Unity Benefit Concert for AIDS in Africa

Open Letter to Michael Jackson: AFRICA UNITY CONCERT.

Dear Michael,

I am writing to you to ask your help for the dying millions of AIDS-afflicted in Africa. As things now stand, over the next decade one hundred million infected people may die--equal to seventeen Holocausts. Count them: seventeen.

The Jews of Israel are still reeling, in deepest pain, from the ONE Holocaust of half a century ago. And now Africa is to befall a fate, unfolding in slow motion before our eyes, infinitely worse? A Holocaust of Holocausts?

This is, by any standard, the largest scale tragedy in human history.

Please read this sentence again. Slowly. And let its true import sink in.

This amounts to the depopulation and devastation of an entire continent. Nothing like this has ever happened on this planet since the Black Plague, six hundred years ago.

A quarter of the population of Europe perished then.

Yes, Humanity recovered. But we might not, this time.

Our political leaders have failed us. Utterly and completely. We stand alone, abandoned, seemingly helpless to do anything, while we watch in horror. We all go about our daily lives, seemingly oblivious to it, numbed by the sheer magnitude of the pandemic. We must act for ourselves now. We, the people of the world.

All over this fragile planet, in every country, there are no rulers of Vision, to lead the way. No FDR, no Churchill, to seize the reins of History, for our time. We are adrift. Rudderless, on a ship of world peril.

PAGE TWO -- UNITY CONCERT FOR AFRICA.

If we do not act: no one else will.

The lack of leadership is mind boggling. In all the debates of all the candidates for the American Presidency this year, no one has said a word about it.

No one.

How can this be? While they go on and on, debating about health care coverage for the citizens of the United States--then they completely ignore the largest health care crisis ON THE PLANET?

What is this? What's WRONG with them? Don't they get it? Can't they SEE?

They have not ears to hear, the deafening cries of the dying. They have not eyes that can see, the chain of being linking the fate of the dying, with our own.

What will we tell our children, and grandchildren, Michael? Assuming we have any, in the final scene of this Armageddon by disease? That we stood by and did nothing?

That we did not act, as you once said so wisely, "to save our own lives"?

Michael, you could change this. Just as you did before with "We Are the World," you could again raise aloft the banner of hope and caring.

A similar musical project, now, could serve, once again, to bring the focus of the World upon this unnecessary calamity.

You may recall the words you said in the unfortunate documentary about you: how you would feel, if you were told: that all the children of the world had died? That there would be nothing left for you, in this world?

Do you know, Michael, how very CLOSE we are to treading the very path that leads to this final outcome? Estimates of the African orphans alone that will be left from this devastation--the children I know you care so much about--number forty million.

I see them now. Their bodies emaciated, care-worn, resigned to a fate they do not understand. Looking to us, the adults, on whom they depend. And we are not there.

PAGE THREE -- UNITY CONCERT FOR AFRICA.

And the wretched of the Earth shall cry out in their millions. And raise up their voices to Heaven. And hear only Silence.

What can be the fate of forty million orphans left to wander a continent in desolation and despair, seemingly abandoned by God, when most of the adults they depended on have died? Surely: a long, slow, agonizing path to the same inexorable fate. As close to a Final Outcome of "all children dying," as could ever arrive.

And then: the breeding ground for still more deaths through war, and the breakdown of civil society. A downward spiral of death and destruction, which no man is wise enough to see the end of.

We know not where this might lead, in the end. Perhaps it is all a bad dream, which must some day end in the dawn of New Life.

But I do know this, Michael: the psychic wound of such a catastrophe, upon all people of color, on this entire planet, surely must be unbearable.

No soul can die in Africa, without that wound being felt here in America. And everywhere. By all of us. But most especially, in the hearts and souls of all who first came from that land. A wound inflicted:

Again.

And Again.

And Again.

One hundred million times.

I know that recent years have not been kind to you, Michael. After having achieved such a height, suddenly everything seemed to go wrong. It was as if someone or something was deliberately trying to tear you down.

How this must have wounded you.

PAGE FOUR -- UNITY CONCERT FOR AFRICA.

But do you know, Michael: that God, all this time, has been searching for a way to bring you back into the Light? To put an end to all your trials?

The tidal wave of gratitude that would engulf you, by all the people of the world, if you would do this, this healing project of Music and Light, would be staggering.

You would shine now, Michael.

You would shine like the Sun.

And be a beacon of light unto the World.

And show true leadership, a leadership of the Spirit, where there is none now.

And your name endure, for a thousand years. Not alone for the precious music you have given this world. But too, for the gift of precious life, to humanity.

There is no negative or dark power on this Earth that can withstand the awesome power of the Light, of God's unending Love. And all who are truly good and pure of heart, as you are, Michael, must one day return to God's Grace. And be reborn in Light. And break free from Bondage.

For no one's heart is hidden from God. God knows who you really are, Michael. And always has. And what your task has been, in this world, your calling in service.

God is calling you now. He is calling you to perform a task, far greater than you have ever known.

It is, perhaps, what you were born to do.

For the children.

Rise Up, Michael. Rise Up.

Show the World who you really are. That you are, and always will be, the beacon of Light, to the children of the world.

PAGE FIVE -- UNITY CONCERT FOR AFRICA..

As for myself...

I am one who has the Gift of Second Sight.

And I see a time, years from now, when one of your sons will stand before his graduating college class.

And he will speak of his famous father, in these words:

That he was so proud, of all you had done, in your unparalleled life. But never so very proud, of what you did, in the early years of the new century: when you lead the world to caring and compassion for all the children of Africa.

And more. For all the children, of all the world.

The Souls of all people of color are now in your hands, Michael. More than you could know, or yet understand.

But you will.

Many hands and hearts will join you. From every continent, from all peoples.

I have thought of you often. Knowing this moment would come.

And I have looked back in my mind, so many times, on all the suffering and struggle of all who first came to this country, from Africa, over a span of hundreds of years.

I have thought of how they first came to this strange New World, in chains.

How they died in their millions in the Middle Passage. How they endured 300 years of slavery.

And how, in the end, a Mighty Contest was waged, a Great Civil War, that finally put an end to it.

Only to begin a hundred years more of struggle. Until, at last, another step forward to the Light. As the Civil Rights struggle of our time was victorious in the end.

PAGE SIX -- UNITY CONCERT FOR AFRICA.

And the Souls of Black Folks, and the Souls of White Folks, came closer together, as they had a hundred years before. One step closer, towards the Light.

That we might be, as Dr. King said in Prophecy, "free at last."

As often as I have thought of you, and your task God has prepared, so too have I thought of him, of Dr. King. Of the great soul he was, struck down in his prime.

Of how much we all lost, the day he died.

And where he would be now, Michael, were he alive today.

I think you know the answer. We all do.

He would be in Africa. He would be in the Middle East. He would be, so many places, on this troubled planet. He would be with the poor and suffering in every land. To raise aloft the banner of hope, as he did then.

And transformed this country.

Now, it is four decades further into the future. And we have not seen his like again.

Now, when we most need him, there is, it would seem, no one to take his place. No one to stride onto the dark stage of History, in Africa, raise a mighty hand, and say: This shall not pass.

But this is not what I See. That God should abandon us now.

For I see, just over the horizon, that we all, Black and White, and people of all color, will do again, what we did before: That, in the end, we all came together in Unity. That we did not let our leaders succeed in dividing us, one from another.

That their lack of leadership did not fail us. That a leadership from God, from the people themselves, rose up in the final hour.

And we created our own victory, in the Cause of Life itself; the cause most dear to the heart of God.

PAGE SEVEN -- UNITY CONCERT FOR AFRICA.

That we gathered together the scattered shards of Dr. King's Dream, deep inside the hearts of every one of us; and we joined them all together, to make a Mighty Blaze of healing, which no force of darkness could withstand.

That we Saw, finally, that the only color there is, or ever was, is the color of God's Limitless Light. And that all our souls are joined together, working towards a final resolution.

Of a Mighty Work, building now for centuries.

The stakes are the very highest, Michael. Tens of millions of people might live. Or, if nothing is done, they will surely die.

And all that we have suffered, and all endured, brothers and sisters alike under the skin, be as it were for nought: being set back so far.

All the souls of the Middle Passage, and all the suffering souls of slavery that followed, down through time, surely must now cry out to Heaven:

"Deliver us, oh God, from the Mightiest Evil yet of our people. We did not fight and endure, for you, our children far into the future, for this to be. We have honored you with our struggle, that you might one day be as you are: blood of our blood, flesh of our flesh. And Risen Up from Bondage. And carrying forward the Light, that first came from us.

We are so very proud of you, our Children of the Future. All our lives we sacrificed for you, and dreamed of the day you would one day live in freedom. Never doubt that we look on your lives from Heaven, where we abide in Final Peace, with gladness in our hearts. Proud of your progress. And with you in your trials.

With all our collective will and passion, our Children of the Future, we join our voices together now to ask you to redeem our faith and trust in you.

Honor us now, that our battle was not fought in vain.

Come together. And act in the Cause of Life."

PAGE EIGHT -- UNITY CONCERT FOR AFRICA.

Whatever happens over the next few years, Michael, may set the pattern for all that follows. Whoever is the next ruler over America, during this time, may control the ultimate fate of a Continent. And of an entire people.

I fear for this country, and of the fate of millions, if there is no change in Washington. This issue, the largest of our lives, MUST BE an issue in the 2004 election. As things stand now, it is not.

We need a platform, a way of getting this into the public consciousness and awareness, as an issue that cannot be avoided or silenced.

For always it is Silence that Kills.

The Bush Government is counting on this silence.

They cannot be allowed to succeed.

A musical project, with yourself and many others, would be a way of Raising the Banner. That we all might come together in UNITY.

Ultimately, we all must hope. As all others before us have done. And dream again. And believe once again in our true power.

For we are not such beings--Black, or White, or any color--to be defeated now. Descended from Heaven, we must one day rise up to claim our birthright.

We are still flesh of their flesh, blood of their blood, alike beneath the skin, as our forebears who triumphed before us. Black and White, we have done all before. Suffered and endured all before, in so many greater ways. And conquered all before.

We must do so again.

Now, more than ever.

But I will let you in on a small secret, Michael.

Something you must already know, in your heart.

PAGE NINE -- UNITY CONCERT FOR AFRICA.

Dr. King didn't really die, that awful day in 1968. I remember being in college at the time, and how we all cried, gathered together in community.

Much has happened since then. The onward march, the eyes on the prize: we went forward. But we should know, after all this time, this one simple truth:

You cannot kill a dream.

