..........Well, well, well—it never rains but it pours, so they say. In "Part Four-D," I mentioned Laurence Sterne and the difficulty he had getting Walter Shandy (I mistakenly said Tristram) down the stairs, since each step Mr. Shandy took awakened new (or old) memories and considerations that drew him—his mind, that is—farther into the past as well as into present complexities (including the question of whether damage had been to his son Tristram's nose during childbirth moments before). And Sterne? Well, Sterne had the job of following and describing Walter's mind but also the job of getting him down the stairs—with the result, a bit like a paradox of Zeno, that Walter would seemingly never, ever go forward in the narrative (or forward down the stairs, either), at least not for so long as Sterne remained true to his artistic-intellectual task, which was, of course, the task of truthfully describing the nature of Walter—and Tristram—Shandy's mental-emotional life.

..........Now I'm in the same boat as Sterne was—or in a parallel boat, at any rate. . In trying to reach Nicholas Lemann, we're distracted by John Perkins, who leads us to Catherine Austin Fitts, and in turn—as you're about to discover—we next find ourselves sailing the most murky seas of the "mind" of Jacob Weisberg. Will we ever get back, ever get to where we were going?

..........Who among you remembers, in Gulliver's first voyage—his voyage to the land of the six-inch-high Lilliputians—the occasion when he has to move his bowels for the first time? All right. Of course everyone does (except maybe Nicholas Lemann, since I can't imagine that he's ever read Gulliver's Travels). In any case, Gulliver by this time has been brought into the capital city and, secured by ankle-chains "that were about two yards long," is given a small hut to shelter in—a small hut that was in fact "an ancient temple" and "esteemed to be the largest in the whole kingdom" (the front gate was "about four foot high"). Living there, Gulliver, when he first feels the need to move his bowels, makes an unfortunate decision. Let's read:

..............................I had been for some hours extremely pressed by the
....................necessities of nature; which was no wonder, it being al-
....................most two days since I had last disburthened myself. I
....................was under great difficulties between urgency and shame.
....................The best expedient I could think on, was to creep into
....................my house, which I accordingly did; and shutting the
....................gate after me, I went as far as the length of my chain
....................would suffer, and discharged my body of that uneasy
....................load. But this was the only time I was ever guilty of
....................so uncleanly an action; for which I cannot but hope
....................the candid reader will give some allowance, after he
....................hath maturely and impartially considered my case,
....................and the distress I was in. From this time my con-
....................stant practice was, as soon as I rose, to perform
....................that business in open air, at the full extent
....................of my chain. . .

..........Reading Swift's great satire requires an alert imagination—and, indeed, we can all "maturely and impartially" imagine what things smelled like inside Gulliver's hut after his first "disburthening," and the wisdom of his decision from then time on "to perform that business in the open air"—though an alert imagination and good memory will still make the sharp reader wonder just how sufficient a solution to his problem Gulliver's really was.

..........Now, I'm going to propose ANOTHER CONTEST, and, once again, the winner will receive a free, inscribed copy of A Nation Gone Blind. But to set up the terms of the contest, we'll have to read a few more phrases from the elegant Jonathan Swift. Since we're in no hurry greater than Laurence Sterne was, we can repeat a bit of what we've seen:

....................From this time my constant practice was, as soon as
....................I rose, to perform that business in open air, at the full
....................extent of my chain, and due care was taken every
....................morning before company came, that the offensive mat-
....................ter should be carried off in wheelbarrows. . .

..........I'm sure you see those ellipsis marks. I've put them there to indicate that we, too, have more business to attend to before I announce the Great Quiz Question and raise the question of why it's so appropriate a one.

TWO

SHOVE ON OVER,
NICHOLAS LEMANN!
THERE'S
COMPANY COMING!!!

..........If only all those we're calling ersatz-left Gatekeepers were fish, we'd have been rid of the whole mob of them long ago. How could it be otherwise, since they're so incredibly good at eagerly swallowing hook, line, and sinker whenever that barbed and glittering old trio is tossed or dangled their way.

..........Unless, of course, they're lying about it. We've got to keep in mind here as before that we may be dealing with lies uttered by quislings rather than with ideas actually believed and burbled out by putatively honest fish. Either way, there's one type of a particularly shallow piscine breed among the Gatekeepers, and I had a sighting of that type last fall as it was having an especially vivid feeding frenzy—if, that is, one fish alone can actually have a feeding frenzy.

