On this day in 1918 - a group of generals and politicians were sitting around a table getting ready to sign a cease fire. They weren't especially concerned by the millions of working class German, French and British soldiers who had been pointlessly slaughtered over the last four years. If they were, they would have ended the war a lot earlier.
But they were concerned about the number of Russian dead. Or more accurately, the changes that the number of Russian dead had brought about had made them feel a little class conscious. They weren't signing for peace, they were signing against Communism. All of a sudden, German Princes, French Generals and British Aristocrats had a lot in common, and a lot to lose.
At first, the Germans had seen the collapse of the Russian Empire as an advantage for them. The Russians had dropped out of the war, Germany was no longer surrounded. True it had lost control of the Iraqi oil fields (which it would have needed to be able to challenge the British Empire) but with the Russians out of the war, it could probably have beaten the British and French in the field and then reinforced the collapsing Ottoman Empire and re-secured its oil supplies with the 'Berlin-Baghdad' railway that had led to the war starting in the first place.
Ya'see, in the early 1900's Germany and Britain were in alliance negotiations (yes, you read that right) but they fell out because Germany wanted too many warships, and Britain had a policy that it would have twice as many warships as all the other powers in the world put together, so that it could defend its empire and continue to control world trade as it had done for the previous 100 years. So when the Germans started producing a new generation of modern, super long range, oil powered war ships, the alliance negotiations were cancelled as both Britain and Germany looked to the newly discovered oil supplies in the middle east.
The German dream was to bring oil to Germany via land, building a railway all the way through the Balkans and Turkey to Iraq, thus avoiding the British Fleet. This little fact helps us to understand why the war started in Serbia - which was on the rout of the rail road, and makes a tad more geopolitical sense than an Austrian Duke being shot (the official reason).
So when the war first started, Britain committed its main force to invading Iraq and only sent a serious force to Europe once it became clear that the french were ballsing it up. But the Russians dropping out gave the Germans a chance to crush the British and French armies in Europe and take back the Iraqi oil fields. With control of Europe and the middle east, Germany would have been able to build and fuel as many ships as it liked and the British Empire would have been stuffed.
So why the famous 'armistice' of 11/11/11? Well the Germans overlooked something. The British naval blockade had taken its toll (increasing the German need to build warships) and the German working class was either starving, fighting, pissed off or all of the above. So the communist revolution in Russia was not quite the advantage the German elite thought it was. By mid 1918, socialist uprisings had begun all over Europe including Germany itself. The very centre of the capitalist world was rotting from the inside out as workers realised that they were slaughtering each other to defend the pies of one fat bastard from another fat bastard. So when the prospect of working class power became a real potential, it was amazing how fast these 'enemy' elites sat down and hammered out a deal.
Almost immediately after the ceasefire was signed, German troops left the front line to crush the socialist republic of Bavaria, Italian troops crushed the uprising in Northern Italy, and US, British and French troops redeployed to Russia to try to halt the revolution at its source, but they failed because they didn't send enough troops (for fear that their troops might get funny ideas if the Russians started chucking English language copies of the communist manifesto at them over the tops of the trenches.) So only Russia turned communist, creating the USSR.
Oil, power politics, elitism, empire, class - starving people getting fed up of slaughtering each other and fat bastards doing dirty deals to secure their own power. Its nice when history makes some kind of logical sense. Or you can believe that a million British soldiers died for 'freedom' and that the Germans surrendered even though there was not one foreign soldier on German soil because they were in a peace-nik kinda mood.
What the media leads us to believe may poison our minds and shape our opinions of current wars, but is cannot change the historical facts.
Oh, and yes, Iraq. In WW1 Britain conquered Iraq for the first time (starting 100 years of oil wars in defence of anglo-saxon naval power), gave Jerusalem to the British people as a 'christmas present' - which im sure didn't turn messy at all - and betrayed post war Germany so badly that they felt they turned to Hitler and US weapons manufacturers redress the balance. But those are all different stories :-D
Tuesday 11 November 2014
Monday 3 November 2014
The Middle East Wars, Oil and the US. The Last Days of Rome?
This article is a very general summary of the wars in the Middle East and Arab resistance to the West over the last 50 years - in all its different forms. The piece started off as a response to a friend asking my opinion of a Robert Fisk
interview (link below) with someone who argues that the various countries of the
Middle East have been deliberately destroyed. I Agree that this has been
the case, but disagree as to why this has been US policy. This is a very controversial idea - but it is the key idea that motives the 'Last Days of Rome Blog'. Lastly, the whole article is obviously a hugely simplified summary as it would take a 100,000 page house brick of a book (as well as a huge research team) to 'prove' this theory. To be honest, people can take it or leave it, but it is the understanding that i have developed over 10 years of amateur study of the region and its place in modern world history and politics.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article40121.htm
Its very credible. Robert Fisk is one of the best journalists in the world and he has lived in the middle east - documenting each conflict - for over 30 years. Because his home is Lebanon, his extensive list of contacts means that he is one of the few people who has had enough trust to get access to Syrian generals and politicians over the last few years. He doesn't want to take the regimes side, rather he wants to let them tell their side of the story because no-one is doing that. (And because the Syrian government is so suspicious of western journalists - probably rightly so - its not letting anyone tell its side of the story except for the official government propaganda office.
So the journalism is very credible. But how credible are the ideas of the woman he's talking to? Well for that you have to see where she's coming from. She is a member of an almost extinct (or at least, dis empowered) Pan-Arab nationalist movement that grew up in the 50's and 60's. It was mostly defined by opposition to Israel and by a desire to united the Arab world into one state. Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Libya were the major players. All of them established secular semi-socialist dictatorships to push these two goals - oppose Israel and unite the Arabs. This movement was gradually weakened through the 70's and 80's as the West skillfully exploited the conflicts between these different countries and singled them out in different ways.
Their failure to be effective opponents of US imperialism in the middle east (and to liberate Palestine) meant that they weakened a lot in the 80's and 90's and have been all but wiped out in the last 15years. Syria was the last secular, Arabist regime standing after Iraq and Libya were destroyed and Egypt was bought off in the 80's. So over the last 30 years as this movement has grown weaker Islamic resistance has grown stronger. In the early phase this was Iranian Shia Islamism (inspired by the over-throwing of the pro-US dictatorship in Iran) and more recently Sunni Islamism (funded by Iran's rival, Saudi Arabia. The contradiction in this is that Sunni militancy and terrorism see's itself as fighting against the West, but because it is funded and supported by the pro-western Saudis, mostly ends up fighting the wests enemies (the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, the Syrian regime, the Iraqi regime, the Iranian regime, the Libyan regime.
So what we have now across the middle east is the two forms of Islamism going for each others throats. The traditionally anti-western Shai islamism led by Iran and the supposedly anti-western Sunni islamism whose foot soldiers believe they are fighting the West but mostly end up doing the Wests dirty work for it.
I personally don't feel all this is about protecting Israel. The fact that the US has been supporting both sides of this in different ways (Threatening Syria one year then fighting its enemies the next - calling Iran evil one year, then working with them to fight Isis the next) only go to persuade me more that the US is trying to destabilise and collapse Middle Eastern society altogether, an idea that few people (such as the woman in the interview) support because of its hugely scary consequences.
The US knows that it cannot control the middle east outright any more, and yet it needs to do so because most of the oil that the international economy runs off comes from that area. So if it doesn't control that area, it loses its control of the world economy as well.
But this presents a third option. Make it so that no-one can control the region. Destroy the fabric of the economy and society so badly that it will take generations to repair. Whilst this is unfolding, there is plenty of opportunity to pirate out lots of oil, but ultimately, it will mean that no-one controls the oil. In fact, Oil production needs a certain amount of stability as it is a complicated process, so there will soon not be much oil production to control.
This sounds like madness, because surely the US needs the regions oil as much as its Chinese, Russian, Indonesian and Indian rivals do? Not anymore it doesn't. The mad rush towards fracking, Canadian Tar sands and deep sea drilling in the gulf of Mexico - all horrible ways of getting oil - mean that the North American continent is very nearly oil self sufficient again. That is a very scary thought. US oil production has been declining since the 1970's, but in just this last few years it has started booming again.
This in effect means that the US has military control of the life blood that all of its rivals need to survive, but that it does not need this live blood itself. So when it feels its power waning because its rivals are all getting stronger, and it is no longer rich enough or powerful enough to fully hold down the middle eastern supplies, the coldly logical thing to do is a 'scorched earth' policy of destroying the area completely. (But also doing it slowly enough that it doesn't kick off a third world war).
If Iran, Israel and Saudi Arabia eventually go for each others throats (instead of fighting proxy wars in Iraq and Syria) this will certainly have the effect of completely destroying the middle east - which is exactly the direction things seem to be going in.
I first became convinced of this idea ten years ago after the US invaded Iraq and was obviously destroying all the countries institutions - making the country uncontrollable to them and anyone else. But the flaw at the time was that the US needed the regions oil as much as anyone else did. Now however, 10 years into this destabilisation strategy, they are virtually independent in oil terms. Why do you think the other powers like China put up with so much bullshit from the US? The US has them by the balls. The Russians have enough oil and gas for themselves - with quite a bit to export - but they don't have nearly enough to share around all of the Asian powers, and without control of the seas they would have no way of delivering it against the US's wishes when push came to shove and trade sanctions would be applied.
We don't just use oil for heat and transport - everyone in the world literally eats oil these days as it requires 10 calories of Oil fuel to make 1 calorie of human food or human 'fuel'. All of these huge third world countries - who own the US's debt and theoretically have the power to bankrupt the US tomorrow if they wanted - would only survive a matter of weeks politically if the oil was cut off, and the famines would kick in violently within a year even if the political elites of these countries managed to survive the instability caused by power cuts and transport shutdowns of the early oil-less days.
All of this has the sound of the conspiracy theory about it because it is so far from the mainstream narrative that we are told through the media that it is unimaginable. But it does not require any vast conspiracy or grand plans. A small handful of neo-conservative politicians in the US, UK and Israel have managed to bring about this instability - whilst they have also encouraged corporations to explore the alternative oil sources like fracking, tar sands etc, most people on the left agree on that. Academics like chomsky have documented the fact thats these wars have been caused by a small group of neo-cons clearly and distinctly. And destroying a region is 10 times easier that trying to conquer it and hold it. To me, the idea promoted by most mainstream lefties - that the US is trying to conquer the middle east to hold it - is more conspiratorial because it would require much more planning, deceit and cooperation to build a direct old style colonial empire like that.
It is only very rarely in history that an imperial power finds itself in control of one small region that everyone in the world is dependent upon for their survival. Destroying the resources that your enemy needs in order to survive is really, really common, but this situation is quite unique. The vast majority of the third worlds population lives on a vast life support machine (created by modern agriculture's dependence on oil) that gets 60-70% of its power from the middle east. If the flow of power is shut off, the machine shuts down, the food stops being produced, people starve and governments fall.
