The Thirty Year Wars  

Crikey's opening note today put the civilian death toll in Lebanon in perspective - things are far worse in Iraq even if it isn't getting anywhere near the same media attention.

Events in Lebanon are terrible. Hundreds of innocent civilians are dead. The daily media images are horrific. It's time for the US government to use its muscle to enforce a ceasefire.

Agreed. But in another corner of the Middle East the US is using its muscle – with these results:

January: 1,778 civilian deaths
February: 2,165 civilian deaths
March: 2,378 civilian deaths
April: 2,284 civilian deaths
May: 2,669 civilian deaths
June: 3,149 civilian deaths

Thousands of civilian deaths every month – 14,423 in the first half of the year – according to United Nations figures.

If Lebanon is bad, Iraq is a hundred times worse. Literally.

Past Peak notes there is speculation in Israel that the US is encouraging the Israelis to attack Syria.

Josh Marshall links to an article in today's Jerusalem Post:

[Israeli] Defense officials told the Post last week that they were receiving indications from the United States that the US would be interested in seeing Israel attack Syria.

He goes on to say:

[T]here do appear to be forces in Washington — seemingly the stronger ones, with Rice just a facade — who see this whole thing as an opportunity for a grand call of double or nothing to get out of the disaster they've created in the region. Go into Syria, maybe Iran. Try to roll the table once and for all. No failed war that a new war can't solve.

That's my fear as well, that the Bush/Cheney regime has painted itself into such a desperate corner that doubling down may seem, as Billmon put it a few months back, "like the only move left on the board." Billmon:

What we are witnessing...may be an example of what the Germans call the flucht nach vorne – the "flight forward." This refers to a situation in which an individual or institution seeks a way out of a crisis by becoming ever more daring and aggressive (or, as the White House propaganda department might put it: "bold") A familar analogy is the gambler in Vegas, who tries to get out of a hole by doubling down on each successive bet.

Classic historical examples of the flucht nach vornes include Napoleon's attempt to break the long stalemate with Britain by invading Russia, the decision of the Deep South slaveholding states to secede from the Union after Lincoln's election, and Milosevic's bid to create a "greater Serbia" after Yugoslavia fell apart.

As these examples suggest, flights forward usually don't end well — just as relatively few gamblers emerge from a doubling-down spree with their shirts still on their backs.

PeakOil.com points to an article on the three energy wars.

"We are practically in an energy war. The price of a barrel of petrol has multiplied threefold" (in the last two years), the French Finance Minister Thierry Breton told Europe 1 radio station on July 25.

Contrary to the contention of the French minister, the world in fact is locked in three energy wars, not one: a price war, an investment and deals war, and a geopolitical war.

The first war, which Breton talked about, is economic due to the factors of supply and demand. Prices soared due to a 'sudden' demand for oil, resulting from the strong economic growth in India, China and Brazil at a time when sustainable growth in the US continues without stopping or slowing down. Meanwhile, the number of the widespread and developed refineries that can process heavy high-sulfur oil has declined. The oil-exporting countries have been producing at almost full capacity for the past three years in order to fix prices. ...

The second war is on oil and gas investment deals. In Latin America, agreements are reconsidered and reneged under the pretext that the previous contracts were unfair to the oil producers. In Russia, there is an overt conflict with the European countries that try to have a share in Russia's oil industry. ...

The third war is armed conflicts within the oil-producing countries, not only in the Middle East but also in Nigeria. ...

The BBC reports on an environmental crisis in Lebanon, after an oil slick was caused after a power station was bombed (presumably a Hezbollah hangout, along with Beirut airport and the highway to Syria).

The United Nations Environment Programme (Unep) has expressed its "grave concern" about oil pollution in Lebanese coastal waters.

An oil slick caused by Israeli bombing of the Jiyyeh power station now covers 80km (50 miles) of coast. Local environmental groups describe the slick as an "environmental disaster".

Almost as much oil may have entered the water as during the 1989 Exxon Valdez tanker incident in Alaska, which led to widespread ecological damage. The UN and other international organisations are assisting the Lebanese government as it attempts to contain thousands of tonnes of oil.

