel, Knights Templar, Sinclairs of Scotland and Oak Island, Nova Scotia, Wales, England, Scotland, London, and Paris and is also found in the Da Vinci Code. Synchronicity anyone?

e. A Preemptive war discussion on 11 December 2004, with Moxie’s mother (at a garage sale in Stuart) at the very same time I was writing about Bush’s Preemptive war of 19 March 2003 (Parmers, Little Torch Key). We discussed her son, a Lieutenant Colonel (armor) at Leavenworth, PhD in history (Columbia), who was about to go to Iraq; Rumsfeld’s remarks about lack of proper armor in Iraq and his ideological reasons for not sending more troops to Iraq; the transformation of the Pentagon (RMA/NCW) and the Afghan Victory Template to Create the new American empire of oil—in resource-rich Central and Western Asia (with few casualties and with high technology replacing the former British empire’s punitive army columns in Eurasia and Africa, during Pax Britannia [1815-1914]). (Never talked with them again—wonder why?)

f. Christian Fascism comes on little cat’s feet to America (2000-2005). America 2014: An Orwellian Tale, by Dawn Blair (Jonathan Greenberg) and articles on American Fascism, by Maureen Farrell (www.buzzflash.com) and the idea of a college reader: Born-again Fascism

g. Deuteronomy 24:5 on not sending recently married men to war for a year. (Inerrancy of their KJV Bible? Only their selected verses, depending on the situation?) No leading Busheviks sons, daughters, or grandkids are serving in Iraq—the apples don’t fall too far from the tree!

h. Pale Male—the famous Red-tailed Hawk Central Park and Bush’s interpretation of Teddy Roosevelt’s Migratory Bird Treaty (removing the nests in the "winter" is ok 2003) and my Search for the Eskimo Curlew. Pale Male and bird lovers forced rich NY condo to rebuild the hawk’s nest. An End Time Sign perhaps?

i. My letter to the editor, PBP, 17 December 2004, On Kristof (Apocalypse [Almost] Now/Left Behinders[La Haye and Jenkins]), Lake of Fire and 100 million American Fundamentalists and their born-again leaders, President Bush, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Dobson’s Christian America and their impending Fascist Christian Theocracy as soon as objective conditions allow.

j. The Virgin of Guadalupe on my desk constantly reminds me of the larger issues of religion in the modern world. Our Lady of Guadalupe is the patroness for all the Americas, and she unites all the different cultures, Sister Marta Tobon (PBP, 11 December 2004). As does CNN’s (18 December) program on the Two Marys, a reflection of the interest in Mary Mother of God and Mary Magdalene the possible wife of Jesus and the influence of Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code. The Fundies don’t want Tom Hanks to play the Harvard professor hero, Robert Langdon, in this alleged anti-Christian movie. Also note the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe in WPB at St. Peter’s Catholic Church (Juan Diego’s awesome vision of 12 December 1565.))

k. See Bill McKibben’s The End of Nature and David Orr’s The Last Refuge, and note, after the last tree is felled, Christ will come back. Jim Watt and Bill Moyer’s speech at Harvard’s Center for Health and the Global Environment accepting the fourth annual Global Environmental Citizen Award (December 8, www.alternet.org/envirohealth/20666) The environment is in trouble and the religious right doesn’t care. It’s time to act as if the future depends on us—because it does. Bill Moyers claims that theology and ideology are in power and the saddle in Washington—and that is very dangerous for the world. He slams the Rapture for what it is—a made-up/bogus doctrine, with no biblical basis, by itinerant British preachers in the mid-nineteenth century. Now millions are true believers in the twelve volumes of the left behind fiction/crapola. See my It Can Happen Here vol. 2, pp. 126-196.

l. All the travel or nature writers that I have loved, especially W. H. Hudson (Afoot in England), H. V. Morton (all of his works), Wendell Berry, Paul Theroux, Henry Williamson, Richard Jeffries, and Edwin W. Teale (Springtime in England) for mixing birds and literature).

m. Readers will note my frequent use of the word "synchronicity" for events/happenings that most would call simple coincidences. For over sixty years, I have noted these many so-called coincidences, and ever since reading Arthur Koestler’s The Case of the Midwife Toad (1973), I have been recording them in my journals, both big and little examples of alternative realities. In the late 1990s, after reading the foreword (xxi-xxxix), by Karl Jung (1949), of the Wilhelm and Baynes translation of the I Ching, or Book of Changes (1949/67/77), I became aware of the concept of synchronicity. This seemed to me to be a fusion of coincidences/alternative reality, and I was determined to record any synchronicities encountered during my travels from 2000-2005. It should be obvious that I no longer believe in simple coincidences but regard them as examples of synchronicity, which are the intersection of alternative realities. One of my next projects is to compare and contrast the various realities of the I Ching and Western Nature thought in hopes of creating a new harmonious reality via the fusion of nature thought of the East and West.

n. George Bush’s policy change (23 December 2004) of raping the American people’s commons (the national forests) by no longer requiring an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), before the Republican Party’s moneyed interests and campaign contributors destroy, rape, pillage our trees. I have suggested that the Bird Nation implement the curse of the Bird Nation before that Bush-Cheney Gang wrecks what’s left of our commons. And the Bird Nation has concurred.

