I'm Pretty Sure The CIA Never Tried To Overthrow Any Foreign Governments, But Some People Have Other Ideas

I'm humble to say that my readers and I are unflinchingly patriotic, outrageously smart, and fully aware that the United States would never meddle in the internal affairs of any foreign country, especially a friendly one.

Otherwise, we might be deceived by a new article at Covert Action Magazine which does a superb job of documenting a series of outrageous, deliberate, and mostly successful attempts by the CIA to interfere with the democratically elected governments of two Southern Hemisphere nations which most of the world would consider "friends and allies" of the United States.

The nations to which I refer are Australia and New Zealand, both of which supported Great Britain, the US, and their allies in both World Wars, and suffered horribly in the process.

And the article in question was written by Murray Horton, who provides more than enough links and photographs to make his presentation utterly compelling.

In other words, it is strong enough to convince all but the unflinchingly patriotic, outrageously smart readers who come to this cold blog seeking refuge from the "fake news" which crept in around the edges some time ago, and now has us nearly surrounded.

Murray Horton himself is introduced as "organizer of the Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA)", "Aotearoa" being the indigenous (Maori) name of the country we would otherwise call "New Zealand". In other words, he's biased!

He's also described as "an advocate of a range of progressive causes for the past four decades", and it's not difficult to imagine that foreign intelligence services meddling in domestic politics may have been one of those causes for most (or even all) of those decades, because the reseach represented here is exhaustive and extremely detailed.

It's just too bad for him that we're all too smart to believe any of it.

Bridgetown Officials Say English Collapse Was Caused By Fire, Deny Any Explosives Were Planted

BARBADOS -- Terror rocked Bridgetown's Kensington Oval on Tuesday morning, when the middle of the English order burned briefly and then collapsed utterly, turning to powder while the eyes of the cricket world looked on in disbelief. Early reports made no mention of survivors.

The English batsmen were always in trouble in their must-win match against South Africa, scoring only 9 runs in their first 7 overs, and taking an additional 19 overs to reach the century mark.

But the real tragedy struck in the 33rd over. England were 111 for 3 when Andrew Strauss was hit by what appeared to be a hijacked airplane. He crashed and burned with a fire so intense it razed Paul Collingwood to the ground as well.

A general collapse ensued, with Andrew Flintoff [top photo], Paul Nixon and Sajid Mahmood disappearing in short order. Mahmood made a particularly awful mess when he collapsed at free-fall speed after watching the only ball delivered in his direction crash into his stumps.

Rescue and recovery workers should have been warned that the scene would be toxic and that survivors were unlikely to be found, but apparently no such warnings were issued. So it goes.

Officials who claimed to represent the host committee said the collapse was caused by a catastrophic weakening of the English side, due to the velocity of the object that hit Strauss and intensity of the ensuing fires. They blame Australian bowler Andrew Hall [lower photo] for the collapse. Hall, who took 5 wickets while allowing only 18 runs, could not be reached for comment. He is said to be hiding in a cave on an unspecified Caribbean island, communicating with his teammates only via cell-phone.

In Barbados, officials vehemently denied any hint of pre-positioned explosives contributing to the utter destruction of the English side.

But the so-called "collapse" -- in fact a total disintegration -- was so explosive that fragments of England's remains have been found embedded in buildings hundreds of metres from the scene.

Bridgetown officials have denied rumors of molten steel under the rubble, but relief workers continue to appeal for more boots, saying their soles are melting from the intense heat of the disaster.

The official collapse theory has attracted the inevitable skeptics who claim that gravity and heat alone could not have thrown such heavy fragments such huge distances with such force, let alone leaving boot-melting heat to bedevil the cleanup efforts.

Defenders of the official story laugh and call the skeptics crazy. So it goes.

But the question remains: What indeed did take England down?

Some critics of Tony Blair's so-called foreign policy maintain that the English side will never again compete on anything like even terms with the world's cricket powers until Tony Blair is removed from office, and either hanged for treason or impaled for war crimes and crimes against humanity. They site the USA's failure to reach the final 16 -- shut out by powerhouses such as Canada and Bermuda -- as well as Canada's failure to reach the Super Eights, as further evidence in support of their assertion.

