WORLDWIDE GEOPOLITICAL CHAOS
I do not believe people that forecast the ‘end of the world as we know it’, whether the prediction comes from Biblical prophetic utterances (Armageddon), the Aztec’s or Nostradamus, it makes little difference, no one has the ability to predict the end –whatever your concept of that is. It is certain the world as we know it will change and dramatically so, it is also a certainty Homo sapiens will eventually become extinct here on earth either by our own hand or by the hand of nature but how and when will always remain a mystery.
Now, with that said, I am of the opinion the next generation will encounter a very humbling and even tragic period for the Earth, and all that populate it. One doesn’t need to use their imagination to see it coming; it’s simply a matter of opening our eyes to the mess we’ve made of things.
Who’s at Fault
We can begin by lining up the usual suspects ranging from individuals like Hitler and Hussein to religions, philosophies, sciences, governments, corporations and so on. In other words the question should be who isn’t to blame? Events occurring during the development of mankind have had an accumulation effect. Two hundred-thousand years of human progress (population growth and inventions designed specifically for the convenience of man) has brought us to the brink of disaster for man and a much needed recuperation period for Planet Earth.
I don’t blame early man or woman for inventing the wheel, they were just trying to make life a little easier and they had no idea what consequences (unintended) would arise from that discovery. I do not blame Henry Ford for the millions of deaths and millions of life-changing injuries caused by vehicle accidents resulting from the mechanization of auto manufacturing. I do not blame Bill Gates for the creation and manufacturing of computer software that makes possible the exchange of hideous photos and information around the world as in child pornography, vivid pictures of human executions and a whole lot more. These all fall under the ever present and menacing law of unintended consequences. Every thing we do, every thing we invent, discover or say has unintended consequences, absolutely every thing.
Today, all of us contribute to the Earth’s demise in some way. I don’t know when or how it happened but at some point—actually a series of points (events) that have accumulated over centuries—our leaders (and us too) caused the balance of culture and nature to gyrate out of control into a random spiral, a chaotic black hole right here on terra firma sucking every thing (the good and bad) in and spitting all of its energy out in the form of war, hatred, bigotry, not to mention crime and man-made health hazards.
I’ll illustrate by giving a snap-shot of just one recent day and you can tell me if you see chaos coming. The following is regarding Iran because that is what this blog features for the most part, however, the NEWS BRIEFS could as easily feature the US, or Thailand, Greece, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Central Africa, Iraq, Japan, China, Russia, etc.
NEWS BRIEFS
SUBJECT: Iran
Date: May 13, 2010 (a single day)
The following was collected from just one news site, United Against Nuclear Iran. I’ll paraphrase UANI’s paraphrasing, and if you are in doubt about accuracy check their archives where you can gain access to all of the reports.
Recently the US government prohibited US companies from doing business with Iran as part of the sanctions imposed on Ahmadinejad, the president and Khamenei, the supreme spiritual leader. Of course, when all the US companies pulled out of Iran that cut deep into the companies profits which ultimately added to our unemployment which added to a significant loss of spendable income for Americans not to mention tax revenue for the same government (ours) that imposed the sanctions in the first place. Well, friend, that ain’t all. The United States of America is more openly opposed to Iran having nuclear weapons than anyone else in the world, and why is that? One reason is because Iran’s economy is strong, they have money, oil, natural gas and most other influential nations don’t. Iran wants to sell its petroleum products and China, Russia, and a whole slew of other big and small countries want to buy so they are not nearly as invested in sanctions as is the US. They actually are but they want to keep it a secret, France doesn’t want to make Iran too angry by joining the US in a big way, and instead of ‘foot-stomping’ they only ‘toe-tap’ their ire.