Whenever i spell this argument out to people - they react negatively because it is so unthinkably horrible. But it makes a lot of cold sense, its explains the events in the middle east over the last ten years better than either the mainstream or the left wing narratives and it is only as genocidal as what the Nazi regime was about, or what the British Empire did to the native Americans and Aborigine's, or what the Spanish did to the South Americans. As soon as you drop this idea that we live in a period of history that is some how 'nicer' or 'more civilised' than all of the periods that have come before it, the logic of the argument becomes pretty clear. Our elite is desperate.
Its the Last days of Rome. The Anglo-Saxon dominance of the world economy - that has lasted for hundreds of years - is waning. And once that has gone they won't be able to afford the guns to stay in military control either. They are being out competed on the economy, the Western created industrial revolution is threatening to choke the planet and drown all of us and the third world population is booming out of control. The West is slipping. The established power elites in the west can see it slipping and they are not going to be first empire in history to NOT put up a fight on the way down if there is any hope they can save their own miserable arses. When seen in this light, this strategy is no more insanely genocidal than those used by other collapsing empires that have clung to power.
Cheers Cai for the inspiration to spill all this out in one place :-D
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article40121.htm
Its very credible. Robert Fisk is one of the best journalists in the world and he has lived in the middle east - documenting each conflict - for over 30 years. Because his home is Lebanon, his extensive list of contacts means that he is one of the few people who has had enough trust to get access to Syrian generals and politicians over the last few years. He doesn't want to take the regimes side, rather he wants to let them tell their side of the story because no-one is doing that. (And because the Syrian government is so suspicious of western journalists - probably rightly so - its not letting anyone tell its side of the story except for the official government propaganda office.
So the journalism is very credible. But how credible are the ideas of the woman he's talking to? Well for that you have to see where she's coming from. She is a member of an almost extinct (or at least, dis empowered) Pan-Arab nationalist movement that grew up in the 50's and 60's. It was mostly defined by opposition to Israel and by a desire to united the Arab world into one state. Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Libya were the major players. All of them established secular semi-socialist dictatorships to push these two goals - oppose Israel and unite the Arabs. This movement was gradually weakened through the 70's and 80's as the West skillfully exploited the conflicts between these different countries and singled them out in different ways.
Their failure to be effective opponents of US imperialism in the middle east (and to liberate Palestine) meant that they weakened a lot in the 80's and 90's and have been all but wiped out in the last 15years. Syria was the last secular, Arabist regime standing after Iraq and Libya were destroyed and Egypt was bought off in the 80's. So over the last 30 years as this movement has grown weaker Islamic resistance has grown stronger. In the early phase this was Iranian Shia Islamism (inspired by the over-throwing of the pro-US dictatorship in Iran) and more recently Sunni Islamism (funded by Iran's rival, Saudi Arabia. The contradiction in this is that Sunni militancy and terrorism see's itself as fighting against the West, but because it is funded and supported by the pro-western Saudis, mostly ends up fighting the wests enemies (the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, the Syrian regime, the Iraqi regime, the Iranian regime, the Libyan regime.
So what we have now across the middle east is the two forms of Islamism going for each others throats. The traditionally anti-western Shai islamism led by Iran and the supposedly anti-western Sunni islamism whose foot soldiers believe they are fighting the West but mostly end up doing the Wests dirty work for it.
I personally don't feel all this is about protecting Israel. The fact that the US has been supporting both sides of this in different ways (Threatening Syria one year then fighting its enemies the next - calling Iran evil one year, then working with them to fight Isis the next) only go to persuade me more that the US is trying to destabilise and collapse Middle Eastern society altogether, an idea that few people (such as the woman in the interview) support because of its hugely scary consequences.
The US knows that it cannot control the middle east outright any more, and yet it needs to do so because most of the oil that the international economy runs off comes from that area. So if it doesn't control that area, it loses its control of the world economy as well.
But this presents a third option. Make it so that no-one can control the region. Destroy the fabric of the economy and society so badly that it will take generations to repair. Whilst this is unfolding, there is plenty of opportunity to pirate out lots of oil, but ultimately, it will mean that no-one controls the oil. In fact, Oil production needs a certain amount of stability as it is a complicated process, so there will soon not be much oil production to control.
This sounds like madness, because surely the US needs the regions oil as much as its Chinese, Russian, Indonesian and Indian rivals do? Not anymore it doesn't. The mad rush towards fracking, Canadian Tar sands and deep sea drilling in the gulf of Mexico - all horrible ways of getting oil - mean that the North American continent is very nearly oil self sufficient again. That is a very scary thought. US oil production has been declining since the 1970's, but in just this last few years it has started booming again.
This in effect means that the US has military control of the life blood that all of its rivals need to survive, but that it does not need this live blood itself. So when it feels its power waning because its rivals are all getting stronger, and it is no longer rich enough or powerful enough to fully hold down the middle eastern supplies, the coldly logical thing to do is a 'scorched earth' policy of destroying the area completely. (But also doing it slowly enough that it doesn't kick off a third world war).
If Iran, Israel and Saudi Arabia eventually go for each others throats (instead of fighting proxy wars in Iraq and Syria) this will certainly have the effect of completely destroying the middle east - which is exactly the direction things seem to be going in.
I first became convinced of this idea ten years ago after the US invaded Iraq and was obviously destroying all the countries institutions - making the country uncontrollable to them and anyone else. But the flaw at the time was that the US needed the regions oil as much as anyone else did. Now however, 10 years into this destabilisation strategy, they are virtually independent in oil terms. Why do you think the other powers like China put up with so much bullshit from the US? The US has them by the balls. The Russians have enough oil and gas for themselves - with quite a bit to export - but they don't have nearly enough to share around all of the Asian powers, and without control of the seas they would have no way of delivering it against the US's wishes when push came to shove and trade sanctions would be applied.
We don't just use oil for heat and transport - everyone in the world literally eats oil these days as it requires 10 calories of Oil fuel to make 1 calorie of human food or human 'fuel'. All of these huge third world countries - who own the US's debt and theoretically have the power to bankrupt the US tomorrow if they wanted - would only survive a matter of weeks politically if the oil was cut off, and the famines would kick in violently within a year even if the political elites of these countries managed to survive the instability caused by power cuts and transport shutdowns of the early oil-less days.
All of this has the sound of the conspiracy theory about it because it is so far from the mainstream narrative that we are told through the media that it is unimaginable. But it does not require any vast conspiracy or grand plans. A small handful of neo-conservative politicians in the US, UK and Israel have managed to bring about this instability - whilst they have also encouraged corporations to explore the alternative oil sources like fracking, tar sands etc, most people on the left agree on that. Academics like chomsky have documented the fact thats these wars have been caused by a small group of neo-cons clearly and distinctly. And destroying a region is 10 times easier that trying to conquer it and hold it. To me, the idea promoted by most mainstream lefties - that the US is trying to conquer the middle east to hold it - is more conspiratorial because it would require much more planning, deceit and cooperation to build a direct old style colonial empire like that.
It is only very rarely in history that an imperial power finds itself in control of one small region that everyone in the world is dependent upon for their survival. Destroying the resources that your enemy needs in order to survive is really, really common, but this situation is quite unique. The vast majority of the third worlds population lives on a vast life support machine (created by modern agriculture's dependence on oil) that gets 60-70% of its power from the middle east. If the flow of power is shut off, the machine shuts down, the food stops being produced, people starve and governments fall.
Whenever i spell this argument out to people - they react negatively because it is so unthinkably horrible. But it makes a lot of cold sense, its explains the events in the middle east over the last ten years better than either the mainstream or the left wing narratives and it is only as genocidal as what the Nazi regime was about, or what the British Empire did to the native Americans and Aborigine's, or what the Spanish did to the South Americans. As soon as you drop this idea that we live in a period of history that is some how 'nicer' or 'more civilised' than all of the periods that have come before it, the logic of the argument becomes pretty clear. Our elite is desperate.
Its the Last days of Rome. The Anglo-Saxon dominance of the world economy - that has lasted for hundreds of years - is waning. And once that has gone they won't be able to afford the guns to stay in military control either. They are being out competed on the economy, the Western created industrial revolution is threatening to choke the planet and drown all of us and the third world population is booming out of control. The West is slipping. The established power elites in the west can see it slipping and they are not going to be first empire in history to NOT put up a fight on the way down if there is any hope they can save their own miserable arses. When seen in this light, this strategy is no more insanely genocidal than those used by other collapsing empires that have clung to power.
Cheers Cai for the inspiration to spill all this out in one place :-D
Sunday 2 November 2014
Why you can't have Capitalist Democracy - Noam Chomsky
"Capitalist democracy would self destruct, and thats why it hasn't been instituted."
"If you persue the division of labour people will repeat the same actions over and over... they will be de-skilled. This is the goal of management - de-skill the workforce. It will turn people into creatures as stupid and ignorant as can possibly be."
"Take a look at the history, its pretty facsinating... there were other countries poised for industrial revolution, like Egypt and India - in fact India was the commercial and industrial centre of the world, more so than England. It could have taken off, but they [India and Egypt] were not free to reject these economics. They were ruled by British force."
Full video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mxp_wgFWQo
"If you persue the division of labour people will repeat the same actions over and over... they will be de-skilled. This is the goal of management - de-skill the workforce. It will turn people into creatures as stupid and ignorant as can possibly be."
"Take a look at the history, its pretty facsinating... there were other countries poised for industrial revolution, like Egypt and India - in fact India was the commercial and industrial centre of the world, more so than England. It could have taken off, but they [India and Egypt] were not free to reject these economics. They were ruled by British force."
Full video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mxp_wgFWQo
"Being Kidnapped, Tortured and Released in Syria"
This is an amazing, page turning read. But it lacks context. Iraq and
Syria used to be politically secular countries where Sunni and Shia
intermarried and Western visitors were welcomed with with excessive
amounts of coffee. The very real apocalypse described in this article is
the result of over 700,000 Iraqi and 150,000 Syrian deaths caused by
the Wests sanctions, invasions and bombings of the region. Without the
context, this amazing artilce is worse than worthless as it enables
the reader to think of the people of the region as savages -
discounting the fact that this is what happens when societies collapse,
and that this collapse was of our making.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/28/magazine/theo-padnos-american-journalist-on-being-kidnapped-tortured-and-released-in-syria.html?smid=tw-share
The ideas that the fighters in this story believe in have nothing to do
with Islam in any recongisable form - especially in a region where
non-islamic christians and other minorities have survived for over a
thousand years, side by side. These are the ideas and attitudes of any
group of people for whom there is no hope and no future. Where all
stability is gone and violence is all that is left.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/28/magazine/theo-padnos-american-journalist-on-being-kidnapped-tortured-and-released-in-syria.html?smid=tw-share
Saturday 1 November 2014
The danger of Witch-hunts illustrated by a silly example - Vaping!
Lets start provocatively in order to prove the point. Leave the bloody 'vapers' alone now guys, we're not going to hurt you or your kids. Put away the holy water - calm down long enough to let the logic centres of the brain kick in. Now, that statement will have pissed some people off - and rightly so. So if it annoyed you, please read on.
If you hadn't guessed, Im a new convert. Started 'vaping' a few weeks ago to reduce my 30-40 rollie habit (with no filters) Today however, i was having real trouble breathing properly as one of those regular chest infections that hits heavy smokers every 6 months or so stopped by to say hi! Or is that 'Die'?