Most cricketologists ridicule the notion that karmic intervention could be responsible for the English collapse, pointing to the seemingly unlimited success of the Australians, who having pasted England 5-0 for the Ashes, now seem on their way to yet another glorious international triumph.

Were Australia not complicit in the very same war crimes, these experts say, the cricket-karma hypothesis might be be worthy of serious consideration. Instead they call it a wacky conspiracy theory.

But other cricketologists dispute this assertion and claim the seeming mystery of Australia's success can be explained by the Coriolis effect, which may cause karma to spin backwards in the southern hemisphere.

New Zealand won't win this tournament, they claim, because the Kiwis don't cause enough death and destruction overseas.

Who am I to say they're wrong? We'll find out in less than two weeks.

Australia, New Zealand, Sri Lanka Reach World Cup Semis; Thumbs Up For FOX

With a week to go in the Super-Eights stage of cricket's World Cup, Australia, New Zealand and Sri Lanka have already clinched three of the four semifinal spots.

South Africa and England have the best chances of claiming the fourth semifinal berth, and their match Tuesday in Barbados may prove decisive.

A win Tuesday by England would keep both teams alive as well as the West Indies and possibly also Bangladesh, setting up interesting possibilities for later in the week. But if South Africa win in Barbados then the final four would be set, the remaining Super-Eight matches would be virtually meaningless, and the hosts would be left with no chance to advance in the tournament, guaranteeing the West Indian organizers less-than-expected revenues to go along with their greater-than-expected expenses.

But this would be no surprise; it would be in keeping with a tournament which saw two of the world's top teams, Pakistan and India, shut out of the final eight, a pair of failures which could well be called "tragic" if they were not overshadowed by the strangulation of Pakistan coach Bob Woolmer [photo] amid whispers of possible match-fixing.

Surprisingly, perhaps, some of the world's best neutral (non-specialized) coverage of this very slow and drawn-out sporting event may be coming from FOX Sports.

Their coverage is accurate and timely; their pages of standings and schedules are easy to read and easy to verify. Those who mostly follow sports, and who find much to appreciate in FOX coverage, may have trouble grasping just how much -- and how blatantly -- FOX lies about the news.

A more cynical writer may venture to suggest that this is all part of an elaborate deception. But not me; I'm busy watching Bangladesh and Ireland fight it out for 8th place at CricInfo.

Why? The French educator Jaques Barzun was probably right when he said, "Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball." He could well have added, "Whoever wants to understand the rest of the English-speaking world had better learn cricket!"

Solomon Islands Hit By Tsunami, Northern Afghanistan Rocked By Earthquake

Twelve people have been killed by a tsunami which hit the Solomon Islands on Monday. Early reports also indicate extensive damage, especially in Gizo, a town of 10,000 and the second largest town in the Solomons, which was swamped by waves said to be 10m (30ft) tall.

We have coverage from the BBC as well as the Scoop news service from New Zealand, which has this:

The Solomon Islands Government has issued this account:

"Waves crashed islands in the two provinces [Monday] morning after an earth tremor measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale hit.

"Reports from Gizo police said the lower lying areas in the tourist town of Gizo have been completely covered, while the nearby towns of Noro and Munda including surrounding villages continued to receive huge waves.

"The main wharf at Noro ports in Western Province is reported to have “cracked in the middle”, and the small wharf completely dismantled with all timbers washed away.

"The Noro cannery has been affected and all residents have been evacuated up the hills on the island.

"People reporting from rural email stations in the two provinces also reported continuous waves traveling at least 500 meters inland."

At least two people were confirmed dead and several others missing in Sasamunga village in South Choiseul as 10 meter waves move 500 meters inland, destroying villages, food gardens and domesticated animals and a hospital.

Choiseul Premier, Jackson Kiloe confirmed from Taro Island at midday today that 10 meter high waves continue to hit the Southern part of Choiseul Island.

He said people are now rushing inland to higher ground as fear griped the entire Western and Choiseul provinces after an earth quake measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale hit the Western part of Solomon Islands at 7 am this morning.

Premier Jackson Kiloe described the sea changes on the western coast of Choiseul as “strangely frightening”.

