Tuesday, January 10, 2006

Division

Was just reading an article saying about how other articles are appearing saying that Al-Qaida is under attack from resisting insurgents (because of unnecessary civilian deaths attributed to Al Qaida) and that US strategists have been fomenting this division for some time now. No kidding. Anyway, it had me pause for thought.

No twentieth century "divide and conquer" exercise could be more successful then the rift plotted between Israel and Palestine. So successful has it been that many on the left have bought the bait hook line and sinking plumbline and have become by consequence the greatest ally imperialism could ever have hoped for. Israel was a sticky problem from the start, and not just because of all the usual stickiness tossed up around middle eastern politics - it was a sticky prob because no-one in the "free" world could afford to deny Zion and risk looking like little Hitlers (a name I can't say I have ever uttered out loud). Because of the shock everyone was still suffering after the bad publicity around Europe's deathcamps, no-one in the free (no point using inverted comers, the irony is too tiring to bother) world of capitalism could afford to knock Israel - and yet Israel was a socialist state practicing communism and full of politically aware laborers, the antithesis of capitalism. If Israel became successful as a communist state it would pose a threat to anti-communist capitalist propaganda post WWII. Think 1950's redscare and paranoia - a new state founded on communist principles and recognised globally for having been founded on those principles could only prove a counterpoint to anti-communist material being pumped out by the Joseph McCarthys of that time.

Meanwhile, in the 1950's, no-one (no-one much anyway) in the world espousing communality and socialist principle could afford to endorse Israel, because while Israel was founded on communal and social principles it veered away from the mantra "nothing to kill or do for and no religion too" by being a communist and religious state. Both at the same time. In apparent paradox, according to marxist doctrine. While the new Russian plutocracy was busy exiling and incarcerating all it's Christians and Jews (one spirit good, holy spirits bad) it could hardly be seen to support a whole country full of the practicing faithful. But like western capitalists, Soviet opportunists couldn't at that point afford to look like Hitlers either. So mostly, at that point, the USSR just pretended Israel didn't exist and withdrew assistance, having little more to do with the place except to send out spies, in case Trotsky was hiding out nearby in Jordan or something (until things started hotting up in the 60's and everyone who was anyone had some sort of militant spoke in the wheel).

In the end, the commercial world's hawks seized on the ideological division between Zionist communism and the rest of the other communists and sought to chafe sensitivities by providing money. Which Israel took, having none, being a country populated by people with little on their backs other then the rags they survived Europe's camps in and with no money forthcoming from their other non-religious communally inclined brothers and sisters. It's a miserable fact but not even Osama questions where his money comes from. Or Hezbollah. Or Hamas. Nobody does, if money is forthcoming and people are desperate they generally take it. And so the seeds were sewn and the divisions increased and the same old fearmongers intent on wiping out Judaism come out with the same old arguments. And still do. "Jews are rich" (they live off world bank fat). "Jews are gold-diggers" (check their teeth). "Jews steal" (land, homes). And even "Jews torture their own babies" (yes this too, anathema but people still buy it).

Oh what a feat in divisivity. Zion can never be socialism's poster child now, not a hope in hell, the kibbutz will never spread throughout the Mid East and into Europe, oil merchants can relax, Israel is cornered by war and that's all that matters.

UPDATE: I realise this was a contentious post, and I did it on purpose. The truth about Zion is hard for some left land intellectuals to accept. No I don't think war is the answer, yes I do think it's a tragedy what has happened in Israelistan/Palasrael - but let's get one thing straight, Israelis were provoked and they fought back. If socialists want to do some big rah-rah for Palestine by implying that Palestinians were provoked and have the right to fight for their homes then it's imperative to understand that fighting Israelis are doing exactly the same thing as fighting Palestinians for exactly the same reasons (and that Israel as a state actually sprung up to some extent out of socialism). I oppose the idea that some wars are wronger then others - they're all wrong to me, all armies (whether state or "peoples") are all fighting for the same thing and all army recruitment drives use the same propaganda (defend your land, your homes, your people). Someone suggested there might be less war and the world might be a better place if everyone critiqued their respective home lands. But I have no home land to critique. Unlike a Chompsky, who might for example choose to criticise just Israel, or a Faiza who might choose to just criticise Egypt, I am in the unfortunate position of having no real land to call my home or to criticise. This is why I sometimes criticise communists - I have no especial allegiance to soil to make my criticism seem especially powerful but I did grow up with alternative party voting parents. I grew up in a world with comparatively few borders (no Noam, you can't claim responsibility for fewer borders, the blurred borders I grew up with are a direct result of depressed economies, war and subsequent migration). This is why my generation do outrageously conservative and straight forward things like tell a Baathist when he is being a dork. Because he is. And why we also know that Bush is a dimwitted third rate pawn. We are unfortunately almost impossible to brainwash and infuriatingly naive in our simpleminded belief that people could share if they tried hard enough but first stop bossing us around ok - otherwise we will go and chat with the rightwingers.

Monday, January 09, 2006

With compliments

Well it's my lunch break. My lunchbreak at the beginning of the week at the start of new year. I stayed up all last night planning a plan and I'm dead tired and look like - well never mind what I look like today, the important thing is that you can't see me and I can congratulate myself and anyone else who looks as haggard as I do after three years of waging peace against all odds. Because by god if there is one - we've done it. We've waged peace when there is absolutely no show on earth that we can stop the killing and the maiming and the torturing and the looting of loot and unearthing of oils and trodding down on rays of hope. Congratulations everyone, congratulations the dead dearly departed and living corpses wasting away on cell floors and in cargo holds. Congratulations the lot of you. Three years later, a lot of dead bodies, more kidnappings then I could count blogs (including all the fake ones) a mash of meaningless words and spent emotion and courageous courage and strawmen blown over in the wind - after all this futility we have made it. I have made it. I have made it thus far, and probably shall continue till I perish. Which is a comforting thought, for I know that all over the world people are waging peace, in their small ways, with their cups of tea and moments caught between word and reality.