So instead im going to use this little gizmo to get me off the fags altogether. But already, im getting a lot of negative feedback for doing it in public places. This stems from how the war on tobbacco was fought, not why it was fought, and this is a really important difference. Peoples reactions to vaping are triggered by the fact that it 'looks' so much like smoking, so it makes them feel anxious (or is that 'righteous'?) :-)
Seriously though. Smoking ain't good. The vast cocktail of of thousands of chemicals does ya' some serious harm. When you fill a room with the stuff, its also been proven to harm the people around you too. Not to mention the evils of the tobacco industry and their recent drives to get more 3rd worlders smoking to compensate for the loss of sales in the West. If people want to smoke, im totally cool with their personal decision, but even most smokers like me admit its a bit fucked up.
Yet smoking was banned by playing to hysteria - the key ingredient in a witch hunt. Many people have lost someone to smoking, so understandably, the emotions run high. And this was the key to the anti-smoking campaigns success, they based their campaigns on the scientific logic against smoking, but then fuelled the communication of this logic with the pain and emotion that smoking has caused, The result is dangerously close to an fear charged witch-hunt (with the odd fascist on the side who just loves to disapprove of people anyway.)
It all gotten a bit hysterical. If the result of this particular witch hunt is that many people's lives are saved, it might be worth it - 'might' because i distrust all emotionally charged witch hunts. But now we are seeing the negative side effects - people getting all righteous with Vapers. Admittedly, more study is needed, as with nearly everything in modern consumer society, but there is already enough evidence to prove that it is nowhere near as harmful as smoking - and probably totally harmless in terms of 'passive vaping'.
If the millions of hard core nicotine addicts (like me) out there are free to enjoy our vapes without sigma and hysteria, we will probably remain nicotine addicts for life, But nicotine alone (without the vast array of other shit in fags - including Arsenic!) is about as bad as caffeine. Its a very mild stimulant which will slightly raise the blood pressure and heart rate in regular users, just like caffeine (which i personally feel affects me more, and has more side effects than vaping nicotine.)
Yet the smoking boogyman still stalks the halls. The hysterical energy unlocked by the anti-smoking campaigns has resulted in people looking down on those who have gone to great pains to adapt their habit from a generally harmful to a generally harmless form. Calls for bans have already gained momentum and a lot won't allow their friends to do it in their houses. But this simply is not logical. As mammals we are essentially reactionary creatures. Visual cues warn us of danger, our blood pressure rises, adrenaline is released and we start to feel angry and agitated. This biological pattern allows us to learn from past mistakes to protect our selves. We get wound up and react - fight or flight.
This is exactly the same process that happens in racist lynch mobs and any other form of witch hunt. Primal instincts are mobilised to get an emotional reaction. When a non-smoker looks at a smoker angrily, they are probably projecting the pain of the loss of a loved one - or the ancient instinct to protect their child - through the prism of the facts they have learned how harmful smoking is.
But if you feel that same reaction because someone is vaping, get a hold of yourself, calm the fuck down and realise that logic is no longer on your side. Worse than that, by ostracising someone who is actively taking measures to reduce the harmful effects of smoking on themselves and others to almost zero, you are encouraging the little demons in their heads that want to get them smoking again.
I can already hear the cries of 'more research is needed' and 'we don't know that 100%' but very few things are that certain. If your still letting yourself get all wound up about it because a voice in your head says 'ah, but there is a slight chance' then you need to realise that this voice is hysteria masquerading as logic. Your home or your work place is full of technology and poisons that pose a very real statistical risk of killing your child or colleague through accidents and such like - a small risk mostly, but a real one. Not to mention the quite high dangers or driving a car and the high level of damage done to the lungs of people who breath in car fumes ('passive car-ing'?) The basic logic is that it is a whole lot better and the initial studies agree. So put the puritanical riding crop down please and be kind to people who are moving from smoking to vaping, because they are doing it for themselves and you.
Western Origins of Isis - John Pilger Nails It
I don't have anything to add to this awesome article. Which was quite a shock to my ego. Rich in historical context - and with a deep understanding of how traumatised nations behave - John Pilger is a master journalist and this article puts Isis not only in the context of Iraq's history, but it also makes vaild comparrisions with the histories of other countries that have been destroyed by the US and turned to radicalism.
This is why i write my little blog of rants in the first place. The separation of History and Journalism into two separate disciplines makes about as much sense as separating Ecology from Biology. If this were to happen, Ecological surveys of unmapped areas of the jungle would read like this; "theres these winged creatures with pointy faces flying through the air everywhere, and there's these green things growing out of the ground. Given that the winged things fly above the green things we think these 'birds' are actually scared of landing on these 'trees', our guess is that they would probably be eaten by them"
Yet these childishly detached observations - the product of an Ecologist who knows nothing of Zoology, Biology or Natural History - fit perfectly with the ramblings of every BBC journo who is catapulted into a conflict in the Middle East without any knowledge of the history of the region. More than that, they require a broader understanding of many different areas of history so as to be able to make informed comparisons and spot vaild patterns. This point is made pretty well be the fact that nearly every regime in the world that is more brutal or authoritarian than ours is automatically compared to Nazi Germany because that's the only bloody thing these people learnt about history before they left high school. Next time the West is lining someone up for attack, just count how many people make the Hilter comparrison.
There are no exact laws of history and politics, but there are many firm patterns that can point a commentator in the right direction, as is true with many of the non 'pure' sciences like Ecology. Just because something cannot be precisely measured in numbers does not mean that studying it is irrelevant, yet modern Journo's run around the world reporting back everything they 'see with their eyes' whilst totally failing to add context. "Aaaahhh, they're all shooting at each other! Probably religion or something. Maybe their dictator is like Hitler! Yes, that's it. And these people are clearly the goodies because, although they are burning that man alive, he supports the dictator and dictators are the baddies. Right, got it. Roll the camera."
Journalism without context is worse than no journalism at all because it creates the impression of a totally unpredictable world where evil regimes and Hilter-monsters just rise out of nowhere - like some supernatural force that must be suppressed by the righteous. It scares the crap out of people, gets them waving flags and patting their sons on the back on their way to go off and be slaughtered in some pointless war.
Anyway, non of this applies to old school Journalist John Pilger. Here is his article which answers everything you need to know about the rise of Isis.
http://johnpilger.com/articles/from-pol-pot-to-isis-anything-that-flies-on-everything-that-moves
This is why i write my little blog of rants in the first place. The separation of History and Journalism into two separate disciplines makes about as much sense as separating Ecology from Biology. If this were to happen, Ecological surveys of unmapped areas of the jungle would read like this; "theres these winged creatures with pointy faces flying through the air everywhere, and there's these green things growing out of the ground. Given that the winged things fly above the green things we think these 'birds' are actually scared of landing on these 'trees', our guess is that they would probably be eaten by them"
Yet these childishly detached observations - the product of an Ecologist who knows nothing of Zoology, Biology or Natural History - fit perfectly with the ramblings of every BBC journo who is catapulted into a conflict in the Middle East without any knowledge of the history of the region. More than that, they require a broader understanding of many different areas of history so as to be able to make informed comparisons and spot vaild patterns. This point is made pretty well be the fact that nearly every regime in the world that is more brutal or authoritarian than ours is automatically compared to Nazi Germany because that's the only bloody thing these people learnt about history before they left high school. Next time the West is lining someone up for attack, just count how many people make the Hilter comparrison.
There are no exact laws of history and politics, but there are many firm patterns that can point a commentator in the right direction, as is true with many of the non 'pure' sciences like Ecology. Just because something cannot be precisely measured in numbers does not mean that studying it is irrelevant, yet modern Journo's run around the world reporting back everything they 'see with their eyes' whilst totally failing to add context. "Aaaahhh, they're all shooting at each other! Probably religion or something. Maybe their dictator is like Hitler! Yes, that's it. And these people are clearly the goodies because, although they are burning that man alive, he supports the dictator and dictators are the baddies. Right, got it. Roll the camera."
Journalism without context is worse than no journalism at all because it creates the impression of a totally unpredictable world where evil regimes and Hilter-monsters just rise out of nowhere - like some supernatural force that must be suppressed by the righteous. It scares the crap out of people, gets them waving flags and patting their sons on the back on their way to go off and be slaughtered in some pointless war.
Anyway, non of this applies to old school Journalist John Pilger. Here is his article which answers everything you need to know about the rise of Isis.
http://johnpilger.com/articles/from-pol-pot-to-isis-anything-that-flies-on-everything-that-moves
Tuesday 28 October 2014
"We’re going to take those refugees, and we’re going to drown them. "
I wish this headline was an exaggeration, but what the actual fuck is this? The British government has decided to withdraw funding from a service that has stopped 150,000 desperate refugee's from drowning in the Med because pulling them out of the water 'only encourages them'!
The article below illustrates the logic behind this evil all too clearly. But make no mistake, it is evil.
This blog is called 'last days of Rome' for a good reason. We are living in an Empire at the apex of its power. Anglo-Saxon power (Created by the British Empire and succeeded by the US empire) is starting to fail. Our language is the dominant language in the world, our parliamentary, legal, capitalist economic, and military systems have been spread world wide and have been taken up by - or foisted upon - most of the population of the world. But it is now failing.
Our competitors are now stronger than they have been in 200 years, Global warming is reeking havoc and our economies life blood - oil - is running out. These patterns have been seen in history before and that's why i call this blog the 'last days of Rome'. But this article adds a little irony to the bargain.
Not since WW2 have there been more refugees on the move world wide. The third world is literally dieing on its arse due to famines, wars and economic collapses caused by our capitalist economic system. So what is our response? Exactly the same response as Rome, pull up the drawbridge to keep the 'barbarians' out.
The third world is collapsing because of 50 years of big money piracy. Have you ever wondered how a society like ours manages to stay one of the richest in the world even though we don't even make anything to sell anymore?
Withdrawing funding from a service which has been proven to save 150,000 lives - in the last year alone - is tantamount to genocide. Welcome to the last days of Rome people, it will continue to get uglier from this point on.
Well done Dan Hodges from the Telegraph - this is an outstanding article
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/11192208/Drown-an-immigrant-to-save-an-immigrant-why-is-the-Government-borrowing-policy-from-the-BNP.html
The article below illustrates the logic behind this evil all too clearly. But make no mistake, it is evil.
This blog is called 'last days of Rome' for a good reason. We are living in an Empire at the apex of its power. Anglo-Saxon power (Created by the British Empire and succeeded by the US empire) is starting to fail. Our language is the dominant language in the world, our parliamentary, legal, capitalist economic, and military systems have been spread world wide and have been taken up by - or foisted upon - most of the population of the world. But it is now failing.
Our competitors are now stronger than they have been in 200 years, Global warming is reeking havoc and our economies life blood - oil - is running out. These patterns have been seen in history before and that's why i call this blog the 'last days of Rome'. But this article adds a little irony to the bargain.
