|
The Absolute Intensification
of the Spectacle of Domination
by Steve Booth of Green Anarchist
|
With 25% of the world oil reserves, Saudi Arabia is one of the most important
countries in the Middle East. America must control Saudi, if it is to control
the oil supply. As regards oil, America and the west in general are in crisis.
Recent price increases, to historically high levels of over $40 per barrel,
suggest that we have reached, or have even passed, the peak year for oil
production. September 11th, the ongoing Iraq war show the US in a continuing
state of conflict with Islam. As the crisis grows, the intensity of the
conflict will rise.
|
Saudi Arabia
Learning the lesson of the 1973 OPEC oil crisis, America demands that Saudi
pumps more oil, to keep the price down. Periodically, terrorist incidents;
attacks on Saudi oil installations, bombings against US bases, attacks on
westerners, show that all is not well within the kingdom. On 16th May 2004,
for example, there was a shoot out in Riyadh, where four extremists were
arrested. The Saudi regime tries to keep the lid down on this, even blaming
westerners for the bombings, but all to no avail. One of Bin Laden's demands
is for the infidels to leave Saudi, and its corrupt rulers' role as no more
than American puppets must do them little good within the wider Islamic
world.
Islamic modernisers
Within Islam, the modernisers are the most significant strand. Modernisers
typically want to put in moderate democratic governments in Iran, or promote
information technology industries in Pakistan. At the same time the modernisers
have a sinister side - Bin Laden for example, who combined hard line Islamic
ideology with the use of modern weapons like anti aircraft blowpipe missiles,
plastic explosives, or the hijacking of airliners to destroy skyscrapers.
Oil turbulence
People now complain about the price of oil reaching a historic high of $41.5
per barrel. Memories of the September 2000 fuel blockades, and the supermarket
shelves being cleared of bread come back to haunt. Every aspect of a global
economy based on transport and the free movement of goods across frontiers
will be affected. Already the government plans have been laid to counter
the fuel price protesters. Secretly a lot of money has been spent on refurbishing
the government oil pipelines. Yet the crisis is further reaching than this.
Reserves overstated
How much longer will the oil last? It is believed by some that world oil
reserves have been overstated. As long ago as 1956, the far sighted Dr M
King Hubbert predicted that oil production would peak, and then decline.
At the peak point in the graph, half the world's oil will have been used
up. Stated reserves vary excessively. The IPCC claims between 5,000 - 18,000
Billion barrels. The US Geological Survey 2,275 Billion. Various other projections
average at around 1,000 Billion. Dr Colin J Campbell predicts that 'Hubbert's
Peak' will occur in the first decade of the 21st Century. He previously
said that it would be in 1999.
Political pressures dictate that reserves will be overstated. Campbell details
anomalies in reserve figures, where claimed amounts have not decreased despite
oil extraction, or have 'increased' despite the lack of new oil field discoveries.
Nine years ago, in 1995, Campbell claimed that 317.54 Billion barrels claimed
by OPEC were spurious reserves, or around 45% of their total. With nine
more years of consumption, what must that credibility gap be now? More recently,
in October 2003, scientists from the University of Upsala claimed the real
level of reserves were 80% less than predicted. [New Scientist] On the 5th
February 2004, the row moved from academia into the Shell boardroom, and
executive heads rolled. 40% of the Oman oil reserves had been overstated.
Reserves have been overstated, but consumption will remain high, or even
increase. The implication of this is that the gap between the real reserves
and quantity used will close up. Text books assume a smooth curve with a
symmetrical rise and fall. The reality is that the two halves of the graph
will be uneven, the top of the curve will be kept high for as long as possible,
and will then crash downwards - the 'Oil Crunch'. Political and economic
realities will make sure of this.
On the official figures of around 70M barrels per day consumption, and 1033.8
thousand million barrels of reserves, oil will run out around 2040. Assuming
Campbell's earlier figure of 40% overstated, this cut off date moves forward
to 2023. On the Upsala figure, it comes nearer, to 2010. The crash will
be softened by changing over to renewable energy sources, and will be delayed
by more efficient extraction methods, but there will be a cut off date,
and it is not that far off. The economic implication of passing 'Hubbert's
Peak' is that from then onwards, the price of oil rises. Saudi is the pivotal
country. Should it cut back supplies to maximise its own revenue, or follow
the orders of its masters in Washington and pump like mad to keep the price
down?
