Frankly folks, I’m starting to foam at the mouth. This war seems like it’s going to be a huge disaster that could easily spread to Israel, Jordan, and Iran. And people aren’t talking about it. People are blithely sharing pictures of cutie kitties and shit on Facebook. They are quoting Buddhist ideas of accepting what we can’t change and changing our attitudes instead. But this war plan… it’s being executed by humans in our name. We CAN change this shit. It’s a matter of self-control, of reeling in our killer instinct and not going into a food frenzy whenever we get a whiff of oil. This means being a free-thinking rhetorical slave and standing up to the master narrative. It means spitting in the Kool-Aid tainted milk instead of lapping it up. It means hissing at the man, and if need be scratching.
So, this morning’s cute-kitty-pic has a bit of a tude. It’s flippin’ pissed. And it’s not going to accept this war.
Art & Crit by Eric Wayne 
Wish I had a clue how to stop it.
We had months to stop the last Iraq War, organised marches worldwide that dwarfed the Vietnam war demos and, unlike this time, no-one with two brain cells to rub together believed the ‘WMD intelligence’. None of it helped.
If you ask me, Obama’s snookered himself on this one. He said chemical weapons use was a ‘red line’, so the Israelis provided ‘proof’ that Assad had used ’em and now the Zionist tail is wagging the US dog. Again.
I reckon we’ll see missile strikes only. A bit of token stuff to make Obama look tough. It’s bound to kill more innocent civilians than anyone else though – probably more than died in the supposed sarin attack.
The wildcard will be the reaction of Hezbollah and any Israeli response to that.
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Yeah, I went to the first big march in DC. It was under-reported. There were over 100,000 people there, but the newspapers said “tens of thousands” to play it down. The most protested war in history before it even started, and it did nothing. I went to a total of 4 protests, signed petitions, contributed money, made political cartoons, frothed like a lunatic, debated people in person and online… Bush smirked, and “shock and awe” took it’s deadly toll on innocent civilians and children. Stupidity triumphed smugly. Death won the day.
Now it’s the same old tune. But, if American citizens were at least able to wake up we could have polls that say, “96% of Americans are against the war”. But this isn’t going to happen b/c people believe in the authority of TV, not reason and logic and evidence. The TV will go along with the administration and people will follow the herd. They will think, if there was really something wrong, the people on TV would be saying so.
This is partly about a sense of belonging and normalcy. Once the direction of the grain is instilled in people’s heads, they won’t want to go against it.
People get afraid of not being on the lifeboat. I see it in politics, and I see it in the workplace. Fear of rocking the boat. Acquiescing to pretty authority. People will believe if they have to in Santa Claus if it means a seat secured on the lifeboat.
It’s interesting how people allow their minds to “believe” or force them to, in order to get along and go about their daily business.
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I have been sitting back wondering if anyone in the US has been doing anything to speak out about it or protest against it. I follow a few communities on Facebook that shamelessly refer to themselves as “the western revolution” that are speaking out. And there are Syrian civilians sharing videos on social media speaking out against Obama intervening.
None of that seems to be having an effect. Their eyes are wide open, they’re going in for the kill and no UN advice or international law will stop them. I see this move being made on Syria as a way to get their ally Iran into the mix.
“Oh wont somebody please think of those oil and gas reserves! Please!” Don’t worry lady from the Simpsons whose name has escaped me, Obama is thinking of the oil and gas reserves, they will be looked after……..
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Well said. Two thirds of the word’s oil is in the area, and we’ve already toppled Iraq and Libya. We want control over the area, and now we have an excuse to take it. I feel like a child being lied to by adults, but seeing through the bullshit.
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The US sure ain’t gonna take Iran’s oil through war.
They might be able to fuck up a lot of things from the air but the US just hasn’t got the capacity to take and hold enough territory to control Iran.
Their only chance is if there’s a serious revolution or civil war so they can install a puppet, but that didn’t even work in Iraq – a much smaller, weaker, more divided country with a much smaller population. In the end US companies got sweet FA oil contracts there – though they did force the Iraqi oil bourse to start trading exclusively in US$ again, which was the real objective anyway.
Any direct attack on Iran in the near future will just strengthen the regime and show up US weakness. The US will keep satisfying itself with strangling Iranian oil exports with sanctions so the non-US$ Iranian oil bourse can’t have a significant effect on the value of the yankee dollar.
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Yap, I remember your theories about trading oil in $US, and wondered what bearing that has on the current situation. Didn’t wanna’ make a request because I can’t pay a commission, but, hoping you do an analysis on the whole Syria situation on your blog.
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I’m having a hard time making heads or tails of Syria actually.
Up until a day or so ago I’d have put quids on the claim that Assad has used sarin missiles was bullshit. It makes no sense for him to do so. They just aren’t decisive battlefield weapons to make a tactical difference and any demoralising effect against the rebels would be more than offset by the horror of those who might otherwise be sympathetic to him and the undermining of support he could previously have counted on from Russia and China.
But then I heard a Syrian diplomat interviewed on the BBC going to ridiculous extents to avoid answering a direct question as to whether they’d been used and I’m now far from sure.
Obama is not going to do much, I’m pretty sure of that. All of this posturing over congressional approval is being used as an out – US presidents hardly ever seek approval from congress until after the attack is a fait accompli (as Obama did with Libya). I don’t think he’ll get the votes and I don’t think he wants them, but there’s still a possibility he’ll fire off a brace of cruise missiles without approval, just to be seen to be doing something, then cry that his hands are tied from doing anything more decisive.
Israel stands to gain the most from this.
They don’t like Obama and this will probably weaken him. They don’t want international pressure to surrender the illegally occupied Golan Heights back to Syria and making Syria even more of a pariah will help there. When the US is shown to be pissant in it’s ‘red-line’ response to alleged Syrian WMD it will give Israel more justification for going it alone against any of its neighbours it can half-credibly claim have or may be developing WMD. If Hezbollah go apeshit over a US missile attack on Syria, Israel hits the jackpot. It will justify just about anything they decide to do in Lebanon for quite a while and enable them to link – in public opinion terms – Hezbollah with support for sarin gas attacks on civilians.
My understanding is that the intel the US is claiming proves that Assad authorised the use of sarin comes from Israel and it’s pretty likely that if the US had just ignored what are probably unverifiable claims from Israel they would have leaked it to Israel friendly media in the US and really beat Obama about the head with it.
The IDF and Mossad are no longer what their legends claim them to be, but when it comes to down and dirty Middle East diplomacy Israel is still the master of the game.
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oh like sweety its a very very…… sweety little cat and please follow me
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