Monthly Archives: May 2011

Kinda sums up where we are in the Middle East. Nowhere.

In The Independent Robert Fisk summarises where we are in the Middle East, in his view, after the Netanahyu visit to Washington and Obama’s response (virtually caving in – although his mild rebukes cost him an estimated $10,000,000 in donations from this source).
Not quite sure about Fisk’s response to Libya. Yes it can be lumped together with other regimes for deaths of its own citizens but Libya is in another camp when it comes to ownership of oil reserves. So western intervention takes a different slant when dealing with Libya than it does Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. We hear that Britain is among those training the oppressors of those fighting for “democracy and freedom”, which Cameron, Obama and western leaders say they want. We know what they’re after, which, as in Iraq, is oil. Bugger democracy.
The blind eyes of what is going on in Israel/Palestine continues apace from both politicians and the media. With the internet there are daily reports of atrocities as Israeli forces continue to bully unarmed and courageous Palestinian villagers with state of the art weaponry, much of it supplied by US and other “democratic” states.

What must we do to save ourselves – and who is in control?

Two big questions addressed in articles in today’s Independent. Not new questions and pretty obvious to many of us, but I put them here as markers.
The continuing battles for oil and the hacking down of rain forests are both suicidal projects, long recognised as such. Turning round an oil tanker has long been a description of a difficult task. Given the drivers of today’s controllers of wealth there isn’t even a will to stop the beast. It is being driven forward at an increasing rate of knots taking us towards oblivion. The US is on board, and so in the European Economic Union. Will any individual countries be able to jump ship? Looks as if Greece is about to be pushed with Spain also visibly suffering.
Who is control? Added to this is the power of the corporations with once again Money at the centre.

Death of Bin Laden and symbolism in the U.S.

It is sad and ironic that the present President of the United States lends himself so easily to ideas that are loaded in meaning in the history of that nation, but everyone thought and supposed he would challenge. The idea that things would change was deliberately nurtured in the run for the presidency, but there is nothing here that the hugely discredited George W. Bush and his right coterie would not have delighted in.

Mondoweiss explains
the deep significance in the code “Geronimo” used for Bin Laden and the abbreviation EKIA (Enemy Killed In Action). Are the wars against the American Indians still held as a glorious part of U.S. history? Is this an explanation of what is continuing they ask as the US goes along with Israel in dealing with the Palestinian territories? It’s not Bin-Laden that is the root cause of terrorism but the continuing oppression of people nowhere more apparent than in the US dominated Zionist state, something many, if not most, Jewish people in the world abhor. You can even get the tee-shirt JerUSAlem!
Writing in Granma Fidel Castro also reminds the US of some home truths apparently forgotten in the triumphalism of the moment. Of course Obama has his eye on the prize and is claiming a just reward for what George W. singularly failed to do.
Bin Laden? Well the video clips give an image rather different to that the media have promoted, a rather sad elderly figure who even now the U.S. continues to claim is a source of immense power. Is this correct? If so who has been the source of this? Didn’t the United States and allies do his work for him in building the idea of the need for a war on terror? A fall guy was badly needed after the fall of Communism and this ramshackle being was the unlikely answer to the politicians’ need.

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Libya. Already out of hand.

Every debacle the US and NATO enters soon becomes a quagmire where it becomes impossible for them to free themselves. The much proclaimed “we are there to protect civilians” has become as sick a comment as can be imagined. We don’t have to go back to Korea or Vietnam, but the still active forays into Iraq and Afghanistan show what we can expect in the next victims. So far Iran and Syria have not had the full treatment, although we can imagine there is much activity on the ground as there was undoubtedly in Egypt as it emerges the new regime is a much in hoc to US imperialism as the old.
So now we have daily reports of extensive civilian casualties that NATO et al are meant to protect, a Channel 4 report is particularly horrifying. Today one of Gaddafi’s sons is dead and three of his grandchildren. The claim is that a “military target” was bombed. It so happened that Gaddafi himself was there. Presumably the three children are civilians, so what was the real purpose of this attack?
Russia Today believes that Gaddafi’s intention to introduce a gold currency us a likely reason for the west to round on him. This was in conjunction with the African Union and other Arab states with the prospect that payment for oil would be demanded in gold. This is not a prospect that the credit-ridden world of Capitalism could countenance.

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