The Real Enemy

As market fundamentalism smashes itself on the rocks of the business cycle, and as we see a neo-con President actually start to act like a 70s style Keynesian, I begin to wonder if natural social cycles of some sort are going to ruin other types of fundamentalism, particularly religious fundamentalism. Because if there is a real enemy to peace in this world it must be fundamentalism in all its forms, where people have somehow been taught that all things revolve around one thing and that one thing must not be compromised upon.

Religious fundamentalism is created by injustice (real or perceived) and is sustained by conflict. Once a religious fundamentalist movement has been created, it requires a continuing supply of conflict in order to legitimize it. That's why you can never count on the leaders of fundamentalist movements to take any steps to try to end whichever conflicts that fuel them. The end of the conflict is the end of the need for fundamentalism, and this is just as true in the evangelical megachurches of Colorado Springs as it is in the mosques of Peshawar. You can't keep people chanting simplistic blather and standing around in huge buildings for years and years on just a good public speaking style. You need (as Hitler and Goebbels obviously knew) to convince them that they are under constant threat and that your uncompromising, angry, militant ethic is the only thing that will save them.

America's Christian fundamentalists are fed a constant supply of threats to "their way of life" and those range from the threat of having gay men carrying away your sons, to being overrun by dangerous, wild-eyed feminists, to having your daughters marry a "heathen" that will bring the rest of his foreign family over from God knows where to destroy the fabric of American society and (shudder) ruin Christmastime. Now that the US economy is tanking and the Administration is about to switch, they will be taught that the Democratic Party is the enemy. Look for the next act of terrorism in America to be perpetrated by a white, Christian American guy that thinks he's saving his nation and his religion from the peril of liberalism....of course he won't be called a terrorist, being a white Christian American. Tim McVeigh, Eric Rudolph, and every KKK member that ever hurt a black man were all terrorists, but we never called them that did we? Wonder why!?

Muslim fundamentalists in the Middle East, Central Asia, South Asia have of course been studied ad nauseum over the last 15 years or so and I don't have much to add to that body of knowledge except to say that the same rules apply to them, and that is that they need conflict to thrive. And thus of course it is easy to thrive for those of them that live in countries filled with traumatized people that live in constant fear for their lives. The invasion and occupation of Iraq, for example, has created a perfect set of circumstances to promote and sustain religious fundamentalism, i.e. dangerous faction-based fighting combined with a lack of basic, functioning services like water, electricity and schools. Religious fundamentalists LOVE that kind of situation, it makes their jobs so easy. And every society has its potential enforcers just waiting on the sidelines for the chance to randomly brutalize people in the ways that the new gangs of Baghdad have been doing. They should never be given that chance, they should never be given the chaos and despair that allows them to roam freely.

Another situation that has ensured the creation and sustenance of Muslim fundamentalism was the "displacement" of Arab Palestinians from their homes and lands during the creation of Israel and the subsequent controlling of their whereabouts and movements ever since. Nobody likes to have their land stolen from them. And there's nothing like decades of living in refugee camps followed by many more years of forced isolation to give people that feeling of being ridiculously, immorally pushed around. And speaking of Israel, that society's Jewish fundamentalists do their part to ensure a constant state of threat and danger by undermining any reforms or moderate trends that might diffuse the constant state of conflict with neighboring countries. People like Israel's Shas party would hate for there to ever be peace with Israel's neighbors because that would spell the end of the Shas Party. Can you imagine how scared those Shas Party guys must have been when a small group of Israeli pilots refused on humanitarian grounds to bomb a Lebanese village during the conflict in August 2006? There is no greater threat to conflict-based fundamentalism than when regular people refuse to commit the acts of violence that perpetuate the threats that fundamentalism feeds off of.

As for the rise of home-grown Muslim fundamentalism in places like Britain, France, Holland, and Germany...I place the blame for that squarely at the feet of whoever came up with Guantanamo Bay, extraordinary renditions, waterboarding, etc. When people are made to understand that they and their family members can be secretly kidnapped from a place like downtown Stockholm and taken somewhere and tortured with no charges and no due process...and you add in that their parents may well have moved them to these countries specifically to escape those very same kinds of injustices...well what do you expect?

To end on a happy note, I'd just like to say that a different future is possible than the clash of civilizations BS that we have been presented with over the last 7 years by western governments and wacked-out terrorists alike and that is for all of us to follow sensible, moderate, tolerant, and cooler heads. But to get that we have to make people stop wanting conflict and start wanting reconciliation. 'Any takers?

Whither the Dragon?

As US retail consumption begins to diminish and as the weak dollar makes certain U.S.-made products cheaper in relation to European and Asian products both for the domestic and international markets, it will be interesting to watch what happens in China. The Chinese economic boom over the last ten years has been dependent primarily on US consumption of manufactured goods (over-consumption in many cases) and secondarily on European consumption. Of course, the Chinese have been selling worldwide, but it is the sales to the US and Europe that have really fueled the Chinese boom.

If US consumers begin to stop buying so much, and that is happening now, that will already directly slow Chinese growth. It will also slow European growth as the U.S. demand for European luxury goods such as Ferraris, BMW's, and French and Italian haute couture and perfume products plummets even faster than for non-luxury goods. Those factors will then also begin to diminish the considerable foreign direct investment in China by US and European investors.

