Dominos of Destiny

"Fate is not an eagle, it creeps like a rat." -Elizabeth Bowen

It is funny to think about how the modern world developed. The twists and turn of outrageous fortune that have gotten us into this current economic and political system that for better or worse manages to maintain damn near 7 billion humans on the epidermis of Earth. Most of my mental activity over the course of my 30 years here has been directed at gaining some sort of idea about why the world of the humans is the way it is. Far from academic and equally far from being unbiased or even disciplined, this has given me a lot to mentally masticate over the years. Like anyone who seeks to understand, it is a fluid process that is not given to absolute notions or permanent 'truths' beyond the rules of constant change and organized chaos that is the Universe at large. Even so, I'd like to share some random thoughts about how things got to their present point.

Colonialism, Imperialism, overly enthusiastic socializing on an epic scale, however you want to think of it, Europe's rather spectacular 500 year run of revolutionizing human existence on our planet is fascinating. Perhaps most important at present, is the invention, implementation and solidifying of what we commonly call countries. Originally they were just administrative units. You can bet your ass that no Spanish Viceroy or cartographer thought that the random lines they drew on imprecise maps would one day dictate the formation of nation states across Latin America. Equally ignorant were the British and French attempts to bring order to the timeless and transient formations in Africa and Asia. It was just expedient in order to govern these huge areas to break them up into different bureaucratic entities. The Sykes-Picot agreements that drew the borders of the Middle East, or the Durand line that divided the Pashtun people, or even the borders drawn by Soviet officials in Central Asia and Eastern Europe were done in what can only be described as a temporary administratively expedient manner that clearly had no intention of worrying about the future.

Having said that, think about how important these lines have become. I am very suspicious as to why these borders have been so stubbornly persistent, even when it is against a lot of peoples best interest to do away with them. The UN has some 200 countries in it, of which the vast majority were created in their present forms by agreements between white guys hanging out in well furnished rooms sometime in the previous century. This has given rise to a lot of flags, nationalism, border crossings and various levels of warfare. Some people, like the Kurds, Tauregs or Pashtuns were deliberately divided with the result that they have been lobbying and fighting for some revisions of the maps in order to give them what they feel they deserve. The rate of fragmentation has been increasing, with South Sudan, Kosovo, and East Timor coming into existence lately after extensive fighting. This is a dangerous precedent that is clearly being taken to heart by many aspiring nationalists and will likely sow the seeds of greater chaos and violence as places like Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Ukraine has portions of their population attempt to inflict enough death to warrant the creation of a separate state; invariably based on ethnic and/or religious lines.

Another funny quirk of the slings and arrows of outrageous historical fortune is the continued existence of what can only be described as an impressively self serving and predatory financial system that more or less controls international trade, all currencies and to great and lesser extents, the life of every human being on the planet. Even if you are just some tribal person living in the jungles of Papua New Guinea and never touched any modern money your whole life, if someone in a suit in Hong Kong or New York decides to throw enough money at your little piece of the world, they can strip mine your entire life-space into an obliterated wasteland with the ruthless efficiency and automation of an ambitious ant colony. The truly hilarious part about this whole thing is that it has taken on the dimensions of the most complicated religion ever, being so damn esoteric as to be basically incomprehensible to anyone who doesn't spend their entire life reading the economic code, who in their turn are then not really able to communicate what they have learned to anyone who doesn't speak their hermetic tongue. The bottom line is that so much of human life is dependent upon this teetering totalitarian edifice that no government can really be sure it isn't going to completely destroy itself by tampering with it; and thus has it more or less become a passively accepted feature of our modern world.

This all evolved out of a need to have an imperial treasury and to facilitate the extraction of wealth from large portions of the planet by colonial powers. Today however, it has evolved far beyond that and is an entity existing completely independently of any individual region, country or even group of super rich people. It is a sort of global web of greed and need that is getting more complex at a compound rate with technology and a multi-polar economic world in which all forces are being merged into the mega-hive of resource extraction, transfer, consumption and destruction. A lot of people like to denounce one aspect, like whaling or fracking, but that does little to really challenge the pervasiveness of the motive for doing it in the first place. Trying to make people feel guilty for doing what most people on earth are part of is an uphill battle that I can't see being won on the grounds of moral authority. I could write a lot more about the evolution of our economic order, but I lack the clarity of consciousness to make it serve any purpose other than exorcising my own mental demons.

There are a lot of factors that made the world today, and I would argue that all of them are amoral forces operating largely independently of any one group or ideology. If technology doesn't betray us and lead to our complete annihilation, and if the Earth's ecosystem can handle our shitty selfish attitude towards it for a bit longer, there is  hope that we will start seeing some logical thoughtful discussion about what would be a better reality than that which the winds of fate have blown our way. My main fear is that it is going to require the wholesale jettisoning of all our previous beliefs to do so, and that many humans would rather go down with the ship than hop onto a new vessel that requires being built amidst undeniably tumultuous seas.