o. Peter E. Price, my oldest friend and bridge-birding book buddy from the Scranton of our youths, a writer-editor-indexer extraordinaire, has read many of these individual travel chapters, laced as they are with political-military observations. Since I was worried about including my political-military-strategic-religious Bush commentary, along with the travel narratives, I asked Peter for his advice on how to handle this controversial political material. Should I completely eliminate it? Place it at the end of each chapter as endnotes? Bracket it or warn the reader as Aldo Leopold does in his Sand County Almanac to simply skip the political-military-religious sections? Include specific political-military-strategic appendices? Peter’s advice was, Include it all because it’s you! However, to assist/help the reader, he recommended the chapters be arranged chronologically (2000-2006), rather than by Tour Company or by geographical region. And he suggested that I should place most of the political material at the end of the various chapters and in the appendices.

In that way, any interested reader could follow my critique of George W. Bush’s political, military, and religious foreign policy as it unfolded or was revealed from the beginnings of the 21st century (the Bush-Gore 2000 campaign), through Bush’s Second Inauguration (2005), his early anti-Anti Ballistic Missile (ABM) and pro-Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) obsessions, his anti-Kyoto and regressive environmental policies, September 11, 2001, Bush’s war on terror, his "torture policy, Afghanistan War vs. Taliban, Bush’s Preemptive War of Choice vs. Iraq based on the WMD Hoax (the WMD snipe hunt," given up in December 2004, was officially reported as over by the Washington Post on January 12, 2005), leading to the current guerrilla war and Iraqi insurgency, Bush’s Neo-Con dream of a New Empire, democracy, and supply-side capitalism in western Asia, the increasing influence of the religious right (Evangelical Theocrats) in American domestic and foreign policy, the 2004 campaign between Senator Kerry and President Bush, the US’s massive debt/deficit and falling dollar, and Bush’s Second Inauguration, the alienation of the world by Bush’s unilateralist and pre-emption policies, Bush and Bushevik hubris/arrogance, and the overarching problems of nuclear proliferation (two minutes to midnight on BAS’s Doomsday clock), global warming and peak oil, new challenges by China, India, and Brazil and the rise of Fundamentalism in the world, along with the surge toward Christian Fascism in America and Bush’s star-crossed/troubled fifth-year jinx. All of the above and Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, Cindy Sheehan and Valerie Plame-Wilson too—Bush’s three furies, who, like Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, pursue and punish doers of unavenged crimes (the American Heritage Dictionary, p. 534).

In three words, Bush’s Megalomaniac, Messianic, Militaristic pursuit of Empire, Preemption, and Unilateralism (See especially Surprise, Security, and the American Experience, by Yale court historian, John Lewis Gaddis [2004] and Gaddis’s article, Foreign Affairs, Jan.-Feb. 2005) as befitting the Great Hegemon and world’s only Superpower is being put to its toughest test by the stubborn facts of history. When I wrote (2000) my last chapter on Grand Strategy (Some Traditionalist Thoughts on Grand Strategy in the Twenty-first Century) in Vol. 1 pp. 484-93 of It Can Happen Here: A Fascist Christian America (2000), the last thing I ever dreamed of was for Bush to follow such an alien, extremist political-military foreign policy. In fact, I didn’t even include that alien Christian Fascist possibility/scenario in my last chapter (23) on Grand Strategy—only strongly hinted at it:

These GOP extremists will use any tactic in order to get the Oval Office back in the early twenty-first century so that they can carry out their dreams of this Fascist Christian Nation, followed quickly by the Fascist Christian Theocracy as the result of their successfully" triggering Armageddon-WW III. Now that would truly be the End of History (secular) and the beginning of the American Millennium.

Make no dry skull and bones about it: right-wing Christian and unscrupulous ideological forces within the Republican party will use another Lost War," Great Depression II, or atomic terrorist incident to place, or keep their Manchurian Candidate II in the White House. He will then carry out their Grand Strategy’s sacred and holy mission: Create those conditions or incidents to bring Jesus back for a Second Time, even if it means the death of 3 billion innocents and the destruction of all the Earth’s cities as prophesied in Revelation. That’s why the stakes are so very high in the American elections of AD 2000-12" (George E. Lowe, It Can Happen Here: A Fascist Christian America, Vol. 1, p. 493, Xlibris, 2000).

I had failed to anticipate the fact that the RWR Crazies of the 1980s would slide, crawl, or float back into power in 2001 despite President George H.W. Bush (41’s) realistic foreign policy, and that these very same fanatics (General Scowcroft’s words) would capture the mind, shape the strategic vision of George W. Bush (43’s) and turn his policy (and America’s) into the "last Christian Crusade abroad with its incipient Christian American nation and a budding Christian Fascist Theocracy at home in the first decade of the 21st century. (Where applicable, I have added keywords that help relate specific political-military topics found in the politics" sections—mostly at the end of the chapters. Therefore, I have followed Peter Price’s advice and included the political-military-religious happenings of Bush’s first term and his jinxed fifth year as they intersected with and influenced and impacted on our travels. I have also added a section on birds seen in foreign climes, as well as five specific chapters on birding in Florida and Nova Scotia and tropical birding in Trinidad and Tobago and Belize. Some names of fellow travelers have been changed where necessary.