..........In any case, the shallow feeder that time around, swallowing hook, line, and sinker to beat the band—again and again—was none other than Jacob Weisberg, to whom all are grateful for his studious and diligent collecting of Bushisms. But on the other hand a person can hardly be grateful for Weisberg's demonstration of what's either myopia in a degree qualifying as clinical blindness, or his demonstration of the most fraudulent imaginable of gatekeeper ploys.

..........Called "Five Years Free," the piece I saw was posted at Slate magazine last September 6.

..........You may have guessed—9/6 being so close to 9/11, and 2006 being exactly five years after 2001—that Weisberg's title does indeed refer to the fact of there having been no further 9/11-style attacks since the original 9/11.

..........In opening, Weisberg says that before 9/11 "We had been living in a fool's paradise," whereas after 9/11 everything was going to be very, very different, because "Now we would have to learn to accommodate the ongoing threat of terrorist violence," comparable to "the Israelis, Spaniards during the era of Basque separation, and Brits in the heyday of the IRA."

..........Okay. Enormous new fears. Now, here's Weisberg's second paragraph:

.............................. As the fifth anniversary of the attacks approaches,
....................perhaps the most surprising result is that American
....................life has not changed very much at all. We worry more
....................about terrorism and have to allow more time to negotiate
....................airport security. But amazingly, al-Qaida hasn't claimed
....................a single additional victim inside the United States. This
....................fact is all the more remarkable when you consider the
....................special challenges America faces in preventing terror-
....................ism: thousands of miles of porous border; an open,
....................mobile society; and easy access to firearms.

..........I ask, unable to believe my own poor eyes and ears, "WHAT CAN THIS MAN BE THINKING?!?!"

..........Everyone remembers the shock and outrage ten months or so ago, when the Bushiscti proposed offering a contract to a company in Dubai that would then provide security for six major U.S. ports. I myself couldn't even begin to understand the hysteria and outcry that ensued. Same thing with Weisberg. I can't begin to take him seriously.

..........After all, what surprise can there conceivably be in another 9/11 not having taken place in five years? Since the Bushiscti themselves were the perpetrators of 9/11, isn't it self-explanatory? The Bushiscti pulled off their inside job, got away with it, and got what they wanted from it—namely carte-blanche war-making powers from "congress," a wide opening of the purse-strings for said war-making, an instantly-created imaginary enemy to make war against, and, hardly least, the best opportunity conceivable to begin their program of crushing, or, if you wish, stripping away, of Constitutional liberties, starting with the so-called Patriot Act and now—those famous five years later—having legalized torture, gotten rid of habeas corpus, gutted the Insurrection Act, and gotten "legislators" to ante up $38 million for spiffing up concentration camps inside the U.S.—an event about which one typical Gatekeeper wrote the following: "Notorious internment camps where Japanese-Americans were kept behind barbed wire during World War II will be preserved as stark reminders of how the United States turned on some of its citizens in a time of fear."

..........I'm so angry I can hardly breathe. I need to calm myself. I think we should listen for a moment to Shylock, or, that is, to Edward deVere, Earl of Oxford:

......................................................................Hath
....................not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs,
....................dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with
....................the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject
....................to the same diseases, healed by the same means,
....................warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as
....................a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?
....................if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison
....................us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not
....................revenge?

·..........·..........·..........·..........·..........·..........·..........·..........·..........·
..........Hath not a Jew eyes? Have none of us eyes? I, as the author of a book whose very title is A Nation Gone Blind, find myself unable to believe my own eyes or my own ears.

..........Weisberg's subject is a perfect Gatekeeper non-subject. Why in the world would even the Bushiscti do a rerun of 9/11 if they don't need to? It's expensive, takes many years of planning ( Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is possibly the best scholar/writer on this point), and, most of all, they might get caught the second time!

..........Would that they'd been caught the first time. Of course the truth is that they were caught, have been caught, and have been exposed time and time over. It's just that all that truth is and has been suppressed, distorted, denied, ignored, or outright lied about not only by most of the inhabitants of a nation gone blind, but by all the corporate-owned and corporate-controlled mass media—and by all the Gatekeepers great and small, whether the ignorant ones, the treasonous ones, or the ersatz-whatever ones.