He said the present sea activities involving huge rolling waves which repeatedly caused dry seas deeper into the ocean have exposed fish and other marine lives.

He said the earth quake that hit the Western Solomon’s this morning was strongly felt twice in Choiseul province.

“We are currently evacuating Taro Island residents and others in coastal areas to higher ground.

“The huge wave rolls are stronger than floods.

“They are causing large areas of ocean to dry up exposing fish and other marine lives,” Mr Kiloe said by phone from Taro Island.

Radio New Zealand International reports: In Solomons Islands there are reports of damage in the township of Gizo and the whereabouts of several people is unknown after this morning’s earthquake. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre in Hawaii put the strength of the earthquake at 7.8 but Geosience Australia has upgraded the quake to 8.1.

Here's a slightly different sort of report from the BBC:

Gizo at centre of tsunami fears

When a magnitude 8.0 tsunami crashed ashore on the western Solomon Islands, it hit a remote, poverty-stricken region.

Made up of volcanic islands and coral atolls, sitting on the notorious Pacific "Ring of Fire", the area is so isolated that even many hours after the disaster, it was still very difficult to assess the extent of the damage or the number of people who lost their lives.

But there were reports of extensive damage to Gizo, the second largest town in the Solomons, which has an estimated 10,000 residents.

Known to tourists as the country's main diving centre, much of the town - which is located on a relatively small volcanic island called Ghizo - is barely above sea level.
...

Many of the houses are on or near the seafront, giving the buildings little chance of escaping the huge waves that hit the coastline on Tuesday morning.
...

Initial reports said the town's hospital had been inundated with water, and government offices had also been damaged. Little was known about the damage to the nearby coral reefs.

Thousands of people are thought to have escaped up a steep hill which forms a backdrop to the town.

According to the charity World Vision, which operates in the area, many people have now been left homeless and without clean drinking water, as many of the town's water tanks - based on the hill - collapsed due to the force of the earthquake.
...

Residents of nearby Simbo, Choiseul and Ranunga islands have also reported deaths and widespread destruction, and there are many other areas which could well have been affected although details are still sketchy.

Approximately 85% of the Solomons' 500,000 population live in rural areas, and the western province - where the disaster occurred - is one of the most remote parts of the country.

Receiving accurate information from villages - many of which are in low-lying coastal areas - is difficult at the best of times, mostly reliant on two-way radio links and satellite communications.

Scoop has considerably more, including these links ...

World Vision International - World Vision to help in Solomons after tsunami
Caritas - Caritas responds to those affected by tsunami
ChildFund - Solomon Islands Tsunami
Oxfam - Assessing needs of communities affected by tsunami

Elsewhere, and even more recently, Quake strikes north Afghanistan

A strong earthquake has struck northern Afghanistan, shaking cities in neighbouring Pakistan and Kashmir.

Residents fled homes in Kabul, Jalalabad and Kashmir when the 6.2 magnitude quake struck in Afghanistan's Badakhshan province.

There is no word yet of any damage in the areas close to the epicentre.

The US Geological Survey said [it] was about 200km (125 miles) underground in the Hindu Kush.

It struck at around 0800 (0300 GMT).

Relief efforts, as far as I can tell, are just getting organized.

If I may...

I've never asked for money here -- never asked for anything, actually, at least not for myself -- and I hope I won't have to. But I can't help thinking that, if you have any at the moment, you might consider helping some of the many very unfortunate people who have recently lost everything, in the Solomons or Afghanistan or elsewhere, somewhere, somehow.

Something tells me this would be a good week to re-connect with humanity, and that this might be a good way to do it.

Thank you very much indeed.

Gwynne Dyer: If Bush Gives The Order, Pace Faces A Big Decision

Many people listen to the White House these days and conclude a United States attack on Iran is imminent: "To be quite honest, I'm a little concerned that it's Iraq again," as Senator John Rockefeller, the new chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said recently.

But if President Bush gives the order, then General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will face a big decision.

Some senior US soldiers were worried about the strategic wisdom and even the legality of invading Iraq, but nobody resigned over it. It was obvious the US would win the war quickly and cheaply, and almost nobody worried about the aftermath.

