Masopher's Mind

Europe lumbers along aimlessly, not yet a federation not quite countries in isolation. Sitting in a small cafe in Portugal I appreciate the opportunity brought to the region and flying into Germany I recognise the effort that being in the Union brings. With Greece and the southern states there is a measure of consistency that the euro brings. In the countries to the north there is a tangible feeling of burden and uncertainty. The English who are in the zone but out of the currency struggle with Europe’s economic weakness but are spared from it’s political weakness and it is precisely the political weakness that makes it’s economic weakness so stark. With divergent governments each struggling to pacify it’s populations of unique temperament, there is no golden mean by which all countries can be lead. Politically, Europe swings right and left at the same time. When one region adopts social policies another is adopting conservative policies each undermining the other. The stormiest place of all is Brussels itself, seat of the Union. One would think that we would find a common goal here which struggles to implement itself across a wider geography. What we find instead is a bureaucratic nightmare with every innocuous party in existence across the 28 states represented and struggling for the soul of Europe’s future. Instead of right left centre and others you find Frankenstein monster coalitions of Nazi sympathisers and conservatives, communists and liberals, extremists and green. In the smaller space of Brussels you find more factions and more fractions; less in common than you would find across normal international boundaries. The biggest spoilers are the plethora of miscellaneous parties which are marginalised on their home turf but powerful in this arena.
With so many differences sometimes it is a wonder that Europe exists at all. At the beginning if the 20th century this region engulfed the entire planet in two intense conflagrations. This belligerence signalled the rise of Russia America and China and the decline of Britain and Japan. Now only 100 years later it undertakes an experiment in unity that could again reshape the destiny of the earth. If only they could agree on which way to go.

The Khost desert is arid. 15 pairs if US army standard issue boots march through the heat towards the American base. The sentry on watch checks his documents. No one is due back. He tries to contact the approaching patrol. The troop don’t respond correctly to hails. The sentry doesn’t want a blue on blue incident, he trusts his eyes but in the heat and dust his mind fills in the blanks. “Nothing is gonnna happen today, just like yesterday, it’s fine, just a lost patrol with sand in it’s radio.”
He orders the troop to halt as soon as they are in audio shot. They pause shuffling forward using western gestures.
“Nothing is gonna happen, they are just impatient to get out of this shitty wasteland.”
His mind flies thousands of miles back to loved ones at home. He wants to be there not here faced with the choice of shooting at comrades for not hailing properly.
The troop that the sentry faces breaks the standoff with a very un-America shout. Now training comes into play, his mind switches to fully automatic just like his rifle. He cuts the first one in two stitching his body with bullets. The rest scatter, running towards him towards the base.
The other guards at the gate open up as well. Deeper in the American base soldiers hear the ruckus and run towards it rifles in hand. They are all in various states of undress, leaving behind magazines, books computer terminals and telephones, whatever they were doing before forgotten in the face of danger.
A disguised fighter gets past the gate. He is cut down instantly. Another manages to breach the perimeter but gets no further. One of them turns and runs. An aircraft roars overhead and he too is overwhelmed by the superior firepower.
The sentry slowly fades back to humanity, but not to reality. In a desert far away from home, fundementalist insurgents had tried to sneak into a military base dressed as US soldiers. They never had a hope of success but yet their audacity defied logic.

I guess I’ll always be a bit infatuated with the bad boys of the Middle-East. In a place where everyone is a douchebag it takes a special brand of douchbagger-y to be thought of as THE douche bags.

And its all religiously based. In an area of Sunni Muslims, the two non Sunni religions get the most grief and make the most noise on the world stage. Israel, which everyone sees and many people hate and Iran which everyone doesnt see and another bunch of people hate.

A friend of mine commented on my Facebook that they should all blow each other up. A joke I heard from a guy in 2006 suggests that if an Arab wished for an impenetrable wall 6 miles high around the middle east the English man would wish simply that the area enclosed was filled with water. In the west no one really likes the Jews or the Arabs, or the other races lumped into those two. That part is perhaps based on race, Jews and Arabs are the petulant ”others” who were not bowed by centuries of slavery nor are they content to work in factories making ipods.

Iran and Israel are in the news because they are the outcasts among the outcasts. Its amusing because the Jewish and Aryan sense of “superiority” originates from these countries.

Israel is in the news because once again amid fights with Gaza Palestinians it goes to sit at the table with Westbank Palestinians. After so many years I am not sure anybody will be expecting much. Lebanon is building up weapons and has had a border skirmish already this year and Gaza is still hell bent on building stockpiles forging a new direction from the PLO and gathering donations from sympathetic organizations and individuals.

Iran is in the news because it shuffles closer and closer to nuclear technology. It finally has a nuclear power plant (from Russia) and has built a few drones. Every move it makes is scrutinized and while there is a great amount of hypocrisy in the media, Iran is building weapons and playing with nuclear power and that is a fact, even if its just doing what every one else is doing. It doesn’t matter that no one cares about Saudi Arabian weapons, Israeli weapons, Pakistani weapons, Indian weapons, everyone cares about Iranian weapons because Iran is a pariah and while “frenemy” weapons can tolerated, pariah weapons can not be.

Peace.