In spite of continuing high oil prices my energy portfolio has been a dog lately, and todays plunge in Oil Search shares made me wonder what was up with them in particular - which I soon discovered was due to a state of emergency being declared in Papua New Guinea. It seems the "curse of gas" is now afflicting the southern highlands.

Soldiers and police are being sent to PNG's Southern Highlands after a state of emergency was declared to restore law and order in the resources-rich but graft-ridden province.

Prime Minister Michael Somare imposed emergency rule on Tuesday to counter an "appalling security situation and the general lack of public order and administration" in the region, which is to supply natural gas for a planned pipeline from PNG to Queensland.

The emergency provisions received strong support in parliament, except from Southern Highlands Governor Hami Yawari who was a lone figure of dissent denying his province was in crisis. He has long been accused of giving cash handouts while public services deteriorated.

Yawari, who like other provincial governors sits in PNG's national parliament, is being investigated by PNG's public prosecutor over alleged theft of government funds. He recently said the province's lucrative energy projects could be threatened if the central government interfered in his administration.

The Southern Highlands is infamous for gun violence with one study has put the number of illegal weapons in the province at more than 2,000.

Petroleum and Energy Minister Moi Avei said the Southern Highlands' energy wealth did a great deal to sustain PNG's economy but the province had little to show for it in terms of public services for its people.

Kofi Annan is propsoing that a large UN peacekeeping force be sent to Darfur in southern Sudan.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has proposed a large, highly mobile peacekeeping force for Sudan's Darfur region, numbering up to 24,000 troops and international police officers.

The requirements for the force, which would surpass the 17,500-strong UN force in the Democratic Republic of Congo as the largest UN peacekeeping mission, were outlined in a report to the UN Security Council, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters.

Sudan's government has yet to approve deployment of a UN force to succeed a smaller and under-equipped African Union force of about 7,700 soldiers and civilian police.

Crooked Timber points to an article about the discovery of oil off Cuba.

Some facts about America's trade embargo with Cuba:

- It's been U.S. policy since 1961.

- It has yet to loosen Fidel Castro's grip on power.

- It has cost America little strategically or economically.

Until now, that is.

From here on out, say a growing chorus of experts, America will pay a price for maintaining its 45-year trade ban with the communist nation _ a strategic and economic price that will have negative repercussions for the United States in the decades to come.

What has changed the equation?

Oil.

To be more specific, recent, sizable discoveries of it in the North Cuba Basin _ deep-water fields that have already drawn the interest of companies from China, India, Norway, Spain, Canada, Venezuela and Brazil.

Canada's CBC has run a documentary on a post peak trial run - Cuba: The Accidental Revolution, which showed that some concerns about agriculture with less availability of pesticides and fertiliser may be unfounded (which makes me wonder why I pay more for my organic food).

Cuba:The Accidental Revolution (Part 1), examines Cuba's response to the food crisis created by the collapse of the Soviet Bloc in 1989. At one time Cuba's agrarian culture was as conventional as the rest of the world. It experienced its first “Green Revolution” when Russia was supplying Cuba with chemical and mechanical “inputs.” However, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 ended all of that, and almost overnight threw Cuba's whole economic system into crisis. Factories closed, food supplies plummeted. Within a year the country had lost over 80% of its foreign trade. With the loss of their export markets and the foreign exchange to pay for imports, Cuba was unable to feed its population and the country was thrown into a crisis. The average daily caloric intake of Cubans dropped by a third.

Without fertilizer and pesticides, Cubans turned to organic methods. Without fuel and machinery parts, Cubans turned to oxen. Without fuel to transport food, Cubans started to grow food in the cities where it is consumed. Urban gardens were established in vacant lots, school playgrounds, patios and back yards. As a result Cuba created the largest program in sustainable agriculture ever undertaken. By 1999 Cuba's agricultural production had recovered and in some cases reached historic levels.

In Cuba: The Accidental Revolution (Part 2) we learn that the country has been blockaded since 1961, but today Cuba has the highest quality of life in the region, the highest life expectancy, and one of the highest literacy rates in all of Latin America.