As long as there is breath in my body, or in yours, or in any of us on this fragile planet, his dream can never die. A thousand years from now, long after we have finally vanquished all Hate, it will still endure.

And shine like the Sun, having come home to God.

A part of the man we once knew as Martin Luther King lives on in all our hearts.

He is here. He has always been here. He is here with me now, as I write these words.

And he, too, is calling you. Calling you, Michael, to rise up. To rise up. To carry on the Dream, in his name.

And if we would but join the dispersed pieces of his Dream all together now, we would raise up a force of God's true power, that no force of Evil could withstand.

And Death, in the final days, shall be vanquished by Life.

And we shall take the Broken Pieces of our lives, the shattered dreams, that weigh us down, from day to day.

And we shall be made whole, by the Grace of God.

And the wandering lost souls of the children of Africa, join with us in world family And reunion.

And we, all God's Children, shall be Free.

PAGE TEN -- UNITY CONCERT FOR AFRICA.

My power is that of my Words. And I use it now, to wage my struggle, for the greatest cause I know, of our time.

Yours is a different path, a different gift. But we are Brothers, you and I, Michael, serving the same God, and for the same reason.

And so, my Brother: I could have sent this Letter to anyone else on Earth. Or chosen a thousand different ways, to raise aloft my battle cry for Life.

But of all the people on this planet, Michael, it was clear to me that there was one, and only one person, to whom it would mean the most.

And that person is you.

No one else for whom the plight of the Children of the World, could possibly mean as much.

And so, Michael, in this, my random act of kindness, I chose you: to share with you my heart, and my dream.

My dream that we, in the final hour, did not fail all who have gone before us.

And that we, all together as a people, shall be now, and forevermore: Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty! We shall be free at last!

God Bless you, Michael, for all that you are, and will always be.

==Robert==*
new York City, October 20, 2003
unity_nyc@yahoo.com

NOTE: This "Open Letter to Michael Jackson," is followed by a companion piece: a VILLAGE VOICEINTERVIEW with the DEMOCRAT winner of the 2004 Presidential Election: A view from the FUTURE: January 3, 2007. Pages 1-32. Both pieces are intended to be read together, and are available online at: www.angelfire.com/ny5/unity

HOW TO HELP THE UNITY CONCERT FOR AFRICA.

Dear Friends,

Having written this "Open Letter to Michael Jackson," I let it go, to find whatever manifestation in reality it can. Or cannot. It's all up to you now. Whoever happens to read this, passed from hand to hand. It does not matter who I am, this "Robert," who signs his name above. I am white, I am male, and I live in New York City. That is enough to know.

I was spiritually guided to write what I have written. But also instructed, guided in prayer, not to attempt to deliver this message to Michael Jackson, myself. The idea alone is all that counts. Perhaps one or another of you who reads this, will transmit it to the right person. So that one will give it to another, and to another, and so on.

Perhaps someone else within the community of Musicians, famous or not, will heed my call. Or someone else of prominence, within the community of African-American leadership. Or anyone at all in a position to take a leadership role.

I have written in Metaphor: writing to Michael as Symbol, one individual speaking to another. As we must all some day do, more and more, if our nation is to be healed. We are all, in the end, Individuals. As are all the Nameless Ones who suffer and die And we must reconnect in this way.

Do with this whatever you are inspired to. But please don't break the link. Do your small part, whatever that might be. The Chain of Being, to survive, must be supported and sustained by a vital Chain of Information.

 Pass it on, post it on the Internet, publish it in a newsletter, fax it, email the UNITY site link, etc. Whatever way you can imagine to spread the word. Should you find my idea worthy. Should my words find a responsive chord within you.

Some way or another, if my Call speaks to you, and to all of us, it will be heeded. And the Divine will find some Way of making it real. In this I trust and believe.

And we shall gather in UNITY. And the World be made whole again.

And we shall be Free.

PAGE TWO. HOW TO HELP the UNITY CONCERT FOR AIDS IN AFRICA

My mind returns again and again to the time of our Fathers, the "Greatest Generation," as has been written. The Holocaust of that time was considered to be a signal event. It lead to the founding of the state of Israel. People took it seriously.

And yet: an unfolding event of far greater magnitude, passes by us, seemingly unheeded and unattended. What is wrong with us? Where is our Leadership? And, as I have said: What will we tell our children? Perhaps there is little we can do. Perhaps we are, after all, a small people, dwindled into insignificance, powerless before the great challenges of our time.

But I yet retain a Faith, that there is a great untapped reservoir of caring, that would rally to this cause. If only the People knew, and heard. And if they were shown a way, a pathway towards connecting. Such a simple way. In any public meeting place.

If we build it: they will come. It is a small thing I ask, and suggest: A Concert of Life: THE UNITY CONCERT FOR AFRICA.The proceeds to the United Nations, and in other ways, as guided. For Africa. For all of us.

The challenge may seem overwhelming. But we must begin somewhere. And with the means and tools ready to hand.

Well? What are you waiting for? We have work to do.

==Robert==*
unity_nyc@yahoo.com
www.angelfire.com/ny5/unity (under construction)
complete text and updates always posted here.

Following (or posted separately at www.angelfire.com/ny5/unity is a VILLAGE VOICEinterview with the next Democratic president of the United States, from the perspective of the FUTURE: January 3, 2007. Three years from now. It is the future we all, if we work together, could make happen. It is an imaginative, metaphoric vision of what might begin with the UNITY CONCERT FOR AFRICA.
And more: beginning with one concert, and spreading to every continent.

That we took back our country. And changed the world. Forever.

VILLAGE VOICE INTERVIEW WITH THE DEMOCRATIC WINNER OF THE 2004 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION. A view from the future: Jan., 2007

It is January 3, 2007, on a cold, winter day in Washington, DC; the seventh year of the twenty-first century. The newly elected Democratic President of the USA, winner of the 2004 election in an unprecedented 86% majority landslide, is herein interviewed by THE VILLAGE VOICE for a retrospective, comprehensive review of his revolutionary first two years in office.

THE VOICE: Thank you for making time in your busy schedule, Mr. President, for this retrospective compilation and analysis of the first two years of your Democratic Administration, headed by yourself and Vice President Bill Clinton. By the way, when is Senator Hillary Clinton going to be speaking at the United Nations this evening, announcing the final stages of the Mideast Peace Settlement?

THE PRESIDENT: Hillary's speech is tentatively scheduled for 7 PM. As you know, events have been flowing fast and furious of late. All things are subject to change at the last minute, in an extraordinarily fluid situation.

George Soros, the international financier who played such a crucial role in bringing about the Mideast Peace, will follow. His innovative vision, that we developed jointly, created an alternative kind of peace process focused on economic development: creating the infrastructure for the future Palestinian State.. Without his unique contribution, none of this would now be happening. Of course, many other philanthropists participated, notably Bill Gates, Sr.

Soros, Bill Gates, Sr., and many others, also backed our government-private funding initiative starting the Trans-Africa Network, linking all Africa in the struggle by radio; or cable television, where applicable. We needed to reach people who were not all literate, most efficiently: to co-ordinate the health building campaign to deal with AIDS, malaria, and so many other diseases.

So much time always wasted, waiting for change through government. So many hopes pinned, so much progress held up: waiting for some "White Knight" to be elected President of the US. It never happened. And the time never came. Finally, we all got tired of waiting. And we seized the tools at hand, in the private sector. To point the way, if nothing else, to what government could do. As an example. We have broken the Old Forms, transitioning towards a society that responds flexibly as problems arise, not waiting until they fester out of control.

PAGE TWO -- VOICE INTERVIEW.

THE PRESIDENT: It was, simply, a matter of logistics. We had to find some way of coming together in UNITY, to coordinate our efforts with a common vision. All working for a common cause. Without that, without Trans-Africa (TAN), we would have remained on separate paths, working in fragmentary and isolated ways.

Sometimes it is necessary, before tackling a problem directly, to set up the overall framework for resolution. One way was dispensing free radios all over Africa. So TAN was heard everywhere. For many, the UN radios became their lifeline, their hope.

And without Hope, the currency of all great change that has ever happened on this planet, nothing at all would have been possible. TAN was the Network of Hope, providing this living sustenance on a daily basis. And even in the darkest hours, as the weak and vulnerable lay dying.

We took existing, isolated radio systems, expanded and linked them together. I remembered Franklin D. Roosevelt and the fireside chats of World War II, providing a vision of strength; and the great voice of Winston Churchill, rallying the British against Hitler. We needed something like that again, for our time.

It is often said, "Where there is no vision, the people perish." But how can the Vision take root and hold, if there is no medium for it to be seen (or heard) in the first place? The Vision that is not Seen, the Call that is not Heard--how can either ever do the great work of transformation? The Trans-Africa Network (TAN) was that beacon, the sustaining voice of hope and healing.

The key was giving people simple ways to participate. Africa-Aid Investment and Development (AID) was an investment vehicle of access to all. This non-profit international corporation, a central hub for NGO's, does what government cannot. People all over the planet now have an easy, direct way to invest in solving common problems. With AID they go online, purchase shares in the international effort. Or invest by mail or phone. They buy stock the ordinary way, like any corporation.

This is a new kind of corporation;investing in public policy and the future. Similarly, we have discarded the concept of political parties altogether, replacing them with a new form of political corporation. Our product: political education, detailed plans for solving public problems, educating a new class of professionally trained politicians.

PAGE THREE -- VOICE INTERVIEW. www.angelfire.com/ny5/unity

THE PRESIDENT: Where Bill Clinton built a bridge to the 21st century, we are now working together, as President and Vice President, to build the bridge to the 22nd century. And beyond. A world in which there is no poverty, no hunger, no disease, and all the rest.

It seems like we've traverse red in two years a century's worth of ground. Well, three years, if you count the beginning in November/December 2003. Both the country and the world community are completely unrecognizable, compared to where we were when George W. Bush, "Little George," was the selected president of the oil lobby and the Supreme Court.

We've gone from a bad dream, from George of Arabia, "President of Terrorism," to a new world of collective UNITY, unlike anything the world has ever seen. It hardly seems like the same planet. In a good way, of course.

THE VOICE: Could you take us back in time, Mr. President, to the moment when you knew, for real, that this was actually going to happen? Or at least, that the worldwide AIDS Initiative in Africa was starting to manifest?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, sure. Everybody remembers that now, I would imagine. When Michael Jackson and I went on Oprah together, it was an electric moment. Plans for the concert were announced, and Michael invited other musicians to contact him, to get the ball rolling. The target date, seemingly impossibly soon, was December 10, 2003. We talked about possible places to hold it, such as Madison Square Garden, my own favorite.