..........As for the Dubai deal—people people blamed it on "incompetence" yet again as they blamed the Bushiscti for such an outrageous faux pas. Incompetence, Ha! They know who did the 9/11 job. They know who worked with whom in the long and complex arrangements for "The Big Wedding." They know who's "good" and who's "bad"—another way of saying who is and who isn't simpatico with and tight with the Bushiscti, otherwise known as the back-slapping gang of neo-cons, Trilateralists, Bilderbergers, and assorted thugs and moles among them who are doing the actual governing and who are actually the rogue or invisible government of the U.S.

..........It was only the ignorant folks—along with the lying Gatekeepers pretending to be ignorant—who were alarmed. Dammit, one thing the Bushiscti, whom we should really call the Cheneyiscti, is who their friends are. And, man, their friends ain't us.

..........Just up above, that phrase "rogue or invisible government" —that's a link to the great Webster Tarpley. Last week—too late—he wrote about the Gates confirmation on the excellent site 911Blogger.com, urging a filibuster to keep from happening the ruinous confirmation that's already—as you read these words—happened. "Gates is a secret government toady," Tarpley wrote in "Filibuster Al Qaeda Founder Robert Gates." Here's some of the relevant history, via Tarpley:

....................When Gates was nominated by Reagan to be head of the CIA
....................in 1987, his role in Iran-contra crimes was already so filthy and
....................so blatant that he was forced to drop out of contention under
....................questioning. In doing this, Gates was seeking to defend his
....................new master, George H. W. Bush, who at that time was pre-
....................paring a presidential bid for 1988. The elder Bush was the
....................czar of all Reagan-Bush covert operations, including Iran-
....................contra. Gates fell on his sword to avoid revelations which would
....................have doomed the candidacy of Bush the elder. Payback for
....................Gates came in June 1991, when he was nominated once again
....................to be head of the CIA, this time by Bush the elder. Sam
....................Nunn and some others posed embarrassing questions, but
....................this time the cover-up of Gates' Iran-contra role was super-
....................vised by Sen. David Boren of the Bush Skull & Bones clique.
....................The Democrats, [intimidated] by the elder Bush's apparent
....................victory in the first Gulf war, rolled over. If Gates was too
....................dirty to even get to a vote in committee in 1987, how can
....................he be acceptable today? If Democratic Senators like Levin
....................and Biden opposed Gates in 1991, how can they find him
....................acceptable for a much more important post at a time
....................of far greater crisis?

..........There's yet more to come, though, as Tarpley reveals. Saying that "Most damning of all is the fact that Gates was one of the founders of al Qaeda, the CIA's Arab Legion which was assembled to attack the Soviets in Afghanistan. Gates is thus part of the infrastructure that produced the patsies of 9/11," a statement followed up by a long passage of evidence from pages 139-140 of his own powerfully revelatory book, Synthetic Terror, Made in U.S.A.

..........Following that passage, Tarpley concludes as follows:

....................This is the same al Qaeda which provided the troupe
....................of patsies, psychotics, and double agents (bin Laden,
....................Atta, Moussaoui, etc.) which were used to pin the 9/11
....................attacks on Arabs and Moslems-instead of the US
....................bankers' rogue network which actually carried out 9/11
....................for geopolitical reasons. Gates is up to his ears in the
....................terror apparatus of this rogue network, the September
....................criminals who created 9/11.

And there you are. I wouldn't recommend, if they hope to avoid the label of hypocrite extraordinaire, anyone's dismissing Tarpley's scholarship—casually or in any other way—without first reading his most, most learned and scholarly and experience-based book.

..........And the point of all this for us, here, now, on my A Nation Gone Blind website? It's this, expressed in the very last sentence of Tarpley's piece on the Gates "confirmation" hearings:

.........."Above all, we want 9/11 truth as the essential precondition for restoring lawful government."

..........Take heed, Gatekeepers, and listen closely. Take heed, listen closely, consider exactly, carefully, and well what it really is that you're doing, you—the New York Times and The New Yorker and The New Republic; you, Jacob Weisberg and Slate magazine; you, Nicholas Lemann; you, Amy Goodman; you, Frank Rich; you, National Public Radio; you, The Nation; you, Noam Chomsky; you, David Corn;, you, the myriad others great and small, inside academia and outside academia—consider what it is you're actually doing in blocking the way, in helping to prevent the ["restoration] of lawful government" in our betrayed and dying nation.