But an attack on Iran is different, even though it would not involve American ground troops, because any competent general knows this is a war the US cannot win.

Who says there's a war the US cannot win?

Why, Gwynne Dyer, of course. He's a veteran of two navies and a respected military historian; he knows the difference between slogans and realities. Dyer's most recent column comes to us today from New Zealand.

Air strikes alone cannot win a war, however massive they are, and they probably could not even destroy all of Iran's nuclear facilities, which are numerous, dispersed, and often deeply buried.

Many Iranians would be killed, but what would the US do next? It would have very few options, whereas Iran would have many. Iran could flood Iraq with sophisticated weapons and volunteers to fight against US forces.

It could throw international markets into turmoil by halting its oil exports. It could try to close the entire Gulf to tanker traffic, and throw the world economy into crisis.

And any further US air strikes would simply harden Iranians' resolve.

So ... what to do about it?

How about NOT doing it?

So would General Pace attack Iran if Bush ordered him to? His only alternative would be to resign, but he does have that option.

Senior officers like Pace, while still bound by the code of military discipline, also acquire a political responsibility. Like cabinet ministers, they cannot oppose a government decision while in office, but they have the right and even the duty to resign rather than carry out a decision they believe disastrous.

The resignation of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff - and possibly several of the other chiefs as well - would be an immensely powerful gesture. It could stop an attack on Iran dead in its tracks, for the White House would have to find other officers who would carry out its orders.

It would doubtless find them, but such a shocking event might finally enable Congress to find its backbone and refuse support for another illegal and foredoomed war.

But what would it say to the Terrorists?

My guess is both the Joint Chiefs and the White House understand that the option of resignation is on the table. Consider the dance that was done around the question of Iran and "Explosively Formed Penetrators" in the past couple of weeks. (EFPs are glorified shaped-charge weapons that can penetrate armour. Most major armies have had them for several decades.)

On 11 February, US officials claimed the EFPs that have killed some 170 American troops in Iraq since 2004 were Iranian-made, and supplied to Iraqi insurgents by "the highest levels of the Iranian government".

White House spokesman Tony Snow insisted they were being supplied by the Quds unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

Familiar stuff from the run-up to the Iraq war - but then something unscripted happened. In Australia, General Peter Pace said Iranian Government involvement was not proven: "We know that the explosively formed projectiles are manufactured in Iran, but I would not say by what I know that the Iranian Government clearly knows or is complicit." A day later, in Jakarta, he repeated his doubts: "What [the evidence] does say is that things made in Iran are being used in Iraq to kill coalition soldiers."

Methinks the General ought to know enough not to undercut his Commander in Chef while he's trying to catapult the propaganda!

There is a civil-military confrontation brewing in the US not seen since President Truman fired General Douglas MacArthur during the Korean War.

But this time, if the general acts on his convictions, he will be in the right.

There are some people around here looking for a much more serious civil-military confrontation than the president firing a General. And pulling for the military, too, unless I am very much mistaken.

The "thinking" goes: If we can't have gridlock in Congress then maybe we can get some mutiny in the Pentagon. Yesterday I wasn't sure whether that would qualify as thinking or merely wishin' and hopin' and prayin' ... but today, having read Dyer's most recent, I could almost be persuaded that there's hope for us yet.

Slim is always better than None.

Australia Prepares Welcome For Dick Cheney, War Criminal

From the New Zealand Herald:
Clashes in Sydney before Cheney's Australia trip

SYDNEY - Anti-Iraq war protesters clashed with police in Sydney yesterday ahead of a visit by US Vice President Dick Cheney, underlining divisions within one of Washington's firmest allies over the unpopular war.

Police detained about six people when up to 200 Stop the War Coalition protesters, demanding Australian Prime Minister John Howard pull troops out of Iraq, tried to march from Sydney Town Hall to the US consulate.

A heavy police presence, including officers mounted on horseback, ringed the protesters in an attempt to minimise disruption to peak-hour commuters, some of whom also squabbled with police.

Protesters held placards saying "Dick Go Home & Take John With You" and "Stop Cheney, Troops Out". Police later relented and shepherded protesters as they marched towards the consulate.

There's more where that came from, and more here too.