Two things I hoped to achieve by going on Oprah with Michael: One, that Michael would feel the entire country behind him in beginning this project: an outpouring of love and support. I think he needed that, to know that we were all rooting for him.

Two: The leadership of the UNITY CONCERT should come largely from the African-American Community. Especially, the Congressional Black Caucus..That's where Charly Rangel, Democratic Congressman from New York, first came into the picture. He read into the Congressional Record the first things we wrote, articulating the vision and the plan for the UNITY CONCERT FOR AFRICA.

PAGE FOUR -- VOICE INTERVIEW. www.angelfire.com/ny5/unity

THE VOICE: We all know now what a keen political strategist you are. Why was UNITY the first piece you moved on the political chessboard?

THE PRESIDENT: Manipulative politicians like George of Arabia, with his soap opera road show, "Terrorism Follies," wielded political power by exploiting raw emotion: Fear. UNITY was a way of assembling a much bigger spectacle, a more powerful expression of POSITIVE emotion. UNITY was a Godzilla of a concert, making "the Terrorism Follies" look puny by comparison.

THE VOICE: You made frequent comparisons or connections between UNITY, "We Are the World, "Live Aid," and the original Woodstock.

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, I was at the first Woodstock myself, you know. In a very real way, Woodstock marked the psychic end of the Vietnam War for my generation. I was about 20, in college. My future wife and I drove there in our VW bug. I still remember the locals, waving at us in support as we drove by, when we got really close to the final destination.

Woodstock, unintentionally at the time, became a transforming experience for the whole country. Here we had all came together, in a little town called Bethel, upstate New York, 500,000 strong. For three days of "Peace and Love." We had thought we were just going to a concert-- albeit, a very big one.

But something unexpected happened when we got there. We looked around at each other, at everyone who had come, and there was a flash of recognition: Hey! We're in the Majority in this Country!

Without that experience of collective identity, of feeling our power all linked together, perhaps Vietnam would have dragged on a lot longer. We became in that moment, to cite the title of Abby Hoffman's book celebrating the event, "Woodstock Nation."

THE VOICE: You saw UNITY as another Woodstock? Maybe in some subtle, metaphysical way, Woodstock may have had something to do with ending Vietnam. But your concept seems to have been one of adding on other dimensions to simply a musical concert. To involve greater numbers of people, in more complex ways?

PAGE FIVE -- VOICE INTERVIEW. www.angelfire.com/ny5/unity

THE PRESIDENT: From the beginning I envisioned something much bigger, and multi-dimension: a series of concerts, this time planetary, expanding into other media. What began in one artistic medium would then mushroom into others: Poets, painters, graphic artists, documentarians, rap artists with new songs, crafts artists, etc. The sky was the limit. Will Smith's Rap Collective was very powerful. Will took the initiative to get the Word out to the brothers on the street.

The end result, when you put it all together: nothing less than the largest scale artistic collaboration in human history.

Film was the key, after UNITY kicked things off. The Big Enchilada was to film UNITY, and all the other concerts on all continents: and then that film would hit theaters everywhere by July 1, 2004. In plenty of time for the Democratic candidate to seize the high ground in the 2004 election, in November.

THE VOICE: How exactly was this supposed to work? How was a concert, or even a series of them to benefit AIDS in Africa, supposed to translate into Democratic votes? Most people hearing this for the first time probably scratched their heads and said, "I don't get it? What's the connection?"

THE PRESIDENT: Yeah, I know. What does music have to do with voting? The idea was a promotional event to get AIDS into front page headlines--at all, any way you could. It was a way of saying, subtly and not-so-subtly: that the people themselves had to assert leadership on AIDS. And that the President of the US was NOT providing it. This was a cultural politics, bypassing the conventional arena.

THE VOICE: What about Bush's tour of Africa, and all the money he pledged for AIDS funding? He got very good press for that at the time, and high praise from many Black leaders, both in this country and abroad.

THE PRESIDENT: The Bush Africa Tour? Oh, that piece of crap. Just another Bush Dog and Pony show. A sham. The intent? To garner glowing Page One headlines for Little George's " bold AIDS initiative." Professor Jeffrey Sachs, of the Earth Institute at Columbia exposed the travesty of it when he spoke before the Congressional Black Caucus in 2003 (broadcast by C-Span). He had a very sophisticated understanding of the AIDS issue, and was one of the first persons I contacted as an adviser to UNITY.

PAGE SIX -- VOICE INTERVIEW. www.angelfire.com/ny5/unity

Quietly, behind the scenes, Bush intentionally pulled the rug out from his own AIDS initiative, failing to fund what was promised. Like he always does. As in: "No child left behind" morphing into "No child's behind left." He did it all the time. This time, he did it once too often. And this time, he got caught with his pants down.

He knew he could count on Conservative dominated media to report non-funding of his AIDS program on Page 37, if at all. And even if it was reported, nobody would pay attention to it. The Page One headlines rolled on, living out a life of their own.

"Bush, Man of Africa" was never more than a cynical ploy to get as much of the Black Vote as he could: a staged event to breathe life into his blow-up doll of "George the Savior, Compassionate Conservative." Joe Conason had a chapter in BIG LIES, explaining how the Compassionate Conservative scam came into being: Chapter Nine: "Faith, Charity and the Mayberry Machiavelli's."

The game plan for UNITY was to unify the planet in a "Woodstock Moment" for our time. If we did that--experienced at a visceral, gut level, our true power in UNITY--we would all look around at each other, and know, just as we had before: "Hey! We're in the Majority Here on this Planet!"

In my thinking on AIDS and terrorism, I was very affected by a PBS series, Avoiding Armageddon, hosted by Walter Cronkite. Martin Schram's book, "Avoiding Armageddon," was the basis for it. (See Chapters 22 and 23.)

One part,"The New Face of Terrorism," explained how children, cut off from a normal family, become prey to a new "Family of Terrorism." Indoctrinated and exploited, they are pawns of the war lords. Everywhere normal families are absent or undermined, they are perverted to a false path. Everywhere where there is no Hope. In Palestine: only a people who have lost all Hope would send their own children out to die, as suicide bombers.

The answer? Always, so simple: For a people without Hope–give Hope. For a people without Peace–give the Peace that passeth all understanding. Government cannot do this. But the world community of artists always had it in their power. And music raised aloft the banner. Both practically, and in spirit. Yassar Arafat wasn't strapping explosives on his body to volunteer as a suicide bomber. The problem was the kids who were. My prescription? Ignore the leaders: reach the followers.

PAGE SEVEN -- VOICE INTERVIEW: www.angelfire.com/ny5/unity

THE PRESIDENT: Implicitly, the UNITY concerts conveyed a subliminal "Message to Bush" or "Earth, calling Bush," that went something. like this:

"Just to let you know, George, here's the deal:

This is not 'Bush Country,' any more. And this is not Little George's Planet, any more. And this planet does NOT belong to a handful of greedy oil monopolies, any more.

We don't care how many Academy Awards you got for your cute little performance in "Bush at War: Scourge of Terrorism."

We don't care how many air craft carriers you landed on, in your photo-op jump suit. Or how many action figures of you they crank out, with this advisory: this 10-inch "Bush Figure" is scaled to Life Size.

Nor do we care about your masquerade as Defender of the Free World.

That's about to stop happening.

Now.

And we're putting you and the entire Bush Gang--Little Dicky, Little Rummy, Little Condy, and all the rest, playing at War--on Notice:

You know what, George? We're Bigger than you are.

You can't continue to kick around an entire planet without there coming, eventually, a moment when we collectively realized that.

And guess, what, George: we just did.

And now we're going to kick Bush Butt, all over this planet. And there's nothing you can do about it!

Get used to it."

PAGE EIGHT -- VOICE INTERVIEW. www.angelfire.com/ny5/unity

THE VOICE: How did your concept for the UNITY CONCERT fit into the larger cultural picture in the country at that time?

THE PRESIDENT: In popular culture, what had already worked to tear down Bush? Which books were the heavyweights attacking him? The ones by Michael Moore and Al Franken. Not your standard Political Thinkers. But they wrote books that were very accessible, very readable. That was the key: whatever you did, make your message very simple, and something everyone could relate to.

Al Franken's best seller LIES, AND THE LYING LIARS WHO TELL THEM, was the one I read first. Then in October, 2003, I read Mike's HEY DUDE, WHERE'S MY COUNTRY? when it first came out.

THE VOICE: All the pieces came together in your mind, of a Mega Event.

THE PRESIDENT: Exactly. I saw a kind of Troika emerging here. What if you got Michael Jackson, the King of Pop, together with Al Franken and Michael Moore, all together in the same room, to work together on the UNITY CONCERT?

I saw the Opening Acts for UNITY as, not musical, but comedy. Al called in his Hollywood friends: Robin Williams, Billy Crystal, Whoopy Goldberg, etc. The A Team of Comedy.

Then Michael Moore began co-ordinating the filming of UNITY. Bringing in other film makers as needed. We also invited community activists, Amnesty International and people around the world, to submit both home videos, and more professional documentary material, that we could use to splice into the UNITY MEGA MOVIE.

THE VOICE: The timing was cutting everything awfully close. If you had this Grand Vision for UNITY way back in January of 2003, why in God's name did you wait until almost the very last minute to pull it together?

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, it was right down to the wire, three short months before the New Hampshire primary. There was a sinking feeling among the people that none of the likely Democratic candidates had the kind of magnetic presence to truly unify the country to beat Bush and his well oiled propaganda machine.

PAGE NINE -- VOICE INTERVIEW. www.angelfire.com/ny5/unity

THE PRESIDENT: It was enormously frustrating to me, waiting from January to the end of October, 2003, for the project to even begin.

I tried, so many times, to move forward. But no matter what I did, I just couldn't get to first base with it.

Finally, I understood:

UNITY was something truly in God's hands.

And there was no way God was going to let it move forward until the exactly right, sweet moment in time, where it would all fall into place, without any effort at all.

God's Time is always different, and usually much slower, than the human sense. God alone has the total breadth of Vision, to see how everything must fit together

And that moment of fitting wasn't until Fall, 2003. In New York City.

And that's just the way it was. And how it had to be.

We had come full circle. George of Arabia's Reign of Terrorism began in New York City, with the attack on the Twin Towers.

And the two stage managed, fictitious wars that followed: Afghanistan and Iraq.

So of course, the most powerful movement to take back the country had to emerge from the ashes of our stricken city.

THE VOICE: The UNITY CONCERTS suddenly erupted, coming from out of nowhere. Just when the Bush Administration calculated they were a shoe-in to coast to an easy re-election.

You seemed to have captured something in the Zeitgeist, something that everyone felt, but no one had yet articulated clearly enough.