Not since WW2 have there been more refugees on the move world wide. The third world is literally dieing on its arse due to famines, wars and economic collapses caused by our capitalist economic system. So what is our response? Exactly the same response as Rome, pull up the drawbridge to keep the 'barbarians' out.
The third world is collapsing because of 50 years of big money piracy. Have you ever wondered how a society like ours manages to stay one of the richest in the world even though we don't even make anything to sell anymore?
Withdrawing funding from a service which has been proven to save 150,000 lives - in the last year alone - is tantamount to genocide. Welcome to the last days of Rome people, it will continue to get uglier from this point on.
Well done Dan Hodges from the Telegraph - this is an outstanding article
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/11192208/Drown-an-immigrant-to-save-an-immigrant-why-is-the-Government-borrowing-policy-from-the-BNP.html
Hywel Williams talks immigration in Wales - Not every politician is willing to jump on the bandwagon of scapegoating immigrants for our problems;
"What about Immigration? People have always moved to Wales from all over the world, and within Wales as well, there has been movement. My Grandfather, who used to work down the pit in Tylorstown [for example]. Who here today - or listening at home - would dream of telling the people of Tylorstown 'You're not Welsh'? And Likewise for our new Welsh citizens, who have moved to our great cities, to the West and the coasts - students, teachers and researchers at our universities, caring for us in our hospitals. Gwynfor Evans said, "Anyone can be Welsh as long as your prepared to take the consequences"" (Starts at 7.45 in - but the rest is interesting too)
I despise most politicians, but i find Hywel refreshing. Even if politicians arn't anti-immigrant or pro-war in their hearts, they are scared of speaking out. They know the grip that the media has on public opinion and they worry about their vote at the next election. So they climb right into bed with the devil to preserve their careers.
With that in mind, Hywel Williams does not have a 'safe seat'. For some bizarre reason, there are still about 9 thousand people in Arfon voting Labour, which makes every election a close call. Yet he stood up and was one of only Forty-Three MP's who was willing to vote against the recent war on Iraq because he believes it is wrong, even though the papers had people braying for blood. The same for attacking immigrantion and immigrants.
An MP who speaks their mind is a rare thing - so we need to keep hold of this one, because not all politicians are the same.
I despise most politicians, but i find Hywel refreshing. Even if politicians arn't anti-immigrant or pro-war in their hearts, they are scared of speaking out. They know the grip that the media has on public opinion and they worry about their vote at the next election. So they climb right into bed with the devil to preserve their careers.
With that in mind, Hywel Williams does not have a 'safe seat'. For some bizarre reason, there are still about 9 thousand people in Arfon voting Labour, which makes every election a close call. Yet he stood up and was one of only Forty-Three MP's who was willing to vote against the recent war on Iraq because he believes it is wrong, even though the papers had people braying for blood. The same for attacking immigrantion and immigrants.
An MP who speaks their mind is a rare thing - so we need to keep hold of this one, because not all politicians are the same.
Saturday 25 October 2014
Islam; The religion of hate? Lets lay this one to rest shall we...
A growing number of people in the country - and around the world - believe that violence and aggression is at the very heart of the Islamic religion. That it is an inherently war like religion that encourages its followers to attack and kill the people of other religions. And its not surprising that they think this.
Youtube contains dozens, if not hundreds, of video's that show acts of violence carried out in the name of Islam. At the same time, barely a single edition of the BBC news passes by without some mention of arrest of terrorists, Islamic bombings abroad or some other crime carried out by Muslim people in the UK. The evidence is there, anyone and everyone can see it.
BUT! (Needed the capitals) But, but, buuuuuut. What kind of evidence is this? And what is it evidence of? The answer seems obvious, until you think about it. If you showed a collection of these videos, TV news stories and articles to a scientist and asked what the evidence actually proves, they would probably say that it only proves that 'some' people use Islam to justify their violence. If you pushed the matter with them, they would then ask for numbers. Lots of lovely numbers. If you then told them that there were 1.6 billion (1,600,000,000 count them zero's! [the zero was invested by an Arab mathematician BTW]) Muslims in the world, the scientist would then tell you that this evidence means nothing at all. Not a sausage (no joke intended :-) )
Because random evidence is absolutely useless. These videos were published by people who have an agenda and they simply don't represent the vast majority of the 1.6 billion Muslims out there. They show handfuls of individuals and small groups doin horrendous things. That. Is. All.
This 'evidence' does prove two things however.
Firstly, it proves that there is at least a tiny minority of Muslims out there who want to commit violence and use their religion as the excuse to do so. Many of them live in countries that have been bombed and/or destroyed by Western forces in the last 15 years (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Pakistan, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza & the West Bank) and their violence tends to be directed towards Western military forces and civilians - funnily enough. Cant think why. But are these people violent because of their religion? Or do they have a political goal for which they are willing to use extreme violence?Kicking us out maybe? Scaring us off, perhaps?
But even though there are only very small numbers out there, these people in the videos are Msulim and they themselves say that they are doing it for their religion. Isnt that enough? If the religion does promote violence, not everyone is going to practise the violence that they are told to because people are a bit crap at following their religions properly. So lets imagine that the vast majority of Muslims are ignoring the instructions of their religion, and that only 1% of them are truly devote enough to do what they believe god has instructed them to do. That would make 16 million Muslims suicide bombers just waiting for the chance to blow themselves up! If that was true, don't you think the various Western occupation forces in the world would be up to their arses in bombers by now?!? And these 16,000,000 bombers would be part of a pretty inefficient and generally crap religion because they would be doing what they're religion tells them to whilst 99% of their brothers disobeyed their own religion.
The logic is there in the numbers guys. 1 in 4 human beings alive today is a Muslim. The world would have destroyed itself several times over if Islam was anything but a religion of peace. In every religion there are nutters who use their religion for violence and manipulation (The holocaust? The KKK?), but even though i am NOT a religious man myself, i have to admit that the back bone message of all of the worlds religions is peace.
Ah, but, secondly. Nearly forgot secondly. Which is bad, because its good. This collection of evidence in the media and on the Internet goes to prove that there are people out there WHO WANT YOU TO BELIEVE THAT ISLAM IS INHERENTLY VIOLENT, and they are willing to focus huge amounts of money, time and energy on creating this image. They find every single isolated case of violence and use the modern broadcast networks to blast each and every image into every home in the country. Have you ever noticed on the BBC, that when a Muslim commits a crime or act of violence, their religion is mentioned, but never the other way round? When did you last hear the headline 'A Taxi drive was arrested for killing a prostitute in East London yesterday, it is believed he was a christian'? No, ive never heard that either. But im sure a few of the murderers in this country have been christened.
The media just drips with racism. Four major paedophile rings have been discovered in this country in the last few years. One in the Catholic Church, one in the media, one in the Westminster establishment and one in Rochdale. Which one mentioned the ethnicity of the offenders? Rochdale 'It is believed that many of the perpetrators are of Pakistani ethnic origin'!? How often did the BBC labour the point that Jimi Saville was of a white, christian background? They didn't because its not bloody relevant! Do they keep telling us again and again what countries the various abusive catholic priests were born in? NO, because that's not bloody relevant either.
Youtube contains dozens, if not hundreds, of video's that show acts of violence carried out in the name of Islam. At the same time, barely a single edition of the BBC news passes by without some mention of arrest of terrorists, Islamic bombings abroad or some other crime carried out by Muslim people in the UK. The evidence is there, anyone and everyone can see it.
BUT! (Needed the capitals) But, but, buuuuuut. What kind of evidence is this? And what is it evidence of? The answer seems obvious, until you think about it. If you showed a collection of these videos, TV news stories and articles to a scientist and asked what the evidence actually proves, they would probably say that it only proves that 'some' people use Islam to justify their violence. If you pushed the matter with them, they would then ask for numbers. Lots of lovely numbers. If you then told them that there were 1.6 billion (1,600,000,000 count them zero's! [the zero was invested by an Arab mathematician BTW]) Muslims in the world, the scientist would then tell you that this evidence means nothing at all. Not a sausage (no joke intended :-) )
Because random evidence is absolutely useless. These videos were published by people who have an agenda and they simply don't represent the vast majority of the 1.6 billion Muslims out there. They show handfuls of individuals and small groups doin horrendous things. That. Is. All.
This 'evidence' does prove two things however.
Firstly, it proves that there is at least a tiny minority of Muslims out there who want to commit violence and use their religion as the excuse to do so. Many of them live in countries that have been bombed and/or destroyed by Western forces in the last 15 years (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Pakistan, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza & the West Bank) and their violence tends to be directed towards Western military forces and civilians - funnily enough. Cant think why. But are these people violent because of their religion? Or do they have a political goal for which they are willing to use extreme violence?Kicking us out maybe? Scaring us off, perhaps?
But even though there are only very small numbers out there, these people in the videos are Msulim and they themselves say that they are doing it for their religion. Isnt that enough? If the religion does promote violence, not everyone is going to practise the violence that they are told to because people are a bit crap at following their religions properly. So lets imagine that the vast majority of Muslims are ignoring the instructions of their religion, and that only 1% of them are truly devote enough to do what they believe god has instructed them to do. That would make 16 million Muslims suicide bombers just waiting for the chance to blow themselves up! If that was true, don't you think the various Western occupation forces in the world would be up to their arses in bombers by now?!? And these 16,000,000 bombers would be part of a pretty inefficient and generally crap religion because they would be doing what they're religion tells them to whilst 99% of their brothers disobeyed their own religion.
The logic is there in the numbers guys. 1 in 4 human beings alive today is a Muslim. The world would have destroyed itself several times over if Islam was anything but a religion of peace. In every religion there are nutters who use their religion for violence and manipulation (The holocaust? The KKK?), but even though i am NOT a religious man myself, i have to admit that the back bone message of all of the worlds religions is peace.
Ah, but, secondly. Nearly forgot secondly. Which is bad, because its good. This collection of evidence in the media and on the Internet goes to prove that there are people out there WHO WANT YOU TO BELIEVE THAT ISLAM IS INHERENTLY VIOLENT, and they are willing to focus huge amounts of money, time and energy on creating this image. They find every single isolated case of violence and use the modern broadcast networks to blast each and every image into every home in the country. Have you ever noticed on the BBC, that when a Muslim commits a crime or act of violence, their religion is mentioned, but never the other way round? When did you last hear the headline 'A Taxi drive was arrested for killing a prostitute in East London yesterday, it is believed he was a christian'? No, ive never heard that either. But im sure a few of the murderers in this country have been christened.
The media just drips with racism. Four major paedophile rings have been discovered in this country in the last few years. One in the Catholic Church, one in the media, one in the Westminster establishment and one in Rochdale. Which one mentioned the ethnicity of the offenders? Rochdale 'It is believed that many of the perpetrators are of Pakistani ethnic origin'!? How often did the BBC labour the point that Jimi Saville was of a white, christian background? They didn't because its not bloody relevant! Do they keep telling us again and again what countries the various abusive catholic priests were born in? NO, because that's not bloody relevant either.
