Counting
Coup
- a Rainbow Warrior story
by
Joel A. Wendt -
The first
three “events” were labeled by the press: assassination attempts.
Four prominent public figures were
involved. The three events were spaced
one week apart, taking a time total of two weeks to
appear. They were called attempts because no
one was killed or even wounded, although the shots
came close enough to badly frighten the presumed
targets.
The first
one targeted the world’s richest media owner, a man
named Robert Morgan. The second one targeted
two very very oil-rich brothers, by the name of
Knox. The third event targeted a famous
political consultant and strategist, who had been
involved inside the two previous Birch
administrations, before going to work for Robert
Morgan’s media empire. The third one,
being more political in nature, dragged in the FBI,
the Secret Service, Homeland Security, the NSA, the
CIA and ATF. The working assumption was that
this was terrorists.
The usual
authorities got nowhere, except for an odd fact that
the investigators kept quiet. In the process
of working out from where the shots had been fired,
searchers turned up at two of the probable sites a
small cleared area (each site was an area providing
some kind of woods or park-like cover). The
cleared area consisted of a circle of bare earth
inside of which was a smaller circle of small white stones, with a
cross-like stone arrangement cutting the circle into quarters.
In the center of each circle was a small eagle
feather, set upright.
Since
eagle feathers can only be legally owned by certain
Native American Tribes, Indian experts were called
in and identified the stone circles as small
symbolic forms named “medicine wheels”, and which
were used mostly by those Nations collectively
called the Plains Indians. Lots of people had
different ideas about what this meant, but there was
no other evidence, and the cases went immediately
cold ... until 30 days had passed since the last of
the first three events.
Then, in
another two week period, there were three more events.
This time the targets were more related to the
politics of the Democrats, yet in somewhat the same way as the
previous four were related to Republicans. The
first one was a sitting Senator, chairman of Ways
and Means, the second one a major contributor out of
the liberal high tech area around Silicon Valley in
California. The third was a former Democratic
President.
Although
no one was hit, and the last fellow had a secret
service detail, the whole thing caused a great deal
of craziness media wise, inside Washington and out.
Lots of screaming for action, but since no one
was killed, or even injured, most of the country was
scratching their collective heads in wonder.
Investigators found once more the medicine
wheel and eagle feather symbols, and worked out the
following as well:
All the
shots were taken from about 500 yards out, which
requires a certain degree of sniper skill, but not a
lot. All kinds of shooters could do
this, although why there were no hits still didn’t
make any sense. One of the sites clearly had
marks made by the rifle on its bi-pod front rest - what seemed to be a teasingly
and intentionally left clue. This, plus facts
related to the recovered bullets lead investigators
to suspect that the same kind of basic sniper rifle
was being used in each instance, probably a
Remington 700, cost about $1200.
The reason the cost got to be
important was that the rifling marks on each
recovered bullet was different, which meant
different barrels and possibly that each gun was
being used once and then thrown away. That’s
six Remington 700‘s, used once, and then discarded.
Costly, but makes sense. If no
weapon is ever found, there is no way to trace it to
its owner.
The day eventually came that was 30 more days since the
last three events, which led to the involvement of a
lot of government and state police being out and
about everywhere. Once more, in two weeks
time, there were three more shootings.
This time the individuals targeted and
closely missed were two cable news talking heads,
one liberal and one conservative. The third
target was a former Alaskan governor and
vice-presidential candidate. The one
difference, which became very important, was that
the press finally found out about the medicine
wheels and eagle feathers - the one-time governor
couldn’t seem to keep her mouth shut.
The
authorities had been investigating a lot of former
and current AIM, or American Indian Movement men and
women, but to no good effect. All generally
had good alibis. While the Press and some
politicians had been talking about how this had to
be foreign terrorists, there really had been no
evidence and now with the fact of the medicine
wheels and eagle feathers finally coming out, the
media frenzy shifted in a fairly radical way.
That’s when a reporter for a daily paper in
Great Falls, Montana, had an interview with an old Blackfoot medicine man named David
Deerfeather, who liked to drink scotch. What
he said changed everything.
“Guy’s
counting coup, that’s what’s going on” David said
over three or four drinks in a bar in Missoula.