"Before the beginning of great brilliance, there must be great chaos."  -   I-Ching

The Reckoning

It's an arbitrary and fluid world that one sees unfolding before us these days. The fate of millions of souls seems to live and die based on the craps shoot of modern geopolitics. It now seems completely possible that the borders Iraq,  Syria and the rest of the countries invented in the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916, will very soon descend into conventional full scale warfare in order to see those imaginary lines get redrawn. A lot of people said that the war in Syria could spread, especially to equally sectarian and violence prone Iraq, but the events of the past few weeks took everyone by surprise.

According to some sources in the Sunni Triangle, ISIS made a pact with remnants of the Baathist forces and various bellicose Sunni tribes to assist in their blitzkrieg. This was further facilitated by the bribing or coercision of most of the generals in the region to simply leave their posts at this critical juncture, telling their troups to leave their weapons and run for their lives. The end result was that the Sunnis, under the aegis of the black banners of Jihad, are in control of a large and strategically central portion of Iraq, got about half a billion from a bankrobbery and a good deal of quality American made weaponry. They have also tipped the balance of power in Eastern Syria, where a lot of the hardware and money is being redeployed to fight the Shias on that front.

The Kurds seem perfectly happy to have inherited Kirkuk when the Iraqi army dissolved, with the battle hardened Peshmerga being more than capable of fighting off ISIS. They even took the opportunity to sell a million barrels of oil on their own, making their de facto independence looking even more viable. The hilarious side note to that is the oil was sold to Israel, the one country that has nothing to fear from the threats that Baghdad and Washington made about punishing whoever bought this 'illegal' oil. Even more ironic is that Turkey is the one facilitating all this oil moving.

Don't count the Shia out however, despite the utter incompetency of the Maliki government. Qasem Soleimani is a very effective strategist and someone not to be underestimated. He is the commander of the Qods Forces, which is in essence Iran's 15,000 strong version of the US Green Berets. Qasem more or less organized and fostered the development of Hezbullah and has played a very central part in the recent success of the Assad regime against its many opponents. This man is now the one who is rallying the Shia armies to oppose the rise of the new Sunni Caliphate. After being on the shit end of the sectarian stick since the downfall of the Fatimid Caliphate almost a thousand years  ago the Shia leaders are definitely willing to wage all out war to prevent any Sunnis, least of all Wahabist extremists, from challenging their recent successes.

Then of course there is the folks in the Arabian peninsula, who are semi-openly supporting the radical Sunni forces in Syria and Iraq. Militarily Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States couldn't do a whole lot, but they do like throwing money at likeminded religious zealots. Of course the US still guarantees these countries safety, so they can talk all the shit they like from the sidelines and place their bets as they choose. The US for its part seems pretty happy to have bailed on the whole shitshow and are willing to let this one play out. After all, it is going to drive up oil prices and make a lot of capitalists a fortune, not to mention arms sales and the fact that all of a sudden no one seems at all concerned about Israel.

Add to all this that there is actually fighting within Europe, which will surely distract NATO from taking any serious action elsewhere, and you have yourselves all the makings of a proper regional throw down. This reckoning has been a long time coming, 1353 years to be precise.

"Be not fainthearted then; and invite not the infidels to peace when ye have the upper hand: for God is with you, and will not defraud you of the recompense of your works..." -Quran 

Kyrgyzstan

Aside from being perhaps the most consonant heavy name for a country when you look at a map, Kyrgyzstan doesn't get much attention in the world. It's not a big country, and it is right in the middle of Asia surrounded by other -stan countries and China to the East. It is a very mountainous piece of land that has been the border between civilizations for thousands of years. It is the only place in the region that has a democracy, for whatever that's worth, and is open to outsiders (most people don't need a visa to visit here). It is a country that a little over 20 years ago was part of the Soviet Union, but now is simply struggling to stay afloat financially, socially and psychologically.  

While a Soviet Socialist Republic, it was a very diverse place, with large numbers of Russians, Ukranians, Uzbeks and ethnic Germans living alongside the Kyrgyz, who didn't constitute a majority of the population until the 1980's. After the end of the Soviet Union most besides the Uzbeks went to their respective ethnic territories.  There is still a smattering of Russians, and the language is still predominant in the cities and widely spoken elsewhere, but things are slowly but surely sliding towards the use of Kyrgyz.

Nomadism isn't such a distant memory here, and plenty of the people still ride horses and spend the warm months up in the highlands living in yurts tending to their livestock. The  government has invoked the peoples oral story telling tradition, in particular the epic story of Manas, to create a national identity. So it was that they moved the statues of Lenin to less prominent locations and put up ones like this in its place-

Here are some other random shots I've taken in the past few weeks here. I'll be sure to add some more before the summer is through.