The Haj
This economic reality takes place behind the cultural and political context
of a state of war, analogous to the Cold War, between the US and its puppets,
and the Islamic world. [see my Great Crusade articles previously] The traditional
and the modern elements within Islam mix and ferment, and the activities
of America rightly enrage Islamic people. In terms of its own cultural identity,
the Haj, the traditional annual pilgrimage to Mecca, is the most important
event. The Haj takes place in the 12th month of the Islamic calendar, (in
the western calendar the date moves forwards 11 days every year) and it
is understood as a duty on all Islamic believers to make the journey at
least once in their life time. Perhaps 1.75M Muslims crowd into Mecca during
this period.
Pilgrims begin with Tarwaf, they must walk anticlockwise round the Kaaba
seven times, (the stone set in the centre of the Great Mosque). They must
make seven trips between Marwah and Safa, along the long gallery. On the
eighth day of the month, they go to Mina. On the ninth day, they gather
on the Plain of Arafat, 12 miles east of Mecca, and must climb the Mount
of Mercy. On the tenth day, pilgrims throw stones at three stone pillars
at Mina, symbolising the devil. The sheer crush of the crowds during this
period was shown when this year, when 244 pilgrims were crushed to death
at the stone pillars on 1st February 2004.
The Haj is the most visible manifestation of the traditions of Islam, and
an important unifying factor. Mecca itself is the holiest part of the Islamic
world. There is a kind of symmetry to the fact that Mecca is in Saudi Arabian
territory, and that Saudi is the world's most important oil producing country.
There is a kind of convergence between those two facts, rather like that
between the iceberg and the Titanic.
America - reasons for conflict
Shift the focus for a moment, concentrate on America. Think about September
11th. Think about Afghanistan, Saddam Hussain being pulled out of his hole
in the ground. Think about Guantanamo Bay. Think about the infamous pictures
of Iraqi prisoners being tortured in Baghdad. Daily, we hear of more violence,
more shootings, more bombings, more atrocities, more people killed.
The conflict between the US and Islam is many layered, and more that just
about the control of oil. We have to take into consideration US imperialism
and machismo as a cultural factor. America has the hi-tec weaponry, but
against this, the political factor, the shadow of Vietnam, a long, lingering
conflict, with the Americans leaving, humiliated, remains. The image of
the helicopter evacuating the last people off the US embassy roof in Saigon,
or for that matter, the US Marines blown up in Lebanon, or the Blackhawk
helicopter shot down in Somalia reinforce this sense of humiliation. Machismo
rejects such defeats, refuses to acknowledge them, and yet the Stars and
Stripes draped coffins continue to arrive at the airfield in Maryland and
the US propaganda machine seems powerless to prevent the publication of
these images.
There is also a bandwaggon effect whereby once a conflict begins it develops
its own momentum. The precise details of its origins, or what it was all
about get lost in the day to day detail. Mired down in the trenches, drowning
in mud, unable to see more than a hundred yards, both sides cast about for
super-weapons to break the deadlock.
Visible atrocities
The US has no regard for its enemies and this is a very dangerous position
to be in. Think about Guantanamo Bay. Think about the infamous pictures
of Iraqi prisoners being tortured in Baghdad. Now ask the obvious question:
If you were going to conspire to commit crimes against humanity, why take
pictures? Why take pictures in such quantities?
One is reminded of the SS officer, Jurgen Stroop, who took photographs of
the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto. The torture photographs also resemble
the case of those concentration camp guards, who made lampshades out of
human skin, and other such perversions. The US has no regard for its opponents.
This much is axiomatic.
I want to go further than this, though, and say these torture pictures were
taken because they were intended to be published. The atrocities need to
be made more visible, as a piece of psychological warfare against its enemies.
The USA wants the whole world to know that it tortures, and has engaged
the services of CNN, Newsweek, and the BBC to spread the message. The USA
wants the world to know that it tortures, that it bombs wedding parties.
The whole point of their terror method is that it is made visible - all
the better to terrorise the rest into submission. The torture is an expression
of American power. Nobody has the capacity to stop them. After all, the
US-Nazis refuse to recognise the international court of human rights at
The Hague. The Great Crusade shows every sign of degenerating into absolute
barbarism.