Nine of our travels, since 1997, have been with Grand Circle Travel of Boston, two with Overseas Adventures Travel, two with Backroads Inc. (England) and two birding trips with Caligo (Key West). Without exceptions or reservations, we would recommend all four-tour companies to anyone wishing to experience the world at a modest cost.

Also included are some of my favorite recipes, desserts, and meals I’ve prepared for visitors at Loon Landing, Port Medway, Nova Scotia

The travels in this book coincided with the first five years of the Bush administration when the world was wracked with terrorism, wars, and political and religious strife. Over the last five years, the euro vs. dollar went from 80 to 135, and one English pound rose from $1.50 to $1.90. In other words, European travel has become very expensive, with Ireland the most expensive country followed by Finland and Denmark.

PROLOGUE

By definition, a prologue is the preface or introduction to a discourse or performance. Or an introductory or preliminary act, proceeding, or event (the shorter Oxford English Dictionary, 1953). My death . . . is made prologue to their play (Shakespeare, 1579).

My last words written in the early fall of 2000, amidst the Bush-Gore campaign, of the preface/prologue of Volume # 1 of It Can Happen Here: A Fascist Christian America (Xlibris), published in Feb. 2001, were

If we are not to be subjected to another and even more dangerous president (than the born-again Ronald Wilson Reagan), it is imperative that the intellectual, political, and journalist leaders of our imperiled nation closely examine the lessons of this book (p. 14).

Well, the lessons were not learned. No matter where we traveled (Europe and Mexico) or lived (Nova Scotia, Canada) did we find any love or respect for our even more dangerous president, George W. Bush. The Canadian audience in Bridgewater, Nova Scotia, cheered at the end of F-9/11. And our van with its Kerry for President bumper sticker received many thumbs up this past summer in Nova Scotia. Sinclair Lewis’s novel with the ironic title, It Can’t Happen Here, described a takeover of the American government by an alliance of right-wing politicians and fundamentalist preachers. In my preface for It Can Happen Here, I warned,

"The thesis of my nonfiction book (in two volumes) with the non-ironic title, It Can Happen Here, is that we are in danger of becoming what Lewis warned against sixty-five years ago, a fascist Christian America (p. 11). Sadly, it can happen here" because it is, and this drift toward Christian Fascism and Corporatism (Mussolini’s original term for fascism, which he helped conceptualized in the 1920s) will be greatly accelerated in the next five years—unless the Vital Center holds against the men and women of passionate intensity determined to bring American Christian Fascism to our threatened secular Democratic Republic in the next decade."

I have added to my title of Truth Seeking the subtitle In a Time of Terror, Wars and Religious, Fundamentalists, because those three issues dominated the first five years of the 21st century and will determine whether we see the dawning of a Christian America, Armageddon-WW III, and a Fascist Christian Fundamentalist America in a new world order of perpetual war/terror and expanding Christian Fundamentalism. This Orwellian nightmare/society will see less tourism/travel and more nationalist/religious fanaticism—much like the Hitlerian world before WWII in Europe. Will we also see a return of the Dark Ages, of fascisms, totalitarianisms, and sectarian religious wars of ages past?

Before Hurricane Katrina, I was very afraid that we could not escape that terrible fate. Now in the spring of 2006, everything is possible again—as the iron conservative chains of the Reagan and Bush revolutions, their ideology and ideologues have been shattered abroad by the realities of Iraqi sand, tribalism, nationalism, and fierce defenders of Islam. While at home the floods, devastation, and social horrors revealed by Katrina’s and Rita’s aftermath have finally breached the dykes of the government-as-small-as-a-bathtub types, privatism obsessions and massive tax breaks for America’s richest one percent—a quarter century of Reaganomics and conservative ideology washed away by Katrina-Rita’s wrath in less than a month. Will this summer/fall/winter of America’s discontent permanently affect the titanic struggle of the Vital Center against that born-again Fascist Beast and its men and women of passionate intensity? Those right-wing ideologues and Christian fascists are still determined to impose their religious and social agendas on all the rest of us non-born again Fundie Christians. However, for good or ill, the furious winds of Katrina-Rita have changed the very future of the future. It’s an ill wind that blows no good.

CHAPTER 1

The Backroads of Southern England, Guernsey, and

London Town

These random thoughts and observations are based on a trip we took with Backroads Inc. (GB) to Southern England and the Channel Islands (Guernsey/Sark) from 19 May to 4 June, followed by a week alone on the town in London’s Chiswick Hotel (June 4-11, 2000).

First off, a disclaimer: Charlotte found this English tour company and was adamant about making all the arrangements and paying for it. Why? It was a reaction to her experience in Cordoba—she couldn’t hear or get near our soft-spoken girl guide in that most marvelous mosque-church. Thirty, or was it forty-five, milling tourists were way too many for her ears. So she cursed her fate and kept on reading her sacred International Travel News (ITN). Lo and behold, she rediscovered Backroads, forgetting that those indefatigable global travelers, John and Liz Soderstrom (Little River, California), had taken four Backroads tours and recommended them highly. At least that’s how I remember it, and I’m sticking with my story. Charlotte made the reservations with the Backroads’ agent at Corona, California, as I was working madly on ICHH and didn’t have time to focus on her trip. Long ago, I had adopted a philosophy of leaning back and thinking of Samos or Torremolinos and, above all, remaining enthusiastic. But every waking moment of mine was devoted to the ICHH. And this was especially true in the first two weeks of May as I tried to get the book cut in two and prepared it for Lane Mann to work his computer magic on it. Thus, we drove straight to Manchester by the sea, bypassing daughters Melissa and Melanie, where Lane got to work, and suddenly, there were two volumes. Then he scanned the lost seven pages with mixed results. I corrected and Charlotte proofed them. Still, it was quicker than one-finger typing them over again.