·..........·..........·..........·..........·..........·..........·..........·..........·..........·
..........All right, we're done with Dubai, and we've heard from Webster Tarpley about how much is at stake and how deeply and repugnantly corrupt, corrupted, hypocritical, deceitful, and how inimical to the people's interests the real government of the U.S. actually is—so let's get back to Jacob the fakir Weisberg.

..........And let us not forget Arianna Huffington and how grateful we remain to her for reminding us in no uncertain terms how a "pathological refusal to accept reality" is not only "sick" but that, worse, it "perverts judgment and rots the soul."

..........I ask you to decide which it is it here, perversion of judgment or rot of the soul, that leads Weisberg to write this paragraph (and, please, note well its third word):

....................But any honest appraisal has to recognize that President Bush
....................has indeed played a role in keeping the United States free from
....................another attack. To say this is not to say that his policy choices
....................have been wise or that they have truly made America safer over
....................the long term, but simply that our avoidance of domestic terror-
....................ism over the past five years is not entirely coincidental.

..........But let it go. Whatever caused by rot or by perversion, these words cannot help but trigger once again the same old question, "WHAT CAN THIS MAN BE THINKING?!?!"

..........The word "toady" doesn't even come close to the kind of words we need as we set about to characterize Weisberg here, to conjecture as to his motives, and as we wonder whether his ear, his perception of irony, of ambiguity, of the kind of complexity in thought and expression that are so much talked about A Nation Gone Blind—a book that it seems to me Jacob Weisberg could do very well for himself indeed by reading.

..........Does he have any idea what he's saying? Does he have any idea of the sheer absurdity of that word "honest" in the context he's putting it in? Does he have any idea of the actual truth—that is, that yes, Bush does indeed, along with the Cheneyiscti and the Gatesiscti and molesiscti and the Bilderbergiscti—has indeed, indeed "indeed played a role in keeping the United States free from another attack."

..........Those who have followed along this far know exactly why, too. If a guy shoots you in the shoulder one afternoon in, let's just say, September of 2001, and if that same guy doesn't shoot you in the shoulder again, not even once, as five long years roll by—well, then, may I just ask, has that guy indeed played a role in keeping you from being shot in the shoulder again?

..........As the kids everywhere around me say, "Duh!"

..........Talk about dumb-sounding journalism. Talk about embarrassing journalism. But it's still not as embarrassing and still not as dumb as what's to follow. If you think you can stand it, come on along and see. We'll start with a part of Weisberg's very next paragraph. Here goes:

..............................To begin with, the Bush administration deserves credit for
....................its role in incapacitating al-Qaida. U.S. military and intelligence
....................operations have not succeeded in killing or capturing Osama
....................Bin Laden or his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri. But surreptitious
....................American-led efforts, some of which Bush acknowledged in
....................greater detail in his East Room address, have wrecked al-
....................Qaida as a centralized organization. The war in Afghanistan
....................took away its operating base.

Even I begin ever so slightly to tire, but the stakes are high, the villains contemptible, the emergency pressing, enormous, and great. The truth here? The truth is that the Bush administration doesn't deserve credit for doodly squat, as Kurt Vonnegut might say.

..........And certainly it—or they—deserve not one iota of credit for "incapacitating" Al Qaeda, but, if anything, they deserve credit for purposely stirring it up insofar as that's ever possible; and they (along with their Poppy-esque and Clinton-esque forebears) do deserve credit for creating it in the first place, just as they deserve credit for pulling off the 9/11 attacks themselves and making "Al Qaeda" and Muslims in general take the fall and become the instantly-created and unequivocally evil enemy, the rapacious devil itself, the insidious disease that preys maliciously on the hale, hearty, firm, heroic flesh of the wholesome West-and that would be the West that no longer has habeas corpus, no longer has New Orleans, no longer has fair taxation, no longer has Posse Comitatus, but does lots and lots of internment camps getting all nicely fixed up.

..........Yes, they deserve credit indeed—for murder, treason, rapine, robbery, treason, betrayal of the Constitution, violation of their oaths of office, abandonment of the people of the United States, abandonment of the poor, as well as for the committing of war-crimes of various kinds and crimes against humanity of specific kinds.