Soon all manner of experts were talking about
what that meant, of which the consensus seemed to be
that Indian warriors did very brave acts against
enemies by touching them, without killing or
wounding them, and then getting away. Of
course, not all experts agreed, but that wasn’t all
that David had
suggested.
“Got to
be a White man”, he said. “Probably the
Rainbow Warrior or the True White Brother”.
This last dragged out all manner of Indian
prophecies, and “the less said about that the
better”, was quoted by many so-called experts,
because for most it was too religious and in this secular age
that’s all we need - some kind of prophecy coming
true. Other newsmen, looking David up later,
couldn’t find him. He seemed have disappeared,
and questions put to other Native Americans in the
area of Western Montana and Eastern Idaho led
nowhere.
Thirty
days later the targets were three religious folks.
One was a famous Christian Right leader, one a
Catholic Bishop and the last was a Jewish Rabbi, who
was much involved in what some called the Israel
lobby. All were clearly political in their
public life. The last one led to the discovery of a left behind a shell casing, which
pretty much settled the question of the rifle for
some. Although one investigator remarked
that this had to be deliberate, and that the
authorities should be careful because whoever was
doing this was smart, careful and quite capable of
leading them someplace they maybe didn’t really want to go.
The next
thirty days event, after this last one targeting the
religious, was a kind of repeat performance, except
it was one from three of the four former groups. Seemed to some to
be a kind of reminder, and that’s when the academic
gave his views on the situation.
Books had
started to appear trying to explain the meaning of
it all. Everyone had a point of view.
What was beginning to be clear was something
noticed first by this academic in his blog.
Many disagreed, but his evidence, based upon
polls and similar typical academic social science
interviews, was that the tone of political posturing
and disagreement, which had been rising toward
nearly out of control hate speech for some time, was
now beginning to abate. People, who formerly
had been fanning the flames of hateful discourse,
were now being more circumspect. Takes a kind
of edge off of things the academic said, when
someone is out there shooting at you.
The folks
in the latest target sequence had all gotten more
outspoken instead of quieting down, and the Rainbow
Warrior, as the media had begun to collectively name
him, apparently had gone back to three of them to
suggest more strongly that they reconsider their
vain and divisive posturing.
Investigators
did begin to make a kind of headway, finally, when
they started working from the following hypothesis.
The shooter was assumed to be traveling the
country, buying new guns at the many gun shows, and
then going to nearby rifle ranges to work out the
kinks of the new rifle, which had to be sighted in,
because each one would have subtle variations and
need individual adjustments to the telescopic sight.
Gun show sellers were mostly reluctant
to give out information, and often gave
disinformation, because what the media had dubbed
the Rainbow Warrior was now becoming a kind of folk
hero, especially after the most recent coup events,
which targeted a high level banker who had escaped
prosecution during the market meltdown, a cable TV
reporter who had touted a lot of stocks that failed,
and a billionaire hedge fund guy who hadn’t paid any
taxes in the last three years.
All the
same, ATF investigators had some gun sellers and
rifle range operators under their thumb, because of prior un-prosecuted felony
violations that could be held over their heads.
The screws were being tightened down
everywhere they could be. From these sources
they built a kind of weirded-up profile.
The
reason for using the same kind of gun over and over
again was simply a matter of skill choice. No
reason not to have a favorite, and this gave the
investigators a lead as they started infiltrating
the gun shows and the rifle ranges.
After a time, they thought they had
their man, although it turned out to be a woman.
Thing was there was no weapon ever found and no
other physical evidence, and the only fact going for
the investigators was this woman buying these same
guns over and over again and going to ranges and
sighting them in. Consequently they didn’t close in on her, but did
start following her and had attached a tracking
device to her vehicle. She lived out of
this very high tech off road camper-van, that cost
upwards of $360,000 dollars - one in which she could
go into the wilderness and not need anything for
quite a while.
Shortly
after they attached the tracking device, she
disappeared while traveling in Western Montana.
The tracking device was found by the side of a
road. Military satellites were now put into
play to see if the vehicle could be spotted, and
eventually a compatible heat signature was found in
an area of Montana called the Bob Marshall
wilderness. Off road vehicles were prohibited
there, but there she seemed to be anyway.
