Good points Ed, as usual. You are right that my theme is unhinged. It's fatalism. Which is defeatism. It's accepting that nature is in action and there's not much I can do about it. I expect Americans and other powerful people to murderously rampage because it's what always seems to have been done, and it has been my life's experience too in thousands of ways, on a daily basis.
Even such a thing as NZ deciding nukes weren't for us sent Americans into a nasty hissy fit. If we wouldn't comply, then they'd bloody well show us what we'd get. In various ways, they punished NZ.
Now, NZ is considering a free trade agreement with China and NZ is generally very friendly with China. Tony Blair has just been in NZ saying that they want NZ to stay in the long-standing alliance, with Britain, USA and co. With friends like those, who needs enemies? They pop NZ on the nose in various ways, then act surprised that NZ goes and plays somewhere else.
Not that NZ is full of angels. It isn't. It's full of people one step up from cannibals.
I'm living inside a hornet's nest! And this nest is surrounded by other hornet nests. I've given up and accepted that they zoom around attacking and there are no bars between me and the hornets. I usually use the analogy of living in chimpdom, with no bars between me and the chimps, but we are on hornets now, so I'll go with that.
April Glaspie and her President and foreign affairs gang deliberately said to Saddam, in person, who had tanks lined up ready to invade, that it was up to Arabs to sort out their affairs. He was obviously not going to invite Kuwaitis over for tea to sort things out. Saddam had already conducted a huge war with Iran with millions [supposedly] of dead as a result. Of course there were mass graves with that process going on, yet the silly media treat the finding of mass graves as proof of crimes by Saddam. Were they really surprised?
I think the USA thought a bullet through the middle east was a good idea for oil prices [up]. I often think that live-fire training is part of USA operations planning. Having troops going decades without the real thing is likely to leave them unprepared to do the actual job when reality strikes. Which personally seems an excellent idea to me. It's also instructive to the likes of Libya that the USA really can and will do what they say they will. Syria pulled out of Lebanon, or else. China isn't in a big hurry to invade Taiwan. Think of the USA as a giant hornet nest, nuclear-armed. Prodding the USA is not such a great idea.
But I shouldn't give up. And haven't really. Which is why I keep going on about reforming the UN into something fit for the job. I've been on the case for over quarter of a century now. Actually, longer, since my father, decades ago, said to me that there wouldn't be world peace until there's a world government.
People immediately leap to the conclusion that that means a USSR type 1984 all-embracing kleptocratic suffocatocracy which tells people how to brush their teeth and what type of bicycle helmet they have to wear and takes all their money. A constitution can be as small as we like.
Decades ago, I said that finally my beloved UN would get going, and I would be the first opposing it and Johny-come-latelies would explain to the doddery old fool to get with the programme. They'd explain to me how the new, all singing and dancing, all-encompassing UN is the best thing since sliced bread. They would be as wildly enthusiastic as new converts. Most people are bossy, confiscatory, stupid, "belongers" who would want BIG GOVERNMENT in the NUN. Just as they keep voting for more and more government around the world in democracies. Nowhere has voted for a Libertarian government or one even slightly resembling a "freedom" party.
I think of the saying, be careful what you wish for, you might just get it. I'm ready to take my chances and could always try to get the mad NUN enthusiasts to vote Libertarian for the world government instead of for Big Brother. I'm sure I'd lose given the track record of existing democracies! Then I'd end up dead on the barricades when I finally refuse to follow their instructions.
You have stung me by pointing out my defeatist, fatalistic attitude.
In regard to Iran, as with Iraq, it would be much better to actually develop the NUN and use the pressure of the other 5 billion people to civilize the Islamic Jihad countries. But that's not what China wants [they will demand the right to attack Taiwan and keep Tibet, among other demands]. Russia will have their expectations. The USA, like all megalomaniacs, can only think in terms of total independence and freedom to run Guantanamo perpetual imprisonment "human rights" concentration camps with none of that boring habeas corpus stuff, which is only for Americans. The great bulk of Americans can't even start to think of being just part of a mulilateral world with a constitution, a president, democracy, freedom, and all that jazz which they claim to support.
Nobody anywhere supports the idea of tradable citizenships rather than the ages-old serfdom way of life, where citizens are state chattels, like so many sheep in a paddock to be fleeced and flocked. Okay, maybe there is somebody, but I haven't come across them.
Mqurice
PS: Yes, I do tend to have tongue in cheek. Even for serious matters. Everything is serious, so I might as well enjoy going down in fatalistic flames. |