..........Why is Jacob Weisberg so set upon being a self-blinded non-seer? Why Frank Rich? Why Amy Goodman? Why David Corn? Why Nicholas Lemann? What do they hope to gain? Do they think the Bushiscti will be nice, or good, to them in return for their craven fidelity, when the rest of the nation goes to its ruin, falls into penury and need and want, or goes to the camps that are being prepared or are prepared already for those who were faithless? Do the gatekeepers actually trust in the Bushiscti and in the Cheneyiscti; do they actually believe that, in payment for their complicity now they'll be paid back later in the coin of favor? Could the gatekeepers conceivably be that depraved; could the gatekeepers conceivably be that deceived?

..........What else could explain it? How can anything explain it?

·..........·..........·..........·..........·..........·..........·..........·..........·..........·
..........Well. As we know from Arianna Huffington, lying makes you sick, makes you rotten, and makes you stupid. Catch this, coming after his limited hangout admission (his "dangling scrap) that "A second factor [in our five-year reprieve from attack], Bush's domestic assault on potential terrorists, has been a more mixed blessing," Weisberg actually writes these words:

..............................A final factor in our avoidance of terrorism is Bush's
....................poorly judged, dishonestly sold, and incompetently execut-
....................ed war in Iraq. Bush didn't occupy Iraq hoping to draw all the
....................terrorists to one place-to "fight them over there so we don't
....................have to fight them here," as he now sometimes puts it. But
....................the "flypaper" effect is genuine. The occupation of Iraq has
....................created a convenient target of opportunity, drawing terrorists
....................who would otherwise be plying their trade somewhere else,
....................including against Americans abroad, or by attempting to
....................sneak into the United States.

..........Is he really ignorant of the fact that there were no terrorists in the first place beyond those the Clintoniscti and Bushiscti and Bildenbergeriscti themselves created for use as "patsies," setting them up to do things like bomb the African embassies, the USS Cole, and the WTC? I hear roars and screams of denunciation and shouted epithets. And what I say say in return to those epithets and shouts is this: Read Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed first, and then permit yourself to speak about the matter. And about the war. Does Weisberg really not know that the only reasons for the Iraq war—ever—were nothing more than profiteering and opportunistic grabs for global hegemony and oil mastery?

..........Well, whatever limited hangout dangling scraps he gives us, Weisberg's own logic is rotten, sick, and stupid:

..............................The occupation of Iraq has created a convenient target
....................of opportunity, drawing terrorists who would otherwise be
....................plying their trade somewhere else, including against Ameri-
....................cans abroad, or by attempting to sneak into the United States.

..........Has any man or woman ever heard a thing more depraved? More myopic? More amoral? More simple-minded, as in its absolutely tone-deaf and out-of-place "plying their trade," as if real terrorists were no more significant than, say, hookers or pickpockets? Or that the war, like flypaper, is a pretty neat way of keeping the bad guys out of our own backyards—like maggots to carrion, they're drawn instead to the war, preferring the vast opportunities of that death and horror and ruination to the far slimmer pickings in the hale and pure and wholesome and honest west. Ah, war! Ah, keeping the undesirables out! Hail the Bushiscti for their tactical brilliance!

..........Well, the fact is that I do know something equally or even more depraved. Or certainly just as blind and ignorant and uninformed and rudderless and embarrassing and dumb and debased and depraved. And here it is, expressed in Weisberg's last two sentences:

....................We all know that our immunity over the past five years has also been
....................the result of extraordinary good luck. One of the lessons of Sept. 11
....................is that such luck can run out on any day.

..........Permit me to object:

..........1)..........We do not all know that.

..........2)..........The "reprieve" has not been the result of luck of any sort.

..........3)..........And the notion that luck may run out is not in any way whatsoever "one of the lessons"—and you perhaps can tell me how any capable or conscientious or experienced writer could use so frivolous and so class-roomy a word in so serious a context—that of 9/11.


..........
..........
..........
..........

THREE

A NOTE ON
SICKNESS, TREASON
MURDER,
AND
GUILT
·

.........."[The] relentless denial of reality perverts judgment and rots the soul."

..........Thank you again, Arianna Huffington; however much of a Gatekeeper you may be, you've touched on a truth. Let's look into it.

·

..........On his web site "Common Wonders," Bob Koehler puts up a piece of his writing each week, and he also emails these pieces to you if you subscribe. I would recommend subscribing.

..........Yesterday, "Rules of Engagement" appeared in my box of incoming mail, and in this piece, Koehler opened by asking, "What illegitimate secrets lie hidden behind the word 'classified'?" He went on:

...................."The government is stalling us," Maguerite Hiken of
....................the Military Law Task Force told me. "They're going
....................to be embarrassed and they're scared to death of war
....................crimes charges."

