Thoughts and Observations Following the Cataclysm
of Sept 11th 2001 (2) November 2001
11th November 2001> Britain is to be placed by Home Secretary David Blunkett under a state of emergency....
Welcome to the land of the free, the home of the brave.....
"Rule Britannia ! Britannia rules the waves !
Britons never, never, never, shall be slaves....""One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie."And you better believe that the name of that One Ring is NOT Al-Qaida.
I went to the Remembrance Day commemoration service today at the
cenotaph in our local park at 11 am as I do every year. There were about 500
people there. It's been getting bigger every year recently. There's
always a march past of veterans and other military groups. Before and
after the 2 minutes' silence, a group of army cadets always fire a
volley of shots. This year they did not, and I wondered why. Was it
because it was considered somehow inappropriate to fire shots after Sept
11th or with a "war" going on, although the British navy has been firing
cruise missiles at Afghanistan, and it was confirmed for the first time
today (11.11. - the timing, the timing) by the government that British
soldiers ARE already engaged in Afghanistan ? The vicar spoke more of
the events of Sept 11th than he did about the two world wars, but then
the Head of the Church of England declared last week that this is a
"just war" (it took him long enough to make up his mind; again the
timing - just a few days before Remembrance Day. So we don't fire shots
because it might upset people under the present circumstances, but
meanwhile we bomb and blast another miserable country as we British have
been doing throughout the centuries, declaring that this is "a war for
civilisation". What better example of the culture of empty phrases [and
empty gestures] in the age of economic imperialism could there be ?*************************************************************
11th November 2001
I watched the film "Platoon" again recently, not having seen it for many
years. At one point the character Elias, a long-serving US soldier in
Vietnam, played by Willem Dafoe, says: "We've been kicking other
people's asses for so long, I figure it's time we got ours kicked."
Inelegant, but to the point: what goes round, comes around.I feel that the more one puts Bin Laden and Islamism in the same box as
Hitler and Nazism, then not only is one in danger of missing the
essentially individual characteristics of historical circumstances, not
to mention those of personal karma, but also the more one is justifying
ANY means to deal with the situation. The more one sees things in terms
of a simplistic good-evil dualism as Bush the Leader and Blair the
Cheerleader are doing tends in the direction of the argument that evil
must just be eradicated - like a bacillus, which was just how Hitler
viewed the Jews; just wipe them out and then we'll be OK. But evil is to
be transformed, not eradicated; indeed, it can never be eradicated, as
Bush seems to think. There are plenty in the English-speaking world,
who, making no essential distinction between Germany in WW1 and WW2,
argue that the poison in German culture that was not burned out in 1918
was only utterly destroyed in 1945 by superviolence, and that that is
what "we" need to do now with Bin Laden, Al-Qaida, and with Muslim fundamentalism.'Liberals' in the West, wringing their hands, say: "we don't like the bombing,
but what else can we do? We'll make it better once the Taliban have been
defeated, but we must smash them first, Ramadan or no Ramadan. We'll
give the Afghans a moderate regime and set them on the path to the
righteousness of our own civilisation....sorry, what was that you said
about oil, Jerusalem and Palestine ? Can we talk about that later ?"***************************************************************
16th November 2001
Breathe again friends ! The global forces of law and order aka The Royal
Marines (the red berets) have landed in Afghanistan to sort things out
and do what the Redcoats so signally failed to do in 1879 - pacify and
conquer the Afghans. (the military disaster of that year by the way was
the consequence of the forward policy of Lord Lytton, first Viceroy of
India, son of politician and occultist Bulwer Lytton and appointed in 1876 by his
father's friend Disraeli, then Prime Minister).Following on from Oxford historian Niall Ferguson calling a spade a spade about
imperialism - he urged America to go for a policy of formal empire
instead of "informal empire", in order to protect the world economy, I have
just heard Charles Hayman of "Jane's World Armies" on BBC radio
news saying words to the effect: "although it's not PC to say this but with
regard to failed states notably the failed states in Africa, we need
the western powers to set up what might be called neo-colonialist or
post-imperial arrangements". I can't quote all his words, but he did
say the words in italics. Watch out for more utterances of this type
surfacing in Anglo-American and western media.Blair has just made another world order speech in which he said that
after the end of the Cold War, there was a chance to build a New World
Order but that it was only words; now we have a second chance really to
do it, and that the international community (aka US-UK) must take a lead
in this to rebuild and reform the institutions set up after 1945 (UN,
World Bank, IMF, GATT=WTO etc).************************************************************
17th November 2001
One can see Gautama Buddha as a reformer of Indian spirituality;
he emerged out of that religious and cultural context. In the Middle
Ages, Islamic armies - out of the Eurasian religious "centre", so to speak, thus
attacked, and created not a little havoc in, both the lands to the West
(Europe) and East (India) of it. This year, out of the "Islamic" world,
come twin attacks on two "twin" symbols which stand in polar relationship
to each other: the Bamiyan Buddhas, symbol of release from this world,
and the Twin Towers, symbol of attachment to the material goods of
this world. Furthermore, trade was always something that linked East
and West, while Mani and his religion passed betwen East and West
along the trade routes.Is there a parallelism between the Bamiyan Buddhas and the Twin Towers ?