By the time we took the doggies to Muddy Creek Kennel and got to Logan Airport, I had done all I could on the book. Yet I didn’t want to send it to Xlibris until we heard from Tom and the events of May-June were cranked into the book. It was a good decision—thus far. Finally, on June 15, my old friend Tom said to go with it, despite his doubts about my epiphany (of early January 1985 upon reading Rev.5: 5) and my excessive emphasis on religion. However, he said it was my book, and if I wanted to be emotional about the Fundie political-religious threat to America, then I should go with it and I did. (What would my departed friend and colleague Tom think now after over four years of the born-again Evangelist George W. Bush and his constant pandering to his Christian Right base?) Thus, as of June 28, 2000, Xlibris had all the material for my official submission, and the book was in the lap of the gods, fate, chance, God, or maybe even a partisan Jewish Democrat; or perhaps good secular Catholic or Protestant liberals who are as worried about our nation’s future as I am, especially from the growing Fundamentalist political power in America and the world.

Our crossing on Virgin Air was much more pleasant that prior flights over Nova Scotia and the North Atlantic—more leg room and better food, pleasanter flight persons, and those neat plastic backpacks. Leslie of Backroads was our Jeeves-on-the-spot at Gatwick. Before we knew it, we were in western London, Chiswick section, and a nice little hotel near the Turnham Green District Line. We met the Ms of Ft. Meyer, Florida on our little bus from Gatwick. Unfortunately, we would see all too much of them in the next fourteen days. The first night, we had a pleasant dinner with the Ms at the Rat & Parrot pub down the street a bit where I had bangers and mashed potatoes. Little did we realize then that the Ms, one more tourist, Laurel of Milwaukee, and the Lowes of Stuart and Port Medway would be the party of five with our driver-guide extraordinaire, David Wood—retired RAF signal-security translator, high school teacher, and sometime Shakespearean actor from mystic Glastonbury.

We took a Melatonin and slept soundly. After a small breakfast—orange juice, cereal, toast (on a rack), and tea, we met up with David a few minutes late. Laurel’s travel friend had been taken to the hospital back in Wisconsin, but Laurel soldiered on despite a bad cold and a trip from hell via O’Hare. She and I became allies against the terrible-tempered M. He knew it all, which was bull dung, because I claimed that dubious honor. We also had a Fox Lake connection: she had taught at Grant High (when Ann Margaret was there) in the mid-1950s, while I taught seventh and eighth grades in 1950-52 at the elementary school downtown. Surprisingly, there was another weaker bond with M, who had flunked out of a Grove City college Navy radio school in 1945, and who harbored a dislike of the Navy and its officers ever since. Still and all, it was a surprising set of circumstances and coincidences from such a small and random group of fellow travelers who were packed and bound together for fourteen event-filled days.

As we were leaving Chiswick, the rain clouds let loose with London’s most characteristic event, rain. Our first stop was a lick-and-promise toot around Richmond Park (see W. H. Hudson on The Hind of Richmond Park)—not too far from Hampton Court. Many deer, big bronze beeches, and pheasants were everywhere. David claimed he was just getting us acclimated to the rain, minivan, and each other. He said we should consider changing seats in order to reduce group conflict. That was never to be a problem. I just wanted to watch for birds—even though I had left my binoculars and bird book at home. M soon became the copilot, and the women stayed put, more or less—in their places throughout the entire trip of around 1,600 miles.

Early on, I realized my key challenge was keeping warm—no chills please, we’re Floridians. Charlotte had left my sweaters, my sacred big pressure cooker, and birding stuff in the garage. Thus, I had to repeat a trick from the Italy-Sicily trip: find a warm-wind-proof outfit and stick with it even if it sticks to you too, much like I suppose the New Brunswick lumberman’s long-johns did after a long winter’s logging. Well, Charlotte didn’t have to burn my Vero Beach blue sweatshirt, blue jeans, red flannel shirt, and two long t-shirts this time, as she was tempted to in Sorrento last year.

Yesterday at a Port Medway garage sale, I discovered something as nearly useful as Kleenex: a tea mug with a teabag side pocket. Armed with these, the China porcelain tea trade would still be flourishing, and the Cutty Sark would be cutting through the waves in search of new records to break. When I first saw it, I thought it was a variation on the Polish mug—the handle on the inside! A pleasant woman in the wheel chair sweetly told me the side car was for the used tea bag! Will mankind’s ingenuity ever end? And Charlotte is currently drying wet Kleenex on the new almost working clothesline! Now Charlotte’s tea bag will never leak anymore as order is reestablished once again in George’s kitchen.