You reached back to pluck the chords of other emotive events in our nation's history, drawing on them for their evocative power.

PAGE TEN -- VOICE INTERVIEW. www.angelfire.com/ny5/unity

THE PRESIDENT: UNITY was a shot across the bow, at the last possible minute, it seemed. It caught the Republicans totally by surprise.

I would have loved to have caught the expression on Karl Rove's face, as events unfolded and he finally understood what the UNITY CONCERT was all about.

At first, they didn't pay much attention to it. OK, so Michael Jackson and a few of his Hollywood pals are going to give some little concert to benefit AIDS in New York City. So who cares?

But then, a funny thing happened: Barbara Streisand and Rob Reiner got wind of UNITY NEW YORK, and announced that there would be a second UNITY CALIFORNIA in Los Angeles, a few days later.

Karl Rove and George Bush just looked at each other in bewilderment. What the hell was this? This wasn't in the Script. This was not supposed to happen.

UNITY NEW YORK and UNITY CALIFORNIA were the first of many across the planet. It set in motion a train of events that unified people all around the world, in a common cause: to go up against the biggest challenge we had ever faced, collectively, as a species on this planet--the AIDS worldwide pandemic.

THE VOICE: There's a kind of symbolic resonance in marking this milestone in your administration with Vice President Bill Clinton by once again coming back to your journalistic home at THE VILLAGE VOICE.

THE PRESIDENT: Indeed. Give my regards to Nat Hentoff and Sydney Schanberg. I still read their columns at THE VOICE regularly. You know, I look back fondly on the extraordinary times we lived through then, starting in the Fall of 2003, and the role they in particular played in everything that happened, to lead to where we all are now.

The final pieces of the Mideast Peace Settlement, putting an end to a half century of conflict, is finally at hand. A fitting moment to revisit our special connection. Now that Israel's Sharon is out of the picture, as it were, progress has been astonishingly rapid the past months. In an End game of these historic dimensions, the forces that desperately do not want this peace are pulling out all the stops.

PAGE ELEVEN -- VOICE INTERVIEW. www.angelfire.com/ny5/unity

THE PRESIDENT: My late entry into the 2004 race began, in a manner of speaking, through the vehicle of the pages of THE VOICE. This was the point of access paving the way for my involvement in the New York political scene, where I made my mark. Finally, I catapulted e onto the national stage.

Nat Hentoff was especially gracious. As was Sydney Schanberg. I cribbed some of my best ideas, back then, from Sydney. I especially remember his VOICE cover story around mid-October, 2003; the one with Bush decked out as Archangel Michael, holding aloft his illumined sword. I still have the article in my files: "The Widening Crusade: Bush's War Plan Is Scarier Than He's Saying." Sydney and I were thinking along the same lines at that time.

The Biblical dimensions of it all were starting to loom larger and larger. This was definitely the time to re-read Revelation, the last book in the Bible. I especially pondered the meaning of Revelation 3:9.

"Behold, I will make them of the synagogue of Satan, which say they are Jews, and are not, but do lie; behold I will make them to come and worship before thy feet, and know that I have loved thee."

I will leave it to others to decipher what exactly this means, in their own terms.

THE VOICE: Thank you, Mr. President. Now, getting back to the main focus of our interview with you today. As we've come to expect of you, we know that not all of our conversation today will be neatly compartmentalized.

THE PRESIDENT: (LAUGHS). I see you've learned my patterns well. One subject leads to another, and is interwoven with another, in ways most instructive and illuminating. That's always been the way my mind works.

THE VOICE: OK. Here's the list. We may not get to everything on the list today. But this is the agenda we'd like to get through eventually.

PAGE TWELVE -- VOICE INTERVIEW. www.angelfire.com/ny5/unity

THE VOICE: We have six subjects we want to explore today about 2004:

(1) How the "Draft Bill Clinton for Vice President" movement got started, right here in New York City.

(2) Karl Rove's secret funding of the Dean campaign in the Fall of 2003, calculated to help boost him into becoming the front-runner (just where they wanted him to be).

(3) The deaths of 96 American soldiers by terrorists on November 30, 2003.

(4) Sharp escalation of conflict between Syria and Israel in March 2004: the proxy build-up for the (planned) invasion of Syria after Bush's (expected) re-election.

(5) More on the sequence of worldwide music concerts, starting in December, 2003: initially, primarily for the benefit of AIDS in Africa. But later also, for the Palestinians, the victims of globalization, and many other causes. Especially the first one, headlined by Michael Jackson, Bono, Sting, Whitney Houston, the Stones, and so many others...

(6) Brief commentaries on the key players who were instrumental in your rise to the presidency, and what roles they played in your overall strategy to get there.

THE PRESIDENT: An ambitious agenda. Why don't we just continue our train of thought on the UNITY CONCERTS for a bit longer, if you don't mind? This "largest scale artistic collaboration in human history" was much bigger, by several orders of magnitude, than Bob Geldoff's "Live Aid" and Michael Jackson's and Lionel Ritchie's "We Are the World."

We took the basic concepts of these two events, and took it to a much more complex level. In the end, there were a total of nine mega-musical events, in sequence all over the planet: two in the US, one each in England, India, Zimbabwe, Brazil, Germany, Jordan and Japan. In each country, the scale and structure was different. Then later, there were two other projects, of a smaller scale.

And so it was: nine mega-events, plus two smaller ones. Nine plus two.

9/11.

PAGE THIRTEEN -- VOICE INTERVIEW. www.angelfire.com/ny5/unity

THE PRESIDENT: An odd list. But there was an internal dynamic why each one manifested. In Jordan, Queen Noor lead the way. She's a highly evolved, spiritual woman. In South Africa, Nelson Mandela took charge. In India, anti-globalization fervor enticed people to become involved. They borrowed my ideas and bent it to their own purposes, while also supporting the AIDS issue.

By Fall 2003, time was growing short in the run-up to 2004. Here was Bush, "the worst president in American history," as veteran White House Correspondent Helen Thomas had said of him. And yet his popularity didn't start to slide until then. No Democrat seemed to have real traction against him.

There was something deeply, desperately WRONG in our political system when no Democrat could compete against "the worst president in American history." Can there possibly be anything more pathetic than that? Either the Democrats had no message, or they were failing to get through the Media Filter effectively. I think it was some of both. They were too emotionally flat to get through the War Fog.

Even though the Republicans were atrocious at actual governance, they had spent 30 years perfecting their Propaganda Machine. They played on voter emotions like a fiddle. Any effective counter-strategy had to systematically dissect and deconstruct all forms of Neocon Propaganda. If you couldn't do that one simple thing, then: don't bother. Just, go away: we'll find somebody else.

My basic strategy was to discard the idea of the Candidate Centered campaign. Ever since the invention of film, it was unnecessary to have Candidates themselves go to every venue in person. I simply videotaped all my "speeches"-- which became more like educational seminars/documentaries. Surrogate Campaigners ("SC's") took them all over the country, multiplying my presence a thousand-fold.

The SC's took out ads in local papers, inviting people in for a viewing and discussion. That way, I made my ideas and presence felt without having to actually be there. Much more efficient. These meetings were themselves videotaped. People asked their questions, some answerable by the SC's or local politicians/candidates familiar with my policies. When we got back the videotapes, we taped responses and sent back completed films, annotated with material collated from other sources. The responses were from myself as the candidate, plus expert commentary on each subject. Graphic imagery from real life people and stories made them vivid.

PAGE FOURTEEN -- VOICE INTERVIEW. www.angelfire.com/ny5/unity

THE PRESIDENT: The campaign videoS were also supplemented with charts, graphs and references to more print and online information: edited and organized into a coherent structure by my staff. The tapes bypassed the Media entirely.

Result: my message got out undiluted, unfiltered. And moreover, was much more complete and professionally packaged than any other campaign in American history.
We videotaped EVERYTHING. With a view towards splicing it all together into one big Mega Movie, the first full length feature campaign film. It was a team effort, with Steven Spielberg at the helm. We planned a US release in September, 2004. After that it went global, with sub-titles or dubbing in every language known to man.

Debates, Forums, Speeches;all these forms of political expression dated back to the founding of our country. Or before. All archaic, unexamined in the light of the modern world. The 2004 debates were pathetic: the same nine topics, over and over again: health insurance, Iraq, the economy, abortion and women's rights, gay rights, Ashcroft and the Patriot Act, NAFTA and the WTO, nuclear proliferation, terrorism. And that was about it; maybe one or two more subjects, at most. As if the entire sum of All the Nation's Business was reducible to this.

What about genetically modified foods? What about the water crisis for the people of the world? What about globalization? What about rebuilding our infrastructure? What about employment for inner city youth? What about the crises in State government? What about the issues of Native Americans, Latinos, Asians, etc.?

My vision was to conduct the nation's business like a business meeting. In business you write up a complete agenda, and systematically go through each item the company must address in order to function. Corporate CEO's do not give "speeches." They run meetings in an orderly way, following a structured agenda. Architects do not give "speeches" about their philosophy of buildings–they present a blueprint. Politics is the only profession left with no orderly system of planning.

Corporate business is not finished until each and every vital part of what is needed to make the company function is addressed. If people not at the meeting need to know this information, they get a printed copy. The corporate CEO doesn't go all around the country, repeating the same (partial) message verbally. In politics, unlike any other profession, there is no modern concept of efficient mass communication.

PAGE FIFTEEN -- VOICE INTERVIEW. www.angelfire.com/ny5/unity

THE PRESIDENT: Our politics needed restructuring and reinventing: to become rational, thorough, systematic. That's why I videotaped all my positions and proposals for specific legislation on ALL subjects. These were then sold through bookstores and media outlets everywhere. This way, I minimized campaign contributions: sales of the videos themselves generated most of the funding I needed. They were even sold internationally, with no violation of campaign spending laws.

No wonder debates were ignored, no one was moved or influenced by them. Especially young people. Why should they be? None of their issues were ever talked about. And they wondered why the young didn't vote! The videos changed that.

Michael Moore epitomized a wide-spread feeling in the last chapter of the book he released in the Fall of 2003, DUDE, WHERE'S MY COUNTRY?

"...what I discovered was even worse: Democratic Party leaders have told me something that they will not admit in public--that they have basically written off 2004; that they see little chance of defeating George W. Bush. They would rather save their energies for 2008 when Hillary or one of their bigger marquee names--whoever the hell that may be--will run and win."
--DUDE, WHERE'S MY COUNTRY?, page 204.

Mike's prescription for this dismal, looming disaster was this: "It's time to start thinking outside the tiny box that exists in our minds." (page 205).

