Wednesday, May 20, 2015



We Have Always Been At War With....(Fill in the blank)

     I'm realizing most people don't understand what the Bush-Cheney-neocon power play in Iraq was basically about, and that makes sense because there's a gauzy veil of imposed ignorance and a practiced sleight-of-hand propaganda enveloping the area and the subsequent events. My limited understanding of it follows.

      The neocon Iraqi power play was about blowing up a regional nation-state in order to sow chaos and destruction in the region. The neocons wanted to sow chaos and destruction in the region, thereby setting the various indigenous power groupings in the region against one another, in order to overall weaken the region and ultimately make it more vulnerable than ever to neocon machinations and interests.

      One short-term result of this was the U.S. having to shed some immediate sense of control over the regional players, but this is only a stage. At the same time U.S. influence is being shunned or downplayed by most of the regional leaders - because they and their populations see more clearly than ever that the U.S. is not a real ally but a destructive powerbroker - new regional power alliances are being nascently formed within the region and with the U.S., with both tacit and active U.S. assistance and approval.

      And as some of these new and growing alliances will predominate someday, the U.S. influence with them will again grow and they will become first policy allies and eventually become the new regional power alliances with which the U.S. will wield as much or more control as prior to Bush-Cheney-neocon destruction of Iraq (Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, et al). It will be a brand new ballgame but with some of the same teams and some new ones, but, crucially, with the same rules.

      This was the intention, even before 9/11, because Bush-Cheney-neocons realized there was already underway a large regional movement away from U.S. hegemony. So Bush-Cheney-neocons acted to forestall this, like experienced forest firefighters would do in the face of a coming conflagration, by intentionally setting buffer and other directionalizing fires to direct the conflagration against itself, causing it to burn itself out quicker than it would have otherwise and to minimize the effect the coming regional conflagration would have on U.S. hegemony.

     That the governing neocons
committed horrendous mass-murder international war crimes in the process was of no concern to these self-righteous and self-interested narcissistic personality disorders.

     T
his neocon strategy is now in its waiting phase, while the U.S. still feeds the buffer and other directionalizing fires with enough fuel and assistance to hopefully manage the conflagration. Managing a conflagration is not a guaranteed success though, but the empire is very patient when it comes to knowing and getting what it wants. Sitting atop possibly the hugest pile of money, influence, and power in recorded history, as well as with much successful ancient and modern historical precedent, the empire has a better view of the possibilities and acts accordingly in exceeding self-interest.

      Julius Caesar used basically the same strategy against the many tribes and their leaders in Gaul and against the Germanic peoples of the time [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commentarii_de_Bello_Gallico]. It's a tried-and-true power play on a huge scale, part divide-and-conquer and part anarchy-management with favors and scheming.

      The neocons actually began this current 'Grand Chessboard' strategy [http://www.amazon.com/The-Grand-Chessboard-Geostrategic-Imperatives/dp/0465027261, by national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski] in the late 1970s under President Carter, when, along with the House of Saud, they began organizing extremist religionists in Pakistan from throughout South Central and Near East Asia to threaten the Soviet Union's influence over its own majority-Muslim border republics. This goaded the Soviet Union to invade Afghanistan to prevent its becoming an armed jihadist staging area on the Soviet Union's vulnerable southern border.

      In other words, anti-Soviet neocons, with largely meta economic interests in mind even then, and with their Cold War mindset and moral bankruptcy, set this Middle Eastern fire a long time ago. Though exactly how the fire would spread was not specifically predictable, its general nature and direction would prove very useful and remains so to neocon goals, which are to further secure by hook or crook the economic realm for U.S. energy producers and their guiding energy and military-armament political controllers back in the U.S.

      That's a primary reason why U.S. presidential elections and Congressional elections are so tightly scripted and controlled: There must not be room for independent thought or action, or the neocon, energy, and armaments interests might have to cede some power. This is an effective 'prevent defense', to borrow an American defensive football term, and it's a continual if not eternal desperate all-or-nothing best-defense-is-a-good-offense strategy.

      So now that those U.S.- and its ally Saudi-created forces that goaded the Soviets into invading Afghanistan are now at work furthering chaos and U.S. and Saudi influence in the nearer Middle East region, seemingly at cross-purposes to neocon interests, ultimately they're actually working for neocon interests. These forces are the buffer and other directionalizing fires that the neocons and the Saudis are content to allow to burn out as planned, leaving the region firmly under neocon control.

    
It's a gamble, to be sure, but the odds of its evil success are much better than even, even at the cost of an uber-destructive regional war between Iranian influence and Saudi Arabian influence. It's a war of gradualism and tentative allegiances in the meanwhile.

     And if the U.S. finds itself someday seeming to side with Iran more than with Saudi Arabia, temporarily or not, then we shall all innately understand that we've always been at war alongside our ally East Persian Gulf Asia and against our enemy West Persian Gulf Asia. It all depends on the fires and the prevailing winds.

Friday, May 8, 2015



















After Me!