....................Could it be that some high-level secrets are that tawdry?
....................Could it be that war is waged-not fought, but set into
....................motion-by, well. . . cowards, who feel themselves en-
....................titled to protection from the consequences of their de-
....................cisions?

..........Well, one responds to Koehler, it certainly could be that way, couldn't it. We know plenty already about the Chenyisctis' preference for starting wars rather than fighting in them, and plenty, too, about their vindictiveness, viciousness, and lack of compassion-except, of course, for victims of Katrina. Fascists may often be sadists and cowards.

.........."For that reason," Koehler goes on,

....................I'll be interested to see how the lawsuit that Hiken's organ-
....................ization recently filed against the U.S. Defense Department
....................plays out. The Task Force, which is part of the National
....................Lawyers Guild, has a simple question for the DoD, the
....................answer to which it was unable to get through a Freedom
....................of Information Act request: What were the rules of engage-
....................ment for soldiers at Fallujah, the Cincinnati-sized city
....................leveled in Operation Phantom Fury two years ago, and in
....................the shooting of Giuliana Sgrena, the Italian journalist who
....................had written about Fallujah, whose car was riddled by
....................bullets at a U.S. checkpoint in Iraq?

....................In other words, what acts are off-limits in this war?
....................What casualty-limiting moral restraints are put on
....................soldiers—or maybe I mean not taken away from them—
....................as they are sent into battle? And why is this classified?
....................Why is this a secret?

..........What the Military Law Task Force wants to know, adds Koehler, "is whether the orders U.S. soldiers were given violated international law. And what the public needs to know is whether those orders turn the stomach."

..........And they do. Koehler gives us testimony from eye-witnesses: An ambulance being directly and repeatedly fired at by U.S. Marines within eye-view distance of the marked vehicle; civilians waving white flags as they run, trying to flee the battle area—and being picked off as they run. And this:

...................."I watched them roll over wounded people in the street
....................with tanks," said Kassem Mohammed Ahmed, a res-
....................ident of Fallujah. "This happened so many times."

..........Ah, crushing people who are still alive by rolling over them with tank treads. How glorious. How typically an action of those who fight for democracy and for freedom and for tolerance. How typically the sort of thing done only by the "good guys," by the "Yanks," by the liberating Americans and their enlightened allies.

.........."[The] relentless denial of reality perverts judgment and rots the soul," said Arianna Huffington.

..........One wonders what soul we have left that's even capable of rotting.

..........And, said Webster Tarpley, "Above all, we want 9/11 truth as the essential precondition for restoring lawful government." [my emphasis]

..........It has got to be so. This lying and this covering up of the vile iniquities and malicious crimes that have been committed in our name by our criminal "leaders" and that continue to be committed will kill us all in spirit and in body—if it isn't already too late—unless what's been done is revealed openly and honestly for precisely what it is and has been: A great, heinous, on-going and unbroken committing of acts of treason and of crimes against humanity.

..........Until we see this truth for what it is and until we speak this truth openly, clearly, and honestly—until that happens, the iniquities will continue, they will increase, and we, with absolute inevitability, will be crushed, doomed, and destroyed.

.......... It's up to us.

............................................................—Eric Larsen
............................................................—December 14, 2006

AFTERWORD

Clearly, we have work left to do, having not yet even returned to Nicholas Lemann in order to finish up with him, nor having said what really needs to be said about the as-yet-unmentioned Christopher Hitchens and others as well.

And there's also our CONTEST to straighten out. You remember the situation as we left it, I'm sure, and you remember that, at that point, Gulliver had made a point of "disburthening" himself early each morning and "in open air, at the full extent of my chain. . . " You'll also remember, I trust, Gulliver's having told us that "due care was taken every morning before company came, that the offensive matter should be carried off in wheelbarrows. . ."

The CONTEST QUESTION is a dual one, thus: First part: How many Lilliputians were assigned the detail of carting off Gulliver's "disburthenment" each morning? Second part: In what exact way does that correct answer reveal a parallel between those Lilliputians and me, writing here about the Gatekeepers, in this extended series of pieces?

Now, the rules: The first reader to send me the correct answers will receive a free copy of A Nation Gone Blind, inscribed by me to that person. Previous winners, I'm afraid, must, in fairness, be excluded from the competition. Good luck. God knows, every one of us needs it.

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