Iran to US: If You Attack We'll Respond; US to Iran: We Won't Invade

This just in, from Reuters via the New Zealand Herald: White House says 'we're not invading Iran'

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Thursday his country would target US interests if it came under attack.

Who wouldn't? Or perhaps I should say: isn't Iran under attack already? Or haven't the Iranians connected the recent terrorist attacks with covert US support for an anti-Iranian terrorist group?

President George W. Bush and his administration are not contemplating invading Iran, the White House said overnight.

"I've said it, the secretary of defence has said it, the president has said it: We're not invading Iran," White House spokesman Tony Snow said.

"He's spinning a hypothetical about something that is not contemplated," White House spokesman Tony Snow said.

Do you notice how the White house never says "We're not contemplating attacking Iran."

Just offhand I'd say the US could do a lot of damage to Iran without invading. So a promise not to invade Iran is not worth the pixels you're looking at, especially coming from Tony Snow.

And therefore, I'll file this one under "manure" ... at least until further notice.

Gwynne Dyer: "It's not God's gift"

I've been reading Democracy - It's not God's gift, by Gwynne Dyer.

I love the way Gwynne Dyer writes. I respect the way he thinks, too, even though I disagree with him from time to time. Dyer is a life-long student of war and man. His writing pops up in unlikely places; this one was published by the New Zealand Herald.

Quoting George W. Bush's Second Inaugural Address, he wrote:

"By our efforts, we have lit a fire in the hearts of men. It warms those who feel its power, it burns those who fight its progress, and one day this untamed fire of freedom will reach the darkest corners of our world."

Bush speeches are a treasure-trove of innocent fun. His speechwriters took the quote about having "lit a fire in the hearts of men" from Fyodor Dostoevsky, presumably not realising that they were quoting a bunch of terrorists who featured in his novel The Devils, and the "dark corners of the world" phrase pops up in every second Bush speech.

But once past the mandatory [relatively] light moment, he turns quickly to more serious problems...

Bush's belief that Americans basically own the copyright on democracy is widely shared even by Americans who deplore his actions.

It's everywhere. More confident ignorance than you can shake a stick at.

America's democratic revolution had a huge impact on the world, but it was both less, and less indispensable, than most Americans suppose.

Americans are not accustomed to being told that anything American is either less or less indispensible than they suppose. And they don't like hearing it, either. This may be one of the reasons why Gwynne Dyer is published in places like New Zealand.

This notion that the US should "seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world," as Bush put it in his inaugural speech, is profoundly misleading because it suggests that American support for such transformations is essential.

It isn't even relevant, in most cases. People have to do it for themselves, and the most helpful thing that Washington could do would be to stop supporting the oppressors.

Why is it so easy for everybody to see this except our so-called leaders? OK, I know. That's a rhetorical question. They don't really believe what they tell us, do they? They don't even care anymore, as long as we believe it.

Not only do they hope we will believe their lies, they also hope we will never realize things like this:

Most of the world's countries already are democratic, and the exceptions are mainly in the Middle East and Africa, the two regions of the world where Western military interventions have been most frequent since the end of the colonial era.

Indeed, it's striking that within the Middle East, the primary focus of American anxieties about terrorism, the Islamist terrorists come overwhelmingly from countries that have close links with Washington -- Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Algeria and now Iraq -- and not from places like Syria, Libya and Sudan. This is hardly an argument for further US military interventions.

I should say not!

You can read the entire (short) piece at Information Clearing House or the New Zealand Herald.

Dyer: "Orwell Was Wrong"

Sometimes we need to back away from the issues of the day (or of the week) and look at a slightly larger picture. Here's one such picture...

If the name "Gwynne Dyer" doesn't ring a bell, you are in for a treat. Welcome to one of my favorite writers. If you're familiar with Gwynne Dyer's work, you probably don't need to be told that he's a life-long student of human history with a special focus on warfare and society. The following piece is an excellent example of why I like Gwynne Dyer so much. It's not easy to find it elsewhere on the net, at least not all in one piece. For these reasons I quote it all here, and I urge you to read it.

