August 22nd - The Beginning of the End?

Bernard Lewis (aka. Bush's Historian) the man who coined the term "clash of civilizations" is predicting that Iran will initiate a third world war or some sort of end of times conflict. You can read his absurdly bigoted, hypocritical and fanatical article on the Wall Street Journal op-ed site, August 22: Does Iran have something in store?.

As an extremely cogent counter balance I present this article by Brian Whitaker of The Guardian, World to End August 22nd.

Unsurprisingly, Bernard Lewis, brings religion into it. He demonizes the Muslim world making the bigoted claim that the Iranian President would happily allow his country and people to be destroyed because for him it's a win-win situation. This is complete bullshit. It's not in Iran's best interest to allow a war of the magnitude suggested to start. It might be in the best interest of a certain few people here in the U.S. but I don't think it's in Iran's. It certainly isn't in the interest of the common man anywhere in the world.

None of the governments involved in Middle Eastern politics have my sympathy - this includes the United States. I don't know about you but I'm tired of these power hungry lunatics trying to manipulate us through scare tactics, fundamentalism, and black/white world views. Screw it - don't believe it, don't buy it, don't play it, don't choose it!

It's always the common man who suffers - the common man is who has my sympathy - not our taskmasters. And those who align themselves with the antiquated ideals of these nation states have my pity that they cannot see beyond the carrot being strung out in front of them. It's up the common man to make sure we don't get screwed over. No right, no left, no middle, just human.

Frankly we should all (and I mean everyone in the world) get over it (our differences, our greed, our violence, etc.) There are more than enough resources in the world for everyone to live quite happily - see Critical Path by Buckminster Fuller.

Enlightened interdependence* is what we should strive for - anything else is just fucking stupid (in which case we, as a species, probably deserve to wipe ourselves out.) It is also, in fact, much easier to achieve enlightened interdependence, than to maintain an endless struggle. Hell whether we want to or not we are all already interdependent.

"The western hemisphere
And all inside
We learn
Who is murdering the innocent
They are children playing with guns
They are children playing with countries
Mining harbors, creating contras
The games they play
The lives they take
They bank their money in the country
They steal from the innocent
A colonial trait
That's much too old
The banks, the lives
The profits, the lies
The banks, the profits
The lives, the lies
I would call it genocide
Any other word would be a lie"

-- Minutemen, From Double Nickels on the Dime