Our government has prohibited US companies from doing (a lucrative) business with Iran, so, do ‘sanctions’ work and who is hurt the most? The US is hamstrung financially by imposing restrictions and that’s not all—our government (the government that prohibited US companies from doing business in Iran) has awarded in recent years $880 million to seven foreign companies involved in Iran’s energy sector. Where are those profits and taxes going? Yes, you are right; they are going to the foreign countries holding the contracts with the US. According to the Bloomberg Report Boeing and Exxon Mobil are lobbying to fend off tightened sanctions against Iran, why? Because it may cost $25 billion in US exports, that’s why. That’s $25 billion Americans need to ward off the severe effects of the global financial crisis. The report goes on to say that Legislation now before Congress would expand a 1996 law penalizing foreign companies that invest in Iran’s oil industry. To me that spells trouble for the United States from a financial perspective. And of course it spells more trouble for most all the other countries too.
CAN WE HANDLE THE TRUTH?
It may sound as though I am against sanctioning Iran and other countries doing business with that country but there is nothing further from the truth. The problem with pushing for everyone (China, Russia, France, Great Britain and others) to sanction Iran—the only way sanctions can be effective—is for the citizens of the US to be willing to embrace REAL austerity, and I mean R-E-A-L austerity. Can you see the turbulence brewing? I know we are NOT Thailand or Greece but, nevertheless, what is happening there can happen here.
RUSSIAN RHETORIC
You might recall that I am paraphrasing major news reports from just one day in May to illustrate my point that drastic changes are on the way. On that same day (May 13, 2010) Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned the United States and other Western nations against imposing unilateral sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program, Interfax reported. What next?!
Nature's Laws
In the previous article I made reference to suspicion and deception as two of mans most basic survival skills, concepts hardwired into the brain of Homo sapiens thousands of years ago. To this day, as animals who can reason, man/woman has attempted to refine those skills into more socially acceptable concepts--without much success I might add. In that attempt to refine we've developed the concept of togetherness, language, culture, religion, empathy, sympathy, compassion and love. Still, we remain the most blood thirsty, corrupt specie on the planet. We have all these skills that other warm blooded animals don't but we go on warring, murdering, rapping, stealing, lying. It seems to me that the only reason why we do not do more bad things is because of our self-centeredness and not because of concern for our fellow man. In other words--I don't want my family killed so I won't kill your family--a sort of quid pro quo. What kept us safe during the Cold War? One thing and one thing only the assureance of mutual destruction, not necessarily because we didn't want to kill Russians, although there was some of that, but mainly because we didn't want them killing us.
I like to think of those skills we've developed (because we can reason out cause and effect) as diplomacy. The tact we use to accomplish a mutually agreeable plan of cooperation. Diplomacy is more or less a recent contrivance evolving from the coming together of those skills. While admirable and something we humans should strive for it isn't natural, if it was we'd have perfected at least a small amount of civilized behavior by now. So where does this leave us with respect to Iran and the very real possibility Ahmadinejad is still smoozing us when it comes to enriching uranium (in other words-building a nuclear weapon)? Lets be frank and take the pragmatic approach. Since the beginning of human nature the alpha dog has always been in charge. Might and the ability to instill fear in ones enemy has always been a part of our culture, why? Man has used the alpha dog approach to protect its tribe, culture, state, country. Along the line people recognized the need for a collective temperament in order to avoid annilating one another. Some of those people were even killed because they proposed such a thing. Today we are faced with Iran (there will be others to follow) and diplomacy is hard at work trying to resolve a potential crisis. I am concerned though that the diplomacy scale will dip to a point where those that do not like us, and heretofore have been afraid of the US, will act out their new found strength in ways detrimental to the American way of life.
We must be strong and appear strong while we test diplomacy. And when diplomacy fails the US must act on that strength.
Iran Overload
I’m on overload too. Now, what would Will Rogers say? Remember one of his favorite quips, “All I know is what I read in the papers”. If he were here today Will would have to say, “All I know is what I read in the papers, newsmagazines, e-zines, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Fox News, CNN, MSNBC. Don’t you think he’d just pack a lunch, buy bait and go fishing? I’m tempted to do just that but then I think of all the information, people are dying to hear me dispense, and I blog.