Orwell Centenary
By Gwynne Dyer
[June 2003]

He was 'Don Quixote on a bicycle', 'the wintry conscience of his generation' and if he had lived long enough he would have been very surprised. George Orwell, born a century ago this month (25 June), wrote two deeply pessimistic novels about the inability of human beings to resist tyranny, died at 46, and subsequently became the most widely read political philosopher of the 20th century: 'Animal Farm' and 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' were translated into 60 languages and sold 40 million copies. But he was wrong.

His original readers were a generation who survived the fascists and the Second World War only to fall straight into the Cold War decades of confrontation with the Communists. They were already afraid that totalitarianism would ultimately win and that the future, in the words of Winston Smith's interrogator O'Brien, would turn out to be "a boot stamping on a human face forever." Orwell's books told them that they were probably right -- but they were wrong, too.

He would have been delighted to know that, but he died forty years too soon. Right down to the end of the 1980s the democratic peoples remained a beleaguered minority, while a third of the world's people lived under Communist tyrannies and another third languished under sordid dictatorships of a more traditional kind. They all controlled what people said, and the more ambitious ones also tried to control what people thought. And Orwell's name became a commonplace adjective.

A useful one, too. The first time I was in the old Soviet Union, in 1982, we drove past a derelict Orthodox church in the southern Russian town of Belgorod one day and one of the film crew remarked on it. "There was no church there," the local Communist Party guide insisted as we watched it recede through the rear window and when we innocently suggested that he drive around the block for another look, he flatly refused. "Orwellian", we said -- and then realised by his embarrassment that he knew exactly what we meant.

That moment should have told me that Orwell was wrong and that the old Soviet Union was doomed, for the official SHOULDN'T have known what we meant. It was more than his job was worth to let us look at that church, and he was used to making the people around him swallow bare-faced lies. But they didn't actually believe the lies, and neither did he. There was surface compliance, but no Doublethink: sixty-five years of ruthless censorship and totalitarian rule had not even managed to keep low-level provincial Party officials from knowing what 'Orwellian' meant.

The totalitarians NEVER achieved the kind of thought control that Orwell and the rest of us feared. Underneath, most people kept their own values and opinions, and by the 80s they were getting ready to dump the dictators. All they needed was a way of doing so that didn't involve buckets of blood, and by the middle of the decade a powerful non-violent technique for bringing the dictators down was being developed in Asia.

The technique spread by example from the Philippines in 1986 to Thailand, South Korea, Bangladesh and Burma in 1987-88, and then to Tienanmen Square in the heart of Communist China in 1989. Not all of these non-violent revolutions succeeded -- in Burma and China they were drowned in blood -- but the example was so powerful and the technique so promising that later in 1989 the citizens of European Communist countries picked it up and ran with it. 350 million Europeans were freed in two years, with hardly a shot fired.

You can extend the sequence of non-violent, more or less democratic revolutions to include the end of apartheid in South Africa in 1994, the overthrow of Suharto in Indonesia in 1998, and the fall of Milosevic in Serbia in 2000, but 1989-91 was when the balance of power in the world changed. From then on, totalitarianism was on the defensive and a majority of the world's people (for the first time in history) lived in democratic countries.

Maybe Orwell wouldn't have been so surprised after all. Looking at the cross-cultural appeal of those democratic revolutions, he might even have felt vindicated in his optimistic belief that the desire for equality and freedom is an attribute of human nature, not of some specific culture.

Orwell would certainly not have greeted this extraordinary historical liberation with the reflex pessimism of most Western intellectuals. Consider Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood, for example: "With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, it seemed for a time that....henceforth state control would be minimal and all we would have to do is go shopping and smile a lot, and wallow in pleasures, popping a pill or two when depression set in."

No, Margaret. The discrediting of the totalitarian dream and the democratisation of a large part of the world were genuine gains for the human race. Coping with too much wealth and leisure is a problem too, no doubt, but a different and lesser one that only troubles very fortunate people. Frankly, on this one I'm with President George W. Bush: "Freedom is a powerful incentive. I believe that some day freedom will prevail everywhere because freedom is a powerful drive."

What Mr Bush overlooks, however, is that all the people who overthrew their oppressors in recent decades did it for themselves. It is doubtful that powerful countries with suspect motives can successfully export democracy to others by force and the attempt of the Bush White House to do just that could yet bring a certain aspect of 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' back to life. Not the politics of it, of course that is now gone in most of the world -- but the geopolitics.

