Written by Robin Mathews
Faced with what more and more Canadians believe is an anti-Islamic (Islamophobic) Canadian Conservative government, Canadians need to be on highest (personal) alert.
“Prime Minister Harper… is fuelling Islamophobia - aimed, ironically and explicitly, at Muslim women”, Susan Riley, The Hill Times, Mar 9, p.17; “Tory MP’s remarks ‘politics of racism’, B.C. NDP MP says”, Times Colonist, Mar. 18, A7; Defence Minister Jason Kenney’s twitter “misrepresentation of photos” of Muslim women is named “corrosive” and “inflammatory”, Glen McGregor, Ottawa Citizen, Mar 10].
Canadians have to be on highest (personal) alert because they will be lied to, misled, misinformed, propagandized, about Islam and its threat to Canada – from all kinds of Conservative government sources, probably from the RCMP, probably from CSIS, and from ‘the parrot press and media’.
Jason Kenny’s distasteful behavior is very close to an expression of “hate”: the presentation of images of Islam intended to be misunderstood negatively. That should have brought about his dismissal from cabinet office – and would have … not long ago. He is safe, now, in the dissolving parliamentary system (unfortunately abetted by both major political Opposition parties. Why haven’t they demanded and demanded and demanded Kenney’s resignation? Where is their moral outrage?)
Their moral outrage may be cocooned in their support for the government of Israel whose policies - called by some the policies of Apartheid – may well be part of a much, much larger Western/NATO/U.S. long-range undertaking. How much the Canadian Opposition Parties have signed on is unclear. The Conservative government of Stephen Harper has not only clearly signed on to the long-range undertaking; it is an eager, active proponent, apparently willing to go to the edge of active racism and the expression of hatred against all members of Islam.
The policy has to do with Samuel Huntington (advisor to the Pentagon) and his 1993 proposal of a Clash of Civilizations. That “Clash” is nonexistent and a fraud. But it has been raised to a propaganda reality AND to a policy one.
In short, it is a claim that two (almost) equal forces are locked in struggle in the modern world … a struggle for dominance. Those two forces are “the liberal, Christian West” and the “world of Islam”, concentrated (for present purposes) in the Middle East.
That whole, fabricated (un)reality is pushed so persistently it not only feeds savage misreports about governments in the Middle East but it twists even many present “objective” and “balanced” histories of Islam. They may not mention the false “Clash”, but they refuse to factor in the behavior of Islamic entities resulting from the brutal expansionism of “the liberal Christian West”.
The history of Islam, beginning in the sixth century after Christ, is also the history of the world since that time. Islam claims to be the key part of the development of monotheism (the belief that there is one God). Islam’s teaching is that knowledge of God’s will began with Adam, passed to Abraham and Old Testament Judaic prophets, continued through Jesus Christ (a great prophet) and ended with “the seal” on prophecy, the prophet Mohammed – the last prophet - and with Islam, the final and truest statement of God’s will.
Islam spread over a large part of the known globe. It interacted with Eastern mysticism, polytheism, African local religions, Judaism, Christianity … and what we broadly call “the civilization of the Western world”… and it early developed major (conflicting) sects within.
In the Dark and Middle Ages of the Christian West, Islam expanded, building rich centers of scholarship and thought. In fact, it is said to have been the key enabler of present civilization in the Western World. It preserved many of the great Roman and Greek works which were lost to the Christian West. From Arab translations of the Roman and Greek classical writers sprang [in the 14th and 15th centuries] what we call The Renaissance (the rebirth). That expansion of intellectual and artistic activity in the West provided for, we say (correctly), the foundation of ‘the Modern World’.
Famous and Terrible is the global position set-out in 1993 (just as the Soviet Empire lay in ruins) by Samuel Huntington. It has been suggested he was not so much outlining a possibility as suggesting a policy, something to be made reality. Many believe it was made reality, taken up by the NATO/U.S. superpower alliance – leading to a brutal, reckless, merciless, often insane Western barbarism (especially in the Middle East) backed up by limitless government propaganda.
That brutalized superpower alliance is forever imaged in Tony Blair (British prime minister) and George W. Bush (U.S. president) striding assertively together to microphones used to spread limitless lying (not ended) about Islamic weapons of mass destruction and Islamic use of poison gas. The proved case of gas use is one in which poison gas was supplied by the U.S. to its ally Iraq (to use against Iranians). Only a little later – as enemy - Iraq was ravaged and raped and wrecked out of the world community in one of the steps carrying out the goal of “the Clash”.
The goal, stated simply, is said to be West/NATO/U.S. global domination, an idea that would seem ridiculous except history since 1993 gives the claim some support. In fact, that proposition explains much – almost everything - about recent history, especially the unrelieved brutality and destruction of countries in the Middle East by “Western” forces or their stand-ins.