What is one to make of these gestures ? Alexander passed through most of
the now Muslim lands affected today. His spirit or impulse, questions of
imperialism, East and West, seems somehow bound up with events today.***********************************************************
17th November 2001Whatever the unpopularities of his first 9 months in office, G.W. Bush was a
President that had the clout of almost the entire oil industry behind him, not to
mention the constellation of other economic forces connected to his father. Then he was surrounded,
indeed handled, by a very tough team, including a number of his father's
key advisers. During those first 9 months, he and they showed very
little sign at all of heeding either American or global opinion on major
issues such as Kyoto, Star Wars II etc, and once the election result was
confirmed and Bush sworn in, Gore has been nowhere in sight. The perhaps
most oligarchical and plutocratic elitist US administration since
McKinley's a hundred years ago was in the saddle, ready to ride
roughshod over all and sundry. The "opinion" or "will" of the American
people would have counted for nothing. Indeed, I'm not sure that it ever
has counted for anything when it comes to serious foreign policy issues vital to the
elite's interests - with the possible exception of Vietnam in 1967-73,
where large numbers of American voters were personally affected.
and so many American lives directly impacted, and also, I believe,
that that period of resistance to the Vietnam War happened after the
beginning of the second wave of the Etheric Christ's activity which
commenced in 1966. Thirdly, that resistance was fired by the idealism
of a generation that had descended from the spiritual world during WW2
and in the years of its aftermath - those were special circumstances.
They were circumstances that were something other than what can be
called "the will of the American people", which, arguably, is something
that has been present since 1776.This war has been their way of closing what I believe to
have been the the three year window of opportunity that opened c.1999 -
the third wave of the Etheric Christ impulse. They closed the second
window - 1966-69 - by, amongst other things, drenching the young via big
business with the unholy trinity of sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll and
seeding student politics with agents provocateurs. I note that Ken Kesey
has just died. 33 years ago he and Leary also played their part in the
closing of that window with their gospel of hedonism and the acid-trip.I appreciate that local democracy traditions are probably much stronger
in the US than in Britain, where we have a tradition of deferring to the
local bigwig, the nob up at the big house, and that to say that "the
will of the American people counts for little" goes against the grain of
the "can-do" optimistic American spirit. It smacks of a cynical,
pessimistic, Old World view of life and politics. But from de Tocqueville
onwards (and maybe before), there have been many observers of the
American political scene (including of course Col. House) who have
despaired of the degree to which American elites have overpowered the
wishes of the people. (House, of course was a member of the elite who
simply wished to overpower the wishes of the people in a different sort of way,
namely through crypto-fascist dictatorship as detailed in his novel
Philip Dru - Adminstrator of 1912). Regrettably, the spirit of
European aristocracy and oligarchy is - along with the democratic can-do
spirit - also alive and well in the US, having crossed the Atlantic a
long time ago. Indeed one might argue it's been there since the very
first colony at Jamestown and has been battling it out with the rising
tide of democracy ever since. The can-do, optimistic, democratic spirit
is the "true" America, and indeed, the true modern world (in fact the
anti-oligarchical spirit BEGAN in Europe with the Reformation),
but to believe that it actually has power over the spirit of oligarchy
when it comes to MAJOR issues of foreign policy is not to my mind
realistic. We all have a LONG way to go there before oligarchy is
dethroned in the realm of foreign policyThe same is true for that other "beacon of democracy" - the UK. When the
proverbial hits the fan, public opinion counts for nothing; the
oligarchs just go ahead and do what they want, usually disguising it
with some fine-sounding words to smokescreen Joe Public. 'Twas true in
1898/9, 1914 and 1941; 'tis still true today.
How fast things turn around in Medialand ! I watched the mid-90s movie
"Seven" last night. It painted a picture of New York as
pretty close to hell on earth, obsessed with the 7 deadly sins, and
suggested that many non-New Yorkers agreed, yet now we're told that New
York is the bravest, most heroic, most virtuous and laudable city on
the planet. Let's hope it stays that way and returneth not to perdition.*************************************************************
29th May 2002
Some quotes from "The Grand Chessboard - American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives" by Zbigniew Brzezinski ( Basic Books, 1997)
"The last decade of the twentieth century has witnessed a tectonic shift in world affairs. For the first time ever, a non-Eurasian power has emerged not only as a key arbiter of Eurasian power relations but also as the world's paramount power. The defeat and collapse of the Soviet Union was the final step in the rapid
ascendance of a Western Hemisphere power, the United States, as the sole and, indeed, the first truly global power...""Two basic steps are thus required: first, to identify the geostrategically dynamic Eurasian states that have the power to cause a potentially important shift in the international distribution of power and to decipher the central external goals of their respective political elites and the likely consequences of their seeking to attain them;... second, to formulate specific U.S. policies to offset, co-opt, and/or control the above..." (p. 40)
Note the first two lines of the next section. :
"...To put it in a terminology that harkens back to the more brutal age of ancient empires, the three grand
imperatives of imperial geostrategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the
vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together." (p.40)- "Henceforth, the United States may have to determine how to cope with regional coalitions that seek to push America out of Eurasia, thereby threatening America's status as a global power." (p.55)
- "America is now the only global superpower, and Eurasia is the globe's central arena. Hence, what happens to the distribution of power on the Eurasian continent will be of decisive importance to America's global primacy and to America's historical legacy." (p.194)
- "That puts a premium on maneuver and manipulation in order to prevent the emergence of a hostile
coalition that could eventually seek to challenge America's primacy..." (p. 198)- "The most immediate task is to make certain that no state or combination of states gains the capacity to
expel the United States from Eurasia or even to diminish significantly its decisive arbitration role." (p. 198)And now two quotes that seem particularly relevant in view of 11th September 2001:
"The attitude of the American public toward the external projection of American power has been much more ambivalent. The public supported America's engagement in World War II largely because of the shock effect of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor." (pp 24-5)
"Moreover, as America becomes an increasingly multi-cultural society, it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy issues, except in the circumstance of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat." (p. 211)
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This page was created 13th Nov 2001
Last updated : 29th May 2002
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