Would you like to know how many people have visited this page? Or how reputable the author is? Simply
sign up for a Advocate premium membership and you'll automatically see this data on every article. Plus a lot more, too.
I have 5 fans: Become a Fan. You'll get emails whenever I post articles on OpEd News
Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould are the authors of Invisible History: Afghanistan's Untold Story and Crossing Zero The AfPak War at the Turning Point of American Empire and The Voice,a novel.
Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, a husband and wife team began working together in 1979 co-producing a documentary for Paul's television show, Watchworks. Called, The Arms Race and the Economy, A Delicate Balance, they found themselves in the midst of a controversy that was to boil over a few months later with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Their acquisition of the first visas to enter Afghanistan granted to an American TV crew in 1981, brought them into the most heated Cold War controversy since Vietnam. But the people inside Soviet-occupied Afghanistan told a very different story from the one being broadcast on the evening news.
Following their news story for the CBS Evening News, they produced a documentary (Afghanistan Between Three Worlds) for PBS and in 1983 they returned to Kabul for ABC Nightline with Harvard Negotiation project director Roger Fisher. Arriving in Kabul that spring they were told that the Russians wanted to go home and negotiate their way out. But the story that President Carter called, "the greatest threat to peace since the second World War" had already been written by America's pundits was not about to change the script.
As the first American journalists to get behind the official propaganda on the war, they not only got a view of an unseen Afghan life, but a revelatory look at how the US defined itself under the veil of superpower confrontation. But as they pursued the reasons behind the propaganda, they were drawn into a story that was growing into mythic dimensions.
It was at the time of the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 when they were working on the film version of their experience under contract to Oliver Stone, that they began to piece together the mythic implications of the story. During the research for the screenplay crucial documents were declassified. Over the next decade they trailed a labyrinth of clues to find a likeness in Washington's official policy towards Afghanistan - in the ancient Zoroastrian war of the light against the dark - whose origins began in the region now known as Afghanistan. It was a likeness that grows more visible as America's involvement deepens.
By 1998, as the horrors of the Taliban regime began to grab headlines, they started collaborating with Afghan human rights expert Sima Wali. They contributed to the Women for Afghan Women: Shattering Myths and Claiming the Future book project. In 2002 they filmed Wali's first return to Kabul since her exile in 1978. The film they produced about Wali's journey home, The Woman in Exile Returns, gave audiences the chance to discover the message of one of Afghanistan's most articulate voices and her hopes for her people.
In the years since 9/11 much has happened to bring their story into sharp focus. Their experience at combining personal diplomacy with activist journalism could become a model for restoring a healthy and vibrant dialogue to American democracy. Ultimately, Invisible History: Afghanistan's Untold Story lays bare why it was inevitable that the Soviet Union and the U.S. should end up in Afghanistan and what that means to the future of the American emp
(5 comments) SHARE Thursday, February 29, 2024 Some like it Hot, Some like it too Hot!
Everybody knows the assassination of JFK took the United States off a course towards world peace and cooperation following the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, but how many people know that the assassination of U.S. Ambassador Adolph Dubs on February 14, 1979 ensured that the US would permanently pivot back to the same Apocalyptic course that was inaugurated with the murder of JFK.
(8 comments) SHARE Wednesday, October 18, 2023 The JFK Assassination--60 years on Nov. 22, 2023: Moving beyond his Death to the Resurrection of JFK's World Peace Plan
We traced our Fitzgerald family history back 1000 years to the end of the Fitzgerald rule in Ireland when they were defeated by the forces of Elizabeth I in 1583; that also marked the beginning of the British Empire. We identified that history as "Mystical Imperialism," a philosophy that rationalized empire by infusing the divine into empire building. We'll present that research at the JFK Assassination Conference on Nov. 17.
SHARE Monday, September 4, 2023 THE UN 2024 EQUINOX EARTH DAY EVENT; a tribute to Earth Rights Economics of Justice and Peace
Gifts of nature can be shared. The solution is a finance policy that removes taxes from labor and production and shifts it to unearned income from land and natural resources. Neoliberal economics was created by elites who paid universities to teach two-factor economics, labor and capital, and made land a subset of capital. This intellectual crime obfuscated the teachings of Henry George's economic justice. Let's bring it back.
SHARE Saturday, May 6, 2023 *The Economic Justice and World Peace Proposal*
Violence begets violence, war begets more wars. These facts have been known to generations before our time and we should not have to learn this horrible truth again. Events have been forgotten by history and covered up by administrations. Old angers and hatreds have been instilled in new generations. We cannot continue in this manner and survive as a people. We must face the facts and put our minds
to diffusing the crisis.
(5 comments) SHARE Thursday, March 30, 2023 The Truth about the CIA's Imperial Holy Warriors is hidden in the Mystical
The first thing an academic tells you when you mention the mystical side of Afghanistan is that you shouldn't talk about that. The study of foreign policy cannot be seen as motivated by anything other than rational and objective reasons and measured by the metrics of quantitative analysis. How then to explain 'Wild Bill' Donovan, the first director of the OSS and the father of today's CIA calling his agents Knights Templars?
(10 comments) SHARE Friday, March 17, 2023 1000 Years of Secrets Exposed
Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould fascinating conversation that starts with The Norman conquest of England in 1066, traveling up to the rebellious outpost of Ireland, and ends with the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy (JFK).
