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In the crazy fun house world of imperial politics nationalist regimes are less preferable than radical religious ones. Noam Chomsky and Andre Vltchek discuss the motivations of empire in the Middle East in this selection from the book: On Western Terrorism – From Hiroshima to Drone Warfare.
“Noam Chomsky:
“Anyhow, going back to the Middle East after World War II. The British role in Iran was reduced and the US began to take over. IN Iraq in 1958, there was a so-called independent government, but it was basically British-run, and it was overthrown in a military coup. A couple of years later the US was able to engineer a coup that overthrew the Nasser-type nationalist government, and that’s where Saddam Hussein comes in. The CIA handed the new Ba’athist government a long list of Communists, radicals, and teachers, and then they all got assassinated. Then you come to the present; the US expects to run Iraq. In Saudi Arabia, the British were the junior partner, Finally the British pulled out, and left it to the United States.”
Andre Vltchek:
Of course Saudi Arabia is a tremendously destabilizing force in the world and its influence spreads from Bahrain to Indonesia. In Bahrain there is the fear that the country may be annexed by Saudi Arabia, The Saudi Army is and out of Bahrain.
Noam Chomsky:
The Saudis are pouring money all over the place to sponsor the most extreme forms of radical Islam – Wahabbism – in Madrasas, in Pakistan, pouring money into Egypt to support the Salafis, all extreme Islamic elements. The United States is happy with that; it doesn’t try to prevent them.
The idea that the US is opposed to radical Islam is ludicrous. The most extreme fundamentalist Islamic state in the world is Saudi Arabia, which is the US’s favourite. Britain also has consistently supported radical Islam. The reason was to oppose secular nationalism. US relations with Israel reached their current close state in 1967 because Israel performed the huge service of smashing secular nationalism and defending radical Islam.
A British diplomatic historian, Mark Curtis, wrote a very good book a few years ago called Secret Affairs: British Collusion with Radical Islam (review here). Curtis went through the British records on Islam. It turns out the British had consistently supported radical Islamist elements, pretty much was the US has been doing. They may not have liked it, but they prefer them to the secular nationalists.
Secular nationalists threatened them – they threatened to take over the resources and use them for domestic development and that’s the worst sin; so we support radical Islamists.”
-Excerpt from “On Western Terrorism from Hiroshima to Drone Warfare p.115 – 116
It would seem that Geo-political decisions are quietly being adjudicated by the imperial powers of the world. It would also seem that they are quite separate from the political fodder being offered to their respective populations.
People are so terribly ignorant when it comes to climate change, in the face of this seemingly unconquerable monolith of stupidity Jon Stewart finds a way to get his point across.
We’re in trouble if the people in charge of Science and Technology are this ignorant. (wilfully or otherwise)
Harper wants Canada to go on airstrikes on Iraq. That’s right. Canada. The nice ones, the peace keepers, the polite people, the bastion of warm-gooey-joy-joy feelings, the “we’re awesome because we can solve problems without bombing people” great white north. He wants us conducting air strikes. We have to tell him ‘No.’
Elizabeth May of the Green Party spoke against the airstrikes (video below) and I think she did a good job. There’s a big part of me that wishes she didn’t tread so softly, that she went for the jugular and tore them a new one. That said, I recognize that her overly tactful and diplomatic manor probably has a much better chance of being considered than the enraged reaming I figure Harper needs. In any event, May has one seat while Harper has a majority government. We citizens need to help out on this one.
I have drafted a template letter anyone is free to copy, paste, edit, amend, and send to their MP. Please share it, send it in, or even write your own. Spread the word. Say ‘No’ to airstrikes.
Dear [your MP’s name] ,
My name is [your name] and I am a resident of [your riding], a voice you are supposed to represent. I cannot express strongly enough how much I am against Mr. Harper’s proposal to join in the airstrikes in Iraq against ISIS. My opposition to the airstrikes can be summarized in three points:
1) It’s un-Canadian. We are, first and foremost, peace keepers and have a history of peace keeping and are supposed to be the good, nice country. Nice people don’t go on airstrikes.
2) It’s ineffective. The U.S has been running airstrikes against the region for who knows how long and terrorism persists. It doesn’t work.
3) However much we might hurt terrorist organizations with airstrikes (again, history shows it won’t be much) we will hurt innocent civilians much more.
For the good of the people of the world and for the integrity of our nation I ask you to do all you can to convince Mr. Harper that this is the wrong course of action and, at the very least, vote against joining in the airstrikes.
Sincerely,
[your name]
[your address]
[your phone number]
Conservative media has attempted to portray the notion of women as autonomous human beings as “radical”.
The recently decimated Liberal Party is stirring back to life with the election of a new Leader. Justin Trudeau has decreed that his MP’s will vote pro-choice, no exceptions.