He focused on celebrity candidates--a Democratic answer to the successful Schwarzeneggar campaign in California. Oprah, Tom Hanks, Paul Newman, even Caroline Kennedy and Joanne Woodward: this was his list of possible candidates.
I too was thinking outside the box. But merely running a non-traditional candidate, a Jesse Ventura or an Arnold Schwarzeneggar, never got to the heart of the matter.

The solution was a much more radical reshaping of the political process itself. To bring politics up to date in terms of twenty-first century information management and media resources. When I taped a speech on Iraq, for example, what I said was supported by adding to the tape statements from foreign policy experts we got from C-Span and other media. This made everything I said much more credible. Then footage from Iraq itself, showing the dramatic real life stories of real people, and the effects of the war, made the videos much more compelling to watch.

PAGE SIXTEEN -- VOICE INTERVIEW. www.angelfire.com/ny5/unity

The UNITY CONCERTS too were an innovative form of cultural/political theater. Something emotion grabbing. The problem with most political expression, in an ocean of words, is that it's very hard to get out your message in a context where a billion other people were communicating in the same medium, at the same time.

That was why Bush was so popular: the Republicans dominated all the graphic imagery that got across in the mainstream media--print, TV, talk radio, etc. But another "Live-Aid" or "We Are the World" style concert would bypass all that.

UNITY beat out all Competition for Message because it had no competition. A Unique Event, by definition, has no comparison. All the Press that the California Recall got paled into insignificance next to knew to UNITY. It was in every corner of the planet by the time we were done.

The Republicans had no counterpunch to an event that was OUTSIDE OF CONVENTIONAL POLITICS ALTOGETHER. And what, exactly, could they possibly have to say by way of criticism of humanitarian aid to Africa, in the first place? Nothing. Checkmate on the first move. One of my best ideas was to invite Nelson Mandela to speak. It was an emotional moment for all of us.

There was another special moment, just before I went on stage myself to speak at UNITY, when I met some friends of Rachel Corrie, the young woman who was tragically run over by a bulldozer in the Occupied Territories in Israel. She was trying to prevent the destruction of Palestinian homes by the Israeli Army. Michael Moore dedicated his book, in part, to her. There was something about her that struck a chord in so many of us.

THE VOICE: Your "Open Letter to Michael Jackson," asking him to mount another "We Are the World" musical project, this time for the cause of AIDS in Africa, was one of the most moving things I have ever read. Only a month later, THE UNITY CONCERT FOR AFRICA, stunned the world. What might you have been thinking, that you left unsaid, that you didn't reveal at the time?

THE PRESIDENT: Mostly I was thinking, How little time I had, we all had, before the presidential primaries a few scant months hence. In retrospect, I should never have doubted the limitless capacity of God to move mountains--if necessary with lightning speed--when the time came.

PAGE SEVENTEEN -- VOICE INTERVIEW. www.angelfire.com/ny5/unity

THE PRESIDENT: The turning point, besides the Oprah show, was when Charly Rangel, Congressman from New York, read my letter into the Congressional Record. While beside him stood the entirety of the Congressional Black Caucus. Broadcast by C-Span, the message went Everywhere.

Do you remember all the demonstrations against the Iraq War before it began? An often quoted New York Times commentary observed that the demonstrations, unprecedented in magnitude and number, made clear that there was now another Superpower in the world: and that Superpower was the court of public opinion. And then: UNITY became an even bigger Superpower.

Perhaps my most successful new idea: "professionalization of politics." Now, anyone who wants to run for office can simply stand up, announce: "Hey! I feel like being a politician today!"And have no professional training of any kind. No knowledge of economics, city planning, the environment, the history of other countries etc. Most dangerous of all, the Commander-in-Chief of the world's most powerful military machine need have no background in the fundamentals of military strategy. No wonder Bush's amateurish forays into Afghanistan and Iraq were such a disaster.

We already have successful models of excellence and competence, such as Olympic Athletes. These young people, identified when very young, have exceptional potential. An elite few, they spend many years training and honing their skills.

Why not have an Olympic Standard of excellence in politics? Thus we created a new kind of professional training program , to similarly identify young people with exceptional talents for public service: the National Academy of International Leadership. Graduates will spend another twenty years in public service, developing and expanding their skills in solving public policy problems of the modern world.

In twenty years, we will have a thousand candidates to choose from for president. Each one of them light years beyond the current sorry lot of Governors and Senators–none of them specifically trained for presidential leadership. Training includes public speaking, how to counter propaganda through forceful speech, and expands the narrow concepts of national issues to include planetary problems. By the time these 1000 National Leaders enter politics by 2020-2030, the comparison between them and the current handful of Republican party hacks will be stark. I expect the Republican Party in its present form will eventually cease to exist.

PAGE EIGHTEEN -- VOICE INTERVIEW. www.angelfire.com/ny5/unity

THE VOICE: Let's talk about some of the other straight political issues: like Bush's plans to go next into Syria, after Afghanistan and Iraq. And then Lebanon, etc. For a total of seven more countries in the Mideast.

THE PRESIDENT: Thank God the Syrian war never happened. Although the Proxy War by Israel, the intended warmup for the takeover of the Syrian War by the US in Spring 2005, did waste a lot of lives while Bush was still president.

THE VOICE didn't publish anything about the Dean Internet financing flap prematurely, or some of the Syrian information, at the time when they first got wind of it. Later I heard they passed around various tips and speculations behind the scenes, to see what other journalists knew.

Some of what came forward at that time hadn't happened yet. And some things just weren't known outside of certain insider circles. And in still other areas, the process of investigative reporting to either confirm or disconfirm a wide variety of rumors and/or speculations, had to proceed on its own pace.

THE VOICE: Greg Palast and his team at the BBC broke the Dean/Rove story around mid-November 2003, as I recall.

THE PRESIDENT: My recollection is that it was more towards the end of November. Oh well (SHRUGS), doesn't matter much now. November 23, 2003, is the date that comes to mind.

THE VOICE: The Dean Internet financing flap, even though the Republicans were "just" padding campaign contributions that were otherwise legitimate, seemed to have an effect on the public (some would argue) out of proportion to the actual offence. What's your take on that, looking back on a little bit of ancient history?

THE PRESIDENT: It was the proverbial last straw. Keep in mind the prior three years of Republican electoral fraud. First, the Florida theft: scrubbing the voting rolls of tens of thousands of African Americans, stealing the presidency. A shock wave went through the body electorate. Greg Palast's THE BEST DEMOCRACY MONEY CAN BUY was the most authoritative book on the subject, as he was an original source. Michael Moore also wrote about it in STUPID WHITE MEN.

PAGE NINETEEN -- VOICE INTERVIEW. www.angelfire.com/ny5/unity

THE PRESIDENT: We'd always assumed that things like that just didn't happen in the United States--that was for third world countries. It was a rude awakening.

Then, the Texas redistricting farce, strong armed by Tom DeLay. People were pinching themselves, asking, "Is this really happening? Using the State Police to hunt down duly elected Texas Congressional Democrats? " The mind boggled.

In Oct. 2003, Arnold Schwarzenegger hijacked the governorship of California; engineered behind the scenes by the usual Republican political operatives. Of course they put up a smoke screen of it being a "genuine, grass roots, populist" recall. Oh, please. The petition for the recall was bought and paid for.

A month later it was confirmed that high officials at the White House had padded Dean's Internet campaign funds--so they could run Bush against their "dream candidate," the one they regarded as the one they could most successfully tarbrush as a "far out liberal." Now that made them four time electoral fraud offenders -- one more than, as it were, "three strikes and you're out."

THE VOICE: Right. Greg Palast was definitely the man to get that lead to. He had a crack team with several years of experience following the Bush trail. It was especially important that he had highly skilled computer experts, so the electronic pathway could be traced.

THE PRESIDENT: Yeah. The one in Florida.

THE VOICE: But, you were right: Palast did have to call in an outside expert, a hacker, to snoop around the official Republican National Committee website, to supplement what he had in-house.

THE PRESIDENT: Rove thought, entirely logically: why not help pick the "weakest" Democrat to run against? Rightly or wrongly, they were sure Dean would be a pushover. The majority of political strategists on both sides thought so.

I thought they could easily be wrong. Most projections were based on a context of no significant changes in national/international situations. Bush was always a train wreck waiting to happen. It wasn't a question of whether, but when. The huge popularity of all the Bush-Bashing books showed how vulnerable he was.

PAGE TWENTY -- VOICE INTERVIEW. www.angelfire.com/ny5/unity

THE PRESIDENT: It became Rove's number one agenda, as the most efficient campaign dollar the Republicans could spend, to give money to Dean through subterranean channels: with the cover story that it was legitimate Democratic voters donating it. The temptation was too much to resist, and completely in character: encourage the Democrats to go in the direction of their own political self-destruction--as they saw it. The ultimate Republican wet dream. And so simple.

Rove wanted to "help along" the bandwagon effect of the Dean candidacy. A little bit of seed money would go a long way; so went the thinking. He figured, every dollar they invested in Dean would encourage real Democratic voters to add one to three more, on the bandwagon gravy train. Nice. Real nice. You could almost see Rove rubbing his hands with glee, congratulating himself on how clever he was.

THE VOICE: I'm itching to get into the subject of your choice of Bill Clinton as your vice presidential running mate. How do you now assess, in hindsight, your unprecedented decision to select him, a former President, in that role? What part did this early maneuver play in your eventual electoral victory?

THE PRESIDENT: Picking Bill Clinton as my vice president was truly a no-brainer, if ever there was one. Anyone with any kind of political savvy had to know and understand that Bill Clinton would have been overwhelmingly elected to a third term as President, if not for the Constitutional prohibition of the 22nd Amendment. He himself had spoken publically about modifying it to permit a non-consecutive return to office. Clearly, he wanted to be back in.

There was no Constitutional barrier to him running on the ticket as Vice President. Anyone who read the 22nd Amendment knew there was no legal impediment of any kind to a two term president assuming the Presidency himself, a third time, by succession rather than election. The 22nd Amendment only blocks the ELECTORAL route. There's no ambiguity on this whatever. Not that Clinton becoming President a third time, by this unconventional route, was any part of the plan. It's just that, should anything happen to me, he would be there as the ideal backup.

I had my own agenda, very different from Bill's. I would use the successes of the Clinton years as a platform, but had explicit plans to go way beyond it. On NAFTA and globalization, I was committed to a thorough, systematic re-examination, with a view to fundamental restructuring.

