The Middle East / North Africa region of the world is going crazy right now, and the unrest threatens to spread to Europe and the other western countries as their economies inevitably deteriorate. Let us make no mistake about it: the Middle East and Middle America are a world apart, but they are also intrinsically connected in today's globalized, decentralized economy. The instability in food prices which were a major cause of the assorted uprisings that took place earlier this year had a lot to do with American policy, actually.
One part of it was that America insists on making a lot of its corn into fuel.
(http://www.dakotavoice.com/2011/02/ethanol-lobby-fuel-trumps-hunger/)
That means a lot of food that could be sold on the world market and eaten is instead siphoned off into a horribly inefficient fuel. In 2009, we could have fed 330 MILLION more people in the world, but we made ethanol instead. I'm getting a little off of my intended topic, but my point is that America was a big hand in what's happening in these "spontaneously" revolting countries.
I put spontaneously in quotes because it turns out that much of the organizing that went into the protests which have destabilized the region came from outside. The US State department created a website called "movements.org" which is also sponsored by MTV, Google, Pepsi, Youtube, and MSNBC. It turns out that a lot of the information reported by western news media is received second-hand from people who claim to be in touch with on-the-ground activists but who actually are staying in Washington. It's very very fishy, especially since it makes exceedingly little sense for us to be going in airstriking the heck out of Gaddafi for "human rights abuses," since we as a nation are responsible for so many atrocities of our own! On top of that, there are dozens of other horrible despots in the world right now; here's a list of all the "bad guys." So what's really happening over there? No one can really tell you, other than, NATO is pissed.
One theory of mine is that they're going after Gaddafi because he's not yet part of the new economic world order- the regime of central banks in charge of running the neoliberal economies which have been set up all over the world. In fact, Libya is one of the only 5 or so countries which don't yet have one: the list is Iran; North Korea; Sudan; Cuba; and Libya. All the "bad" countries, no? Psst: The Libyan "rebels" have already set up a new central bank in the country
By the way, what is NATO still doing? They were there to defend the free world from communism, but now that the Soviet regime has fallen, it doesn't seem to make a ton of sense to still have NATO doing stuff. If they ever let Israel into that club, watch out.
It's clear that the West wants everyone to conform with its idea of trade, which helpfully serves its own interests. We're seeing resistances to that from the countries in the Middle East, some of which are taking steps to get out of the economic hegemony of the US, like starting to trade oil for something other than dollars. In 2000 Saddam Hussein switched from the dollar to the Euro.
We saw how that turned out, and that's how it's continuing to turn out for all those countries which haven't been forcefully brought into line yet. Iran just got off the dollar, with President Ahmadinejad calling the dollar a "worthless piece of paper." Is it any surprise the war drums are being beaten again for Iran? The silver stake to the United States economy is losing the hegemony of the dollar, currently the world's reserve currency. But it's inevitable: the dollar is not worth very much at all. There is a lot of disinformation about the state of the dollar and the economy more broadly, but I'll get into that elsewhere.
I'm sure Gaddafi and Ahmadinejad both are not so nice dudes, believe me. But you can't blame people for liking them, because the west is SO MUCH WORSE. Believe me, if you look into the wars the US has caused, then it's clear. This is our foreign policy. One of my favorite things to think about it how Americans would feel if we were an the receiving end of ANY of the shit we give the rest of the world. We just realized we could sell people guns and make mad money, and then rebuild their country, and make mad money OR just make them in debt to us so that they have to do whatever we want, basically. Look up GATT, the IMF, and the World Bank, three huge arms of the global "Shiva the destroyer/creator" industry we have set up.
So my thinking/ advice is this: do not believe in a righteous war in the Middle East! The solution to the problems is not war and has never been. The situation was caused by war, and by colonialism! Its solution will come through a rectification of American and other western policy, not by forcing the Middle East to get in line. I fear that if the hardline stance continues, we will have world war!
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