Author: R J Adams

Iraq descends further into chaos today as a round-the-clock curfew in Baghdad, due to end at sunrise Sunday, is extended indefinitely.

The flaunted assault by the Iraqi military on Sections of al Sadr’s Mahdi army in Basra has reached a stalemate. Despite the US media’s broadcasting of erroneous statements to its citizens, suggesting the Iraqis were engaging the Basra militias without assistance from the US military, American warplanes have been bombing and strafing the city, and the BBC reports tonight that British troops have now entered the battle.

Once again, this abominable occupation creates havoc for innocent Iraqi civilians desperately attempting to reconstruct their lives in the face of never-ending terror, suffering, and death; an innocent nation torn asunder by the ravages of an illegal invasion and occupation that has lasted five, desperate, years and holds no hope of returning to normality for decades to come.

America is determined to remain in Iraq. Of that, there can be no doubt. So long as the country is occupied, insurgents will retaliate against the oppressors.

The plan designed by those who laid their signatures to the US Project for the New American Century, a plan to take control in the Middle East, secure oil pipelines, and become the dominant force in the area, has proved a dismal failure, resulting in the loss, so far, of 4,000 Americans and an undefined, but enormously high, number of deaths among Iraqi civilians. That figure may be vague at best, but it has produced one statistic that has been accurately calculated: the number of orphans in Iraq now tops five million.

America, under George W Bush, has likely underscored its place in history alongside the atrocities of Nazi Germany and those of the Rwandan genocide of 1994, by its illegal occupation of a sovereign nation innocent of any act of aggression.

The damage is done, yet continues to be done. Removal of US troops from Iraq would not mark the end of violence in that country. It would merely mark the beginning of the end. Some degree of civil war is inevitable. It cannot be avoided. So long as a US presence is allowed to remain, the resulting suppression will lead to continuing low level violence ad infinitum.

Get out, America! As in Vietnam, where you interfered and got burned, so Iraqis are proving that, despite culture differences, humans beings everywhere have one thing in common: an aversion to foreigners marching in and taking over their lands.

NOTE: this, posted yesterday on an Iraqi website:^[1]

“The main Sadrist spokesman al-Obeidi has said that the GZG government “have closed the doors to dialogue for a peaceful resolution of the crisis in Basrah.” He said that al Sadr has issued a statement saying that Bush’s statements on the crisis provide legitimate legal grounds for the Mahdi army and the Sadrist current to transform their role from calling for peaceful mediation of the crisis to the defender of the rights of the people and to protect innocent civilians.
Sadrists also confirmed a delegation of the Central Bureau of the Sadrist office in Najaf visited Grand Ayatollah Al-Sistani and discussed with him developments in the security situation in Basra. Sistani expressed displeasure of the deteriorating performance of the government in the areas of security and economy.”

It seems al Sadr’s six month ceasefire may be over.

^{[1] Gorilla’s Guides, March 29th, 2008}

Filed under: Bush’s war

It’s good to be back online. My thanks to those of you who emailed your sympathy at this time of blog “cold turkey”. Unfortunately, as both emails and blog are routed through the same server, they were only received this morning, just as Sparrow Chat came back online. Consequently, there hasn’t yet been time to answer them all.

It really is good to be back.

What exactly were the ancient Egyptians envisaging when they constructed the Great Pyramids of Giza and Khufu? Historians and archaeologists have pondered that question for centuries. Undoubtedly, they were burial chambers of the kings, but why a pyramid, rather than a rectangle or square?

In modern society, the pyramid-shape turns up all over the place. In essence, it represents a structure designed to funnel matter, in one form or another, from the bottom to the top. Take pyramid selling as an example: this idea (illegal in most western nations, but still prevalent under various guises) relies on the toil of numerous workers (the pyramid base) each selling relatively small amounts of a product, but in such vast numbers that overall profits make the few (at the pyramid’s peak) very wealthy indeed.

Their are a number of super-large companies operating worldwide still employing the pyramid sales technique, but managing to circumvent national laws by various, corrupt, means.

It’s hardly surprising this is the case, when one considers that most societies on the planet operate through a pyramid-style process.

Is it possible the pyramids of ancient Egypt were effigies to the success, at least so far as wealthy Egyptians were concerned, of the society they created?

The pyramids were built by vast numbers of poor, non-union, laborers, all working for a pittance to the greater glory of their Pharaoh – at least, so we are told.

No doubt as they toiled, more than one was heard to mutter, “Why can’t ‘e just ‘ave a bleedin’ normal ‘eadstone like everyone else?”

Since the days of the Egyptian empire, societies have emulated the Egyptian model. Take modern day America, for instance. Here we have a perfect example of the pyramid-sales technique utilized on a national scale to create a capitalist society with a relatively small, wealthy elite at its peak, sucking up wealth and power from the ever-expanding base beneath.

In fairness, there was a time when the very bottom of the US pyramid contracted considerably, as the numbers of poor diminished due to a strong economic base. The model fails to allow for a continuing contraction, however, due to the ever-increasing demand for greater wealth from those at the very top.

Imagine for a moment, America as an economic pyramid. At its peak are the wealthiest of society. As we progress downwards the sides expand out. It is here we find the CEO’s, senior managers, and others of their ilk. Nearer to the bottom are the American workers, bustling away to make profits that are immediately sucked away, up into those esoteric regions at the very peak.

At the base of the pyramid are the dispossessed, the poverty-stricken, the down-and-outs of society. These unfortunates make no contribution to the wealth at the pinnacle.

The benefit of the pyramid system, the flow of profit and wealth, is mainly upward. More and more is squeezed into an ever decreasing space at the top. In times of plenty that space expands downwards, bestowing further benefits on those levels close beneath. During periods of recession it contracts, leaving many in the lower eschalons worse off.

There is also a downwards flow of wealth, though much more of a trickle than the torrent raging ever upwards. It seeps down to the lower levels, siphoned off on its way as salaries, perks, and tax avoidances, until it finally becomes a stagnant puddle of so-called ‘benefits’ for those few at the very bottom eligible to receive them.

This, then, is the model for societies throughout the world. It is the “freedom and democracy” much expounded by George W Bush and his cohorts as they slaughter their way across the Middle East.

When viewed from the pyramid perspective, the concept of taming other nations, commandeering their valuable commodities, and sucking more workers into a system designed solely to create wealth for a minute few, suddenly becomes highly visible.

Is it perhaps time we moved on from the pyramid-system of society, and allowed those ancient Egyptian Pharaohs to rest in peace?

Filed under: Pharaoh’s curse