PAGE TWENTY-ONE - VOICE INTERVIEW. www.angelfire.com/ny5/unity

THE PRESIDENT: It was also an up-front insurance policy: if I got into office and turned out to be not up to the job, in any way, he would be there to fill in for whatever my deficiencies might be: on a temporary, flexible or longer term basis, as the case might be. In a worst case scenario, I would voluntarily resign my office; not that any one who knew me at all doubted that I was more than capable of discharging the responsibilities of the job. Also, I created a new position: Presidential Envoy, my personal ambassador to the people of the world. Former Senator Gary Hart has worked out very well in this role.

Bill had a very healthy respect for my abilities, which in many ways he considered more advanced than his own. And I, of course, held him in highest regard for his well known talents, which I need not detail here. Together, we made a legislative team unlike anything this town (Washington) had ever seen.

Back then, in the Fall of 2003, Nat Hentoff was the ideal man to analyze the various Constitutional and political dimensions of this: that is, Bill running again in the Vice Presidential slot. He had a firm foundation in Constitutional law and history. I knew that rolling around the Rubik's Cube of political possibilities of a Clinton Vice Presidential gambit would intrigue him. Whatever he might feel about Clinton personally. Bush was in a league of political disaster all by himself, as Hentoff saw it. That was the key to everything.

From my perspective, choosing Bill Clinton for number two on the ticket, at the very beginning of my Presidential bid was a simple, uncomplicated recognition of the obvious: run with Bill, get elected. CHOOSE Bill for the ticket -- not AFTER being nominated, but right at the outset -- GET the nomination. The one hand fed the other.

THE VOICE: The metaphor you always used was "doing it with mirrors."

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, it was all so simple that way. I subsequently played the Mirror Game constantly, mostly in ways that were very subtle, and behind the scenes. Mirroring was devastatingly effective, not just in this first play on the political chessboard, but in much of what I did thereafter.

THE VOICE. The Mirror Game, as you call it, was your unconventional way of hoisting yourself into the 2004 campaign by your bootstraps.

PAGE TWENTY-TWO - VOICE INTERVIEW. www.angelfire.com/ny5/unity

THE PRESIDENT: A good metaphor. It was the only way I had of vaulting into the campaign arena, in any way. My goal initially was just to get media coverage, of any kind, merely to get my foot in the door. On another level, I didn't necessarily care that much about my own place in the limelight, as long as my ideas got across.

THE VOICE: The Conservative Propaganda Machine instantly started cranking out accusations, dripping with disgust, that it was Clinton himself who had "planted" the story, and was really pulling the strings himself to get this phony, so-called "Draft Clinton for Vice President" movement engineered into place. And his feigning surprise when shown the article about it in THE VOICE was all an act.

THE PRESIDENT: Clinton's Grand Strategy was on Wesley Clark.. But once the VOICE'S front page headline was blazoned all over Manhattan, "Draft Bill Clinton for Vice President" we were off to the races. The Village Democrats, and the usual cast of New York area political junkies, hastily convened a downtown meeting to discuss the strategy, to get a petition going. Also, for brain-storming to explore other possible ways of advancing this idea into the public consciousness.

THE VOICE: It's a funny thing, in retrospect, how convenient it all turned out to be that the Clintons had come to New York, of all places, after leaving the White House. It made all the subsequent events of the winning 2004 election so much easier to manage and orchestrate: that all the key players that made it happen were right here in the Empire State, in New York City.

Hillary had an office here, and of course Bill was in Harlem, on the Upper West Side. THE VOICE was here, of course, as the center of the political debate that got it all started. And you too, Mr. President. This was your headquarters too, at the time. Or at least, it was one of your major bases of operations. But let's review the firestorm the first piece in THE VOICE set off at the time.

THE PRESIDENT: As you know, it was a cataclysm, a political shockwave, when THE VOICE published the first article detailing this novel strategy in the Fall of 2003. Michael Moore, having floated his ideas about celebrity presidential candidates, was inspired to weigh in on the merits of pressuring the eventual winner of the Democratic banner to run with Bill Clinton as his Vice President–and to make this choice known early in the campaign, even before winning nomination.

PAGE TWENTY-THREE. VOICE INTERVIEW. www.angelfire.com/ny5/unity

THE PRESIDENT: From THE VILLAGE VOICE, the article raced around the net like a tidal wave. Especially spearheaded by SALON.COM. Also Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor at THE NATION, really took off with it.

It was a Numbers Game: in the vast ocean of the net, I knew with some certainty that enough people--desperate for ANY kind of strategy to defeat Bush--would leap on it. Even if many dismissed it as just a political fantasy.

The Republican leadership, of course, blustered and tried to shoot it down, jeering at it. That was the public mask. Inside, they were scared to death of the idea of a genuine draft of Clinton for Vice President gaining wide currency.

THE VOICE: Some "fantasy" that turned out to be. What started out as "fantasy," bled so fast into the real world, it made heads spin. What were the first stages of drafting Clinton in that role, which you started almost single-handedly? How did you visualize, or anticipate, the initial public reaction?

THE PRESIDENT: It was, naturally, an instant hit. The citizenry did not significantly differentiate between the notion of Bill Clinton back in office as Vice President, and Bill Clinton as President, as a concept in their minds. The image or role of President and Vice President blurred, one into the other. ANY Democrat who ran with him on the ticket would have been elected.

As I said at the time, Donald Duck would have won if he ran with Bill. The public wanted the Clinton Years of economic boom back. And everything else that went with it. Even people on the left who had major problems with Clinton were still ABB, Anyone But Bush. Even Michael Moore reconsidered his stance against ABB, given the bleak and catastrophic alternative.

Initially, not everyone in the Democratic leadership thought it was a smart move. Some thought it could easily backfire, given the successful eight year war to demonize Clinton.

I pointed out that, by running this one up the flagpole early enough in the game, we could test market an Anyone/Clinton ticket before committing to it. In a larger sense, much of the entirety of my success was doing all kinds of things earlier, rather than later. This conveyed a sense of planning and preparedness.

PAGE TWENTY-FOUR. VOICE INTERVIEW. www.angelfire.com/ny5/unity

THE PRESIDENT: It was always a dumb tradition to choose your vice president after being nominated, without any time given to assess the public reaction. Now, after my success in announcing my list of vice presidential candidates at the very beginning (with Clinton at the top of the list), nobody would think of going back to that old way of thinking.

Fortunately, the public clamor for Clinton in this role amped up very, very quickly. Putting up a two term heavyweight into the presidential lineup, as Vice President, made the Republican team look like political midgets by comparison.

Ironically, the fear mongering that Bush had made essentially the entire theme of his presidency was, in the end, his undoing. Having scared the public half to death with all the war theatrics--the war on terrorism, the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq--he only succeeded in setting himself up to be thrown out of office by a ticket the voters trusted more, precisely because of Clinton's eight years of experience.

They rememberedthe aftermath of Clinton's wars had been much tidier than the botched, unending loss of American lives in Iraq. Also, we announced up-front our intent that Wes Clark would be high amongst our choices for Secretary of Defense.

THE VOICE: Where did you get the idea of promoting Bill Clinton as your Vice Presidential nominee in the first place?

THE PRESIDENT: You see, I remembered the brief flirtation there was back in 1980, among the GOP, of choosing Gerald Ford to run as Ronald Reagan's Vice President. The "Dream Team," they called it at the time. Naturally, it fizzled out quickly, when Ford insisted on equal status, a "co-presidency."

THE VOICE: What made you think a similar strategy by the Democrats would work this time? Most presidents would not have had the humility to be anyone's Number Two.

Even an amiable guy like Ford bristled at the idea, when pitched by the Reagan camp. How could you imagine someone with Clinton's ego accepting it? Also, most candidates would not have wanted an ex-president in that role, as it would inevitably invite constant comparisons, diminishing their own stature?

PAGE TWENTY-FIVE. VOICE INTERVIEW. www.angelfire.com/ny5/unity

THE PRESIDENT: Way too much was at stake to do anything else BUT this. People everywhere, not only here but in other countries, begged him to do it. Bottom line, Clinton did it for the good of all the people he'd met in his eight years of office. He remembered them all, whether they were elected officials or ordinary people.

Bush was falling in the polls by October, 2003. But not fast enough to give more than a ray of hope. Everyone knew the trend, though encouraging, could vanish overnight. Fears were higher than ever that, in another close election, there was a near certainty (or so many people felt), that the Republicans would again resort to electoral chicanery, trickery and outright fraud. For them NOT to have done that would have been out of character, given the sequence of maneuvers we'd seen repeatedly.

Both the national and international situations were starting to look grim: mounting casualties in Iraq, the disastrous economy, the already dangerous level of tension in the Mideast beginning to escalate still higher. On and on.

There was a rapidly growing awareness in the public that the Bush Administration was not just (almost) supernaturally incompetent, having mismanaged or mangled almost everything they touched. People were starting to truly believe, as they never had before, that this Radical Right crowd was indeed just as dangerous to national security, and even to democracy itself, as the Administration's harshest critics had been saying all along.

Both in this country and around the world, people were starting to get, not just frustrated and angry, but genuinely frightened and alarmed about the dangerous paths the world was heading down, potentially, with a second Bush Administration poised to become, as President John Quincy Adams had warned us against, in the 1820's, "dictatress of the world."

THE VOICE: Gore Vidal, one of your favorite writers, quotes that line frequently. "The United States goes not abroad, seeking dragons to destroy." And so on.

THE PRESIDENT: Dictatress, indeed. Connect all the dots, and everything pointed in the direction of an unprecedented enhancement and concentration of presidential power, in all our history. And worse: this, combined with an almost palpable, ruthless determination to use it to the fullest extent possible. Not just on the part of Bush personally; this was a much broader based movement of zealots.

PAGE TWENTY-SIX -- VOICE INTERVIEW. www.angelfire.com/ny5/unity

THE PRESIDENT: You had the Patriot Act, giving the Justice Department all the tools needed to corral the citizenry at will. You had a Republican Party that was now almost completely dominated by right wing ideologues. There was the steamroller drive by the FCC under Michael Powell to concentrate all media sources into a critically few hands. You could debate about whether this was quasi-fascism or not. Whatever you called it, it was the most serious slippage in democracy, ever.

THE VOICE: You said then it was critically important to connect all the dots; to see beyond individual events to where all this was collectively headed.

THE PRESIDENT: What I felt about most strongly was this: If Bush had been elected again and retained his majorities in Congress, there would have been no barriers left--no checks and balances or institutional barriers of any kind--to prevent him from becoming, in essence, a World Dictator. As Commander-in-Chief of the one remaining superpower, he would have had unbridled power to reshape the world any way he and his team of ideologues decided. In just the way the Neocons, by sheer non-coincidence, had been scheming to do for more than a decade.