Various
agencies decided to try to close in - they were
after all under a lot of pressure to take action -
any kind of action.
By the
time they got there, mostly by loud and noisy
helicopters, the vehicle was out from under the tree
canopy that had previously hidden it, and was in the
open in a high valley with a large meadow and
grassland landscape in its center, surrounded on all
sides by dense pine forests.
The woman
was sitting in a chair outside the vehicle next to
the creek that flowed through the valley, under an
awning that folded out of the side of the
truck-van-RV. There was some kind of uplink
antenna on the roof, and she was watching TV, and
cooking on a grill. When they got close, they surrounded her with about 20 heavily armed
officers, who had disembarked from three different
now landed attack helicopters, one of which had
various suits watching from a position of safety.
As they approached, she stood up and raised
her hands in a kind of gesture that suggested they
might want to talk first.
Fortunately,
the most senior FBI guy had once been a hostage
negotiator, and very much wanted her to surrender
without any fighting. He separated from
the surrounding circle and walked to within about
five feet of her. She was well endowed
in a sexual sense, wearing mostly loose clothing and
shorts showing a lot of tanned leg above good boots
that had small knife sheaths on their outer edges. She seemed to be at least 50
years or more old. Her hair was long, and worn
in a braid. Its color was naturally blond with
silver-gray streaks. She had no makeup
on, although she wore a bit of silver and turquoise
jewelry - earrings and a bracelet.
In the
pictures they had taken of her before she
disappeared, she was always dressed overly warm, and
wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses.
They hadn’t ID’d her, as she had no
fingerprints in the system - fingerprints they
pulled from discarded coffee cups at one of the
rifle ranges. Tracing the vehicle
license plate has come up empty as well. Some
suggested she must have been some kind of former
government operative to have left no obvious
identity traces that they had been able to find.
Her first
words were: “You are in a lot of danger. Think
carefully before you act.”
She
paused to let that sink in. He looked around
and didn’t see anything, although as she was in the
open and exposed, that meant that so was he, as were
all the officers and the suits.
She
continued: “Your ships and your men are in a
minefield, that has now been activated. You’ve
stepped out of it. I have a lot of friends”.
At which point she slowly raised her left hand
with the five fingers splayed out - clearly some
kind of signal.
At the
edge of the surrounding thick pine woods there was
movement, and soon there had to be at least a couple
hundred armed men, possibly women as well, stepping
out into the clear all around them. The FBI guy raised his hand, and with a couple of
gestures told his men to not move, and in fact to
sit down. There was muttering, but also
obedience. They were well trained.
She
turned to a second chair, invited him by gesture to
sit in the shade (it was about noon on a sunny
summer day). He sat, and was offered a drink
of water.
She made
another gesture and then said: “The minefield is now
turned off. If any of your men get up, it will
be turned back on.”
He
started to speak but she put a finger to her lips
and shushed him.
“You are
going to leave. There is no reason for
any loss of life, and you have no evidence, only
suspicion. An arrest would be set aside by a
court, although I wouldn’t expect to ever be allowed
to get to court. That being the case, I’m not
about to submit to a fake arrest by Homeland
security, only to disappear into a life-time of
custody and torture as some kind of assumed domestic
terrorist. You try to arrest me and everyone
here will die, especially your suits that were
stupid enough to come with you.”
“There
will be no more counting coup by me, but I can’t say
what others will do. I’m going to retire,
having made my point and set my example.
Political statements I leave to others, except
for this: the real government of the United States
is the people, not the wizards of Wall Street, or
the politicians or the vain media, or the religious
leaders or all the other people that think they know
better than the rest of us. We don’t
consent anymore to the way things are being run, and
you are forcing some of us to express our votes with a gun.
No other nation in the world is as well armed
as are the American People. There are a lot
more of us, than there are of you - a lot
more.”
“Think
about it. The elites and their servants
believe they have the power, but not here, not in
America. We are waking up to how you try to
divide us, how you try to lie us into making war on
each other. Those times are over.”
“Be wise.
Be careful. I’m sure you
have recorded this, ... now get going. You have ten
minutes to clear the area and another five to clear
the air space. We have more arms surrounding
you than you can imagine, including surface to air
missiles.”