With the collapse of the Soviet Bloc, Cuba lost the foreign exchange needed to pay for expensive drugs and medicines. As a result, much of Cuba's medicine today is based on medicinal plants. These are grown on farms, processed in small labs and made available to patients through an extensive network of medical clinics. Today Cuba's advances in alternative medicine could have important consequences for other countries around the world.

While I've been having a break from posting I did manage to catch up on a few other bits of media that I hadn't had time for. Robert Newman's anarchist stand up comedy act on "The History of Oil" (video) was much better than I imagined.

A lot of people have been asking where they can find more information about the role of Iraq in WW1 - Robert says:

"It's mentioned in War Plan Iraq by Milan Rai (Verso) also by John Pilger in his writings on Iraq (I think Distant Voices), and probably it's in Robert Fisk's mighty tome The Great War For Civilization. Though I haven't read that yet. There's a couple of pages about it in Al Morton's A People's History of England. If you click on Babylon Railways on the net you can get interesting source stuff.

I found some first person accounts of British soldiers stationed in the Middle East between 14-20 on the interweb. I'd give you the co-ordinates but you've got Google - hope that doesn't mean that you just end up bumping into each other."

I also finally got around to watching Syriana, which I (unlike some reviewers) found both realistic and entertaining. And I remain confused why anyone couldn't follow the plot - maybe I'm a bit too immersed in the subject matter on a day to day basis...

By coincidence, I also found myself watching Steven Spielberg's "Munich" last weekend, which I quite liked. Having paid no attention when the movie came out, I was vaguely expecting a Hollywood version of "One Day In September" (an excellent documentary on the events in Munich, though maybe not what people outraged by more current events are looking for - I vaguely recall the Germans coming off as just as much the villains of the piece as the Black Septemeber terrorists). Instead it was actually a fairly balanced piece that avoids taking sides, preferring to simply demonstrate what a mess the situation is.

The ABC's "Foreign Correspondent" had some interesting segments on tonight, including a look at the US nuclear power industry, a piece from Baghdad blogger Salam Pax and a look at the comeback of the green fairy (and its a fairy you'd do well to be wary of)...

With Opposition Leader Kim Beazley seeking to change Labor policy on uranium mining and Prime Minister John Howard talking up the prospects of a uranium enrichment industry in Australia, Washington correspondent Tracy Bowden looks at one of the drivers of Australian policy, namely the revival of the nuclear power industry in the United States.

As oil prices rocket, energy hungry America is looking for alternatives – and the one getting the biggest push, financially and politically, is nuclear power.

When the nuclear power plant at Three Mile Island came close to meltdown in 1979 it shattered public confidence in the industry. But all that’s likely to change. The nuclear industry has a big booster in President George W. Bush. He asserts: “Nuclear power is abundant and affordable. Nuclear power helps us protect the environment. And nuclear power is safe.“

Bowden visits Port Gibson, Mississippi, which has a nuclear power station that many local residents already worry about, and where the operating company is planning to build a new one.

She also looks at the campaign to close down the Indian Point nuclear plant in New York state. The September 11 commission found that Al Qaeda had investigated nuclear power plants as possible targets. In fact when the hijacked planes flew to New York, they also flew directly over the Indian Point Power Plant in upstate New York. If it had been the target then what would have happened to the 20 million people living in the area?

Besides spending a bit of time sitting in front of the tube, I also managed to finish off Leigh and Baigeant's history of Hermeticism, "The Elixir and the Stone". For those who don't recognise the names, these are the guys who wrote "Holy Blood, Holy Grail", which is often described as the source of most of the material used in Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code". From Amazon's review (another reader callis it "Quite interesting but painful to read", which I'd largely agree with).

Since the seventeenth century, science has been contending with philosophy, organised religion and the arts for domination over Western civilisation and society. By the middle of the twentieth century, the battle appeared to be won; scientific rationalism and scepticism were triumphant. Yet in the last few decades a strong and potent counter-current has emerged. One manifestation of this has been the so-called occult revival.

