Steve Hooker: War & politics

Brutal repression sometimes works

Tue, 18 Jan 2005 11:14:24 GMT

Telegraph: Saudi Arabia continues to crush the political community that could provide them a level of immunity to a bloody coup d'etat. Fifteen anti-monarchy demonstrators, including a woman, have been sentenced to public lashings and jail terms in Saudi Arabia. The sentences are a signal that the government will not tolerate open opposition despite undertakings to liberalise.

I can't decide on which side of the fence I sit. Crush everything that resembles opposition, or let it have a voice? In any other country I'd say let them have a voice, but in Saudi perhaps things are different? Nah! Throughout history, repression loses—eventually.

Guardian: Now US ponders attack on Iran

Tue, 18 Jan 2005 10:19:42 GMT

"They think in Iran you can just go in and hit the facilities and destabilise the government. They believe they can get rid of a few crazy mullahs and bring in the young guys who like Gap jeans, all the world's problems are solved. I think it's delusional," the former CIA officer said.

Seymour Hersh said last night on BBC news that there was no way anybody could stop this, now that the neo-cons are in charge in the Whitehouse,

Christian politicians at war with Muslim clerics. Religious wars have always been with us. When will humanity grow up?

Real reasons behind Iraq invasion

Mon, 29 Nov 2004 10:55:29 GMT

From The Australian: "...[The US] had identified the jihadist campaign as "a Saudi problem". Most of the September 11 suicide attackers had been Saudis. Bin Laden was a Saudi. Saudi money trails were everywhere. An invasion of Saudi Arabia presented the tactical problem of waging war against a country of vast area and the strategic one of disrupting the world's oil supplies.

The Americans had established and then strengthened a military presence in countries surrounding Saudi Arabia - Yemen, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait. Invasion of Iraq would complete the encirclement."

This idea that Iraq was a strategic target, that it was not attacked for it's oil nor it's WMDs is fairly new to me. I've been asking why the US and UK lied about WMD, why then they thought they needed to invade Iraq. I think this is getting closer to the real reasons for the attack.

BBC: Online commons to spark debate

Mon, 29 Nov 2004 10:43:25 GMT

"...government could play a bigger role in setting up systems of trust for online communities too. Proposals for ID cards, for instance, could also be widened to see if they could be used online."

I've long thought that one day blogs will ber a legal requirement for everyone. Your web address will be in your ID card. Those who need to could check out your postings to see what type of character, or religious, or political animal you are. Also, your utility bills, credit card details, birth certificates—everything is stored there, for both yours' and the Gov's convenience. They may or may not be called blogs.

Metafilter: The Sinking PetroDollar - abandon ship!

Thu, 04 Nov 2004 22:13:58 GMT

In an item over on Metafilter they're talking about "the float of the PetroDollar may stop once the lighter than water part leaves the Dollar."

Perhaps Saddam's idea of Oil-for-Food in Euros was another reason for the war. And putting pressure on Saudi Arabia was not so much about throttling the terrorist's funding, more about pressure on OPEC to keep the dollar.

Still the words used in this Venezuela article, even if it's a tabloid cheap shot are 'fighting talk.' Re: OPEC (and Iran) switching to Euros, "the immediate effect would be a massive devaluation, perhaps sparking of domino-effect devaluations worldwide in US$-related foreign reserves and foreign debt calculations."

Will Isreal pull the US into a Middle East war, a war over the petrodollar?

Will bin Laden's threat to bankrupt the US come true?

Tune in next week ";->"

The Russian Sunburn anti ship cruise missile. Now in the possession of Iran.

Looks like middle USA has beaten the rest of the world

Wed, 03 Nov 2004 14:22:59 GMT

Sad? Wondering about your own echo chamber? I am. I was 90% certain that Bush wouldn't win, that it wouldn't be as close as the polls predicted.

Listening on the internet, reading my usual sites, I figured that Kerry would pull it off.

Now, I'm realising that I've been reading people like me.

Perhaps, most people are like me, that is, most of the rest of the world. We seemed to want Kerry over Bush. Yet, the middle, the heart of America decided to stick with it's war President, it's Christian, god fearing lunatic.

America's secret war

Mon, 25 Oct 2004 22:14:49 GMT

"In an article in the Saudi English daily The Saudi Gazette, Md. Maqdoom Mohiuddin and Khamis Mushayt wrote an op-ed and book review which exposes an alleged U.S. plot to invade Pakistan, and then later possibly Sudan, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Turkey."

This surprising item alerted me to this book by StratFor's boss, George Friedman. StratFor is a private CIA, being paid by companies to tell them of risks.

The book tells of the 'real' reasons why the US went into Iraq: to scare the shit out of other wavering countries to back the US and not Al Qaeda. Apparently. It says that WMD and terrorism links were merely a smoke screen, or propaganda.

This clarity (even though Wolfowitz has said this openly) wouldn't have been enough to pull the US street with them.

I have been puzzling why they lied about WMDs. Seeing that I must have been a cover, but for what? Still, I wonder if there was one reason, I guess there'd be many. Oil, being another, though, I wouldn't think oil would be primary, surely, there are hosts of reasons there.

The fact that Friedman's book, apparently, doesn't mention oil, at all, leads me to believe that this wasn't an oversight, just that it's our Achilles' Heel.