Ukraine

"Nationalism... is like cheap cheap alcohol. First it makes you drunk, then it makes you blind, then it kills you"    -Dan Fried

What a media frenzy has surrounded the events of the past few months in Ukraine. I was recently asked by an elderly Russian man what I thought of this conflict, to which I could only reply that no one is ever all right, and no one is ever all wrong. In the following post I will try and explain the situation as best I can, with a conscious effort to be clear and concise.

As countries go, Ukraine doesn't have much history of being an actual nation or people. It has been slavic for a long time, but before that Scythian, Kazar and other nomadic stock from Central Asia. During the Russian Civil War/Revolution one of my favorite historical characters, Nestor Makhno, managed to make some serious headway against authoritarianism by setting up a free area in which no one was allowed to impose their ideology on anyone else.

Of course, the Red Army eventually overwhelmed them by sheer numbers and ruthlessness, and the area was turned into the Ukrainian SSR. When Stalin decided to experiment with agricultural production in the 1930's millions of Ukrainians died of starvation in what is known as the Holodomor. Things didn't get much better during the next decade with the Nazis rampaging throughout the region slaughtering more millions.

Once it was over though the Soviet shot callers in Moscow decided to make like old school Imperialists, get their pens out, and start drawing borders. The result was the country we now call Ukraine.



Starting with the Orange Revolution in 2004 the country has seen a lot of tension between the east and west. The east is relatively industrialized and does a lot of trade with Russia and the CIS countries, whereas the west is more agricultural and exports primarily to Europe. In addition to this division, the west speaks Ukrainian in addition to Russian and has lately seen a lot of nationalism based on this fact.

Now I feel like I can discuss what is currently happening.

The imprisoned Yulia Tymoshenko used her considerable wealth acquired during her time as Prime Minister to pay people to go into the Maiden and oppose the government of her foe, Viktor Yanukovych. The gambit worked, at least for her, and she was released.

What led Tymoshenko to believe that the moment to mobilize forces had come was that Yanukovych had decided to sign an economic deal with Russia that would have done a lot to relieve Ukraines ruinous economy. Unfortunately for him and Ukraine, the EU concluded that doing so meant that they couldn't have similar trade deals with them. Viktor, for all his many faults, made the logical economic choice and chose Russia over an IMF loan that would have led to austerity that would have ruined him politically.

He then decided to use force to drive out the people who were being used against him, which led to people voluntarily joining the protests and things spiralled out of control until he fled the country and an unelected Ukrainian nationalist government was installed with the blessing of the West and a lot of positive coverage in the press.

The first act of this government was to remove Russian as an official language, which is pretty stupid considering its the only language all Ukrainians can speak. Naturally a lot of Russian speaking people in the country took offense to this and with support from Russia have started to fragment the country in retaliation.

Due to some truly impressive corruption the once mighty military of the Ukraine has been reduced to a shadow of its former self and is in no position to oppose anything or anyone militarily. Add this to the fact that a fairly sizable contingent in the new government is openly Fascist and anti-semitic, you have yourself a proper political tinderbox.

Russia has put up with a lot of shit from the West since the end of the Soviet era (the bombing of Serbia, NATO expansion into Eastern Europe, the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq) but having a partially fascist government on its borders was too much.

Consequently, Putin did what most Russians thought was right and started taking action to topple the new government in Kiev. Then you got America once again getting involved in political feuds on the other side of the planet and things get even more volatile.

Where it will go from here is hard to predict. Best case scenario in my opinion is that the country will allow a plebiscite region by region, with those choosing Russia being allowed to peacefully integrate. Another option would be to hold snap elections and hope that some sort of a unity government is formed that is strong enough to weather the economic shitstorm that will be the foreseeable future of the country. If they are lucky Russia will still offer them the deal given to Yanukovych and the EU will stop being dicks about them having concurrent deals with them.

This is of course just all my opinion, and as such, is fundamentally the product of my own bias. I wish the people of the region the best possible outcome and hope that violence can be avoided.

Berlin

Way back in the 15th Century an ambitious bunch of megalomaniacs using the familial name Hohenzollern began to transform a series of towns into a city and raise armies in order to establish an Empire. They were a temperamental, organized and determined crew, but they fit in pretty well with the other inbred sadists masquerading as divinely ordained nobility of the day.

The city of Berlin that they founded and resided in for centuries has had a turbulent time during its five centuries. Some of the more dramatic phases were-

Losing half its population due to the horrendous war caused by the protestant reformation, seeing armies come and go for 30 blood drenched years.

Becoming a center of religious tolerance during a time when that wasn't common in Europe, leading to a mental blooming of brilliance on par with any other.