Nor, hopefully, will we hopefully ever know war again on the Korean peninsula—fifty years to the day that conflict, police action, limited war broke out when I was teaching bird study at Camp Conway, Conway, New Hampshire, at the foot of Mt. Chocorua (near the summer home of e.e. cummings and William James). One-half century afterwards, the US, North Korea, Russia, and Japan are finally talking about missile tests, the reopening up again of the ports of Korea after we first blasted them open in the 1880s and my Westminster Presbyterian quarters in the 1940s helped convert those millions of Korean Presbyterians. Also in the summer air are the implications of the Chinese WTO vote, and even Cuban-US relations may come in from the cold because of the un-American actions of that Cuban-American gang of Élan’s relatives, family, and politicians.

Meanwhile, the Presbyterian Rev. D. James Kennedy of Ft. Lauderdale wants money for his Holocaust in Sudan book and to support his persecuted Christian brothers and sisters everywhere in the world, especially China (200 million home-churched Fundie Christians). It’s all a part of a future new Christian crusade that the American fundamentalists will launch once America has a near-perfect ballistic missile defense (see Bush the Younger’s speeches of 23 May, 2000, and 1 May 2001, for dangerous signs of things yet to come). Then the US can wage new wars of Christian liberation to free fellow Christians from Islamic persecutors in the Sudan, Nigeria, Indonesia, and especially the 200 million home churched Fundies praying underground in China or their persecuted Christian brethren in India. All these future wars of Christian liberation will be waged without fear from Islamic, Confucian, or Hindu nuclear weapons retaliating against New York, Chicago, Dallas, or DC. That future fate is as near as the 2000 elections if the Fundie George Bush gets his hands on the nuclear football, his finger on the nuclear launch codes, and builds his BMD (Ballistic Missile Defense)—the old Reagan SDI. Bush’s Fundie mentors have convinced him that since thermonuclear wars can now be won with few American casualties (thanks to the full-blown BMD/SDI), then its worth the risk to save fellow Christians everywhere in the world and thus get the eternal credit for helping bring General Lord Jesus Christ back for a second time. It can happen here, as it almost did during the good old Reagan years of 1981-83. And it’s actually happening now in mid-2001, thanks to the US Supreme Court’s selection of George W. Bush as the forty-third president of the USA in that virtual coup d’etat of 10:00 p.m., 12 December 2000.

Enough for now of these crazy political-military-religious asides, which were triggered by the fiftieth anniversary of the Korean War and the stolen election of 2000, for we must return to the backroads of southern England in late May of 2000 and hope to hell that the center holds.

The first official stop was a combination of lunch and sightseeing at an archeological dig: the Fishbourne Roman Palace or villa or museum and garden from around AD 150. But first, a pastry and Coke in the gift Shoppe. The clouds darkened; I saw some slow-skidding blackish scuds and knew rain was but a few minutes away. Across from the large tent like villa area were the gardens, Roman herbs, and replica of a Roman potting shed, where a realistic farmer was at work. The tools seemed authentic, and I listened alone—the others had gone back in the now heavy rain. The printed narratives were interesting—especially on the Roman introduction of kitchen garden herbs (herbs of Provencal), as well as the Roman veggies grown there. I joined the rest looking at the partial mosaics, including a very fine polychrome mosaic, Cupid on a Dolphin, trying to understand the general layout of this Roman villa, two hundred years after Caesar crossed the Medway in his victorious conquest of southern England in 55 BC. I’m writing this overlooking the estuary of the Medway in SW Cove, Queen’s County, Nova Scotia, Canada. The Medway is mentioned in the Magna Charta, and young Ensign Nelson served on a guard ship on the Medway before being ordered to the West Indies (more on this later on in chapter 13—Caribbean Cruise.)

In the mid second century, this villa was at its peak and served as governmental trade center until the Legions left in the 4th century to fight the decay, deterioration, and decline caused, as Gibbon wrote, by the triumph of Religion and Barbarianism. Published in the same year as the American Revolution, Edward Gibbon observed, The reign of Antoninus is marked by the rare advantage of furnishing very few materials for history; which is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind (Bartlett, p. 270, 1937). Indeed, indeed! There were few materials for history there at the ancient villa, but enough for scholars to take advantage of a farmer’s lucky ditch-digging discovery to construct the outlines of a Roman palace or villa for us to wonder at on our grand tour, which would take us deep into prehistory of that green and pleasant land. Last year, I marveled in the Cotswold’s at a small stone circle tended by a gypsy or local witch, but I was most taken by the entire expanse of farmland and lack of people. In southern England, the magnificent hedgerows (only 180,000 miles left from over 400,000 miles originally) have replaced the pinkish stone fences of the Cotswold. There are a lot of rich farmland and all sorts of bird habitat. No wonder bird behavior and modern birding began in England in the 1920s. And Liz Soderstrom was correct when she observed that the only drawback from a Backroads trip was that the hedgerows blocked the view. Yes, but the alternative is the modern throughways!

I devised a scale of extra bonus points for David—stars really—for the most backroads of the narrow, hedgerow surrounded road paths that David could find for us. There were plenty that rated four stars, and many were two or three, when we seldom saw a car. It was a touring, sightseeing company that lived up to its name and reputation. I didn’t know that every hedgerow is different, and often, they are hundreds of years old. Many diverse plants and trees make up the rows. Some fill in after fifteen to twenty years; others take much longer. They are currently under attack by farmers and developers, but typically, the English have formed trusts and local committees to save their beloved green hedgerows.