But scaring the crap out of the House of Saud meant they clamped down on Al Qaeda's finances. Or, so Friedman says. He goes on that Al Qaeda will be looking, once more, for a method of bring a jihadic uprising to the Muslim world. Though he thinks that the insurgents in Iraq are merely foreign fighters and that the Iraqis are against them. This is echoed in a Debkafile story about Al Qaeda blessing decapitation as a "Muslim method" for killing Westerners and their supporters. "Prophet Mohammed, who declared that decapitation is the most effective means of intimidation and deterrent against the enemy." In this 'blessing', actually a long PR release from Al Qaeda, they ask themselves, "why are not enough Iraqis fighting the infidels and the occupation?" Still, then, the Arab street hasn't bought the Al Qeada line. They still haven't risen up.

This is exactly what Ayman al-Zawahri expected the Egyptian masses to do when he assassinated Sadat in 1981. It never happened. Many Palestinians cheered the fall of the twin towers, some Iranians, Iraqis, Syrians, Saudis... the list is endless. But many didn't—many feared the giant's wrath. Many sympathised with the US. Was it Al Qaeda's plan to cause a crusade, and the surf the backlash? If so, and, though the situation in Iraq is messy, there appears to be no mass uprising.

What next then for bin Laden's strategy? Sure, the toppling of the House of Saud would be a huge goal. And very dangerous for the West. Will Al Qaeda admit after 20 years of trying that the Arab street is too disinterested in their Islamic rantings and stunts? What if they went military, not terrorist and tried to crack oil production—everywhere?

Our reliance on oil would surely bring a recession. Our economies are too 'market lead' or bubble based to stand a real shock like this. Would it weaken us enough, such that Al Qaeda's mission to cause an Islamic uprising somehow worked?

The Cold War being the Third World War.

BBC: The making of the terror myth

Fri, 15 Oct 2004 11:29:32 GMT

This (via The Guardian) sounds like an excellent programme to watch. BBC2 from next Wednesday.

"Some critics of this situation see our striking susceptibility during the 90s to other anxieties - the millennium bug, MMR, genetically modified food - as a sort of dress rehearsal for the war on terror. The press became accustomed to publishing scare stories and not retracting them; politicians became accustomed to responding to supposed threats rather than questioning them; the public became accustomed to the idea that some sort of apocalypse might be just around the corner."

I need to re-frame my thinking on the war on terror. Sure, it'll last a generation, I still believe that. But, I've always beielved that this is due to the generations that are growing up, now, in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria and perhaps Indonesia. Not, the generations growing up in the UK, US and other Western countries. That it was violence, destitution, religious intolerance in Middle Eastern countries that were the causes. Not couch potatoes demanding that their politicians make them safe.

I've been looking at this as a couch potato. Safe in his safe European home. Now that there is another view, I can go back to my media studies, and re-read Folk Devils and Moral Panics.

Lest I forget, this is the age of media. Where words, videos, are spread at hyperspeed. As a person who consumes this stuff, who waits for the next outrage, I've yet to understand my motives. Is it soap opera, or the reality outside my front door? If 'we' as a society could answer that, honestly, then perhaps, just maybe, we could focus on the important shit in our lives—the reality outside our door. This is not to say we turn our attention away from the horrors, but we could give them less import, less TV coverage. And this will cool the terrorists ardour for publicity. They simply would not be getting airplay. Their voices wouldn't be heard, not in that way.

But this is why 9/11 happened. Wake up! They shouted. They weren't being heard any other way. Could there be another way for us to listen? Or are we too interested in soap and our navels?

There has to be another way. Lest our politicians react to our fears by more invasions of more countries as knee jerks to our misplaced, lavish fears.

Keeping Bush's secret, secret

Tue, 12 Oct 2004 10:16:27 GMT

Quite obviously, Bush has been listening, and repeating just what he is told via his secret little ear piece.

What I want to know, is why they put the little box on his back, why not in a pocket? Surely, someone must have thought, "heck, people can see that."

Don't the powers manipulating him care any more? Doesn't the American people care that their President is a laughing stock around the world?

Guardian: Why do they hate us?

Sat, 04 Sep 2004 10:16:24 GMT

Book review in UK Guardian: Imperial Hubris by Anonymous, a CIA desk operative.

Each side in the "war on terror" sees the other as the aggressor. This explains the odd symmetry of the statements of Bush and Bin Laden. They both feel their respective culture, society and civilisation is facing a genuine existential threat.

Bin Laden must work as a revolutionary vanguard to agitate, mobilise and radicalise the masses, who have yet to understand their duty. The best way to do that is through propaganda: by word (television, cassettes etc) and by deed (spectacular and hopefully transformative attacks on symbolic targets).

It's often been said that Bush is bin Laden's greatest lieutenant. He, after all, has created hundreds of thousands more troops for bin Laden, radicalising much of Iraq and now looking at Iran. WMD were a cover for his plans: of taking the war to 'them,' of bring democracy to countries who never fought for it, who are still 500 years behind our struggle to democracy.

No way will Bush bring economic regeneration to Afganistan there's no visible payback for such financial generosity. Iraq will be plundered rather than rebuilt. I've always said that education would be the only way out of this generational war as we get deeper and deeper into the beginning of the beginning. Hearts and minds aren't being won in Abu Ghraib they are being lost.

I don't see Kerry saying much that will be different. He's out to please the US voters, not the people of Iraq. We'll have to wait a long, long time before we get a US president who can see a way out, until, like this book says, an "all-out war that will involve razed cities and astronomic body counts on both sides." Then, we may grow up and realise that violence begetting violence isn't a solution.

It'll be 20 years before truth isn't censured from US TV screens, before the US electorate opens it's eyes. Just like the blindness that was Vietnam. Between then and now, the US is going to become increasingly isolated and increasingly bombastic. It's going to be a terrible 100 year war.