Sothic Press Bloggs

Things on the political front are looking ominously familiar. The inmates of the White House continually refer to Iran"s uranium enrichment program as their "Clandestine development of nuclear weapons." This despite the UN analysis that given its current tools Iran is twelve years away from producing weapons quality material. Added to that is the suspicion that the enriched material they have is not of their own making, but is older stuff, possibly from China. Well if you think facts like those will deter the Bush Bandits, BBs, you have not been watching the news since the year 2000. Remember the other UN analysis, the one headed up by Hans Blix that told the world Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction?

A closer look reveals that the parallel goes much deeper. Afghanistan was the precursor to the invasion of Iraq and proved to be a heaven sent opportunity to test the latest strategic bombs and the most effective way to deliver them before moving on to the primary objective. In passing it"s worth noting that the Afghans are still reeling from the resulting onslaught. News articles continue to pop up here and there about the radiation victims in the HIndu Kush - not headline stuff, just the odd item buried in BBC and WHO routine reports but enough to tell the reader where evil really lies.

Substitute Lebanon for Afghanistan, and Hezbollah for the Taliban and the pattern emerges. The Israelis have done the softening and testing this time - the least they could do for an already stretched US military machine - and the UN have drawn a line in the sand for the evil Iranians. No prizes for guessing what comes next. No, not year upon endless year of ineffective sanctions upon Iran; not with India and China just screaming for their oil. The BBs are not patient people and time is not on their side. These are action folks who favour the reptilian response, so place your bets on a pre-emptive strike; a surgical removal of the offending organ. Only it will not be surgical, it will be a bludgeoning swipe that will fail as miserably as the last.

When did repetitive behaviour ever bring a differing result?

posted by SothicPress at 11:08 AM | E-mail comments

04 August 2006

Zen Masters throughout the world agree that "There is only now," yet the uninformed are motivated to the point of war by religious and political leaders everywhere on the premise that history is everything. The long running saga of Ireland and its relations with Britain, the new Britain, have become quiet of late which at first glance would appear a mystery. Despite arguments that are frequently referred back to William of Orange, or earlier, recent news of sectarian killings and car bombings is suspiciously thin on the ground. Could it be that Irish leaders and populace alike are too busy enjoying a booming economy to worry whose banner is flown highest? Because if that is the case, if all that is needed to stop the children squabbling and pulling each other"s hair is some shiny new toys with which to play, then they should be given before hostilities break out.

Mothers have long known that a child can be controlled by punishment both corporal and mental, but if you want to retain the spirit and seek a return for your investments, love is a better way to go. Whether it is a pet, a child, or another adult behaviour can be modified without the use of force or sanctions by making the desired behaviour the most attractive. Talk of intervention forces, of UN sanctions, and of buffer zones may sound like sound advice, but it is only rhetoric, and a poor comfort for those with nothing. Shiny new water services, electricity generating stations, medical supplies, transport networks and food, food, food, food, would serve much better. Israel can lay claim to a successful outcome of their military hard line policies in the past, but "There is only now."

When Palestine becomes a more attractive place to live than Israel there will be no incursions.

Something really silly is going on in the world today. California is having an energy crisis because of the heat wave there. How can that be? Heat is energy. California is not short of energy; it is short of electricity. Why is an area so rich in sunshine and natural resources short of electricity? because despite the huge amount of energy the Sun pours down on its inhabitants they fail to store it, or convert it for their needs. The current crisis is merely exacerbated by inefficient air-conditioners burning up the electricity allocations. That"s asinine; absolute and outrageous asininity. What sort of idiot burns energy to lose energy? Cooling can be achieved just as effectively with evaporators as with electrically driven air-conditioners. In fact more effectively because a well designed evaporator not only does away with the energy hungry compressor, but also with the fans that force air over the cooler. Alternatively heat can be used instead of electricity to compress the refrigerant as in gas-powered refrigerators - by gas I mean gas, not petrol. Of course you wouldn't use petrol, you would simply focus the sunlight. The beauty of such simple devices is in no moving parts to wear out, and when the sun goes down so does the air-conditioner.

In Europe, and in the UK in particular, natural gas prices are set to rise 25% as suppliers start hoarding their reserves until oil prices rise further - nothing like whipping the customers when they're down. Yet, yet . . . a recent report published by the BBC claimed that by not using filament bulbs for lighting in the UK a 20% saving in energy consumption could be achieved. Wow! Imagine that. A 20% savings in national energy needs by outlawing filament bulbs. Imagine what could be saved by outlawing electric air-conditioners.