From a naturalist/birder viewpoint, these long windy green life rafts or rivers of green tangle offer a safe haven and path for wildlife and birds to safely move throughout England. There is a great deal of literature on hedgerows, which I’m going to look into. Growing fences have always fascinated me since I read W. P. Webb’s The Great Frontier and The Great Plains in 1952-53. Our American Great Plains had no wood or stone, only sods or plants to make the necessary fences. Thus, in 1871 at Glidden, Illinois, an American invented barbed wire, and the West was won. But it almost destroyed Western civilization, making possible the awful trench warfare of 1914-18. (I saw an impressive demonstration of trench warfare at the Imperial War Museum in London while visiting the equally repulsive but militarily related Holocaust exhibit and Spitfire Summer—an aerial reaction and innovation to the stinking, lice-ridden, trench warfare that the USA—and George E. Lowe—was determined to avoid again fifty years ago today during the Korean War [see Fernbacker’s classic This Kind of War—voted one of the ten best books on war in this century].) Modern airpower doctrine was born in England, Italy, and the US out of the bloodletting of WWI trench warfare. Never again, pledged a generation of military officers and strategists. Two obvious results were the armored blitzkrieg of Heinz Guderian and the strategic bombing aerial offensives of Britain and the US on Germany and Japan in WW II.

The Fishbourne Roman Palace (mid second century) wonderfully concentrated my mind on what until our visit had been rather dry historical facts: Julius Caesar Legions of 55 BC, Hadrian’s Wall, and Londinium. Two thousand years ago, real flesh and blood people from the warm Mediterranean Sea lived, loved, worked, and died in these very buildings. And thereabouts many Roman Centurions (the great deterrents of the Roman Empire) retired, married locals, and lived out their lives in this once barbarian land. It is useful for representatives of the world’s only remaining superpower to learn the lessons of imperial overreach and the inherent dangers of Pax Americana—bankruptcy, mercenary armies (no citizen draft, just professional armies of minorities and non-citizens), loss of vision, excessive entertainment (bread, circuses, and TV sports), failure of nerve, and lack of citizen civility, impact of new religions on traditional institutions, loss of resolution and conviction, and ending with the ultimate triumph by the barbarians already within and manning the Roman Empire’s walls.

All the English museums that we visited were in one way or the other representative or reflective of Pax Romana or Pax Britannia and the aftermath of a destructive imperial overreach. And hanging over it all is this question: the US as the Great Hegemon, hyper power, and indispensable power of 2001-2012? Which path will America choose? An aggressive, arrogant American twenty-first-century superpower, which leads to the Amerikan Millennium—Pax Americana? Or will we evolve into a diverse-multicultural society, playing an enlightened, modified, non-aggressive role of a mature superpower advancing freedom, liberty, and justice at home and abroad?

As I write these words on 20-23 August 2001, the TV and Internet are filled with commentary on the tenth anniversary of the second Russian Revolution. Professor Paul Kennedy of Yale (not one of 43’s tutors) noted that the rise and fall of the Soviet Union ranks with the rise and fall of Nazi Germany. It caused an immense shift in the strategic landscape and the political landscape of the twentieth century (LA Times, 19 Aug. 2001). And Professor Hosking, Russian historian at the University of London, perceptively observed that, It was the first time since at least the Middle Ages that a great power crumbled without being defeated in war . . . It was the end of five hundred years of the Russian Empire, one of the longest empires in history. It compares with the Roman Empire in durability and is longer than the British Empire (LA Times, 19 August).

And one might logically ask, How long will the Amerikan Empire last? Is the American century in its last years? (1945-?) Is that not the question and rationale behind the Christian right and ideological right and the Bushevik Cabal’s fanatical obsession with the BMD and the RMA of Rummy’s RANDIANS-Christian Crusaders? Develop the modern 21st century weapons’ system equivalent of the Greek-Roman phalanx, or British ships of the line/dreadnoughts to enforce and protect the Amerikan Empire in the 21st century? The result would be a glorious" follow on to Pax Romana, Pax Britannia—a white, blue, and very red Pax Americana.

The first night was spent at the Cricket Field Hotel in Wiltshire on the way to Portsmouth (I saw a welcomed English Robin and the famous sweet-singing Blackbird) on the way to the Guernsey ferry. The Channel CAT was sailing in the afternoon giving us the morning at the Portsmouth Naval Base-filled with memories of England’s glory days when iron men and wooden walls were all that stood between the Spanish, French, and German dreams of conquest and hegemony over Europe—and the world. It was blustery with some light rain as I struggled to keep warm and ward off a cough or cold. I never solved my chills until I bought an Aran-type white wool sweater in the Naval College town of Dartmouth. There were many references to Drake and the Armada, the defeat of which gave England the brilliance of the Elizabethan age, liberation from Spanish conquest, and over three centuries of relative peace, prosperity, Protestantism, immunity from invasion and protection of the British Empire by the British Navy.