In "The Elixir and the Stone", Baigent and Leigh argue that this occult revival - and indeed the entire revolution in attitudes which has taken place recently - owes a profound debt to Hermeticism, a body of esoteric teaching, which flourished in Alexandria two thousand years ago and which then went underground. The authors trace the history of this intriguing and all-encompassing philosophy - which has much in common with contemporary holistic thought - charting its origin in the Egyptian mysteries, and demonstrating how it continued to exercise enormous influence through the magicians and magic of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

Many remarkable characters feature in the narrative, including the Franciscan friar Roger Bacon and the Elizabethan magus John Dee; prototype of Shakespeare's "Prospero" in "The Tempest", but he central figure that emerges is that of Faust himself - one of the defining myths of Western civilisation. "The Elixir and the Stone" is a remarkably rich and ambitious book that adds up to a little short of an alternative history of the intellectual world. Perhaps for the first time, it puts into their true context those shadowy alchemists and magicians who have haunted the imaginations of people for centuries. Moreover, it offers a way of looking at the world that is in one sense 'alternative', but, in another, deeply historical.

In spite of the bad writing and less than objective views the authors seem to have about hermeticism (I'm largely ignorant about religion but I am more than a bit interested in history - so the slightly proselytising style got on my nerves) I found quite a few parts of the book intriguing. There was one passage in a section called "The Fragmentation of Reality", which is largely a lament about modern science turning away from what they view as its roots in hermeticism (which could be broadly defined as medieval medicine, alchemy, numerology, astrology and the like), which resonated a little with my subject matter here (I think the "everything is connected" concept is a Buddhist one as well, but I'm not planning on making this an exercise in comparitive religion, so I won't go down that path tonight).

Hermeticism thought had posited an interrelationship and interconnectedness of all things - so that pulling a thread at one point in the fabric of reality might cause something to tauten, or to unravel, somewhere else. ... In the analogous structures of the atom and the solar system, nuclear physics also found a species of confirmation for the old Hermetic doctrine of macrocosm and microcosm. There can be few serious-minded science students who did not at some time wonder, even if only idly, whether each atom might not in itself constitute an entire solar system - and whether the solar system we inhabit might perhaps be a single atom in some immensely vaster creation. Such thinking is, in itself, characteristically Hermetic.

Quite apart from such vertiginous speculation, modern science - without, of course, calling it by it name or acknowledging its source - has, in effect, accepted the Mermetic principle of interconnectedness. The concept of an interconnected microcosm and macrocosm may, in its literal sense, be too metaphysical for scientific empiricism; but the principle of interconnectedness may not be disputed.

Every schoolchild learns, for instance, of the cycles of evaporation, and precipitation, and of growth and decay. Few informed people today can be ignorant of the relevance to their own lives of the ostensibly remote Brazilian rain forests. Environmental studies confront us daily with the need to recognise our planet as a living and ultimately threatened organism, the brutalization of which, however distant, will have repercussions on our own existance.

It is now generally appreciated that the resources of the earth are not infinite, but limited, and that we have come precariously close to exhausting them.

It is also generally appreciated that our smallest acts of can have consequences of catastrophic, even apocalyptic, magnitude - an appliation of chaos theory's "butterfly effect".

An aerosol with CFC squirted in the privacy of one's bathroom will produce effects radiating out to the ozone layer. A bonfire of autumn leaves in the garden will contribute to global warming. the toxins with which we pollute our surroundings will eventually return to us in the food we eat, the water we drink, the air we breathe.

As the Hermeticists of ancient Alexandria insisted, we are interdependent with the natural world and an inseperable part of it.

While the picture painted of Hermeticism is largely benign, there are a lot of intersections with the tinfoil world. Conspiracy theorists often point at The Eye of Horus and its symbolic descendents on the US dollar note and the logos of a lot of western intelligence agencies, for example (if the book is correct, it seems the modern day intelligence service had its genesis in the hermeticists like John Dee of Elizabethan England).