I
just don't know which way to go
I just can't think here on the brink
am I deranged or mad
if so I'm glad
don't know what else could feel so bad

The paranoids are after me
they want me in their paranoid society
if I can't refuse what would I lose
I mean what's so great about my sanity

But you can have fun out on the run
no you can't stay here they're much too near
can you call a friend
better think again
you never ever know where they have been

The paranoids are onto me
they'll want you too (if you follow me)
so don't act coy or get annoyed
and above all don't get paranoid

Have you got heart and think you're smart
been in good cheer looking in the mirror
cause you can count
on their amount
Uh Oh what happened to my bank account

The interest rate is killing me
do I have to stay in this economy
and if I live under some bridge
can the paranoids still raid my fridge

Oh it gets too expensive living on the defensive
and you can't have quiet unless you buy it
you may just laugh
but I hope you see
that the paranoids are really truly after me

The paranoids are really into me
they'll chase me through infinity
they like my tone hey I'm in their zone
and when I die they'll simply make a clone
The paranoids are
afterDelivery status notification (Failure)
delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:
alt.conspiracy.us
                               
                                      Turtle Mother

                        We Are Her Sisters and Brothers

     In the photo, I see such a stalwart gal, despite the presence of its paparazzo audience, depositing its progeny into the uncertain future.  A very handsome mother she is too.  The land is green there, I note, lush, thick with dewy grass.  Very fertile soil.  So different than the thin limey dust barely alive leaf, pebble, twig and insect shell detritus of far west Austin soil where I live over the limestone of the Balcones Fault.  I have to use a pickaxe to break in.

     Yet, the creek-lagoon turtles (species unknown to me, and to them) who ply confluent Lake Austin manage to dig their nest holes here over the Fault and lay their eggs with focused effort and only small paddles and short claws with the relentless ability of a little steam shovel.  I've seen them many times in various stages - near water's edge and deep into the woods across hard roads, and in transit either way - digging, scooping, mostly using back legs, sometimes their snouts (they fill back in the holes with front legs too), sitting at the slanted upward angle headfirst, their tailsides dipped into the dug hole.

     I'm not sure I've seen the actual laying (no thrust and retraction noticed), but they are indeed steadfastly resolved to stay in place and let me be the more transient one once she'd dug the thing and begun the laying, or the waiting to lay (as opposed to laying in wait).  Sometimes after seeing them and allowing them their privacy, I'll come back later to an empty open hole because, I think, she had been 'discovered' and felt that the spot would no longer be secure, or maybe the laying had been physically thwarted by the stress of having uninvited company.

     Most fascinating and known to me is that their nests are often dug right into the flat, rock-hard walking path above and along the lagoon (cypress-lined along with various stakeholding flowering 'weeds' [who you calling weed?], Virginia Creeper [unfortunately renamed American Ivy; what could be a better name for ivy than Creeper?], what's called cleavers, junipers mistakenly called cedar, irrepressible ligustrum and nandina, Mexican redbud, diminutive oaks, mistflower bush, Turk's Cap, and whatever else has dropped and floated onto and washed down the slope onto the flatter ground throughout the years).

     Yet turtle releases a modicum of preserved water, thereby muddying the top dirt layer, and soon she sits, either to abandon a beautiful perfect little hole, or a partially dug one, or, best for her and me, I return much later in the day or evening, or at least a day later, and, despite knowing exactly where her spot had been, for the life of me I can't spot where it was.  The cementing job has so perfectly camouflaged the nest that if it has completely dried from the original mud work, it's practically impossible to spot.

     Only months later when the hole is plowed from below upward and opened by the little ones having first broken through their shells (releasing fluid in the process to aid digging through hardened dirt) can that be determined, unless some sharp-sniffing raccoon, armadillo, or possum has happened by and dug it up prematurely, which sadly but business-like does happen from time to time.

     But when Mother Turtle has been extra lucky, then there is her hole empty but for some crumbled dirt and about 10 to 12 empty soft but fibrous and tough opened curled and folded-over oblong egg shells, bisected roughly longitudinally, in and around the hole.  There is no proud mother waiting nearby, of course.  She is going about her present business in the creek or lagoon or far away down the lake, and often I wonder if by sheer chance or some more programmed odds there will be a reunion, especially when I see a full-size turtle swimming by with a much smaller one trailing only very slightly behind, or stopping together to sun their hopeful heads, before moving on or diving, which I see often, and sunning on logs together comfortably, and allied.

     So there has now been another Spring, The Spring of the Eternal Turtle, Queen of Turtle Island, and however uncertain the future is, it's tellingly likely there will be Turtles in it long after we may be gone.  Nature blesses Herself as She can, and we're all the Blessed Beneficiaries.  We can remember that and work to live by it and allow such Sacred Attunement and Relational Respect to become our First-Nature.

     I also wonder what keeps Turtle going, and what She really stands on, and where, as she holds up The World.  I believe She stands over her completed perfect nest as she readies to return to the creek and let The Future take care of Itself.


                                                                   Mother and daughter