"What 'Nineteen Eighty-Four') is really meant to do is to discuss the implications of dividing the world up into 'Zones of Influence'", George Orwell wrote to his publisher at the end of 1948 -- and it certainly does that. The three-way cold war of 'Nineteen Eighty-Four', with constant skirmishes between the three totalitarian mega-states of Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia and no freedom left anywhere in the world, is geopolitics as nightmare. It would be a pity if the 21st century turned out like that.

The 20th century didn't, actually. There was a long cold war between two great power-blocs, but only one of them was totalitarian. Besides, it all ended pretty well, with no nuclear war and a wave of non-violent democratisation. But now we can see the faint outline of exactly those three Orwellian blocs glimmering on the horizon ahead.

It may never come to that, of course. Most people outside the United States (and many Americans, too) assume that the reign of the neo-conservatives in Washington and the current extreme unilateralism of American foreign policy are self-limiting phenomena, soon to be discredited by the sheer cost of empire-building in the Middle East. Local resistance to the American presence is growing in Iraq and Afghanistan, and before long Americans themselves will turn against this policy and normal service will be restored.

That is the assumption, and it is why other governments are keeping their heads down and playing for time. Why have a confrontation with the US now if you can just wait a bit and see it change course of its own accord? But what if it doesn't? What if there is a bigger American empire in the Middle East three or five years from now, and the United Nations is on the scrap-heap, and NATO is gone too? The rest of the world won't just roll over and accept American global hegemony, but what will it do instead?

In that case we're back in the jungle, where the only way to contain the ambitions of other great powers is the old game of alliances. What would those new alliances look like? Quite a lot like the world of 'Nineteen Eighty-Four'.

Oceania is already taking shape: essentially, the English-speaking world of North America, Britain ('Airstrip One' in Orwell's novel), and Australasia. Give or take a Pole or two, that's who actually showed up for the invasion of Iraq last March (though Canada and New Zealand are so far managing to avoid being swept away by their respective giant neighbours).

Orwell's Eurasia isn't too hard to identify, either. It is NATO minus North America and Britain, but plus Russia. It is nobody's first choice, but if it becomes necessary it's a good fit: the European Union's economic strength plus Russia's resources and nuclear deterrent would be a credible counter-weight to America/Oceania -- and it's the only way Russia could get into the EU (which it very much wants) within the next decade.

Eastasia is the puzzling one, mainly because it's hard to figure out which way Japan would jump: rapprochement with China and a junior partnership in a new 'East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere', or honorary Anglo-Saxon status and a role as Oceania's Asian 'Airstrip Two'. Neither option is appetising, so Japan would certainly try to avoid the choice as long as possible -- but if it did opt for Eastasia, it would go very nuclear very quickly, as the best way of establishing an equal relationship with China.

Which leaves the Middle East (a string of restive American protectorates), Latin America (client states of Oceania), Africa (contention between Oceania and Eurasia), South-East Asia (a zone of conflict between Oceania and Eastasia) -- and India. The Indians would be the one major power with the freedom to stay clear of the global alliance confrontations, but conflicts with Muslim neighbours to the west could easily pull them into alliance with the United States.

This is an ugly world, but it is not unimaginable. If the multilateral consensus that has kept things sane for a long time breaks down, a massive realignment like the one that occurred in the twenty years before the First World War is quite possible, and the result would be a more militarised, less free, more compartmentalised planet.

There would be no primitive 'Big Brother'-style totalitarian systems, for their time has passed, but the foundations are already being laid everywhere for subtler 'national security' regimes that would encroach greatly on civil rights and political liberty. Hardly anybody wants this outcome, but then the pre-1914 great powers didn't really want their idiotic alliance system either. They didn't design it, but their responses built it.

Something similar could be happening again soon. Listen, for example, to the tone of some recent remarks by America's favourite hate figure of the moment, French President Jacques Chirac -- almost as if events were sweeping him away against his will.

"...War should not be used to settle a crisis which can be resolved by other means....The world today obliges us to seek a consensus when we act, and not to act alone. The US has a vision of the world which is very unilateralist."