A lot of this tinfoil theorising seems to be from the traditional right wing tinfoil world, with its paranoia about masonic / zionist / communist conspiracies (presumably people like Barry Goldwater and Pat Robertson are the most well known exponents of this traditional sort of tinfoil, from my limited understanding of it) - but it also seems to be fairly widespread in left wing tinfoil mythology as well (I've seen some 911 theorists point at the dates of all the terrorist bombings they consider "false flag" operations - 9/11, 7/7, 3/11 etc - as evidence of some sort of numerology being practiced, along with other theories about the significance of Bush reading "My Pet Goat" during 9/11 (presumably some sort of reference to Satan or other ancient goat gods).

There is one section of the book called "The Rise of Secret Societies" which I was hoping might shed a little light on the origins of some of this madness, but it ended generating more questiosn than answers.

The metamorphosis of medieval magi and alchemists from solitary practitioners to more politicised orders like the Rosicrucians (and later the Freemasons) is described in some depth, but the Thirty Years War in Europe (largely the Catholic world trying to bring rebellious Protestant countries - some of which sheltered hermiticism and some which were apparently run by the Rosicrucians - back into line as part of the counter reformation) sent these orders and their descendents underground and they just give a laundry list of esoteric, and largely dubious, orders which came along later - including the Illuminati and Aleister Crowley / the OTO / Order of the Golden Dawn which tend to ring lots of tinfoil bells, along with various bizarre German sects that were part of Third Reich mysticism like the Order of the New Templars and the Thule Gesellschaft.

The Thirty Years War itself was apparently an unparalleled disaster for Europe (something like a third of the German population perished during the wars) and the Enlightenment came along shortly afterwards (presumably religion was out of favour after a few decades of jihad) which put paid to political Hermeticism (though the authors claim the underground forms contributed to the French and Russian revolutions - presumably the American one as well, though they don't mention it - along with the rise of the Nazis).

One of the more curious sections was one of the closing chapters which looked at hermeticism and the development of music, which ended up with a fairly long description of the Altamont debacle at the end of the 1960's. While this was before my time, I vaguely recall Hunter S Thompson mentioning it occasionally in his books, so I was intrigued by how much space they devoted to describing the event - portraying the Rolling Stones as Faustian figures who had lost control of the forces they had conjured up (4 people died, one killed in front of the stage during the concert by the Hells Angels, who were providing "security" for the event).

A documentary was made on the whole thing called "Gimme Shelter" which I should watch some time (some traditionalist tinfoil sites describe the movie as "the first snuff film" and the death of the guy in front of stage as "human sacrifice").

Given the annoyance Leigh and Baigeant have caused the Catholic church with their theories about Christ and the Merovingians, it does seem that there is some weird religious jockeying going on (and while, as an athiest, I tend to distrust organised religion - I tend to distrust secret societies even more).

While I'm on a historical tinfoil track, I might as well throw in this comment from "Iridescent Cuttlefish" from a recent thread on RI, which looked at an earlier bout of jockeying between the Catholics and the Nazis (I'll leave the topic of cooperation between the two groups on other fronts alone) amongst a whole lot of other stuff - the propaganda aspects are interesting though I haven't got a clue how much there is to it all.

Shrubageddon (and the quiet little post on nanotech riding to the rescue) reminded me of my own overarching POV--that 9/11 and the imperial adventures in the Middle East are basically pretexts and diversions in late-stage capitalism’s final assault/last gasp before the façade maintained by technological suppression and artificial scarcity crumbles--which somewhat escaped my focus as I read Jeff’s water hijinks post, because something else was ‘clicking’ for me. It involves, as S intimated, quite a few of the ideas running through the recent threads here (the Vatican pedophilia cover-up, the issue of fake antisemitism, etc) as well as my own current reading. It’s actually only a sort of fuzzy epiphany, as it raises more questions than it answers, and yet something feels vaguely right about it.