This is all potentially worrisome. Right now, the largest human migration in history is occurring between the Chinese countryside and Chinese cities, with hundreds of millions of people moving within China to fuel the demand for workers connected to manufacturing for export. If those jobs start to dry up, there is going to be trouble. And if there is trouble in China, it will be the whole world's problem.

THE FINAL PROVOCATION

It seems that 2008 will have a head start for the postponed plans of Santa Claus in the Middle East.

Now that Bush junior has been able to easily savor the sunrise upon the hills of Jerusalem, the gift that best-friend-Israel will be offering on a plate to this Little Hero, we see that the threat of the Nuclear Pakistan Muslim neighbor of Iran has also been put off as to thwart the attention of the analysts from the possibility of Iran receiving any help from a Pakistan rebel, again.

And now that Bush has finally decided, at the end of his Presidential era, to meet his friends in the Middle East, what can one say. The only thing Bush junior ever pushed for has been War and everyone except the Western Media seem to know it. But of course everywhere in the world many people rather think they are dreaming rather than confront the hard realities of their doings.

The reality is that the Bush Administration is not only paving the way for the last legacy of its failed diplomacy, but it is using the whole world as a chess board for a bunch of greedy, sadistic and distorted masterminders of Total Destruction.

There it goes: “ Today, an unidentified Pentagon official called this 'incident' in the Strait of Hormuz "a serious provocation." Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman referred to it as a "serious incident." Mr. Gordon Johndore, National Security Council spokesman said the United States urges the Iranians "to refrain from such provocative actions that could lead to a dangerous incident in the future."”

So the Pentagon, the Defense Department and the NSC have the final script of the play they set the décor for of the Next Act : The Décor: Straight of Hormuz. Players : US Navy and Iranian Coast guard.

But the problem is the “unidentified” Play directors are improvising the reactions of Iran based on their high level of mislead-made-up “information”.

“…and a man speaking heavily accented English threatened, "I am coming to you. ... You will explode," according to a video released Tuesday by the Pentagon…”

The Media in the West continues to think that the Iranian coast guards have a very harsh accent… Ha Ha!!

The British also had a blast when they tried the “provocation” scenario at the Strait of Hormuz and they turned out to be the laughing stock of the international assembly; but to be showing commitment to the plans carefully set out in the Chatham-CFR-AIPACIAN club, the directors certainly have to get it over with. With or without applause.

Along this time the world looks on a faint video at two speed boats on routine (cut at the most important scene) checking the identity of the BIG BOATS filled with all kinds of weapons and dangerousity and of course saying HELLO becomes a threat. In Persian there is a saying “when you pick up a stick the robber cat runs”… or in other words, those who are the real criminals start blaming the others before they get blamed only to divert attention from their own crime.

Who in their right mind would sit home easily when a roaming criminal starts walking in their neighborhood?

Considering the tight military enclosure and build up as well as the constant pressure around the Islamic Republic of Iran, this country has shown an objective calm and certain stability in its reactions, compared to some of its near and far neighbors. First of all, considering that the main actors of the country are, intelligence-wise, amongst the most secure and impenetrable, the hard facts about Iranian tactics and goals cannot be evaluated simply through hypothesis or wishful thinking of a few.

Second, in order to maintain an analytic theory, Iranians do not merely depend on traditional western intelligence patterns, which have in the past years shown their inefficiency endangering the correct understanding of the situations at top levels. Lobbying is only one of the main diplomatic elements of decision making in Iran.

Apart from the Supreme Leader who functions like the founding Head of a family/ company, the circle of decision-makers / managers is thin and spread out as well and amid those who decide, the constant gain of knowledge and direct contact with the population as well as the levels of consultations are quite different from Western countries. Councils and Gatherings are not simply based on a certain level of society. The social classes inside Iran have been slowly transformed…and none of the Tehrangeles or MKO advisors of the Pentagon can be of help to understand them...

And as long as the Western decision-makers continue with their Dangerous Games, the followers of the prophecies of Nostradamus in the West, those who still feel pain and compassion as humans and those who follow the same God all over the world, will unite.

That is a lot of people to kill…

Finishing 2007 in the not-so-Great, not-so White North

It is with a great amount of phlegm and hacking that I greet the New Year, but that is a personal matter unrelated to international affairs. This Xmas Holiday I found out that if you travel for days to get to the arctic in December, you can now find an absence of winter unknown to any of my ancestors from those climes. It is warmer up there, and strangely enough more extreme because all of this warmer air and water makes the winds blow absolutely out of control. I also found out that the old arctic communities of Scandinavia are dying out (after a thousand years of history) to be replaced by a combination of summer vacation resorts and offshore oil pumping stations.

One day up there, my cousin took me hiking to a small town I used to visit as a child. It was now abandoned. It's church, school, houses, and shops were perfectly intact...only there was no one there and all the windows had been boarded. In the twilight that is an arctic December noon, and with a howling wind, I shivered not from cold but from imagining much more of the world looking just like this some day.

So the world looked strange from its top this Xmas.