My heroine Helen Blavatsky says, "There is no religion more powerful than truth." Which is hard to refute. Truth though is often hard to define, as is the case in the current spat going on in the Middle East at the daily cost of hundreds of lives. There are reports from Palestine, Turkey, and Iran that Israel"s latest round of slaughter promulgated on the abduction of two of their soldiers was preceded by Israeli abductions of a doctor and his brother from Gaza. So who started it? Not me mother - it"s so hard to tell with children because self-preservation comes way before truth in the immature. All the attentive parent can do is to mediate and hope to limit the damage to snide kicking and hair pulling until maturity. Media services though are already mature and should be pumping out the facts, but for citizens to expect truth if it flies in the face of government policy and sponsors' agenda is to grossly overestimate one"s progeny. One has to wait and hope that maturity will eventually come to governments in the form of policies for peace. Any government that propagates war, in any form, is clearly a long way from maturity.

Good to see the aerospace business doings so well at the Farnborough show in England this year. The industry is enjoying a boom, mostly on the back of the warring factions all over the world; the Middle East in particular. Well the Middle East almost completely actually, and not all of the Middle East. Actually the war is only in Iraq, and now a little bit in Lebanon - well just the southern Lebanon, where the Israelis have broken all accepted concepts of appropriate action. So anyhow the aerospace business is up and booming with a big chunk of BAE Systems' new orders coming from the US; a reward, no doubt, for supporting Bush through his invasion and sticking with him even after "Mission Accomplished." EADS, the Franco-German consortium, did exceptionally well with an order for 322 of their lightweight choppers from the US military. It seems the European/US rift over the invasion is old news now, and no longer relevant, well not in business anhow. Tony Blair might be forgiven for thinking he need not have put British troops in harms way after all, but that would be an under-reaction to the loss of less than 120 British lives; the US has lost around 2,500, and the Iraqi figures range anywhere from 15,000 to 100,000. Business is good.

I feel sorry for the taxpayers of the United States having to spend all their hard earned dollars on The Middle East. It really is quite unfair that more than 45 cents of every dollar goes to supporting the Israelis and fighting in Iraq. The Whitehouse requested, and were granted, more than $800 billion for defence this year, and the same again last year, which, when you consider the total federal income is only $2 trillion, seems excessive. Admittedly the $2 trillion is not all income tax dollars, social security tax dollars are in there too, and around $250 billion in corporation taxes. Still most of it is direct taxation money and it is being spent in the Middle East to protect the US citizens from the hordes of Palestinians and Syrians about pour out of the sky from fleets of aircraft so secret that they have yet to be seen.

It seems odd that a group of people obsessed with differences within their own religions would focus their attention on the most powerful fighting force the world has ever known. The US taxpayers might draw some comfort if they knew whether they were under threat from the Shi-ites or the Sunnis. That would at least give their working week some focus. Imagine working until May to pay Uncle Sam not knowing from whome he is defending you, and why it cost more than the health, national insurance, education and veteran funding all combined.

Whether it is called "War on Terror." or "The Cold War," or "Reds Under the Bed," it is really of little value other than to engender Fear because Fear sells, and that, on the surface, appears to be all the United States is about. Heavens how are you going to sell all those "Boy's Toys" if the population is not scared out of their tax dollars by the thought of beards and turbans and kalishnikovs pouring over the horizon? Never mind the fact that if you rounded up all the terrorist groups in the world they wouldn't fill the arena at Madison Square Garden. To sell rockets and bombs, bombers and submarines you need big-time fear; ground-zero fear, London Underground fear - look out for the next big fear on the run up to the election. Fear is key and the media the conduit. Nothing new in that; that's old hat. All the bad boys have to do is maintain power. All the good guys have to do is nothing.

But was it always like this? Are we smarter now than we have ever been? Would we be better off without the machismo meatheads currently holding the reigns? How about we put women in power? There is evidence to support the fact that the Ancients - folks who walked this planet more than 10,000 years ago - were administered by intelligent, caring females. Helen Blavatsky in her Isis Unveiled, and The Secret Doctrine revealed much of the matriarchal philosophies. They were not burning oil or the trees or each other back then. They were using the Sun for their energy needs and as a result had little to fight about - I have to pause to reflect here that men probably fought over women then, as now. Anyhow take a look at Helen"s works, Helen Blavatsky, and have a look at The Matriarch, a much easier read about Meira McMahon, the New Matriarch.