No longer did you have to be a "Conspiracy Theorist" -- accusing George W. Bush of knowing about 9/11 beforehand, citing his family ties with the Bin Ladens, and the like -- to see the handwriting on the wall. You just did the math in terms of analyzing the power structure, tracked the sequence of events, and bingo: the flow chart leading towards serial warfare in the Mideast, as General Wesley Clark wrote about in WINNING MODERN WARS, was starting to unfold before our eyes.

The extreme case prospect was some degree of fulfilment of the Biblical prophecy of Armageddon. Many people, Jewish or otherwise, were seeing the situation more and more in Biblical terms. Or at least, serial warfare in the Mideast as a mega disaster in the making, with unforeseeable consequences.

Conceptually, in the filming of UNITY with Spielberg, I wanted to link together events originating in World War Two with current events in the Middle East, with a trajectory towards Armageddon prophecies as a backdrop. Besides his obvious talents, he was the perfect person for the project,because of his background as the maker of "Schindler's List." I knew he would bring a sense of resonance to the project--linkage between current events, the Holocaust, and the larger events of the thirties and forties--that no one else could.

PAGE TWENTY-SEVEN. VOICE INTERVIEW. www.angelfire.com/ny5/unity

THE VOICE: Many Conspiracy Theorists believed that Bush, given his Religious Right background and support, especially in Texas, was deliberately trying to bring about pre-conditions which could lead to Armageddon. Literally and for real. That he had this crazy vision that he and The Elect of the Religious Right, would be lifted off the Earth in the Rapture, while everyone else died.

Others, less Biblically-oriented, calculated that he simply lacked the most basic and elementary skills of a competent Commander-in-Chief: and could well succeed in triggering Armageddon or similar major catastrophe by blunder or miscalculation.

THE PRESIDENT: It's like the line Will Smith used in his rap song about Bush:

"Is he stupid?
Or is he smart?
Take your pick.
It doesn't matter."

It made no difference whether Bush was a Machiavellian schemer, or just horse's ass stupid and incompetent. I didn't know, and in a sense didn't care, whether or not he was in collusion with the Carlyle Group and the Saudis to take over all Middle East oil--or whether any of a dozen other Conspiracy Scenarios was true. All roads lead to the same end result: blood for oil, and serial warfare. Perhaps, the larger aim was to take over, not only all of the Middle East, but much of Africa as well.

THE VOICE: Let's get back to Wes Clark for a minute. Quoting from page 130 in his book, WINNING MODERN WARS, published in 2003:

"As I went back through the Pentagon in November 2001, one of the senior military staff officers had time for a chat. Yes, we were still on track for going against Iraq, he said. But there was more. This was being discussed as part of a five-year campaign plan, he said, and there were a total of seven countries, beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia and Sudan."

THE PRESIDENT: Speculation about different lineups sometimes included Saudi Arabia. There was an eery madness to it all--policy makers casually discussing which countries were slated for invasion, and in what order. Megalomania unhinged.

PAGE TWENTY-EIGHT. VOICE INTERVIEW. www.angelfire.com/ny5/unity

THE VOICE: I remember at the time you cited this from an article in the New York Times about Israeli bombing of the alleged terrorist camp in Syria:

"Israel's citing of a terrorist link to the base in Syria that it bombed; a link that posed a threat to American troops in Iraq, Israelis explained; seemed likely to persuade Mr. Bush not to criticize. To some diplomats, it was almost as if Israel tailored the attack to suit Mr. Bush's well-known concerns."
--New York Times, 10/11/03.

THE PRESIDENT: The Syrian gambit, seemingly coming out of nowhere, was of course carefully orchestrated. Just leave out the "almost as if" part, and know that Sharon was advancing Bush's agenda, in exchange for Bush's original removal of the thorn of Saddam Hussein. It was hand in glove, smooth as silk. And right on cue.

THE VOICE: At exactly the same time, Congress was holding hearings to crank up heat on Syria, stoking the fires to "get tough." Did you think the Syrian raid was a formal or informal back room deal between Bush and Sharon? Or was it more innocent shadow boxing: each man "interpreting signals" coming from the other ?

THE PRESIDENT: It never mattered, either way works just as well, leading to the same result. When you see a whole string of "coincidences," all tending in the same direction, what can it possibly matter whether you "believe" in conspiracies or not? Either there is conspiracy by human agency, or God Himself must be arranging all these "interesting" sequences of events. God must be a Republican, I suppose.

THE VOICE: We later learned Bush/Cheney planned to phase in expanding the war into Syria--and all of the other countries to follow--after the 2004 election. By then, it would be too late for anything or anyone to stop them.

THE PRESIDENT: It was a delicate balancing act. On the one hand, they had to put in place the pretexts for the Syrian War slated for early 2005. On the other, premature expansion of war into yet a third arena, in Bush's first term, could cost them the election. Also, it would overtax the troops. They had to stoke the fires of war with Syria, but not so fast it would tip their hand. The pretext for attacking Syria would be that we were attacked first by Syrian terrorists. Well, of course! With our troops still in Iraq, and Islamic fundamentalists pouring in from every direction, what did we expect? It was just a matter of time before a major terrorist attack happened.

PAGE TWENTY-NINE. VOICE INTERVIEW. www.angelfire.com/ny5/unity

THE PRESIDENT: That's why the 96 GI's killed on 11/30/03 was such a crucial piece of the puzzle. Initially, it undermined Bush's credibility on the war as nothing else had, up to that point. On the other hand, the decisive action he took after that unfortunate event, and the military victories achieved, quickly overrode that effect. The net result in the polls, when everything shook out, was sharply positive. It was a mini 9/11 all over again: Bush the Savior, stepping forward to protect us.

It was the same dynamic we'd seen again and again: Raise Fear, then provide a platform for George of Arabia to Dispel Fear. It was an illusion, a game of image making that seemed invulnerable to counter-attack.

Look how popular the Gulf War, had made his father: an unprecedented 91% popularity. Hey, if one war makes you popular, think how much more popular two wars could be! And if you time it right with the second war, there's less time for the popularity boom from it to fade before the 2004 election comes. All in all, it was very adroitly managed.

The fact that the GI's of 11/30 were not, at the time, known or revealed to have died as a result of specifically Syrian terrorism, was a card that was held back until it could be played, at will, at the optimal time.

THE VOICE: That's where Wes Clark was so crucial, at this stage. His military insider sources confirmed that the unfolding scenario of Mideast conquest was exactly on these lines.

Let's get back to your relationship with Bill Clinton for a bit. Some people thought there must be a deal between you to the effect that if you ran and won, you would voluntarily step down, and hand the presidency over to him. That it was the Democrat response to the Republican "creative" use, or misuse, of the electoral process.

THE PRESIDENT: Not a chance. Yes, putting Bill in as Vice President was, as I made very clear, an insurance policy. Look: the kind of leadership I offered was revolutionary. It was the most ambitious program for the transformation of America, and the world, that had ever been proposed by any American presidential candidate, ever. It was, in essence, nothing less than the Second American Revolution. We created the first truly modern American Presidency, finally making full use of all of the inherent possibilities of 21st century technology.

PAGE THIRTY -- VOICE INTERVIEW. www.angelfire.com/ny5/unity

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, people wanted change. Wanted it desperately. At the same time, Big Change is threatening. I was truly an unknown quantity. Nobody knew who I really was. They wanted to believe in me. But it was a big gamble, the gamble of their lives, if it turned out I couldn't deliver on what I promised.

Knowing that, Bill and I sat down with former Cabinet members and much of his former staff. And for the first time in American history, we drew up the entire budget, chose the Cabinet, worked out our legislative agenda, etc.--all of this before the election, not afterwards.

The old idea of holding the Presidential election in November, and in two months throwing together a government, was always ludicrous and pathetic. Imagine if General Motors or IBM discharged it's CEO and most of its executives every four years,starting from scratch to cobble Humpty Dumpty back together again in eight weeks. A disaster! How much more so did efficient functioning suffer when the US Government was essentially the largest company on the planet.

It's a miracle our democracy somehow got through 200 years of this no-planning formula for disaster and survived. It was OK when we were thirteen colonies, with little over a million citizens. But now we're 200 times as populous: the most complex industrial, technological and information management democracy on the planet. You cannot competently manage a large scale organization like the modern federal government with NO planning beforehand. The extremity of dysfunction this caused just got worse and worse.

Our system of governance was headed towards a breaking point, the longer this went on unresolved. The system we had was that the candidate spent virtually all his time simply getting elected. Then scrambled to try to put together a plan, and a team. Just
god awful. In real life, you cannot do anything effectively without planning and preparation. In governance, or anything else. More than anything else, the way that Bill and I seized the initiative to change all that, won the election for us.

We changed that by simply throwing out conventional politics altogether, ignoring conventional campaigning. We started doing everything the Clinton Administration had previously done after being elected, only this time we started in February, 2004. Look what the "Contract with America" had done for the Gingrich-era Republicans. Our Presidential Plan 2004 was a hundredfold more complex and developed.

PAGE THIRTY-ONE. VOICE INTERVIEW. www.angelfire.com/ny5/unity

THE PRESIDENT: The planning, drawing up of the budget, assembling the Presidential Team WAS the campaign. We didn't need to do anything else. We were the most prepared Presidential Team in American History. In future, I expect such planning by the party out of power will begin four years in advance. This will be done by the party as a whole; the eventual nominee will modify it as needed.

In New Hampshire, we took campaign funds and set up aNATIONAL HEALTH INSURANCE FUND, gave out ID/credit cards to demonstrate how the new system would work: redeemable at any pharmacy for prescription drug coverage. Yes, it ran out of money eventually. But we needed to break through the psychological barrier that health insurance was an issue that would never be solved.

This was a much better form of "advertising" than buying TV ads. All a TV ad ever does is make a claim about what you would do, in theory, if you were elected. Why not give people an actual experience of leadership, instead? Our campaign was a campaign of Doing; not of talking "about" Doing.

THE VOICE: What was your thinking or feeling about George W. Bush, personally? Just as a human being? You've said some pretty harsh things about him.

THE PRESIDENT: I truly felt sorry for him. He never wanted to be president in the first place. He was trying to please his father, by going into the family business. The strain on him was incredible. Recall his absence ( AWOL again) from his presidential duties for a few days after 9/11. He was back on the bottle. They hushed it up and concealed it at the time. Then another bout in August of 2003. Finally, still another relapse in Feb., 2004, for a couple of weeks after I won in New Hampshire.

He didn't know what to make of me. But he did know one thing for sure: whatever I had going for me, was something he had no possible way of responding to. He was a Child of God, just trying to do the best he could. Our healing web of compassion must include him too, now that he has gone on to another place.

