BOMBING SYRIA ANYONE? CHEMICALLY?

Overheard, off-mike, at a corporate briefing, with italic-static coming in from academia.

'When all else fails, we bomb.'

With the unprecendented scale of American indebtedness it is hard to see how the US can continue to project its military power as it did in the post-Cold War period.

'Listen, bud. When we've sold them the stuff over the years, years in which we've propped them up, cosseted and feted them, and they start misbehaving, well, then we call them despots and bomb them. Well, not 'them' as such, but the poor people around them. The soldiers in their army who took the despot's pound (100 qirsh) to feed their families. And we bomb the rebels too and their families, while we search furiously for someone to put in the despots place, because it's westernisation and modernisation and shock and awe we're touting'.

At present the US combines an absolutist insistence on its own national sovereignty with a universalist claim to worldwide jurisdiction. Such an approach is supremely unsuitable to the plural world which globalisation has created.

'Pull out those swords and we'll give them a good rattle. Line up those battleships and sail them into the east Med.. We're lords of all the sea. Rule Westernia, Westernia rules the waves. Listen, if those folks won't behave in a modern manner – buy our goods, eat our food, choose our religion - who says we're abandoning it? We fundamentally are not! - use our weapons – who said we invented chemical weapons? Germany and Britain 1914-1916, you say? Had to, when you think of it. Made a few pounds out of it too. Of course, I've paid a visit to Porton Downs. Wonderful part of the country. We run marvellous training courses. Do we research and produce chemical weapons?'

The economic recession is linked to a recession of democracy.

'No point waiting around for the UN to come up with a plan. They couldn't come up with a pot to piss in. No, we'll have to do it ourselves. Done it through the centuries. Bloody Russians won't play ball. Damned Chinese are worse. Only interested in themselves. Not really interested in the world and modernity and progress. As we are. No, I am not being ironic.'

The notion that the United States leads an expanding bloc of western nations is almost the reverse of the truth. In present circumstances, 'The West' is a category which has ceased to have a definite meaning – except in the United States, where it denotes an atavistic resistance to the unalterable realities of multiculturalism.  

'Listen, bud. This is only going one way. Our way. And we'll kill if we have to. And afterwards we'll re-construct the hell out of the place, you bet your bottom dollar we will and we can tell you now, we're ready to get down and dirty with those oilfields. What? Syria has no oil? Why the hell are we thinking of going in there?'

There are things practically everybody can do, and if you are from a privileged sector of the population, then there are even more opportunities. You can speak, you can write, you can organise, you can reach out to other people. If you keep doing it, you can make an impact.

False Dawn -The delusions of global capitalism: John Gray; book; Granta; London; 2009

Occupy: Noam Comsky; book; Penquin Books; London; 2012

https://www.gov.uk/defence-chemical-biological-radiological-and-nuclear-centre

http://breathingwithalimp.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/so-syria-has-no-oil-then.html

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THE IMMUNITY OF THE WEALTHY

One of the puzzles of the current age in Ireland, and across the globe, is the immunity of the wealthy in the face of their very obvious culpability in matters of law, finance and governance. 

Great devastations have been delivered via the banking, legal, financial, accounting, property development, civil service and political systems in Ireland; devastations that have impoverished people, wreaked havoc on landscapes and environments and forced thousands to emigrate. Yet no one has been brought to book.

Why is this?

Because his purse is basically unlimited.

You know any really rich people?

Maybe a couple.

You ever know one you could trust?

Fintan O'Toole, columnist in The Irish Times, is near apoplectic on this question.

The legal system, meanwhile, has proved itself to be almost entirely powerless in bringing to justice those who commit crimes that are most corrosive of social order: corruption, fraud, tax evasion, bribery, perjury, market abuse, corporate recklessness.

Why is this?

The jury has a story. In their head. About what happened in that room. We have to drive that story out of their heads.

How?

By telling them a better story.

One of the stories the rich tell us is that we're all in this together. We are not. The gap between rich and poor grows daily and becomes, many people argue, increasingly irreversible. Another story the rich tell us is that the rich/poor divide is equivalent to other divides in the world and thus amenable to positive action to rectify it.

build a coalition of white and black, Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old

This is a fallacy.

because nobody's going to come out and admit they're awed by his money

Good efforts can be made to rectify the discriminations cited by Barack Obama, all except for the rich/poor one. At the end of the day re-distribution of wealth, and the immunity that comes with it, is the only course of action that will bear fruit.

I tried being poor. I didn't like it. Did you like it …?

Race: David Mamet; play; Samuel French; New York; 2008

A More Perfect Union: speech; Barack Obama; 18.3.2008; excerpt in a theatre programme; Hampstead Theatre; London; 2013

Facing up to State's failure can allow us to begin again: Fintan O'Toole; column; The Irish Times; 6.8.2013

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