At Portsmouth, there are three main museum ships on full display: HMS Warrior (world’s first iron battleship, a revolutionary combination of steam/sail of 1860), Nelson’s HMS Victory (Trafalgar), and Henry VIII’s ill-fated HMS Mary Rose (first ship able to fire a real broadside). There are exhibits about Trafalgar, where Nelson and Britain gained control of the seas for one hundred years (1815-1914). There were also references to the Battle of Jutland, when Admirals Jellicoe and Fisher could have lost WWI in an afternoon’s engagement with the German imperial navy—but didn’t. No, the great blue water deterrent held for Elizabeth, Henry VIII, and all English statesmen through Winston Churchill, with great help from the RAF during the Spitfire Summer (Battle of Britain) of 1940 and the US Navy in 1941. Control of the channel—the sea and the air over it—has kept England free from continental kings, conquerors, emperors, and dictators for nearly a millennium. Who will protect England and Europe from the Busheviks’ BMD, offensive space weapons, and new expeditions to Sicily (Taiwan and Middle East) once America is rearmed and invulnerable to Islamic, Indian, or Chinese nuclear weapons?

The crucial question Whom does it deter? was handwritten next to a picture of the new HMS Dreadnought, a nuclear submarine carrying Polaris A-3 launched by Queen Elizabeth II on October 21, 1960 (155th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar). This nuclear dreadnought was to be the forerunner of the fifteen thousand-ton Trident class subs carrying D-5 MIRVED (multiple warheads) thermonuclear weapons, the British Great Deterrent to World War III and ultimate guarantor of British sovereignty in the twenty-first century. Who indeed though does the British deterrent deter?—Russia, China, France, India, Pakistan, Israel, or the US? Or could it be a British component of a future European Great Deterrent (along with Russia’s) to deter or check a Fundamentalist America, armed with the full-blown Ballistic Missile Defense/SDI? A British Great Deterrent ironically placed in service of a rapidly evolving United States of Europe, driven there by an aggressive, isolationist Fortress America and Garrison State, and a go-it-alone fundamentalist, unilateralist foreign policy adopted in the early years of the twenty-first century by a militaristic Fundamentalist Amerika (Cheney, Rumsfeld, and RANDIANS-Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, and Marshal.)

Like Rome in the 4th century, which recalled her Legions home from Britain to fight domestic unrest and protect their distant frontiers, the USA is likely to remove our NATO ground forces and rely once again on offensive (B-2s), defensive (BMD) nuclear weapons and offensive space weapons in a new Fortress America and Garrison State—a Christian Fascist Amerika, hell bent on bringing Jesus back via Armageddon-World War III. Then the victorious Jesus would set up his Millennial Kingdom, supported by American nuclear weapons in the Amerikan Millennium. This nightmarish vision was added to and embellished by my trip through southern England and Guernsey and Sark and presidential candidate George Bush’s May 23, 2000, and May 1, 2001—major Washington speeches on arms control, ballistic missile defense, deterrents and deterrence.

Images of Pax Romana, Pax Britannia, and Pax Americana swirled around in my mind as I worried about a future American Fundamentalist Evangelist President. Someone like Oliver Cromwell trying to impose a neo-Puritan Fascist Christian Theocracy on America and a Global Universalistic Protestant Christian Empire on the world (Pax Christiana) enforced by superior American offensive-defensive nuclear and conventionally superior high-tech weapons (Pax Americana). It can happen here and will if the Vital Center in America, Europe, Canada allows it to occur through apathy, indifference, or greed. Well, George the Younger (forty-three) was selected, not elected, and we will soon reap the whirlwind—unless God intervenes to save His Creation from these modern Vandals and Hunnish barbarians that have marched to power with Resident Bush.

The Lazarus-like HMS Mary Rose, pride of King Henry VIII’s Navy, sank when seven hundred troops shifted their position during an engagement with the French off the island of Wight in 1535. After thirty years of naval service, the great ship went down, until it was raised in the 1980s. Today in a huge shed, she is constantly bathed in a chemical solution, which will preserve the wood forever. I looked closely at the innovative gun deck that revolutionized naval warfare. From the early 17th to mid-19th century (HMS Warrior), these wooden ships of the line were the British great deterrent and were the key to Pax Britannia and the protection of her worldwide empire and the USA in the first half of the 19th century (Britain enforced the Monroe Doctrine for the USA). The death of these wooden ships’ deterrent role was symbolized by the HMS Warrior (iron battleship) and finally by Britain’s HMS Dreadnought (all-steel, big-gun battleship) launched in 1906 and triggering a worldwide naval arms race, a leading cause of WWI.

King Henry VIII watched as his pride and joy sank, but the English admirals were able to keep the French and Spanish at bay and in the channel by the use of superior naval technology revolving around the devastating broadsides fired from the new English and superior Dutch cannons on the innovative gun decks. These new tactics defeated the Spanish Armada, Louis XIV, and Napoleon. I didn’t go aboard the HMS Victory but discussed with the guards the French or Belgian sharpshooter who killed Admiral Nelson. I told them of Thomas Raddall’s book (Roger Sudden) and his theory about the former officer at Melville prison near Halifax’s Hangman’s Island, who hid his identity, eventually escaping, sailing right past Port Medway, heading for the French shore and Bay of Fundy. The museum guards claimed the sharpshooter was a Belgian, and they had never heard of Liverpool’s Raddall. At the Maritime Museum in Greenwich, we saw Nelson’s little uniform with the small bullet hole just above his heart on his left side.