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, February 17, 2023 From the Jerusalem Crusade to the Holy Grail to the death of JFK
The immolation of Templar Grand Master Jacques de Molay at the hands of the Pope's Inquisitors would serve as an inspiration for generations to seek revenge on the Roman Church. And so begins the legend that winds its way from Jerusalem to Paris to the Holy Grail, to Rosslyn Chapel and Scottish Rite Freemasonry and from there to the death of JFK.
(22 comments) SHARE Wednesday, October 5, 2022 How the Mysticism of Newgrange Pulled us into its Vortex
I knew that returning to Ireland would complete something I'd started when I'd first visited there back in 1971. But it wasn't until we were directed to Newgrange by another Fitzgerald from the same village as my family on the other side of Ireland did I realize--that something--was far more profound than anything I'd experienced in my lifetime.
SHARE Tuesday, October 4, 2022 Bhadshah Khan's Afghan World Peace Movement
The strength of Badsher Kahn's Khudai-Khidmatgar and its philosophy challenged more than just the Afghan tribal code of Pashtunwali and the dominance of the British Empire in India. Badsher Khan also challenged the idea expressed by many Western orientalists that his movement was just an aberration.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, June 10, 2022 A Declaration of Human Rights for the 21st century, World Peace
Endless war puts you in a hell of madness from which there is no escape. The madness of war has come full circle and is now in our schools, parks and homes. It was always a part of our nature. We have given in to a part of our nature that should have matured but instead has remained aloof from our humanity. That part of our nature is unlearned and untamed. We are the victims of our own design and therefore we can change it.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, May 7, 2022 The Hegelian Dialectic is a Mental Trap that only leads to Self-annihilation
The system of designed social conflict to break down individual rights was spelled out by Hegel himself when he said: "'...the State' has the supreme right against the individual, whose supreme duty is to be a member of the State... for the right of the world spirit is above all special privileges."
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, March 21, 2022 Imagine a future based on JFK's Dream of World Peace
Something about America died along with our president on November 22, 1963 that never returned. We decided to find out what that was and discovered myths surrounding the Fitzgerald family's connection to Camelot provided clues. Resurrecting the peaceful world that JFK wanted to create requires imagination. But before restoring JFK's dream we need to know the deeper history connected to the Papacy that led to his assassination.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, January 13, 2022 The Dark Answers to Imperialism, JFK and Afghanistan are hidden in the Mystical--Two Authors' Journey of Discovery
The first thing an academic tells you when you mention the mystical side of Afghanistan is that you shouldn't talk about that. The study of foreign policy cannot be seen as motivated by anything other than rational and objective reasons and measured by the metrics of quantitative analysis. How then to explain 'Wild Bill' Donovan, the first director of the OSS and the father of today's CIA calling his agents Knights Templars?
(5 comments) SHARE Friday, October 30, 2020 Our interview about President Carter's true role in starting the longest war in US history
October 7, 2020 was the 19th anniversary of what is described as the longest war in American history. But the real start of the longest US "war" was when President Carter and Zbigniew Brzezinski succeeded in drawing the Soviets into the "Afghan Trap" on December 27, 1979. It is the back story leading up to the Soviet invasion that everyone needs to know, especially the pivotal role of President Carter.
(5 comments) SHARE Friday, August 14, 2020 'Magical Thinking' has always ruled the US role in Afghanistan
The best way for us to understand Afghanistan is to look at the record of American involvement going back four decades and to look at the record requires a reexamination of President Jimmy Carter's national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski. From the start, U.S. policy formation surrounding Afghanistan has lived in a realm of magical thinking that has produced nothing but a catastrophe of nightmarish proportions.
(6 comments) SHARE Thursday, December 6, 2018 We're all CIA assets! What can be done, a personal story
In view of current New Cold War plans to mount a full-scale global war against China and Russia, Americans need to look back and reconsider the turning points that brought our country to this crossroads. How did we as Americans come from being so much against war in Vietnam in the 1960s into preparing for a world war against just about everyone on the planet today? The CIA sabotaged the anti-war movement through its music.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, November 3, 2018 The Khashoggi Gambit
Overthrowing secular regimes and replacing them with Muslim fanatics put Khashoggi squarely in the vanguard of Neoconservative foreign policy and his death at the hands of a Saudi death squad is a blow to their entire agenda. But it should be remembered that their agenda gained prominence in the first place as a result of a not so dissimilar atrocity leveled against an American Ambassador in 1979.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, September 19, 2018 Why did Master Spy Robert Moss Secretly become a Dream Coach Guru?
There is no mention on Moss's website that before he turned to dream work he was a prote'ge' of notorious CIA and MI6 operative Brian Crozier. Along with the CIA and MI6, Moss left a high level and successful career as a master propagandist (i.e. an expert in lying) working for the Institute for the Study of Conflict ( ISC) and Forum World Features , a London based CIA propaganda news service which operated from 1965 to 1974.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, July 29, 2018 Part 2: The Tragic Imperialist: Brzezinski, Afghanistan and the End of Emperors
No one has ever suggested a privatized agency in the death of Ambassador Dubs. But the Safari Club's anti-Communist agenda came to the White House with Brzezinski in 1977, had been active in Afghanistan for years. If ever there was an opportunity for their 1,500-strong black network of assassins to act on Brzezinski's agenda to lure the Soviets into their own Vietnam, it was at room 117 of the Kabul Hotel on February 14, 1979.