Not much topical news of interest this week, so I guess we’ll
just have to talk about the experiences of Paris Hilton in jail
and Lindsay Lohan in rehab. No? Okay, I guess the "most
ink" award this week goes to something that happened 40
years ago.
Various observances around the Judeo-Christian world noted
the 40th anniversary of what we now know as the Six
Days War. By 1967, the entire world population of Palestinians
had been in exile without a country for 19 years. During that
time, the Muslim countries, which we then called
"Moslem," had nurtured a festering grudge toward
Israel and developed what they thought was considerable military
muscle. On the morning of June 5th, with Egyptian,
Jordanian and Syrian armies poised on the borders, Israel set
about the total destruction of the Egyptian military before
sundown. In the next five days, the Israelis wiped out the rest
of the opposition and occupied the West Bank and the Golan
Heights, forever changing the politics of the Middle East. Forty
years and a few Nobel Peace Prizes later, it’s still a step
forward and two steps back in that part of the World.
Israel was established with the military and financial
backing of the entire "western"–read that
"capitalist"–world. It was seen as the foothold
where corporations could begin to exploit the mysterious Arab
world. We can be sure that if oil didn’t bubble up in the
Middle East, the Jews still would be the people without a
country. But unlike the colonialism practiced by the US and
western Europe in the rest of the world, Israel colonized
neighboring territory with ideological and cultural motivation.
In just 19 years, it established regional military dominance and
a stand alone economy. Compare that to the current colonization
of Iraq by the US.
Israel now is irrelevant as a Middle East staging ground for
military and corporate exploitation. That’s where Iraq comes
in. Just last week, the White House started talking publicly
about South Korea as the model for the future of the US invasion
of Iraq. The US military has been hunkered down in South Korea
for 57 years. Did you notice how the mission evolves as it goes
along? Five years ago the Bushwhacker promised that the war was
over when Saddam Hussein was removed from power. We had reason
to believe that should take about six days. Now we’re advised
that we have that remote, permanent war which Orwell predicted.
The Korea comparison looks like the long awaited exit
strategy. The strategy is that there is no exit. The Bush Gang
doesn’t care much for the obvious Viet Nam comparison. In Nam,
the US just packed up and left causing that undeclared war to be
branded as the first the US ever lost. Dubya can avoid being
remembered as the President who lost the Iraq war simply by
making it permanent. For The Gang, of course, permanent means
until January ‘09. After that, the next person sleeping in the
White House can take the blame.
If that’s not enough back-to-the-50s nostalgia for you, how
about the new cold war, almost like the old cold war. As we
speak, the guy who thinks he’s the president is in Europe for
another one of those G8 conferences where thousands of
protesters get ignored by the participants and the press. Along
the way, Bush has aimed a few verbal jabs at Russian president
Vladimir Putin. He’s jabbed a few other world leaders too, but
Putin replied that if the US wants to get belligerent with
Russia, he still has a stash of missiles laying around and he
might just point ‘em at targets in western Europe. I say,
"Almost like the old," because this time around, the
US will find the war a lot colder for the lack of any allies in
the rest of the world.
I guess this item qualifies as a crime story, but I’m
mentioning it anyway, because it’s right in our backyard and
it’s the first time anyone’s ever been arrested in
California for trying to overthrow a government on the other
side of the world. It’s not surprising that the Hmongs would
be interested in throwing a revolution in Laos. They were
culturally exiled in their own countries even before they threw
in with the Yanks in Nam. They’ve got an even bigger beef than
the Cubans in south Florida, but the geography isn’t working
so well for them.
Just reading between the lines of the mainstream media
reports, this story has at least a few loose ends. Reports say
that these guys were meeting in public places and approaching
some very public people seeking support. In other words, they
were behaving as though they thought they were legal. Like most
aborted terrorist conspiracies, a good guy infiltrates the bad
guys and hears what they’re talking about. If these guys
really had a revolution in mind, that was about all they had. If
they were talking about hiring soldiers and acquiring military
hardware, no one is saying they actually did any such thing, no
one is saying how they planned to transport their revolution
halfway around the world and no one is saying they had the
means. In other words, it was just some guys talking. Still, it’s
another terrorist attack nipped in the bud and another notch in
the pistol for Homeland Security.
We’ve been talking occasionally about food in recent
reports, and I’ve been wanting to talk a little about
"corporate organic." I’ll stick with the culture and
leave the science to the experts. You might want to check out a
monthly program called Organic Matters on this radio
station. Safe to say that the word "organic" has lost
all specific definition as surely as the profanity which the FCC
may or may not be continuing to punish has lost all it’s
punch. The dirty words which the FCC doesn’t want to hear on
radio and TV used to have good shock value, but no more.
Everyone hears ‘em all the time and no one is especially
shocked except the FCC. "Organic" used to mean
something, too, but some big corporations discovered it and
started printing new labels. Then they got the federal
government to declare that it doesn’t mean what it used to
mean, and now the supermarkets are stuffed with
"organic" food.
The Summer of Love is the other 40th anniversary
in the news recently, and there’s a parallel to be observed.
Some people in San Francisco thought they had a nice little
subculture going until it was discovered and given a name by the
corporate media. The next thing you know, long hair on men was
popular and "do your own thing" was an advertising
slogan. In a corporate society, ideas which have the ring of
truth and originality often are coopted and retooled to sell
products. In other words, no truth is exempt from being turned
into a lie. If you think only hippies eat organic food, you’re
wrong about both.
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