As you can tell, if you’ve read any of my articles, Iran—Ahmadinejad—uranium enrichment is the theme of this blog and true to that theme I’ll stay, sort of.
During the past month or two A-jad has gone from resistance to IAEA inspections to semi resistance and now he’s saying Tehran may agree to ship part of its stockpile of low enriched uranium abroad for enrichment. The AP reported that this is the first official indication that Iran could at least partly sign onto a UN-drafted plan aimed at easing nuclear tensions. I’ve underlined the obvious modifiers.
There are those who think this is a step in the right direction but is it really. We all hope so, however, there are many who think it’s a lie, another delaying tactic while A-jad ramps up his program of enriching uranium for military purposes. You’ve heard this over and over, I know. Here is the reason I’m siding with the skeptics. Anthropologists believe Homo sapiens moved out of East Africa 50 to 100,000 years ago and those people (our ancestors) brought with them practices that would help them survive. Survival was the only goal, nothing else mattered. Those practices—that later became traditions, customs, mores, culture, etc.—included self defense, there were a lot of adversaries including predatory animals. Long story short groups formed out of a need to protect themselves from animals as well as a growing number of adversarial human beings. With the advent of groups (tribes, settlements, towns, cities), and ultimately a perception of encroachment, came conflict over the traditions and customs mentioned above. All of that has been engrained (hardwired) into the brain of the male gender along with suspicion and deceit. You can not conquer an enemy without first being suspicious of their intent and employing deception in discovering whether your suspicions are warranted or not. The crux of what I’m saying is this hardwiring of self defense, suspicion, deceit, and ultimately killing (barbarism, if you like.) trumps diplomacy most of the time. Therefore, diplomacy must be entered into with the same level of suspicion and deception as our adversaries. Diplomacy is a tool, not a universal remedy, like the military it should be used sparingly and with utmost caution.
One might think I’m being barbaric, uncivilized, silly or stupid for thinking this and out of my mind for dumping it in cyberspace and maybe I am. I invite you to tell me what you believe.
HAVE WE DONE THE RIGHT THING?
I'm concerned that our collective political heads are once again in a hole in the sand. Reading from Newsweek, op-ed pieces and hearing commentary on TV about President Obama and his administration got me to thinking of a conversation I had with a friend last August. It went something like this: Friend, "...I'm convinced Obama is our man." And my friend was right, not that he was my choice but that he is the one now sitting in the Oval Office. I replied, "I'm sure he's a good man, well educated and certainly intelligent, but--" My friend interupted, "But what?" "I think Senator Obama is naive." I went on to explain that I thought his campaign platform overestimated his ability to calm the masses and bring peace to the world. And that Senator Obama underestimated those that wish to do us harm. The conversation tapered to the point of us agreeing to disagree.
This illustration has nothing to do with the present state of America's economic woes, but more to do with America's safety and security. You don't have to be a think tank member to know that there are a number of calamities that could befall the U.S. that would have a far worse effect than a serious recession and that, fellow Americans, is another strategically placed terrorist attack.
The point of this is are we ready or are we loosing our edge? Are we distracted by the economy, and mezmerized by Obama's Kennedy-like popularity.
The idea of trying to mend our reputation with the rest of the world is to me an insult. The ugly American label may well be deserved by the ugly Americans, but to categorize the majority of America, as Obama did recently in Europe, as arrogant, dismissive and derisive was an insult and an ignorant one at that. That kind of leadership mentality plays well with those that hate us and fuels the fires of governments that want to see the U.S. collapse militarily, economically, socially and religiously. The next step will be a level-the-playing-field philosophy that will be introduced in subtle fashion. The proponenants, I believe our President to be one, will favor equalizing everything--it's only fair, right? Wrong! That's a big wrong and the reason is obvious, the U.S. is the only country I trust to carry the big stick, not Argentina, Iran, Saudia Arabia, China, N. Korea, India etc.
Do you believe this is Obama's ultimate intent--global equalization? Is it a wise strategy or not?