Where the capacities of the two sides are evenly matched, conflict assumes
a kind of equilibrium. There are limits. Memories of the horrific use of
poison gas in the First World War, and fears that the enemy had much worse
in stock, kept both sides from using gas as a military weapon in the second
world war. Where the capacities of the two sides are vastly unequal, the
situation is much more dangerous, radically unstable, and tends towards
extremes. There is no restraint on the more powerful side using super-weapons;
neither is there any reason why an almost crushed weaker side should not
deploy weapons of mass destruction if it has them.
The torture pictures show how the US-Nazis regard their opponents as untermensch,
sub-humans. They would not hesitate to use thermobaric 'Bunker-Buster' bombs
against them. They would not hesitate to use laser weapons, tasers, so-called
'non-lethal' weaponry, chemical incapacitants, napalm. The US-Nazis openly
declared the limitations of the Geneva Convention to be null and void, and
openly flout its provisions at Guantanamo Bay, in the Baghdad prison, and
in the secret prisons of Diego Garcia. It is but a short step from there
to gas chambers, crematoria, and mass graves. We have already learned of
CIA mass graves in Afghanistan. The gloves are off.
The white helmets of the US military policemen standing behind Hess, Goering,
Ribbentrop and the other Nazis in the dock at Nuremberg asserts the right
of the US to try war criminals. This photograph was one of the most potent
images of the post 1945 world. No US soldiers, politicians or CIA-Gestapo
concentration camp guards will ever be tried in a similar way. In a slimey
piece of characteristic postmodern irony, the US torturer Nazis even invoke
the Nuremberg defence of 'I was only obeying orders' when challenged about
their behaviour.
Pushing the nuclear button
I believe that the following prediction is inevitable and will follow sooner
or later, as a logical progression from all of the above. I believe that
the US-Nazis are going to detonate nuclear weapons over Mecca during the
Haj.
They might do much the same with a biological attack, but it is obvious
that a nuclear strike carries much more strength, it has a greater value
symbolically. In such a radically unstable world situation, the conflict
moves towards extremes, like September 11th, and this is the extreme going
in the other direction.
Hiroshima, Nagasaki, 59 years on - remember America is still the only country
to have used atomic weapons in wartime. It could easily do so again. During
the Cold War, the rationale behind having nuclear missiles, 'Mutually Assured
Destruction' (=MAD), pointed out that as both sides had the bomb, neither
would be so foolish as to use them. The only circumstance under which such
weapons could be used, would be when one side has a nuclear bomb, and the
other does not.
I am not saying that this is going to happen this year or next. It might
not happen at all. But I believe that if we extrapolate from present trends,
such an atrocity is extremely likely. There are three causal factors which
will force it in this direction. One is the economic situation brought about
by declining stocks of oil. The second factor is the isolation and machismo
of the American Imperium - they are locked into a kind of 'groupthink',
and not open to external challenge. The third cause is the reality of the
escalating level of conflict and the function of spectacular media images
. We live in a media world of diminishing returns, and the only way to have
an effect is to create something more outrageous than last time. Using nuclear
weapons against Mecca falls into that pattern and would be the strongest
symbolic attack that could be made against Islam, and the most potent, global,
public demonstration of US power.
Economics
Domestic US economic instability caused by the declining stock of oil and
rising prices will intensify public hostility towards Islam. It may be that
OPEC will cut back on oil production, rather like the crisis back in 1973.
Shortages of metals like copper, a staple of the electronics industry, cased
by conflicts in Africa, may also be part of this picture. More general effects
of globalisation, jobs moving abroad for instance, will add to this.
It may be that Islamic terrorists could discharge a 'Dirty' bomb in Washington,
(deliberately contaminating the city with a bomb containing nuclear waste
materials). The use of a 'Dirty' bomb opens up the nuclear option, on a
'they used it first' basis. Perhaps the incident would be a genuine act
of Islamic terrorism, or engineered by the American Securocrats themselves.
The effect of such an incident, and the shortage of oil more generally,
will push the Americans in that direction.
Groupthink
The second cause is the intellectual climate of hostility against Islam
within the Pentagon, Langley and the White House. These places constitute
a closed world, where the normal constraints of morality do not apply. We
can see this in the way the whole Crusade process has moved: Saddam, Afghanistan,
September 11th, Bin Laden, Iraq. Looking at how they got into this mess
in the first place, we see how George W Bush, the Generals and Securocrats
are not very bright, and think themselves immune from the consequences of
their actions and choices. They are contemptuous towards their opponents.