And now, having congratulated myself and anyone else who passes by on our frailty and utterly utterly ridiculous task (might as well try spinning gold from hay) - I am going to go and eat my sandwich.

Today, is a day in which I look about me at my disrepair and feel satisfied, so satisfied with my unrelenting ineffectuality that I spread my imaginary arms wide and cheer on every one of you who achieve as little as I do while forfeiting sleep sanity and even frequent mealtimes, to following the war on terror and thwarting it in every way possible that is possible to creatures digging our own death pits with teaspoons. There is probably a better way, but it might not be as fun. I hope I wrote "fun" in the right intonation, you know, the weary but damned if I let on war is hell tone.

Wednesday, January 04, 2006

Iraq war, officially lost

Nobody ever wins a war, but I'm not sure a war has been lost as many times as the war in Iraq has.
  • WMD - no comment. Intelligence lost, Bush lost.
  • Human Rights - Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and subsequent revelation of extraordinary rendition network. Civil liberties lost, Bush lost.
  • Democracy - patriot act, increased police powers, sedition legislation. Multiple democracies, Bush, Blair and Australia fair, lost.
  • Money - the one that matters most to men of war;

THE Bush Administration has scaled back its ambitions to rebuild Iraq after the devastation wrought by war and dictatorship and does not intend to seek more funds for reconstruction.

The decision signals the winding down of an $US18.4 billion ($25.1 billion) rebuilding effort (read more).


Many many dollars lost. The war for oil is failing, rebuilding Iraq costs too much. The damage dealt to Iraq by war and sanction is low priority. Securing oil (and a broader consumer base by default) is the goal and when money is tight all the trimmings are stripped away - exposing war's end aim. At this rate, it is likely the oil will eventually be lost as well. In just a few more years alternative fuels will probably be taken more seriously, when it dawns that developing alternative fuels probably costs less then war and that the market for pepsi and tim tams in the ME is hurt when the customer base is half dead.

A middle case scenario

The US will pull out of the ME badly burned and humiliated, and Saudi Arabia will be left sitting on cut-price oil fields when alternative fuels gain a marketable foothold. For a while ME oil tycoons might survive by establishing an ME market independent from the global one, ME environmental green damage will continue under internal pressure where external pressure left off. "Terrorism" as we now know it, a form of vengeance, will shift. "Terrorists" will become experienced mercenaries for hire, selling their experience. No longer required to quell western interests in the oil stakes "terrorists" will hire themselves out to parties with a greater vested interest in industrial sabotage then in civil unrest. The subway threat will ease in far western cities and the roadside IEDs ease in middle eastern cities. Industrial espionage will increase, especially where competitive alternative fuels are concerned. The world will reject war, like the world did post 1918 and 1945 and in the 1960-70's and in February 2003, and it will be a few decades before anyone decides to try it out again, which might happen if some desperado thinks he can swing it.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, at home. While Dow Jones bombs out on the Aus stock exchange (more loss attributed to the Iraq war) BHP and Woodside petroleum have profited. BHP has oil lots sewn up along the Iraq/Iran border between Basrah and Ammarah, including Missan and Al Hafaya (appears the marshlands are due only a short respite between regimes, no sooner have the marshes been re-irrigated then oil enterprises pop up). Woodside signed a deal in November 2004 with the Iraq Oil Ministry for oil and gas projects in Kurdistan, Northern Iraq and was posting "record" Aus stock prices by December 2005. It seems that those companies that are profiting in Iraq are doing so in regions less hard-hit. Ie, where there is less war there is more profit and where there is more war there is loss (BHP originally sunk when war broke out in march 2003 but appears to have "bounced back" by brokering deals in the relatively low-conflict south-east). Newcrest's fortunes also seem tied to Iraq, though how directly depends on my doing more searching and my lunch break is over now so I have to go.

Monday, January 02, 2006

Prove me wrong

Well that was shortlived. My work with the American people appears to be over. It could just be that I ran out of impetus. Or it could be the heat wave hanging over Sydney last week just sucked any enthusiasm I had left out of me. Or it could just be that I find the American people an uninspiring and lost cause. There was a time when I might have allowed for you know, individuality or something, before coming to rash conclusions like this. But those times are over. Without exception the American people seem to me to be rude, loud, many other things my sensitivities preclude me from putting in words and convinced that their liberality is the only liberality. A lot like Australian socialists really, who I also consider a lost and degenerative folk.

I was going to make room for a sentence about Americans who don't feel especially American, and how it might be to feel about as American as I do Australian, and how I can relate to having a birth certificate and citizenship but there being, well, more to life then that. I was going to make up some kind of sentence like that, offering up the universality of souls in hope. But I just can't bring myself to do it - I am just reminded of that fink TAI who parades around pretending he is not American and sounding every minute more American then ever. And anyway, I would rather go and have a pot of tea and finish my mint slices then think anymore about Americans. I am uncertain if this means my own liberality has given out or whether I am turning into a witch or could this be early onset menopause or have I just finally had an absolute gutsfull and can I be bothered ticking off whoever is next on my smite list.

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