The time has finally come for there to be a great and true healing in our country–the one that George Bush promised, but tragically never delivered. People were way beyond frustrated with the eternal warfare between left and right. They just wanted the People's Business done, in a professional way. We've done that, and much more never dreamed of at the time. That will be our legacy.

PAGE THIRTY-TWO. VOICE INTERVIEW. www.angelfire.com/ny5/unity

THE VILLAGE VOICE. Now that you and Vice President Bill Clinton have won the presidency back for the Democrats in 2004, who would you thank for making your victory possible? Tomorrow, we begin with your plans for taking the next steps to deepen and extend Mideast Peace, now that this has finally been achieved.

THE PRESIDENT: Main credit goes to George Soros and other Mideast investors: teamwork between the public and private sectors. It was always a silly idea that diplomats could negotiate peace, without building the infrastructure for the Palestinian State first. All previous attempts got the cart before the horse.

For the 2004 victory, I would first like to thank the key people who made it possible: Michael Moore, Al Franken, Katrina vanden Heuvel of THE NATION, Amy Goodman of Democracy Now radio, Rep. Charly Rangel and the Congressional Black Causus, Oprah Winfrey. They opened the doors for everyone else to follow. I thank all the musicians and artists around the world who heeded my Call. And of course, above all, I thank Michael Jackson. Without his unfailing energy, courage and his Divine Music, we wouldn't be where we are today.

And Michael, if you're reading this now, I leave you with these words: All the suffering that any one of us must endure, is but a way for us to see how it feels from the other side of life. That we learn compassion. And the day must one day come when we look back upon it all, and the entire meaning of our lives is revealed. And we know what we were born to do. And we look back upon each and every thing that happened, and suddenly we See: it was all a part of a Divine Plan. And that plan, is ever and always, leading us towards the Light. That we be Free at Last.

Peace, Love and Light Always,

==Robert==
unity_nyc@yahoo.com

NOTE: This VILLAGE VOICE INTERVIEW with the DEMOCRAT winner of the 2004 Presidential Election: A view from the FUTURE: January 3, 2007, and "An Open Letter to Michael Jackson" are companion pieces, intended to be read together. Both are available online at: www.angelfire.com/ny5/unity

"We Are The World (USA For Africa)," by Michael Jackson.

There comes a time when we heed a certain call
When the world must come together as one
There are people dying
And it's time to lend a hand to life
The greatest gift of all

We can't go on pretending day by day
That someone, somewhere will soon make a change
We are all a part of Gods great big family
And the truth, you know,
Love is all we need

[Chorus:]
We are the world, we are the children
We are the ones who make a brighter day
So let's start giving
There's a choice we're making
We're saving out own lives
its true we'll make a better day
Just you and me

Send them your heart, so they'll know that someone cares
And their lives will be stronger and free
As God has shown us by turning stones to bread
So we all must lend a helping hand.

[Chorus:]
We are the world, we are the children
We are the ones who make a brighter day
So let's start giving
There's a choice we're making
We're saving out own lives
its true we'll make a better day
Just you and me.

Page Two -- We Are the World, by Michael Jackson.

When you're down and out, there seems no hope at all
But if you just believe there's no way we can fall
Let us realize that a change can only come
When we stand together as one

[Chorus:]
We are the world, we are the children
We are the ones who make a brighter day
So let's start giving
There's a choice we're making
We're saving out own lives
its true we'll make a better day
Just you and me

Email: email to Robert

Timbaland is going to produce a modern version of the legendary song "We Are The World". Quincy Jones has given Timbaland the rights to revamp the classic benefit song with contemporary singers, with the proceeds from the sales going to AIDS research. The year 2005 marks the 25th anniversary of the original "We Are The World" recording which featured Michael Jackson, Diana Ross, Cindy Lauper, Stevie Wonder and others.

email Timbaland

ROCK MUSIC DEFEATED COMMUNISM -- BY HUNGARIAN OFFICIAL

By M.R. KROPKO, Associated Press Writer CLEVELAND - Rock music played lead in giving Hungarian baby boomers the resolve to bring down their communist state, says one of those reformers who today is a government official.

Andras Simonyi, Hungary's ambassador to the United States, spent an hour Saturday night discussing the impact of Western songs on Eastern European politics before an invitation-only audience of 250 at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Simonyi, 51, was a devoted fan of the Beatles, Cream, Traffic and Jimi Hendrix (news) when their releases weren't officially permitted in Hungary. Records and tapes sometimes were smuggled in or recorded from foreign radio broadcasts.

Hungary became a democracy in 1990; after more than 40 years of communism. The nation of 10 million joined NATO (news - web sites) in 1999 and will formally join the European Union (news - web sites) on May 1, 2004. "By keeping in touch with the music scene in the West, it kind of kept me sane and with the feeling I was part of the free world," said Simonyi, an economist by training. The ambassador was introduced by defense and anti-terrorism consultant Jeff Baxter, who once played guitar with The Doobie Brothers and Steely Dan (news - web sites).

Baxter and Simonyi said they would like to establish an institute to study rock music's global influences. "There is a commonality to the music and freedom," Baxter said. "To Andras, Western music was an open window of fresh air in a very repressive society." Simonyi impressed an audience member from Hungary. "He represents quite well his generation," said Judit Gerencser, a 27-year-old student at Cleveland State University. "I have heard about this from my parents, but I never really heard about just how much this music was influential."

Copyright 2003 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.

Published on Wednesday, November 26, 2003 by FindLaw.com
  
AIDS, Profit Margins and Mortality Rates
by Joanne Mariner

Here are some numbers to consider: 14 million, 35.9 billion, and one.

The first is an estimate of the number of people who will die of AIDS and other treatable diseases over the course of the coming year, most of them in the poor countries of the developing world.

The second figure represents the combined 2002 profits, in dollars, of the ten biggest pharmaceutical companies listed in Fortune magazine´s annual review of America´s largest businesses.

The third figure corresponds to the number of countries that, last week, voted against a U.N. resolution on access to drugs in global epidemics such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. The resolution emphasized that the failure to deliver life-saving drugs to millions of people who are living with HIV/AIDS constitutes a global health emergency. 167 countries voted in favor of the resolution. The single vote against it was cast by the United States.

Sadly, these numbers are closely related. To protect their exorbitant profits, drug companies are fighting the production and distribution of cheap generic versions of patented drugs. Unable to afford the medicines that could save their lives, millions of poor people around the world die of treatable illnesses every year.

And, as the recent U.N. vote exemplifies, the drug companies have a reliable ally. Not only does the U.S. government use its considerable economic power to bully developing countries into restricting access to low-cost generics, it continues to try to change the international rules that allow such generics to be made in the first place.

Unnecessary Deaths

In their vulnerability to treatable diseases, the rich and the poor live in different worlds. Every year, millions of people in developing countries die of illnesses that they would likely have survived had they lived in Europe or the United States. A key factor in the enormous global disparities in death rates is poor people´s lack of access to needed drugs.

Consider the case of HIV/AIDS. An estimated 42 million people are living with HIV/AIDS worldwide, 39 million of them in the developing world. India alone has at least 4.5 million people who are HIV-positive, and possibly many more.

In the United States and other rich countries, since the advent of anti-retroviral drug treatment, AIDS has become a manageable disease, not a death sentence. But for the millions living with HIV in the developing world, prospects for effective treatment remain dim.

At present, only a tiny minority of HIV-positive people in poor countries have access to anti-retroviral drugs. For the others, as well as some marginalized populations in rich countries, the cost of treatment remains prohibitively high.

Patent Protections and Profits

Nothing in the ingredients of anti-retroviral drug treatment makes it inherently expensive. Indeed, when a combination of generic drugs is used, treatment costs are about $600 per patient per year.

But companies that profit from drug sales prefer to keep drug costs artificially high. In the United States, the cost of anti-retroviral drugs is generally in the range of $10,000 to $15,000 per patient annually, and people with advanced cases of AIDS may pay far more. Relying on international patent protections, drug companies have been trying to maintain high drug prices globally by restricting the production and distribution of low-cost generic substitutes.

Global patent protections are tied to global rules on trade, specifically, the rules of the World Trade Organization. Although the WTO´s strict intellectual property rules carve out exceptions for national health emergencies, they still go a long way toward limiting poor people´s access to life-saving medicines.

And as Oxfam has shown in a paper titled “Patent Injustice,” the problem extends beyond HIV/AIDS. Brand name drugs for a number of major diseases cost several times more than their generic equivalents. The increasing drug resistance of endemic illnesses such as tuberculosis and malaria -- and the resulting need for access to new drugs -- mean that the WTO´s monopolistic pricing rules threaten many millions of the world´s poor.

The Brazil Model

Despite the WTO´s restrictions, some developing countries have made important steps in meeting their peoples´ drug treatment needs.

In Brazil, notably, extensive prevention efforts combined with state-funded anti-retroviral treatment have reduced AIDS-related deaths by more than half since 1996. The cornerstone of Brazil´s treatment program has been the local production of generic equivalents of brand name anti-retroviral drugs, which has driven down the cost of treatment enormously.

But Brazil´s successes, and those of countries like it, have been hard fought. TheWTO rules have been a battleground on which Brazil and others have fought a series of high-stakes skirmishes with drug companies.

Backed by one of the world´s richest and most politically influential industrial lobbies, the drug companies have enlisted the U.S. government as a loyal ally in the campaign against generics. Through the office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the United States has fought to advance the interests of the pharmaceutical industry, pressuring other governments on a bilateral basis and threatening to seek trade sanctions via the WTO.

The U.S. vote last Wednesday in the Third Committee of the U.N. General Assembly was not too surprising, given this record. Still, it was dismaying to find the United States willing to stand alone against 167 other countries -- as if it were a matter of principle to oppose a resolution calling for widespread public access to the drugs necessary to combat global epidemics such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.

Future Trade Agreements

The U.N. vote is, moreover, a worrisome portent for the future. At present, the U.S. Trade Representative is negotiating a number of bilateral and multilateral trade agreements, including the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas. Given U.S. advocacy on behalf of pharmaceutical companies´ interests, these agreements are likely to go beyond the WTO´s rules in protecting drug patents.

President George Bush, in a number of his most high-profile speeches, has expressed a rhetorical determination to assist in the global fight against HIV/AIDS. By allowing U.S. officials to lead the world in protecting the commercial interests of drug companies, he betrays his public commitment to this cause.

The author is a lawyer with Human Rights Watch and a columnist for FindLaw.com

Copyright © 1994-2003 FindLaw

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