"Europe is...here to stay as a major world power. Then we have to take account of the emergence of China on the world stage, and India too....Whether you like it or not...we are moving towards a multi-polar world."

'Multilateral' implies cooperation and consensus; 'multi-polar' means confrontation and conflict.

A three-cornered cold war like that of 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' is as stupid a way to spend the 21st century as can be imagined. It would also minimise American freedom of action in the world, which is hardly the declared goal of those now directing White House policy. But five more years on this course and we could be getting close.

A year and a half of those "five more years" are now gone, of course, and "four more years" of the same are indicated. We could be getting close indeed.


The following song by Bill Nelson has always reminded me of 1984. Many of Nelson's songs do that. But this one does it more than most.


The Atom Age

I can't sleep, I can only dream
I talk so fast, I don't know what I mean
I'm so imperfect in this perfect world
my beauty limps, it's like a synthetic pearl
I stand proud as the flags displayed
citizen of the atom age

I can't march, I can only dance
I'm just a victim of circumstance
I try to change but oh what's the use
I am the lie that tells the truth
I stand proud as the flags displayed
citizen of the atom age

I'm all hooked up to every modern appliance
but I hang with the angels from the gallows of science
it's a neon future and it tears me apart
'cause it's the state of the nation, the state of the art
I stand proud as the flags displayed
citizen of the atom age

What Caused The Killer Tsunami?

An article published today by Independent Media TV raises some very serious questions about the causes of the December 26th earthquake which triggered the tsnumai which -- so far -- has killed more than 50,000 people. Is it possible that these people lost their lives because of reckless use of oil-exploration techniques? At least one reporter is suspicious. Here's a long excerpt from the piece by Andrew Limburg:

On November 28th, one month ago, Reuters reported that during a 3 day span 169 whales and dolphins beached themselves in Tasmania, an island of the southern coast of mainland Australia and in New Zealand. The cause for these beachings is not known, but Bob Brown, a senator in the Australian parliament, said "sound bombing" or seismic tests of ocean floors to test for oil and gas had been carried out near the sites of the Tasmanian beachings recently.

According to Jim Cummings of the Acoustic Ecology Institute, Seismic surveys utilizing airguns have been taking place in mineral-rich areas of the world’s oceans since 1968. Among the areas that have experienced the most intense survey activity are the North Sea, the Beaufort Sea (off Alaska’s North Slope), and the Gulf of Mexico; areas around Australia and South America are also current hot-spots of activity.

The impulses created by the release of air from arrays of up to 24 airguns create low frequency sound waves powerful enough to penetrate up to 40km below the seafloor. The “source level" of these sound waves is generally over 200dB (and often 230dB or more), roughly comparable to a sound of at least 140-170dB in air.

According to the Australian Conservation Foundation, these 200dB – 230dB shots from the airguns are fired every few seconds, from 10 meters below the surface, 24 hours a day, weather permitting.

These types of tests are known to affect whales and dolphins, whose acute hearing and use of sonar is very sensitive.

On December 24th there was a magnitude 8.1 earthquake more than 500 miles southeast of Tasmania near New Zealand, with a subsequent aftershock 6.1 a little later in the morning that same day.

On December 26th, the magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck at the intersection of the Australian tectonic plate and the India tectonic plate. This is the devastating tragedy that we have all heard about. The death toll of this horrific event has reached 52,000 souls and continues to rise.

On December 27th, 20 whales beached themselves 110 miles west of Hobart on the southern island state of Tasmania.

What is interesting about this is that the same place where the whale beachings have been taking place over the last 30 days is the same general area where the 8.1 Australian earthquake took place, and this is the same area where they are doing these seismic tests. Then 2 days after the Australian tectonic plate shifted, the 9.0 earthquake shook the coast of Indonesia.

A great deal of interest and seismic testing has been taking place in this area, as the government of Australia has given great tax breaks to encourage the oil exploration.

Too scary to believe? Too scary not to believe? You can decide right away if you like, or if -- like your humble scribbler -- you prefer to have more evidence, you can sit back and wait, and see what emerges. I'll post more info on this blog if I learn anything more.