Out of the corner of my eye
I turned to look but it was gone
I cannot put my finger on it now
The child is grown
The dream is gone...
Is it possible that a mere ten years from now we affluent Westerners may no longer enjoy the forms of government that we take for granted today?
Could the loss of "soft" prestige in Iraq lead to a broader destabilisation of Western economic dominance?
Could our dependence on dwindling fossil fuel resources, coupled with our moral, institutional and political decay - plus the consequences of global warming - bring about a sudden, massive, complete collapse of faith in our existing power structures?
In the years leading up to the French Revolution, how many people really knew what was about to go down?
What will the boys with the Big Money portfolios do? Pretend it isn't happening? Stifle dissent? Spin the hype beyond all belief (are we there yet)?
Has the media already succumbed? Is our current militarisation against a phantom threat a precedent for future violence on our own shores? Will the bloggers be the first to fall?
sometimes i wonder...
Indeed, for Iraqis, America’s invasion and subsequent occupation has been and will continue to be one massive war crime, an onslaught of criminality against humanity not seen since World War Two. It is they, the Iraqi people, who have undergone tremendous hardship, and it is they who will continue to suffer in horrific ways, due to the lunacy and delusions of America’s miscreant leaders. Indeed, hell on Earth has been imported into Iraq without so much as a care, concern or bother from the American people, without so much as a protest or two by the world entire.If we cannot walk away from Iraq, if we cannot admit our terrible mistake, then what have we become? What do we not deserve?
For America and her people, on the other hand, to say that the Iraq debacle is the greatest strategic disaster in American foreign policy history is an understatement, for the implications of America’s defeat at the hands of Iraqis have only now begun to be seen, with its reverberations to be felt for years to come. What was once considered a cakewalk by an arrogant nation, basking in the glory of exceptionalism and ignorance, blinded to reality by addictions to materialism and televised charades, instead turned into an inextricable sand trap that threatens to turn a New American Century into the Last American Decade.
...this war has always been and will always be about black blood, that dark substance that condemns and curses all who live above it, and empowers and enriches those who extract it. He who controls the oil controls the world, after all, and he who controls the world controls humankind’s destiny.
It is the devil’s excrement that sustains modern civilization; its births Empire and makes overlords of those that control it. It is also a truism that those who seek the power of modern empire must make a deal with the devil to drink blood from its veins. It is this deal with the devil that invariably resurrects violence, destruction, suffering and the worst in human wickedness.
As T.S. Eliot once said:
After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think nowI will show you fear in a handful of dust.
History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors
And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,
Guides us by vanities. Think now
She gives when our attention is distracted
And what she gives, gives with such supple confusions
That the giving famishes the craving. Gives too late
What’s not believed in, or if still believed,
In memory only, reconsidered passion. Gives too soon
Into weak hands, what’s thought can be dispensed with
Till the refusal propagates a fear. Think
Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices
Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues
Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes.
These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.
The tiger springs in the new year. Us he devours.