They display an arrogance as befitting the world's own superpower. Once
a project like a nuclear attack against Mecca starts rolling, it will be
difficult to stop.
Media
The third big factor in this is the media. How America is seen on TV and
in the newspapers, sets the parameters of their own thinking. The more the
Imperium feels humiliated, the more it will want to hit back, the harder
it will want to kick. Their Machismo has to be projected; hence the torture
photographs. If we think of September 11th as a media event, (Normal TV
schedules were all suspended as the towers burned, the whole world sat agog
as they crumbled and collapsed) then we have to think of this as a counter
strike.
Just as the arrogantly named 'World Trade Centre' symbolised global capitalism,
the American, multinational corporate dominance, Mecca symbolises Islam.
If you wish to utterly destroy something, it is a tempting and simple strategy
to go for its symbols. In the context of an all-out war against Islam, such
an attack would be just too tempting. Does anybody seriously think that,
when pressed, the American Imperium would be able to resist this?
How it would be done
The strike would be set for the peak of the Haj, the 9th day of Dhu' l-Hijjah,
the twelfth month in the Islamic calendar. At this point, 1.5 M Muslims
would be gathering round the 'Mount of Mercy' on the Plain of Arafat, 12
miles east of Mecca. Several short range missiles would be launched from
an adapted cargo ship in the middle of the Red Sea, and would only take
a few minutes to fly to their targets. The Sacred Mosque and Kaaba would
be the main target, Mina, Muzdalifah and the Plain of Arafat others, making
clear the absolute character of the attack. As the Americans supply and
control the Saudi Arabian air defences, it would be a simple matter for
them to make sure the missiles got through, even assuming the Saudis have
the capacity to defend their airspace against such an attack.
The patsies
As with all conspiracies, there has to be a patsy, a fall guy. With the
Reichstag Fire it was Van Der Lubbe, With Kennedy it was Lee Harvey Oswald.
With Princess Diana it was Paul Burrell. The patsy functions as a scapegoat,
someone for the public to blame, a way of muddying the waters in the immediate
aftermath, to distract attention away from the real perpetrators.
In this case, the fall guys would be Islamic modernisers. Prior to the attack,
covert US support would have been given to various Saudi groups critical
of the Haj, or hostile towards the Saudi regime. Excessive publicity, out
of proportion to their true significance, would have been given to these
people to raise their public profile.
The missiles themselves might be modified Scud missiles, captured in Iraq
and cleaned up, or US facsimiles of these. Some improvements in their guidance
systems, for example using GPS systems would have been installed. The bombs
themselves would be made out of plutonium from the Soviet Union or Pakistan,
to divert attention away from the US - or perhaps sophisticated chemical
fakery of some sort would be used to create the illusion of this.
After the attack, 'evidence' would be left on the abandoned cargo ship to
point towards an Islamic group. A video claiming the attack on their behalf
would be sent to Al Jazeera. The problem with this is that most people would
immediately assume this crime against humanity was perpetrated by America.
Most of this Islamic world would not be convinced by the fakery.
There is a double aspect to this question of visible guilt. On one level,
the Americans would want the world to know they had done this; to borrow
Noam Chomsky's line, to 'keep the rabble in line'. What is the point of
being the biggest bully on the block if you cannot hit people? The second
aspect, the structural need to muddy the waters, to create that little glimmer
of doubt in the minds of tender hearted domestic US liberals; also serves
the global strategic goal of strengthening the traditional Fundamentalist
wing of Islam, while discrediting and disempowering the modernisers.
Aftermath / Consequences
Were the Americans to destroy Mecca in this way, it goes without saying
that there would be a massive increase in Islamic anger against the US,
and a rise in terrorist attacks against US interests and soft targets abroad.
Yet, most of this rage would be impotent, and in the face of declining global
security, most US assets save for the soldiers, will prior to this have
been pulled back within US boundaries.
For Islam such an attack would be humiliating and bring about its long term
decline. The economic problems for the US would still remain, the oil crisis
would still continue.
Were it to take place, such an attack would be an example of a secondary
goal replacing a primary one. It is easier to wage war against mostly defenceless
Islamic people than it is to address the basic problem, today's economy
is too dependent upon oil, a finite resource, and the oil will soon run
out.
- – Steve Booth
|