The woolly anti-choicers that still remain within the party, or loosely affiliated, have recently penned an open letter to Mr.Trudeau about his policy.
“How can such a discriminatory policy serve the democratic ideals of our great nation?” wrote the ex-MPs, many of whom are known for being outspoken on socially conservative issues.
Actually it’s quite easy – your moral conscience is wrong – and since abortion is a settled issue in Canada the Liberal Party of Canada won’t support any fooling around the rights of women and their autonomy.
“Trudeau tweeted his apparent response late Thursday.
The days when old men get to decide what a woman does with her body are long gone. Times have changed for the better. #LPC defends rights.
— @JustinTrudeau”
Times have definitely changed for the better . I’m scoring one for Trudeau on this issue.
The NDP seeing the traction that the fifteen dollar minimum wage is getting in the US has made it part of their platform.
“NDP Leader Tom Mulcair says he will put the idea of a $15 an hour minimum wage to a vote in Parliament when it resumes next week.
“Household debt in Canada is skyrocketing right now, families are having more and more trouble getting by. The good middle class jobs that people used to be able to rely on just aren’t there any more,” Mulcair said, speaking in Vancouver on Saturday.”
It is time to start distributing the profits a little more equally here in Canada, and raising the minimum wage is great place to start.
I do love me some infographics. Go to Vision of Humanity to see all the stats and the overall peace rankings for countries of the world. Care to guess to see if yours is on the list? I’ve got the top 10 most peaceful countries and the bottom 10 of that same scale below the fold.
“We are living in the most peaceful century in human history; however the 2014 Global Peace Index shows that the last seven years has shown a notable deterioration in levels of peace.”
So begins this year’s peace index, an annual report released by the nonprofit Institute for Economics and Peace. The study ranks 162 countries (covering 99.6% of the world’s population) according to a complex set of indicators that gauge the absence of violence and political instability. These include a nation’s level of military expenditure, its relations with neighboring countries and the percentage of the population held in prisons.
The chickens of western colonialism are coming home to roost.
Excerpt from “The Guns of August” – by Matthew Stevenson via Counterpunch
“Doubts about the sincerity of Americans in Iraq probably began when President Ronald Reagan dispatched his former national security advisor Robert C. “Bud” McFarlane to Tehran in 1986 with a cake and a Bible and proposed swapping arms for American hostages in Lebanon.
Until that moment, in the long war between Iran and Iraq, Saddam was our man, a bulwark against Shiite expansion in the Gulf, a non-fundamental (i.e., someone not adverse to girls or gin) Muslim willing to do the West’s bidding.
Bud’s cake and Bible alerted Saddam to the fickleness of Western support, and he repaid the favor in 1990 when he invaded Kuwait and let his troops drive all those looted Mercedes back to Baghdad.
The Iraqi occupation of Kuwait led to the first Gulf War and Saddam’s alleged death threat against President George H.W. Bush, cited in 2003 when his son, President George W. Bush, decided to overthrow Saddam’s regime.
Driving Saddam into a hole near Tikrit (where he was captured and later hanged) wasn’t the hard part of the blitzkrieg. The biggest challenge was deciding who should run Iraq once Saddam was swinging from the gallows.
Remembering the Mesopotamia, Churchill had faced the same conundrum in 1921, and at the Cairo Conference he went with an invented, cereal-box monarchy, an air campaign to subdue rebels, and a cadre of loyal Sunnis to keep the majority Shiite population on their knees.
In one form or another, that unholy coalition lasted until the 2003 American invasion, when the Bush administration decided to turn the country over to the Shiite majority.
Never mind that such a government would align Iraq more closely with Antichrists in Tehran.
* * *
By suppressing the Sunnis, the U.S. hoped to keep al-Qaida sympathizers in Iraq away from the oil fields. Under this partition, Shiites would get the government, the U.S. would get the oil, and Sunnis, especially those with Osama bin Laden posters on their kitchen walls, would get the shaft.
The problem with this division of Iraqi spoils is that it required the Bush administration to disband the Iraqi army and Saddam’s Baathist party infrastructure, two centers of power not solely identified with either Sunni or Shiite interests.
At the same time (mid-2000s) the U.S. army withdrew its forces into frontier stockades. Iraq fell into anarchy until Gen. David Petraeus took time out from his amorous counter-insurgencies and paid Sunni warlords, especially in western Iraq, some $300 million to fight on the American side.
The rent-an-army surge worked until the Obama administration stopped payment on the Petraeus incentive compensation and left it to the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to explain to the opposition the fine print of the American victory, what in the Vietnam War President Nixon called “peace with honor.”
Speaking of peace with honour; the IS is bringing neither to the region as this Vice News clip illustrates.
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
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