Every time
a Muslim commits a crime his religion and race is mentioned in the
report. Listen for it on the BBC news, its there nearly every day. There
are 1.800,000 British Muslims, there will always be violent crimes
among any group of 1.8 million people, but by focusing on each and every one of them it is possible to create a false perception. Its like a drip, drip, drip into our subconcious minds. People now believe that Muslims are evil deep down inside. Every time they hear the words 'Muslim' or 'Islam' on the media they always have a negative attached. Something horrible and emtionally disturbing. This technique of propaganda has been tried and tested on human beings. It works very effectively. Why do you think advertisers spend billions getting you to buy their products? Drip, drip, drip. An episode of the news never goes by without a negative mention of Muslims these days, its like poison for the soul and it does not reflect reality.
Every government in history has tried to create the impression that its enemies are evil and dangerous. Thats what governments do, how do you think they persuade basically decent human beings to kill each other? De-humanisation. The enemy is not human. He's a Muslim, or a Commie or a Crout. But never a human.
And after a while, the propaganda becomes self producing. The idea that a certain group of people are either inherently violent, or inherently evil starts to sink into the subconcious of the whole population. Then it becomes something that sells! Enter money and greed, stage left! Yes Islamophobia sells newspapers. The newspaper owners don't work for the government, they don't have to. They are after money and power, they know we are at war, they know war creates hatred and they know hatred sells newspapers. So they fan the flames! "Ooooh look at this guy, he has a hook instead of a hand! Just like a James Bond villian, put him and his immigration case on the front of every single f**king paper for the next 12 years!" (Only for him to be eventually deported to Jordan where charges against him were dropped. Sigh....)
Anyway, thats enough of me. This rant was inspired by the wonderful Mehdi Hassan in this fantastic video below. One of the most passionate, articulate speeches ive ever heard.The man has real energy.
Every government in history has tried to create the impression that its enemies are evil and dangerous. Thats what governments do, how do you think they persuade basically decent human beings to kill each other? De-humanisation. The enemy is not human. He's a Muslim, or a Commie or a Crout. But never a human.
And after a while, the propaganda becomes self producing. The idea that a certain group of people are either inherently violent, or inherently evil starts to sink into the subconcious of the whole population. Then it becomes something that sells! Enter money and greed, stage left! Yes Islamophobia sells newspapers. The newspaper owners don't work for the government, they don't have to. They are after money and power, they know we are at war, they know war creates hatred and they know hatred sells newspapers. So they fan the flames! "Ooooh look at this guy, he has a hook instead of a hand! Just like a James Bond villian, put him and his immigration case on the front of every single f**king paper for the next 12 years!" (Only for him to be eventually deported to Jordan where charges against him were dropped. Sigh....)
Anyway, thats enough of me. This rant was inspired by the wonderful Mehdi Hassan in this fantastic video below. One of the most passionate, articulate speeches ive ever heard.The man has real energy.
Thursday 23 October 2014
Ok - Serious WAR MONGER scoop - posted on Twitter by a member of Gwynedd council no less!
At which point he wrote 'I'd sign our bombs' after having a go at the MP. A member of the 'friends of palestine' group managed to screen grab the record of the conversation. Right...where to start? Deep breath.
Firstly, Pro- and anti- war people should be able to agree that bombing isnt nice. Blasting human being into thousands of tiny pieces is not something your supposed to enjoy unless you are American, or Tony Blair (for whom proffessional help is being sought)
Secondly, as anyone who has seen a war zone can tell you, the idea that we have these super clever bombs that only target bad people - and leave civilians untouched - is complete and utter naive bullshit. Bombing any country results - almost inevitably - in burning men, women and children to death in their own homes. Every western attack on the middle east in the last 15 years - regardless of the reasons for the attack - has had this effect. Thats what Wars do!
Many people who are pro-war admit that there will be civilian casualties but tend to say that this is 'tragic but unavoidable', but only real sicko's and naive morons actually celebrate the dropping of bombs by offering - even as a joke - to sign their names on it. Images of the Israeli settlers sitting on the hill watching the bombs fall on Gaza spring to mind.
But it gets worse. I can't remember where i read it, but im sure i read somewhere that this little burk was going to stand as the Labour candidate for the aseembly for our area! Which, if ive remembered right - would explain why he is trying to out Blair the Tony monster on the bloodlust scale. He just see's this council role as a jumping off point to taking his place among the highest and the greatest of the war mongers in the establishment.
Gwynedd council has just agreed to divest from Israel and many of our local MP's are proudly anti-war. North West Wales has a long tradition of peace activism - i wonder if he even knows where he lives. Oh i forgot, he does now, he deleted the twitter thread. Too late though! :-D Spread both the image and the blog post where ever you like, lets hold him accountable.
[Can't confirm if the feed has been deleted or not - so have removed reference to this]
Innocent Canada attacked by Terrifying Terrorists! The only real suprise is that it hasn't happened earlier.
The joke among American's who travel abroad is that they sometimes introduce themselves as Canadian because admitting that they are American tends to trigger a lecture about the US being the biggest bully in the world. Or worse, it is met with embarrassing statements like 'oh, American? You killed my grandfather'. So given that such conversations are more iceberg makers than ice breakers, saying your Canadian helps. Canada is seen as the US's big friendly neighbour who wouldn't say 'Boo' to a goose. Good ole Canada doesn't interfere in other peoples business the way the US and UK do.
So if this is the case, why has Canada just had the experience of terrorists 'rampaging' through its Parliament and capital?
Sadly, the fluffy nation of polar bears and mounties is a myth. Canada is a paid up member of NATO and part of the unofficial 'Anglo-Saxon' imperial club that is happy to kill anyone who would try to change the balance of power in the world. Although the US is by far the largest member of this ethnically, historically and linguitically driven group, the UK, Australia and Canada have a close military relationship with the US where they keenly jump into wars together to watch each others backs, even when other NATO members are holding back.
This is why innocent Canada has been at war in Afghanistan for 13 years, why it helped the CIA with the international kidnap and torture regime that it ran from the prisons of Iraq and Guantanamo, and why Canada's PM recently declared that Canada was going to be joining the bombing campaign against the most bombed and traumatised people in the world - Iraq. Like the US and UK, Canada is helping to spread bloodshed around the world, and yet expects it not to come home.
[This video is specifically talking about US foreign policy and history, but the principal is the same for US allies as well "Violence begets Violence, Terrorism begets Terrorism"]
Like the Brit's, the Canadian public may still maintain an image of their country as a fluffy defender of democracy, but for people who live in the real world - or the 'third world' - one bomb falling from the sky to annihilate your village is pretty much the same as the next bomb regardless of which country it came from or what that countries people think of themselves.
The UK saw bombings in London a few years after it invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, and so did Spain because it was one of the few EU countries willing to support the US led slaughter from day one. The real surprise here is that Canada has not been the focus of some other attack during the last 13 years.
So why does Canada join its English speaking cousins in these wars? Well, just like the other major Anglo-saxon states, Canada has a lot invested in the current power balance in this world. Canada is a huge settler state - 2nd largest country in the world - which has wiped out and marginalised much of its native population and is now dominated by roughly 20 million white folks. It has a wealthy, western economy and huge oil reserves that it is currently using to allow the US to become independent of Middle Eastern oil. Like Australia and the UK, Canada's priveleged position in the world is depedent upon the the US staying top dog.
It would be nice to think we live in a world of 200 independent nation states, all going about their business in a spirit of cooperation and friendly competition, but we simply don't. White, Anglo-Saxon wealth and privilege is maintained through a complicated system of violence that has destroyed Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and Yemen in just the recent round of violence of the last 15 years. [We don't have space here to go into the endless list of genocides that established this Anglo-Saxon dominance in the first place, but needless to say, we didn't become the dominant group in the world with our business acumen or winning smiles.
Occasionally the other allies in the Western block can be dragged along to join in the slaughter, so we sometimes see France bullying its ex-colonies in Africa - or the Germans and Japanese sending a token number of troops to Afghanistan to show willing - but it is primarily the UK, followed by Canada and Austrialia - who are the first to dive in behind the US. And so, ultimatly, the violence that we bring to the rest of the world comes home to us (but always in much smaller, almost token amounts). If Canadians are suprised that there are people out there in the world that hate them, it is only because the are ignorant of their governments and militaries role in the world.
So if this is the case, why has Canada just had the experience of terrorists 'rampaging' through its Parliament and capital?
Sadly, the fluffy nation of polar bears and mounties is a myth. Canada is a paid up member of NATO and part of the unofficial 'Anglo-Saxon' imperial club that is happy to kill anyone who would try to change the balance of power in the world. Although the US is by far the largest member of this ethnically, historically and linguitically driven group, the UK, Australia and Canada have a close military relationship with the US where they keenly jump into wars together to watch each others backs, even when other NATO members are holding back.
This is why innocent Canada has been at war in Afghanistan for 13 years, why it helped the CIA with the international kidnap and torture regime that it ran from the prisons of Iraq and Guantanamo, and why Canada's PM recently declared that Canada was going to be joining the bombing campaign against the most bombed and traumatised people in the world - Iraq. Like the US and UK, Canada is helping to spread bloodshed around the world, and yet expects it not to come home.
[This video is specifically talking about US foreign policy and history, but the principal is the same for US allies as well "Violence begets Violence, Terrorism begets Terrorism"]
Like the Brit's, the Canadian public may still maintain an image of their country as a fluffy defender of democracy, but for people who live in the real world - or the 'third world' - one bomb falling from the sky to annihilate your village is pretty much the same as the next bomb regardless of which country it came from or what that countries people think of themselves.
The UK saw bombings in London a few years after it invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, and so did Spain because it was one of the few EU countries willing to support the US led slaughter from day one. The real surprise here is that Canada has not been the focus of some other attack during the last 13 years.
So why does Canada join its English speaking cousins in these wars? Well, just like the other major Anglo-saxon states, Canada has a lot invested in the current power balance in this world. Canada is a huge settler state - 2nd largest country in the world - which has wiped out and marginalised much of its native population and is now dominated by roughly 20 million white folks. It has a wealthy, western economy and huge oil reserves that it is currently using to allow the US to become independent of Middle Eastern oil. Like Australia and the UK, Canada's priveleged position in the world is depedent upon the the US staying top dog.
It would be nice to think we live in a world of 200 independent nation states, all going about their business in a spirit of cooperation and friendly competition, but we simply don't. White, Anglo-Saxon wealth and privilege is maintained through a complicated system of violence that has destroyed Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and Yemen in just the recent round of violence of the last 15 years. [We don't have space here to go into the endless list of genocides that established this Anglo-Saxon dominance in the first place, but needless to say, we didn't become the dominant group in the world with our business acumen or winning smiles.
Occasionally the other allies in the Western block can be dragged along to join in the slaughter, so we sometimes see France bullying its ex-colonies in Africa - or the Germans and Japanese sending a token number of troops to Afghanistan to show willing - but it is primarily the UK, followed by Canada and Austrialia - who are the first to dive in behind the US. And so, ultimatly, the violence that we bring to the rest of the world comes home to us (but always in much smaller, almost token amounts). If Canadians are suprised that there are people out there in the world that hate them, it is only because the are ignorant of their governments and militaries role in the world.
Monday 20 October 2014
This is not territory i usually venture into.....buuuut, abortion. (Please don't throw rocks at me!)
