The London Bombings-Why?

12 July 2005

While Tony Blair supports the US 's ‘war on terror', that by their own admission will last indefinitely, innocent people are dying on the streets of London . Why?

We are being told that we are winning the ‘war on terror', but by any yardstick, the opposite is true. Sheldon Rampton, in an excellent piece in Counterpunch, details the abysmal failure of this so called war. From Afghanistan to Iraq , if we really are fighting terrorism, then our political and military leaders are grossly incompetent.

In his feature of 8.7.05, Noam Chomsky says, “If the United States can maintain its control over Iraq, with the world's second largest known oil reserves, and right at the heart of the world's major energy supplies, that will enhance significantly its strategic power and influence over its major rivals in the tripolar world that has been taking shape for the past 30 years: US-dominated North America, Europe, and Northeast Asia, linked to South and Southeast Asia economies.
It is a rational calculation, on the assumption that human survival is not particularly significant in comparison with short-term power and wealth. And that is nothing new. These themes resonate through history. The difference today in this age of nuclear weapons is only that the stakes are enormously higher.”

Previous in the same article, Chomsky states. “the NIC (The US government's Intelligence think tank) warned that " Iraq and other possible conflicts in the future could provide recruitment, training grounds, technical skills and language proficiency for a new class of terrorists who are 'professionalised' and for whom political violence becomes an end in itself." The willingness of top planners to risk increase of terrorism does not of course indicate that they welcome such outcomes. Rather, they are simply not a high priority in comparison with other objectives, such as controlling the world's major energy resources.”

As Gary Younge, in this weeks Guardian says, “ Did Downing Street really think it could declare a war on terror and that terror would not fight back? That, in itself, is not a reason to withdraw troops if having them there is the right thing to do. But since it isn't and never was, it provides a compelling reason to change course before more people are killed here or there.”

Does anyone believe for one moment that we are in Iraq for any reason other then the oil? If it is about the oil, and ‘Peak oil' pessimists like myself believe that we are facing a world of dwindling energy (i.e. oil) supplies….soon; then the actions of our political leaders become crystal clear and frightening logical. The implications are also becoming inescapable. Expect more terrorism on our streets, more foreign wars, and accept a constant eroding of our civil liberties in pursuit of the resources necessary to maintain our high energy, high consumption lifestyles.

While to many a complete reassessment of our high consumption lifestyles is impossible, and to some “not negotiable”, to me this represents a complete failure of political leadership and a lack of collective imagination. We have a stark choice, either find other ways of re-creating our lifestyle and all that means, or acquiesce to fighting ever worsening, never ending resource wars, and all that means.

I believe that most of us will ultimately chose to actively engage the emerging shift in redefining our humanity, and reshaping what it means to be human. After all, every indicator of well being (health, mental health, education, job satisfaction, rather than GDP) in modern society is getting worse not better. This shift will involve a wholesale rejection of defining ourselves by what we purchase, re-localisation of home, work, shopping, and recreation, and de-globalisation of manufacturing, food, and energy. In short it is learning to live within the limits of the earth on which we rely for everything; living off the interest in our account rather than spending the capital; harvesting rather than mining, balanced and in harmony with all the rest of life. I also notice that this profound shift would also solve many of the problems that bedevil us- climate change, traffic congestion, wide spread alienation, lack of purpose, obesity, and heart disease to name a few.

This short piece is only a noticing of the cause and effect of our actions. While in no way am I condoning this sickening act of terrorism, I am also not condoning either our callous wars in the Middle East, but rather noticing that the current way is a blind alley, and another more fruitful avenue beckons.

This avenue is a step into the unknown. Perhaps it is farfetched to believe that international cooperation on equable sharing of the remaining resources will replace the ‘default' option of war. Then again maybe it is farfetched to believe in the survival of the human race. But surely a crash program to introduce renewable energy supplies and conservation and low energy solutions is not that difficult to envisage. Even the second biggest oil company in the US , Chevron, is calling for it. Hell it even makes a lot of sense, especially since Britain will shortly become a net importer of oil again, joining the rest of Europe (except Norway ) and the USA . We won't give in to terrorists, but what about common sense? Reducing dependence on foreign oil make such bedrock common sense that I can't even believe it's up for discussion. But it is. Perhaps if enough of us wake up to this fact then maybe our sorry state of a no real choice, bought, sold, and paid for democracy might just make some difference.

Yeah, farfetched all right.

Links to the articles above in case the hyperlinks didn't work due to my somewhat shaky web design skills.

http://www.counterpunch.org/rampton07092005.html

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9387.htm   http://www.guardian.co.uk/attackonlondon/comment/story/0,16141,1525755,00.html

Naresh