Huntington’s vision (or project) fit NATO/U.S. plans in at least six ways.
One. The “Clash” of Communism and Democratic Capitalism was just over in 1993. The NATO/U.S. forces needed an enemy in order to keep their massive weapon culture alive and to maintain active military supremacy.
Two. Islam is (organizationally) a sitting duck. Though counting something over a billion believers, Islam is in no way unified in the way the West/NATO/U.S. superpower alliance is unified. Islam is divided by the historic (and often disputing) Sunni and Shia sects (and others). Moreover, major countries marked by Islamic faith are not in pacts and agreements with each other, often having strong policy differences. (Some have strong Western ties.) Only think of Malaysia, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, and India (to name only some!).
For the purposes of NATO/U.S. expansionist policy, country by country “pieces” of Islam can be cherry picked and decimated.
Three. The Christian West and Islam fought and traded imperial roles over a thousand years. Beating the drums of that storied past, the culture of Islam can be painted as permanently demonic by NATO/U.S. interests (especially among crackpot fundamentalist Christian leaders).
Four. The need to dominate global energy sources accompanies the desire to exert global hegemony. One of the huge caches of fossil fuels is in the Middle East. By happy chance, getting control of Middle Eastern fossil fuels means decapitating Islam there, erasing independent Islamic leadership, and – where convenient – erasing whole Islamic countries – all under the guise of bringing “democratic society” to dictatorial, brutal, failed states.
The shifting alliances NATO/U.S. have with al-Queda, (forms of) ISIS, ISIL, rulers like Libya’s Ghadaffi, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, Syria’s Bashar al Assad, Turkey’s Recep Tayyup Erdogan, Egypt’s Abdu-Fattah el-Sisi permit Destructive Instability to be a major policy tool: to weaken, to disunify, to divide, and – finally – to destroy independent power in the Middle East.
The more Islamic armies of one kind and another destroy each other, the more NATO/U.S. policy is furthered. That may explain the ease with which the most modern weaponry seems always to be available to “rebels” of all stripes there. It may also explain the growing cry for Islamic unity. Both the Muslim Brotherhood and ISIL argue for a unifying ‘Caliphate’ – some organized entity to meet the overwhelming force of the NATO/U.S. superpower alliance. That alliance may have had a great deal to do with the 2013 overthrow of the Mohammed Morsi (Muslim Brotherhood-sympathetic) government of Egypt – out of fear that a major country in the Middle East might offer itself as the organizing centre for much greater Arab and Islamic unity.
Five. Choosing Islam as “the terrible other” provides, unspoken, a racist basis for the Clash – for the New Crusade against the infidel. Racism mixes well with fundamentalist forms of Christianity which vehemently deny salvation to the non-believer. The racist basis serves, also, the alliance of the Christian West with Israel.
Broadly speaking, the policies of the State of Israel (despite rhetoric) are not in any way necessarily Jewish. They can be seen as part of the policy of “white” expansion over the “brown” Middle East.
Six. Israel as “the foot in the door”. The animosity of almost all Middle Eastern Islamic governments (and/or populations) towards Israel arises from local friction, in part. But it is also part of the recognition that Israel is the West/NATO/U.S. foot-in-the-door to the Middle East. Seen in that perspective, the massive military support for Israel need have nothing to do with the fight against anti-Semitism, and/or religious persecution of Israelis. It may have everything to do with a core strategy to erase Islam from the Middle East as a significant power there.
Elsewhere in the world, non-Islamic countries are questioning the hegemony of the NATO/U.S. superpower alliance. Having gained a measure of self-confidence, Russia is fighting back against what it sees as encirclement. China is forming a loose alliance with Russia (and quietly building its own military might). Both are sympathetic to the South American countries (in what the U.S. calls its “backyard”). Some of those countries - against huge odds – are working for independence from a long history of U.S. domination.
And so – outside of the manufactured West/Islam Clash, the BRICS seem to be slowly shaping a counterbalance to the NATO/U.S. superpower alliance. What effect the BRICS might have on the manufactured “Clash” between ‘the West and Islam’ is yet to be seen. Canada’s government, to date, has done almost nothing to connect to the BRICS, lashing itself, instead, to the mast of the pirate ship forever sailing into the deeply troubled waters of the Middle East and doing everything it can to unleash a program of bloodshed, terror, wholesale destruction, and booty-hunting there.
Written by Robin Mathews
_______________
The Straight Goods
Cheers Eyes Wide Open
1 comment:
Now we're getting down to it.
Just one more step:
The tie that binds it all together.
Post a Comment