The article in the link puts a very contentious and emotive issue into the social and historical context that it deserves. It by-passes most of the moral bullshit and goes right to the nerve of the issue. An American friend of mine posted this article, which i think is very pragmatic and sensible. But NOT ONE of the commentors agreed with him or the article, and i don't think it got a single 'like'. Sorry America, but your world view is pretty fucked.... 'Land of the free' my arse
Abortion. Its an issue of wealth and poverty, of class and status, of population and resources, of misery and freedom, of self control and dignity. Only once these areas have been dealt with should the discussion move to the abstract moral concepts that the whole 'debate' nearly always gets struck in. Its amazing how utterly bollox filled most conversations on this topic are.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/katha-pollitt/abortion-conversation-katha-pollitt-pro_b_5989136.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000063
Abortion. Its an issue of wealth and poverty, of class and status, of population and resources, of misery and freedom, of self control and dignity. Only once these areas have been dealt with should the discussion move to the abstract moral concepts that the whole 'debate' nearly always gets struck in. Its amazing how utterly bollox filled most conversations on this topic are.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/katha-pollitt/abortion-conversation-katha-pollitt-pro_b_5989136.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000063
Sunday 19 October 2014
WTF just happened in Kobani? My bullshit detector just pointed to Syria and exploded!
- "Kobani Kurds successfully fend off Isis with US help!" said the Media
- "Erm….
No. Much, much stranger than that." Said the people of Kobani.
So the brave Kurds of Kobani come under attack from Isis and, with the help of US and UK bombing, they manage to drive Isis out of the town at the last second. Sadly, the time-line is much stranger than this wonderful Disney narrative of goodies prevailing over baddies.
So the brave Kurds of Kobani come under attack from Isis and, with the help of US and UK bombing, they manage to drive Isis out of the town at the last second. Sadly, the time-line is much stranger than this wonderful Disney narrative of goodies prevailing over baddies.
Time line -
- US starts bombing huge areas of northern Iraq and Syria at almost the same
time that Kobani comes under attack – ‘save Kobani’ starts to be used as the
poster child to raise support for the war.
- Days later, the media fills with stories of how the Kurds in Kobani are
losing to Isis, and still the US only launches a few token air strikes whilst
Isis tanks are free to drive through the open desert towards the town.
- When Kobani is almost lost, people start demanding that the Turks do
something as their huge army is literally only 1 mile across the border. The
Turks also do nothing.
- The Turks eventually spring into action! Aaaaand start bombing THE KURDS that
live on the Turkish side of the border.
- At almost exactly the same time, reports start to emerge from Kobani that the
fighters there – who by now only control a few blocks of the city – have been
massively reinforced with mystery weapons and new fighters, even though the
city is surrounded with Isis on one side and ‘Kurd bomber’ Turkey on the other.
- Within a few days, the hugely reinforced Kurdish
forces drive Isis from the town even though all these supplies arrived when
they seemed totally cut off.
WTF? This is one of those incredibly bizarre situations where the answers to
what really happened will only surface in 50 years time, if at all. But hey, lets have a go….
At first it looked that the US was letting the city of Kobani fall because the Turks did not want to help the Kurds, which is understandable when you consider that it has been at war with them for generations. But the bizarre twist where the Kobani Kurds get huge reinforcements on the same day that the Turks start bombing their own Kurds suggests that the poor town of Kobani was caught in some bizarre poker hand game of chicken between the US and Turkey.
The clue here is the media. Plenty of cities have fallen to Isis across Iraq and Syria, but the Western media has been all over Kobani for weeks, giving it the special focus that is usually used to justify a war ‘oh look at those poor people, we must beg our government to go and bomb them!’
The US started to look stupid however because the Turks were so set against the idea of allowing the Kurds on their border to be helped that they threatened to restart their own war on the Kurds if the US helped Kobani in anyway. For days both sides starred at each other over the remains of the city until the whole place was nearly lost and then, SNAP!
Who knows who folded first. Maybe the US was just too scared of Kobani falling because it would make their bombing effort look utterly pointless and they decided to resupply the Kurds with weapons and troops against Turkey’s wishes, which provoked the Turks to start bombing their own Kurds in case the victory would embolden the Kurds on the Turkish side. Or maybe the Turkish bombing started first to suppress the angry Kurdish riots in Turkey and so the US thought ‘fuck it, might as well save our own media necks now and help those guys survive, we need our photogenic symbolic victory.’
Who knows? Either way, both Turkey and the US sat there inactive for days, right up until the point where the city nearly fell in front of the whole worlds media. Then suddenly the Kurds in Kobani are hugely reinforced and the Kurds in Turkey start getting bombed.
Only Three solid things can be taken away from this;
- Firstly, the US and UK do not give a shit about how people are being treated by Isis, and
- Secondly, The US and Turkey have just had some sort of face-off. But its impossible to tell who won.
At first it looked that the US was letting the city of Kobani fall because the Turks did not want to help the Kurds, which is understandable when you consider that it has been at war with them for generations. But the bizarre twist where the Kobani Kurds get huge reinforcements on the same day that the Turks start bombing their own Kurds suggests that the poor town of Kobani was caught in some bizarre poker hand game of chicken between the US and Turkey.
The clue here is the media. Plenty of cities have fallen to Isis across Iraq and Syria, but the Western media has been all over Kobani for weeks, giving it the special focus that is usually used to justify a war ‘oh look at those poor people, we must beg our government to go and bomb them!’
The US started to look stupid however because the Turks were so set against the idea of allowing the Kurds on their border to be helped that they threatened to restart their own war on the Kurds if the US helped Kobani in anyway. For days both sides starred at each other over the remains of the city until the whole place was nearly lost and then, SNAP!
Who knows who folded first. Maybe the US was just too scared of Kobani falling because it would make their bombing effort look utterly pointless and they decided to resupply the Kurds with weapons and troops against Turkey’s wishes, which provoked the Turks to start bombing their own Kurds in case the victory would embolden the Kurds on the Turkish side. Or maybe the Turkish bombing started first to suppress the angry Kurdish riots in Turkey and so the US thought ‘fuck it, might as well save our own media necks now and help those guys survive, we need our photogenic symbolic victory.’
Who knows? Either way, both Turkey and the US sat there inactive for days, right up until the point where the city nearly fell in front of the whole worlds media. Then suddenly the Kurds in Kobani are hugely reinforced and the Kurds in Turkey start getting bombed.
Only Three solid things can be taken away from this;
- Firstly, the US and UK do not give a shit about how people are being treated by Isis, and
- Secondly, The US and Turkey have just had some sort of face-off. But its impossible to tell who won.
Finally, being born Kurdish is probably even
more unlucky than being born Palestinian.
Is Russia still the enemy? Backing an angry bear into a corne
Excellent video here. We keep constantly being fed the narrative that the big, scary Russian Bear is ripping the Ukraine to pieces. Leaving aside the huge amounts of publically accessible evidence that shows that the US state department overthrew the - admittedly corrupt - democratically elected regime in Ukraine (mostly by supporting neo-Nazi groups), history shows that the US has been the aggressor against Russia for 20 years.
When WW2 ended, Europe had been carved in half by the US and Soviet armies. The countries occupied by the US formed the NATO alliance and the countries occupied by the Soviet Union former the 'Warsaw Pact'. Two hostile, imperial alliances facing off along a line - the 'Iron Curtain' - that ran right down the center of Europe from sea to sea.
The Russian's saw their military control of this regoin as very important because they had faced 5 major invasions from the West of Europe in 200years, the last of which - in the 1940's - killed over 30 million people (5 times more than died in the Holocaust). So when the Soviet Union began to collapse, its new pro-western leader Gorbachev made an agreement with the US that Russian troops would only withdraw from Eastern Europe if Nato did not flood in to take their place. This would create a 'netural zone' between the US based western NATO alliance and Russian territory.
20 years later and the 'defensive' NATO alliance has reached the Russian border, absorbing all but two of the formerly Soviet east European Russian allies. Hundreds of millions of people - and about a thousand miles of new territory - have moved from East to West in what can only be seen as a huge expansion of US and Western control of Europe.
When the situation in the Ukraine is seen in this light - historical context can sometimes be useful - the current stand off starts to make sence. How can the country whose imperial control keeps shrinking be the aggressor and the 'aliance' whose economic and military control continues to expand be the defender? War is peace, hate is love, up is down - Orwell would be banging his head on the desk at our gullibility. This tit of a general even admitts that he knows nothing about history! He actually says it.
The proud Russians are feeling encircled. This is probably because the US led NATO alliance now has troops in over a dozen countries that border - or are very close - to Russian territory. At this stage its important to mention that Russia still has the second largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world.
So back to the 'Russian Bear' analogy. Western civilian populations were once persuaded that the huge and deadly Russian bear was going to rampage through each and every one of their home towns across the US and Europe. Instead, outcompeted for resources and strategic territory, the bear is now tired and old. More importantly, the Bear has been attacked by the hunters that are chasing it 5 times during its lifetime, and it is now trapped in the corner of a single cave whilst the hunters keep getting closer and closer. How do you think it will respond?
When WW2 ended, Europe had been carved in half by the US and Soviet armies. The countries occupied by the US formed the NATO alliance and the countries occupied by the Soviet Union former the 'Warsaw Pact'. Two hostile, imperial alliances facing off along a line - the 'Iron Curtain' - that ran right down the center of Europe from sea to sea.
The Russian's saw their military control of this regoin as very important because they had faced 5 major invasions from the West of Europe in 200years, the last of which - in the 1940's - killed over 30 million people (5 times more than died in the Holocaust). So when the Soviet Union began to collapse, its new pro-western leader Gorbachev made an agreement with the US that Russian troops would only withdraw from Eastern Europe if Nato did not flood in to take their place. This would create a 'netural zone' between the US based western NATO alliance and Russian territory.
20 years later and the 'defensive' NATO alliance has reached the Russian border, absorbing all but two of the formerly Soviet east European Russian allies. Hundreds of millions of people - and about a thousand miles of new territory - have moved from East to West in what can only be seen as a huge expansion of US and Western control of Europe.
When the situation in the Ukraine is seen in this light - historical context can sometimes be useful - the current stand off starts to make sence. How can the country whose imperial control keeps shrinking be the aggressor and the 'aliance' whose economic and military control continues to expand be the defender? War is peace, hate is love, up is down - Orwell would be banging his head on the desk at our gullibility. This tit of a general even admitts that he knows nothing about history! He actually says it.
The proud Russians are feeling encircled. This is probably because the US led NATO alliance now has troops in over a dozen countries that border - or are very close - to Russian territory. At this stage its important to mention that Russia still has the second largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world.
So back to the 'Russian Bear' analogy. Western civilian populations were once persuaded that the huge and deadly Russian bear was going to rampage through each and every one of their home towns across the US and Europe. Instead, outcompeted for resources and strategic territory, the bear is now tired and old. More importantly, the Bear has been attacked by the hunters that are chasing it 5 times during its lifetime, and it is now trapped in the corner of a single cave whilst the hunters keep getting closer and closer. How do you think it will respond?