Here’s how it happened: I’m plowing through a hugely fat, rather dry and overly careful historical analysis called “The Third Reich in Power,” the 2nd volume in the unfinished trilogy by Cambridge prof Richard J. Evans, who is solid, stolid and definitely not in any sense “radical”. In fact, I had been getting a bit annoyed at the short shrift he gave to the role of the transnational corporations in Hitler’s ascension, when suddenly bells started ringing in his treatment of how the Nazis dealt with the threat they perceived the Catholic Church to be. Evans’ take was that Goebbels personally took over after an earlier effort to emasculate the Church by restricting parochial school attendance and Catholic youth group membership (which were seen as competition for fascist state indoctrination and the Hitler Youth respectively) completely backfired, sending many thousands of pissed off Catholics into the streets of Oldenburg, as well as swastika flags into the gutters and even a wave resignations from the Nazi Party, which had never happened before.

Hitler was apparently so angry that he wanted to round up all the priests and send them to Sachsenhausen with Martin Niemoeller (author of the famous “When they came for the Communists I did nothing..” speech), but Goebbels was nervous about such a move because Niemoeller was already getting them very negative international press and because they still hadn’t annexed Austria, which was nearly universally Catholic. So, in a brilliantly calculated maneuver, Goebbels dug up a few cases of alleged pedophilia, combined them with rumors of rampant homosexuality in the German monastaries, inflated the numbers involved and cooked up a prodigious scandal where none had been before. He also utilized photo op field trips where kids who weren’t even Catholic were whipped into a Salem-style hysteria, screaming (in front of reporters) not to let the sex fiends get their hands on them. Within a few months parochial attendance went from 95% in Oldenburg to 5%, the local Hitler Youth group mushroomed overnight, Catholic monastaries, lay buildings and finances were confiscated, and many hundreds of priests and monks were (quietly) led off to various concentration camps.

I’m not in any way saying that the story of the pedophilia cover-up in recent discussions is related, but hysterical denunciations and faked repressed memories do happen occasionally, in wave-like patterns. The question this raises is who could be orchestrating the faked ones and why? I once knew a teacher who was Salem-ed, the very strictest teacher in my grade school, and even though the kid recanted (her father was later charged with the identical crimes) the teacher was broken, shamed out of the profession. Innocent, even. There’s tremendous power in the mob.

The other mob I thought of was the current wave of real and/or imagined antisemitism. Evans also touched on this, describing the Propaganda Ministry’s efforts to inflame the nascent and deeply-rooted antisemitism in Germany into a force which could be reliably used to intimidate, cajole and generally brainwash segments of the population which weren’t quite down with the program enough for Goebbels. In this case, Evans’ account immediately caused me to understand what’s been happening at the site where I used to be a regular (Information Clearinghouse). I had already been challenging some of the more rabid Jew-biters for their obvious manipulation by the likes of Rense and others of his ilk, but the owner of that site, the good and homorable Tom Feely had to shut his comment field down before I really realized what was going on there. It wasn’t just the same phrases and vitriol lifted from Rense that sank ICH—it was precisely the same stuff that Goebbels cooked 70 years ago. Today I was linking through a bunch of unfamiliar blogs and websites which had large comment fields running, and I found the same posters spouting the same crap who had just shut down ICH. They didn’t even bother changing their handles!

I don’t know that any of this stuff is being pumped by the Israeli cell phone scammers, but it’s big, and I think I’m guessing better why this is happening. Like all good deceptions, it’s got at least two faces. It provides convenient evidence for accusations of antisemitism, which can get “undesirable” sites and other organizations shut down and/or discredited, and it also builds a very easy, very familiar scapegoat for when things go sour. If old loves die hard, then ancient hatreds must be about immortal. I have no doubt that Jews are getting used, set up for some kind of fall, but I still can’t get my head around why they would let themselves be used in this way, unless they’re just being sold out by their “leaders,” the same as the rest of us. All signs seem to point, as others here have noted, to the “Christian” Zionists, although that particular endgame is still unclear to me. Why would Israel let its already tarnished image be shat upon by this Lebanese horror? Or, again, is it simply because, as Amos Elon declared as he left Israel in digust, that the people in charge there now are so far gone in the madness of fascism and religion and that, like in the States, the citizen-consumers don’t really have any voice, any representation at all?