We could have spent the entire day at the various ships and museum exhibits, but we had a modern ship to meet and zip across on the storm tossed English Channel. It was our first crossing, and an easy one on the familiar CAT, an exact copy of the one we take from Bar Harbor, Yarmouth, Nova Scotia.

The Channel Islands off the coast of France have the dubious distinction of being the only slice of British territory captured and controlled by Hitler in WW II. And the memories are everywhere: German concrete fortifications are all over the island, a damp and depressing underground hospital dug by slave laborers, and at least two museums of the war years. The island newspapers during the occupation had required daily doses of anti-Semitic propaganda that makes fascinating reading, given what we now know about the Holocaust and the human genome project: no such thing as race a la Hitler, neo-Nazis, David Duke, Christian Identity, etc. As for the Chimps, we share 99 percent of the same genes and 80 percent for chickens (forget the missing link or even the weakest link!). The anti-Evolution Fundies (and President George Intelligent Design Bush too) are in deep trouble. They stand approximately where the Roman Catholic Church did when Galileo revolutionized 17th century thinking by showing that man is not the center of the universe and that our solar system revolves around the sun, not Christian man. All the Fundie ranting about Creationism or Intelligent Design and against Darwin (Evolution) has been swept into the dustbin of history by today’s word that scientists of the world have now created a road map of the human genes. It is not just another moon shot but rather one of the greatest scientific achievements of all time. Science, health, religion, and society will never be the same after today. Five racially different human beings have been mapped, and they are all the same! Chief Seattle was right: All men are brothers. So too was Jesus who perceptively begged us to turn the other cheek and love our neighbors as well as the Jewish rabbis who preached the negative golden rule of Jesus of Nazareth.

To actually read the daily newspaper of Guernsey and see the daily dose of officially inserted anti-Semitic Nazi propaganda and combined with the new Holocaust exhibition at the Imperial War Museum is to understand for the first time the actual nature of the EVIL that visited the world on 1933-1945. And never forget that insidious anti-Semitism lives on and flourishes on over two thousand Internet sites. But now, with the results of the human genome project, we have a great new tool to root out this racial, ethnic superiority myth of nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which stretches back eons into the prehistory of mankind. No wonder only 40 percent of the American people on CNN had positive feelings about the genome project and 48 percent had doubts (hell, in the summer of 2005, 25 percent of the American people actually believe that the sun revolves around the Earth!) The Supreme Court today also reinforced Miranda rights in another victory for the Vital Center.

How far have we strayed from the Nazi occupation of Guernsey? Sixty years in time perhaps, but not really that far, for there are right-wing Fascist forces just waiting to slither out from under their rocks, to blame the Jews, Blacks, Liberals, Eggheads, and Gays for a lost war, great new Depression, terrorist nuclear attack on New York, naked American civilians to rogue or yellow nuclear-tipped ICBMs, etc. There was a banality to Hitler’s evil that must never again be forgotten. It was revealed in microcosm at Guernsey and macrocosm at the Imperial War Museum, London, and the Holocaust Museum in Washington (for example, train tickets for doomed Jews were charged for one-way/special half-price children tickets for railroad trips to the gas ovens of Dachau, and local gossips routinely sent their odd/peculiar neighbors to the Gestapo torture chambers). Today (27 June), recently declassified top-secret British and American documents reveal that ULTRA decoded in October 1943 Nazi plans to send all Italian Jews to Auschwitz. This information was sent to Churchill and then to highest American leaders, whether it was read by FDR or Churchill is not known, but American and British bombers did most definitely not act it upon.

Our second through fifth nights were spent at the Les Douvres Hotel, Saint Martins—a quiet tree-surrounded establishment a few miles from town via very narrow roads. Not surprisingly, it was more French than English, as were the excellent meals. There was a pleasant bar where we gathered for a drink before dinner. I had a cold beer and Charlotte had a sharp ginger beer—almost too strong for her taste. M—and David usually had a couple large beers, which affected M one-way and David the other. David was even more pleasant, while M was even more obstinate, unpleasant, and boorish. David also guides Backroads literary tours, acts in Shakespeare plays, and speaks five languages. Laurel was a college professor of drama, English, Spanish and is well traveled. M’s pleasant wife was a librarian and long-suffering, while M was a successful accountant and thinks he is well informed about everything under the sun but has little book or intellectual knowledge. We’re not literary, he once snapped. He tries to dominate all conversations. And he was like Lieutenant Sox’s wife at NAS Ewa, who punctuated her conversation with clips from the Reader’s Digest (President Reagan loved to do that too).

It was inevitable that M became the hidden brunt of our exasperation and derision. And more than once, when beer clouded his judgment, he stormed away from the table, with his wife meekly following him. In a word, he was one of those classic horses’ asses that inhabit every bar in the world. The first night in Guernsey, he fumed that he was an Episcopalian, his wife was a Catholic, and he wouldn’t allow anyone to criticize another person’s religion—a perfectible acceptable position. The only problem was M asked me to define fundamentalist—and I did. In passing, I mumbled about Charlotte being a cradle-born Unitarian and that her father and brother were Episcopalian. He heard that word and went ballistic. Another night, it was an aspect of criminal law—proportionality of response—, which caused him to