Is Isis the only religous 'state' in the Levant?
***Controversial Idea Alert***
There's ISIL (Islamic State in the Levant) which we hear so much about, but what about JSIL? (Jewish State in the Levant?) Both are racist entities that are bent on using extreme violence against minorities in order to establish their single-religion countries. One is terrorising villages and towns today to drive the minorities out of the country, and the other started doing this nearly 70 years ago when it drove 700,000 Palestinian Christians and Muslims into exile, and continues its intimidation and violence against minorities to this day.
The key difference is that when JSIL was first established in 1948, it
received foreign backing with money and arms flowing in to feed its
terrorist groups - the 'Irgun and Stern gangs'. Isil however
has.......not.........oh. My mistake. Isil has also been receiving huge
amounts of money, training and arms from the West via our gulf state
proxies (including some funds send directly from the US and UK to 'rebel
groups' in Syria).
JSIL's violence today is slow and gradual as its initial wave of ethnic cleansing and massacres in 1948 gave it control of the territory, which meant the urgency of its mission slowed. ISIL however is currently having its 1948 moment where fanaticism is the only way to achieve their impossible vision. Other than that - and im really not trying to be deliberately controversial here - i can't see the difference.
JSIL's violence today is slow and gradual as its initial wave of ethnic cleansing and massacres in 1948 gave it control of the territory, which meant the urgency of its mission slowed. ISIL however is currently having its 1948 moment where fanaticism is the only way to achieve their impossible vision. Other than that - and im really not trying to be deliberately controversial here - i can't see the difference.
Saturday 18 October 2014
A warning from history - Working class life in the UK without Health Care - MUST WATCH
A warning from history - Working class life in the UK without Health Care - MUST WATCH
This is a warning from the past from a man who has lived long enough to remember history. If your not moved to tears by this one then there really is something wrong with you. Its hard to imagine the horrors of poverty that existed in this country before the social state of free health care and social benefits was introduced 69 years ago. Mostly thats because there are few people left alive who were actually there. But the same level of poverty exists today for about half of the worlds population, and in many third world countries its getting worse as populations rise and 'trade restrictions' that protect local resources are relaxed.
And here too, we are slipping back in time. The effects of the gradual
privitisation of the NHS, social housing and the welfare state are hard
to imagine because, unlike Harry, we weren't there before they were
introduced so we can't imagine how bad it was or how bad it could get.
But unlike Harry, i don't think this is a Tory issue. Labour have been happy privitisers for 20 years now. Over the last 40 years the social state has been in gradual decline and all of the main parties at Westminster have accepted a model of market rule where corporations have more rights than individual human beings. Money is the game. The numbers show that we are living through the greatest transferre of wealth - from the majority to the elite - in world history. The thieves Banquet of the Bankers, City traders and Corporate CEO's. The hard won rights and protections of the working class of this country are being erroded into nothing, but instead of looking at the problem and its source, working Brits have been hypnotised by the newspapers into blaming immigrants, the unemployed and the poor for what is happening. By the time we wake up and stop blaming 'Islamocommunism' for this decline in our living standards our children will be living in Harry's world, listing to the screams of cancer paticents too poor to buy morphine and watching as 10 yr old children get 'consumed' by TB.
Anyway, bollox to that, the Great British Bake Off will be on in a min....
But unlike Harry, i don't think this is a Tory issue. Labour have been happy privitisers for 20 years now. Over the last 40 years the social state has been in gradual decline and all of the main parties at Westminster have accepted a model of market rule where corporations have more rights than individual human beings. Money is the game. The numbers show that we are living through the greatest transferre of wealth - from the majority to the elite - in world history. The thieves Banquet of the Bankers, City traders and Corporate CEO's. The hard won rights and protections of the working class of this country are being erroded into nothing, but instead of looking at the problem and its source, working Brits have been hypnotised by the newspapers into blaming immigrants, the unemployed and the poor for what is happening. By the time we wake up and stop blaming 'Islamocommunism' for this decline in our living standards our children will be living in Harry's world, listing to the screams of cancer paticents too poor to buy morphine and watching as 10 yr old children get 'consumed' by TB.
Anyway, bollox to that, the Great British Bake Off will be on in a min....
Isis is slaughtering the Kurds of Konbani - whilst Turkey and the West watch
Very dodgy. Even a mainstream US TV host is willing to admit that the US military is happy to let Isis destoy a Kurdish town on the Syrian Turkish border. They can see the tanks, they know where they are, and they certainly have the availible fire power (note how the entire Iraqi army was destroyed by US forces in a matter of days during the US/UK invasion of 2003) but a rag tag group of militants are allowed to drive tanks openly through the desert - with no air support - towards a Kurdish town without being blown into a billion pieces?
This is because the town is Kurdish. The Kurdish people are the largest
stateless people in the world. They live in a huge area that crosses
the Syrian, Iraqi, Turkish and Iranian borders and in the 1920's it was
agreed that they would have a state. But because they recieved no
western backing the lands of this new state were dismembered by their
neighbours and now it seems everyone in the region has a slice of
Kurdistan. The largest piece is in Turkey, where the Turks have been
waging a war of oppression against their Kurdish population virtually
since day one in the 20's.
So on the one hand we have US airpower that could push ISIS away from the Kurdish town of Kobani without breaking a sweat and on the other the Turkish army - the largest land army in Nato - sitting just across the border (literally 1 mile away from the border town) and doing f**k all while the people of Kobani get slaughtered.
In other words, the Turks are happy as larry
to see the Kurdish resistance get slaughtered in Konbani and have told
the US that the only way they are willing to join the alliance is if
they let this happen. If the US was really concerned about ISIS in
anyway, it would tell Turkey to go and f**k themselves and help the
people of Konbani. But this is not about ISIS. It never has been. The US
is interested in destablising this region. They are perfectly happy for
the Kurds to be slaughtered and for the Syrian and Iraqi regimes to
fall to pieces.
Conquering a territory to hold it is only one reason to invade a place. Type 'scorched earth wiki' into google and see what comes up. A lot of wars in history have been fought to destroy an area and deny the enemy of its resources, Every single action taken in the middle east over the last 15 years has gradually made the place a more and more ungovernable and unstable nightmare than the last. We don't give a damn about the people in the middle east and we don't even give a damn about controlling its resources. What is more important to us it to see that those resources stay out of Iranian-Russian-Chinese hands. End of.
So on the one hand we have US airpower that could push ISIS away from the Kurdish town of Kobani without breaking a sweat and on the other the Turkish army - the largest land army in Nato - sitting just across the border (literally 1 mile away from the border town) and doing f**k all while the people of Kobani get slaughtered.
Conquering a territory to hold it is only one reason to invade a place. Type 'scorched earth wiki' into google and see what comes up. A lot of wars in history have been fought to destroy an area and deny the enemy of its resources, Every single action taken in the middle east over the last 15 years has gradually made the place a more and more ungovernable and unstable nightmare than the last. We don't give a damn about the people in the middle east and we don't even give a damn about controlling its resources. What is more important to us it to see that those resources stay out of Iranian-Russian-Chinese hands. End of.
Silent nuclear war in Fallujah - Is Isis born of a genocide?
Fallujah is in the Isis controlled area of Iraq - and people are still struggling to work out why the people of the region offer such support to the group. After all, what could possibly traumatise a people so much that their desperation leads them to back a group like Isis?How about taking one small city, laying siege to it for months and then blanket bombing the entire population with the chemical weapon white phosphorus and depleted uranium? The birth defects, genetic mutations and cancer rates that are all skyrocketing in this part of Iraq are the only explanation we need for the radicalisation of these people. While our media was bombarding us with bullshit arguments about 'liberating' Iraq, the Americans were unleashing a radioactive and chemical attack of such severity that its effects are like a slowly unrolling genocide that will kill and deform the children and unborn of that land for generations to come.
Everytime you hear some bullshit public school debate on the BBC about
the origins of Isis and their savagery - a debate which will probably
leave out the allied destruction of Iraq altogether - please remind
yourself of the word 'Fallujah' and all of a sudden it will all seem to
make a lot more sense.
Link to 'The Independent' Artilce on Fallujah - "Toxic legacy of US assault on Fallujah 'worse than Hiroshima'"
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/toxic-legacy-of-us-assault-on-fallujah-worse-than-hiroshima-2034065.html
Destablisation of the Middle East - a quick glance....
Ive spent the last few hours looking at news reports from across the Middle East on the 'information clearing house' - a source that draws in reports from hundreds of media outlets. The shear scale of what is starting out there is hard to put into words, but basically, EVERYONE is on the move;- Libya - mystery jets (from god knows where?) continue to bomb the war torn country whilst miitias fight over oil fields.
- Syria - The government army is launching a huge attack on several fronts to take advantage of the fact that the US is bombing its enemies
- Iraq - Isis is trying to surround Badghdad and is launching successful hit and run attacks less than an hour from the capital.
- Turkey - Mobilising troops to send across the border into Syria.
- Qatar, UAE, Saudi - taking part in bombing god knows who in Iraq and Syria.
- Lebanon - Hezbollah stepping up attacks against Sunni groups in Syria along with the Syrian government.
- Yemen - Various media announcing that the Yemeni Capital has fallen to Shia rebels. It may well be that these are only protestors or that it is some sort of uprising. Can't see the Saudi's not invading now
- Theres more in Somalia, Egypt, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Sarahan northern Africa as well but my brain can't absorb it at the moment - let alone make coherant observations about it.
To put it in context. A few weeks ago the middle east was right on the
brink of a regional civil war and the US started throwing shit loads of
bombs into the situation, across a huge area from Baghdad to the med
coast. To say this is making the long list of participants on all sides
'frisky for action' is the understatement of the century.
Let me put it another way. Not since the WW2 have so many countries in one area all been at war at the same time. And this is happening in an area where 70% of the worlds oil - the global economies life blood - is pumped from the ground. The amount of alliance making, invasions and military manovers going on is about the same as was happening in Europe in 1939.
Please, forget the damn BBC. Its not that they don't want you to know when something big is happening, its that the various journo's and reporters there don't even have the world view required to imagine that anything could be more important than British mortgage prices. They have been raised in a sheltered little bubble.
Let me put it another way. Not since the WW2 have so many countries in one area all been at war at the same time. And this is happening in an area where 70% of the worlds oil - the global economies life blood - is pumped from the ground. The amount of alliance making, invasions and military manovers going on is about the same as was happening in Europe in 1939.
Please, forget the damn BBC. Its not that they don't want you to know when something big is happening, its that the various journo's and reporters there don't even have the world view required to imagine that anything could be more important than British mortgage prices. They have been raised in a sheltered little bubble.
The Media bullshit storm surrounding Isis
Isis. We don't know where Isis came from, how they became so powerful
or how they managed to take over Iraq so quickly. But clearly they are
very strong - and therefore dangerous so we have to deal with them.
Bollox. Utter crap. Our political and media leaders always behave as if
everything that happens in the world is a complete suprise to them. They
want us to believe that the Middle East is full of terrorist Genie's
that burst onto the scene out of knowhere and have to be clubbed down
like a huge international game of 'club-a-mole'. Cause and effect is
completely disgarded. No context is provided.
