HOLY SHIT

Give Israel up, guys, you’re not going to get it back, not that it was ever yours in the first place! The Philistines can take care of themselves; they don’t need Jews or Arabs, six-pointed stars nor Egyptian scarabs. This is not holy war; this is holy shit! Go back to your deserts and count your money, then get on with your lives and count your blessings. Things could be worse. Armenians got it much worse from the same Turks who let Jews back into Palestine in the first place, long after the Romans kicked them out with great ceremony and fireworks. Surrender to your war god of victory and conquest; prostrate yourself to the great black rock of fortitude, Holy of Holies. Take the veils off your wives and get them some make-up. That’ll make it better. If they look less like executioners, then maybe you’ll feel less suicidal.

IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER

This is the Bible; this is a new millennium; this is WWIII. Populations are in movement all over the globe to avoid the axe, to avoid the sword, to avoid the inevitable. This is the war to end all wars. This is slow-motion Apocalypse, the first to be televised. This is the year of the virus, DNA carefully packaged in Trojan horses. This is the race to end all races. Jihad rears its ugly head like a ghost from the past, Saladin riding a gilded stallion, forcing the infidels into submission, showing mercy to the repentant. The One God is a jealous God. His three grandsons fight for favor in his eye, Ariel, George, and Osama taking up where Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad left off, jockeying for position in a world growing smaller by the day. Abraham’s house long divided between Jesus’s many children and Muhammad’s brotherhood of the sword, Moses wants nothing more in his old age than his childhood room with a view after years of travel and homelessness. Sibling rivalry for the Father’s favors begins at home.

STATUS QUO

Al Qaeda may have saved us all when they invaded our playground, took our toys, and used them to bloody our noses. They didn’t intend to save us at all, of course, any more than native Africans ever intended to protect wild species, but the end result may be the same. Whatever humans may do in their history, the Earth will survive, and so will Life, I feel sure. It is the human race itself that is most at stake. Nature’s most precious and precocious creation likes to play with fire, and that’s dangerous. When we create nuclear bombs and splice genes, the genie is out of the bottle, and may not go back in. If the human race goes extinct, it won’t ever come back. By the same token, if culture degenerates, it may never come back either. When western culture degenerated previously in the Dark Ages, there were others to pick up the slack and make it their own. This time around, the stakes are much higher and the world much more integrated. Frankly, I’ll be glad when all the oil is gone and we can get on with our lives either with something else or nothing at all. Oil is bad politics, reminiscent of the lust for gold five hundred years ago, reminiscent of the lust for lust that we struggle with every day. Maybe we should just slow things down a bit and see if our lives aren’t just as good at a slower speed. Unfortunately we can’t ask others to accept a status quo which leaves them at a permanent disadvantage. I guess we’re on this roller coaster until some unseen hand decides to put on the brakes. At least maybe we could agree to stop molecular biology short of cloning. After all, everybody likes sex, right?

BLACK SPEED

The oil crisis deepens as the price of oil climbs to record highs, now topping $100 a barrel for the first time in history. People aren’t jumping out of windows yet, but they might soon. Of course, others are jumping for joy. Jihad grows fast in oil, biting the hand that feeds it; that we know for sure. So does conspiracy, also biting the hand that feeds it. Oil is the anti-hero of a thousand faces. Like a good whore, it can be whatever you want it to be. 90% octane flows through the nation’s arteries like junk flowing through the morning news. The Black Speed is a hard habit to break and invariably leads to the hard stuff, guns and money. Even if you can kick it, you can’t forget it- the smell, the taste, the iridescent wet spot in the driveway. The withdrawal symptoms will be difficult. Witness the phantom orgasm of Saturday night red-light racers trying to shift the gears of a car that no longer exists. It’ll take a phased withdrawal, peace with honor, retroactive logic to convince ourselves that we like riding the bike instead.

The Death of America, the Re-Birth of Europe

It’s Europe’s turn to lead the world again, not as English or French or Greeks or Romans, but at the head of a united Europe that returns something to Russia that it took away from the Soviets, and respects its status as a major player in the community of nations.  America is not fit to rule the world any more.  They’ve made too many deals with too many devils, mostly previously under the guise of Soviet containment and anti-Communism, now mostly under the guise of increased oil flow.  When American tanks rolled over the Arabian Desert and into Iraq for the second time, they crossed the line.  The Afghan War was justified, slimly, to remove a Taliban regime that sustained al-Qaeda.  The Iraq War was not.  At that point al-Qaeda won in its quest to remove America as world leader.  If I were a Conspiracy Nut, I might think they planned it that way, themselves having no great love for Saddam Hussein.  Not that it’ll make any difference with respect to Israel; it won’t.  Israel is a fait accompli, and no more than a pretext for the current jihad worldwide.  But if Europe can unite, they’ll have accomplished something that’s never been done in history, which means they’ll have the moral upper hand to lead the world and set an example.  America did that once, until wars of independence became a rite of passage for a developing country.  Europe is now fighting a war of inter-dependence.  If they succeed, then look for a united South America, United Turkistan, etc.  FTA’s are a major step in that direction already.  America has gone too far in its excesses and its negligence.  European corporate executives don’t make a billion dollars a year.  Europe doesn’t leave half of its population without health insurance.  When Americans voted for George W. Bush in 2004, they voted for ignorance, greed, and selfishness.  Now the bill is due.