He
understood, and was soon able to persuade the
officers and suits to leave. A return to the
meadow a few days later revealed that there had been
no minefield - it had all been a bluff. In the thick pines around the meadow
they found evidence of a lot of loose ground,
suggesting that the people had been hidden under
something that kept the satellites from seeing the waiting
crowd.
Of the
Rainbow Warrior and her friends, there was no trace
whatsoever. Hate speech by vain talking heads
began to decrease quickly, as others imitated her
and started counting coup. Once the faked up
divisiveness lessened, the American people soon
discovered the obvious truth: they had much more in
common with each other then they had any real
differences. And most important: that there
were far far more of common sense, wise and thoughtful ordinary people
than there are of those, who think their wealth or
position or
passion makes
them smarter or better.
Eventually,
even the media got it, although as was usual they
were the last collection of the truly clueless. This came about in a very
interesting way. It turned out that the
Rainbow Warrior had left behind a list - not of
specific targets, but of types of troublemakers.
For example, she had pointed out what was
being done out of impulses of greed and desire for
power by agribusiness, which was destroying through
bad gene transfer science the food chain, and also
interfering in healthy world-wide agricultural
developments by patenting genetically modified
grains.
She
pointed out the egregious activities of members of
the military-industrial complex, who used people
from the advertising and public relations
communities to create false pictures of national and
international reality through a consciously
developed psychological operations kind of warfare,
used against the American People. In all
instances she named names, and gave information
about corporations and companies most people had
never heard of before.
It was a
long list of affronts against Americans by
Americans, and by Americans against humanity.
She suggested that public mock trials using
the Internet be started, and that another way to
“count coup” was simply to expose to public ridicule
these people, who otherwise remain faceless and free
of the normal social shame they ought to feel as
betrayers of their own kind. "It's not the
corporations, its the people who run them. Put
faces to these cheats, liars and traitors."
She
encouraged computer hackers to do similar
actions, given their ability to get inside data
streams and reveal those secrets. She warned
against creating chaos and destruction just for
itself, but rather wrote of the importance of
unmasking wrong doing for use in the mock court of
public opinion. It was her view that the three
branches of the American government had all been
corrupted and compromised, and the people needed to
provide out of themselves the missing elements -
that a real government of the people, by the people
and for the people, didn’t need Washington D.C. in
order to come into existence.
We have
all kinds of electronic means, she said, - ways of
distributing information. What was lacking, on
our part, was sufficient self-discipline.
We had too much a tendency to love our
own opinions, and believed falsely this meant we
could also have our own facts. A
conspiracy theory, she wrote, was pretty useless in
terms of fixing something, because too much of it
was built out of paranoid fantasy. Its very
grandiosity bred confusion, not wisdom.
And
wisdom, she wrote, was the missing
element, which could only now be provided by
the people themselves. Politicians didn’t seek
it. Greedy corporate officers didn’t use it.
The secret government (black operations) folks
had no sense of it. At the same time, wisdom
came from a “we” process, not an “I” process.
A talking head on cable TV or talk
radio, was just a maker of noise. Wisdom
required a community conversation, and a willingness
to hear the other guy out.
Similarly,
anyone who are on the Right, who automatically
disparages the Left, and anyone one of the so-called
Left, who automatically disparages the Right, is
basically not thinking at all. They are just
being what she called: a political racist.
Instead of being prejudiced and bigoted
against a person of color, they are prejudiced and
bigoted against a person of a different point of
view, and for no better reason.
What this
ultimately meant, she concluded, is that there is no
true self government of any people in a political
sense, that isn’t founded on individual
self-governing in a moral sense. In this way
she said, in the end of her message: While
America, in the sense of corporate or existing
government ways, had no real business thinking
it could lead the world, Americans, as a people,
could contribute a lot to the future of humanity by
their own example.
We’d been adolescents politically for a long time now, she added, and now it was time to grow up and actually be responsible, instead of just posturing like bullies in a school yard. Then she quoted Christ, with a little addition: Render unto Caesar (the state, the Republic) what belongs to Caesar (We, instead of I); and (at the same time) Render unto God (our own moral self-discipline) what is God’s (according to our individual religious understanding of the nature of the Divine Mystery).