It would be more
suprising if Isis didn't exist and its bloody simple to explain where
they came from. Both Iraq and Syria are brutalised, war-torn countries
that have seen many years of western funded and supported slaughter
(more directly in Iraq and less in Syria.) For people in these
countries, life is scary. Scary as shit. The random violence, the
bombings, the food and power shortages, all contributed to making life
unpredictable and unstable. In both these countries life is even more scary for the Sunni's than it is for the Shia because both of them have Shia governments that have effectively been at war with their Sunni populations, so the Sunni's don't even have local authority on their side. Until last year, the Sunni areas of both countries were full or rival militias, fighting the government, fighting each other for power, a total break down of social order and the rule of law (which is what prolonged wars tend to create - EVERY TIME).
But because we didn't like the Assad government in Syria, we pumped huge amounts of weapons and money into the Sunni area that straddles the Iraq-Syria border. Lets re-cap. The economy was in tatters, there was no law, no security, no government that could be trusted, rival militia wars, mass kidnappings, rape - you name it - and we pumped in loads of weapons and money?!?
Do the origins of Isis still seem like some grand mystery? History teaches us that war torn siuations of political and social breakdown - power vacuumes - generally don't last for long. The craving and the desperation of the people for some kind of order (ANY kind of order) eventually means that the biggest bastard rises to the top. Where warlords rule the roost and there is a common enemy - especially when there are billions of Dollars of US weapons being pumped into the area - the most calculating, vicious and ruthless groups have the best chances. If it wasn't Isis it would have been someone very similar.
How do you think this rag tag group of a few thousand militants took over such a massive area so quickly? The people were ready for them. Rather than a conquest the Isis takeover of this area is more of a revolution, a general Sunni uprising led by the most psycho hard nuts on the block. Look at the expansion pattern, they swept through huge areas - barely firing a shot - and then virtually ground to a halt. Thats because they had already taken the Sunni area and are now hemmed in by Kurds, Shia and well armed foriegn borders on all sides.
The best solution to this crisis (if any of our leaders were even remotely interested in finding one, rather than finding an excuse to re-man their military bases in the area) would be to recognise that Sunni-Shai relations are now too bad to be reconciled and to negociate with the Sunni about their own state. Hopefully this would lead, over time, to the Sunni themselves rejecting the Isis extemists as life gradually calms down.
The alternative is to bomb the living crap out of the area and eventully re-invade. Lets rephrase that, in a situation where years of western bombing (and support for Syrian militants) have created such a mad-max like collapse of society that the people are supporting the biggest hard nuts on the block in a desperate attempt to restore some kind of normality, our only plan is to blast the living shit out of the exact same people who are going nuts because they have had the crap blasted out of them so much over the last 15 years?!?!?!
Our political and military leaders are not that stupid. This is 'The Shock Doctrine' being used all over again. We want to re-occupy the extremely expensive and strategically important military bases in the area and know that we cannot do so without a bloody huge crisis. The West did not hand pick or create Isis, but by pumping huge amounts of weapons and money into such a mental situation they may as well have, someone was going to fill the vacuum and it was never going to be the Quakers. Photogenic evil Disney villians going around loping off heads and showing it on Youtube. Thats a great reason to re-invade. And every civilian we kill will lead to another 10 recruits joining Isis. And the cycle goes on, so our presence will continue to be needed. Similar games were played all over the British Empire in colonial days, its a technique that we and the US are very familiar with. BASTARDS
An amazing Tune can carry an important message - 'We are all the same'
I was forced to disown a cousin the other day who said that i was a
traitor for thinking of these people as human beings and for marrying
'from the wrong side'. But how can i not see them as human? Here in this
stunning and moving music video an Iraqi-Canadian and
Palestinian-Londoner bring us hundreds of images of beautiful human
beings from across the Arab and Muslim world.
Its people Vs power - not culture Vs culture or religion Vs religion - We are slipping into very dark days here in the West. We all need to make an effort to learn about those who appear different from us, because ignorance and misunderstanding can lead to fear, and fear always leads to blood.
Its people Vs power - not culture Vs culture or religion Vs religion - We are slipping into very dark days here in the West. We all need to make an effort to learn about those who appear different from us, because ignorance and misunderstanding can lead to fear, and fear always leads to blood.
i would also like to apologise to the people of Iraq for our 5th
military attack on their oil rich and ancient land in 100 years. It
doesn't really mean much but its from the heart. Im not a religous man
but i know we are all brothers and sisters and we can see this fact in
the face of any human being if we just open our eyes, Hamdulillah
Written late Sept 2014 - War on Isis build up
Morning! We're bombing Syria. Remember that vote last year where the Parliament said we can't bomb Syria and everyone said 'yay democracy'? Cynical bastards like me said 'this wont stop them.'
The only difference is we are bombing the rebels instead of the government. Remember the rebels? when the parliament blocked the UK from bombing Syria the government decided to up its arming and funding of the rebels instead. And now we're bombing them. You couldn't make this stuff up.
But the result is the same. Government, rebels, who cares? Either this is yet another insanely large coincidence, or these are just wars of destabilisation. Getting involved in the fighting is whats important, not silly little things like whose side your on. Controlling the intensity and the tempo of the fighting is whats important.
Morning! We're bombing Syria. Remember that vote last year where the Parliament said we can't bomb Syria and everyone said 'yay democracy'? Cynical bastards like me said 'this wont stop them.'
The only difference is we are bombing the rebels instead of the government. Remember the rebels? when the parliament blocked the UK from bombing Syria the government decided to up its arming and funding of the rebels instead. And now we're bombing them. You couldn't make this stuff up.
But the result is the same. Government, rebels, who cares? Either this is yet another insanely large coincidence, or these are just wars of destabilisation. Getting involved in the fighting is whats important, not silly little things like whose side your on. Controlling the intensity and the tempo of the fighting is whats important.
Written on '9/11' 2014
AMAZING - on the day after 9/11/2001 Hunter S Thompson wrote;
"The towers are gone now, reduced to bloody rubble, along with all hopes for Peace in Our Time, in the United States or any other country. Make no mistake about it: We are At War now — with somebody — and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives.
It will be a Religious War, a sort of Christian Jihad, fueled by religious hatred and led by merciless fanatics on both sides. It will be guerilla warfare on a global scale, with no front lines and no identifiable enemy.
http://uproxx.com/webculture/2014/09/hunter-s-thompsons-91201-espn-column-basically-predicted-exactly-what-would-happen-in-the-aftermath-of-911/
AMAZING - on the day after 9/11/2001 Hunter S Thompson wrote;
"The towers are gone now, reduced to bloody rubble, along with all hopes for Peace in Our Time, in the United States or any other country. Make no mistake about it: We are At War now — with somebody — and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives.
It will be a Religious War, a sort of Christian Jihad, fueled by religious hatred and led by merciless fanatics on both sides. It will be guerilla warfare on a global scale, with no front lines and no identifiable enemy.
We are going to punish somebody for this attack, but just who or
what will be blown to smithereens for it is hard to say. Maybe
Afghanistan, maybe Pakistan or Iraq, or possibly all three at once. Who
knows? Not even the Generals in what remains of the Pentagon or the New
York papers calling for WAR seem to know who did it or where to look for
them.
This is going to be a very expensive war, and Victory is not guaranteed — for anyone, and certainly not for anyone as baffled as George W. Bush. All he knows is that his father started the war a long time ago, and that he, the goofy child-President, has been chosen by Fate and the global Oil industry to finish it Now. He will declare a National Security Emergency and clamp down Hard on Everybody, no matter where they live or why. If the guilty won’t hold up their hands and confess, he and the Generals will ferret them out by force."
This is going to be a very expensive war, and Victory is not guaranteed — for anyone, and certainly not for anyone as baffled as George W. Bush. All he knows is that his father started the war a long time ago, and that he, the goofy child-President, has been chosen by Fate and the global Oil industry to finish it Now. He will declare a National Security Emergency and clamp down Hard on Everybody, no matter where they live or why. If the guilty won’t hold up their hands and confess, he and the Generals will ferret them out by force."
http://uproxx.com/webculture/2014/09/hunter-s-thompsons-91201-espn-column-basically-predicted-exactly-what-would-happen-in-the-aftermath-of-911/
Written Aug 2014 - During the Israeli Assualt on Gaza
Rise of anti-semitism in Europe.
Both sides are as bad as each other.
The conflict has gone on for thousands of years.
Its all about religion.
I know Palestinians suffer, but don't Hamas want to destroy Israel?
The political leaders on both sides are to blame.
Im getting sick of this - theres a thousand reasonable sounding arguments like this out there that all say the same thing. 'Go back to sleep, its too complicated, don't get involved, if you get involved you are only going to be making it worse. Its too complicated to understand.'
Its bullshit. This is the subtle edge of propaganda. Its like a lawyer scattering seeds of doubt around a murder case in the hope that just enough of them stick to cast doubt on the conviction. But the subconscious message is always the same 'go back to sleep, don't get involved.'
There is a colonial regime - a relic of Europes past - dispossessing an entire people of its land at the point of a gun and killing anyone who objects. Its not more complicated than that. Stop knotting yourselves up in the dismissive middle class moral dilemmas that the BBC and their like keep throwing out there to muddy the waters. Don't you see how it works for christs sake?
If you solve the underlying problem of the land theft and dispossession all the other problems will evaporate. It won't be perfect - just like south africa and northern ireland - but it can be a whole lot better. In the mean time, stop listening to all this soothing bullshit that quietly tells you not to get involved. These debates are fake. They are a distraction. Focus on campaigning to create a regime in Israel-palestine that considers all human beings equal. And that starts with ending the occupation of the 67 Palestinian Territories
Rise of anti-semitism in Europe.
Both sides are as bad as each other.
The conflict has gone on for thousands of years.
Its all about religion.
I know Palestinians suffer, but don't Hamas want to destroy Israel?
The political leaders on both sides are to blame.
Im getting sick of this - theres a thousand reasonable sounding arguments like this out there that all say the same thing. 'Go back to sleep, its too complicated, don't get involved, if you get involved you are only going to be making it worse. Its too complicated to understand.'
Its bullshit. This is the subtle edge of propaganda. Its like a lawyer scattering seeds of doubt around a murder case in the hope that just enough of them stick to cast doubt on the conviction. But the subconscious message is always the same 'go back to sleep, don't get involved.'
There is a colonial regime - a relic of Europes past - dispossessing an entire people of its land at the point of a gun and killing anyone who objects. Its not more complicated than that. Stop knotting yourselves up in the dismissive middle class moral dilemmas that the BBC and their like keep throwing out there to muddy the waters. Don't you see how it works for christs sake?
If you solve the underlying problem of the land theft and dispossession all the other problems will evaporate. It won't be perfect - just like south africa and northern ireland - but it can be a whole lot better. In the mean time, stop listening to all this soothing bullshit that quietly tells you not to get involved. These debates are fake. They are a distraction. Focus on campaigning to create a regime in Israel-palestine that considers all human beings equal. And that starts with ending the occupation of the 67 Palestinian Territories
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