Prussian Armies marshaled here under the Hohenzollern banner unify Germany in a daring and dashing campaign that forged a nation; not to mention being the first modern military campaign.

The city was a cultural orgy during the Roaring 20's and at that time one of the largest cities earth had ever had on its surface.

As the epicenter of the Nazi Reich, the city saw many monumental building projects, most of which were promptly blown to smithereens.

The population was compelled to hide underground like moles for a few years as English speaking Valkyries perfected the murderous art of aerial bombing.

When the Russians finally made it to the gates of the city, an apocalyptic battle took place involving millions of men and thousands of tanks- arguably the biggest brouhaha of all time.

Following the devastation the city was divided militarily in half with the occasional tank standoff and soldier or civilian dying at the fortified border between east and west. Premier Khrushchev once said, "Berlin is the testicle of the West. When I want the West to scream, I squeeze Berlin."

Once all this drama was over the city of Berlin was a living breathing historical mutant. Too strange to be copied and too rare to ignore. Its most recent phase is decidedly less violent, but every bit as captivating.

Today Berlin has a staggering 890 square kilometers of urban forests, parks and other green space (they alone are almost 9 times the size of Paris), making it the least city like metropolis in the world. The late Kaisers hoped it would become the greatest city of all time and thus designed it on a plan that would theoretically accommodate 30 million people. This probably would have happened too if Wilhelm II and/or Adolf Hitler hadn't been such insatiable savages. I however am glad it only ended up housing a mere 3.4 million, for this has made it a spacious and livable place.

I ended up living in the 8th borough, Neukoelln, during most of my stay here. Ironically, this is firmly in what was once the American sector of the city, and today is half populated by people who are not ethnically German; primarily Turks, Arabs and Kurds. It is a lively and sometimes gritty, but also frequently peaceful and picturesque part of the city that I have learned to love in a way I never expected to love any urban setting.

I recently found out that the castle like fortress/barracks that I frequently ride my bike past once housed the armies of the Prussian Kaisers and then was the Gestapo headquarters in which the Final Solution was plotted and perpetrated. This happens to be right next to the decommissioned Tempelhof airport used in the Berlin Airlift and which is now the biggest park I've ever seen. In a typically Berlin drama the place was planned to be sold and developed after it was closed in 2008, then it was promptly squatted, then the city decided to open up to the public, when some developers talked them into letting them build some shit, the public got pissed off at this, and then the city voted to keep it as it is. 

For me it will always be the city that fostered the brains of Humboldt, Hegel and Marx. The streets that witnessed the dastardly murder of Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht and their Spartacist brethren. My neighborhood that once saw political street battles led by the likes of Olga Benario as Commuinsts desperately fought the spread of Fascism street by street and brain by brain.

A place of Anarchist squats, spectacular museums, utterly distinct neighborhoods, unsurpassed nightlife, more cultural diversity than you can shake a consciousness at and so much nature that you can easily forget concrete chaos any time you want. A city in which Communism and Capitalism smashed into each other at great historical velocity, and some how came out the better for it.

I think Jean Paul was right when he said some time ago that "Berlin is rather a part of the world than a city." David Bowie was perhaps even more correct when he commented that Berlin is "The greatest cultural extravaganza that one could imagine."

I feel truly honored to have been able to call it my home for part of my life and hope to return many times to see what this sprawling mosaic of humanity is up to. 

Downhill Struggle

I really love it when scientists weigh in on the little issue of our impending doom. Perhaps my pleasure in this arises from the fact that the dispassionate language that they use almost always seems like they really don't give a flying fuck personally, but they are obligated to say something from some sort of humanist sympathy for the unscientific masses. A recently published study funded by NASA gave me some seriously dark chuckles indeed (here is the article). 

It pretty much says what everyone not actively ignoring reality is already aware of, the only difference being that scientists are all about specifics. The primary conclusion of the research said that most historical collapses are the result of rapacious elites wanting to consume absurd amounts of resources. This multi-disciplinary grouping observed that this is certainly true of our current situation, with elites in developed countries being the most responsible for our imminent demise.

What they failed to mention is that people emulate elites as much as they can manage in our Capitalist system. Consumption is equated with status, status with quality of life and the power to control it. I think it is from this fact that the arrogance and careless abandon of the wealthy has been transmitted down through the classes to the point that as a whole, we are not concerned with any number of scenarios the study listed resulting in an 'irreversible societal collapse'. 

This state of apathy has rather brilliantly been achieved by the elites allotting only enough of the world's wealth to the masses to keep them servile, while telling them that any downturn in the economy will destroy their lives, and that taking comprehensive action to avert the disasters the scientists promise would invariably be economic suicide. Given our value system, who can be surprised that people seem to believe that half measures and a faith in technology (which has so far only increased per capita consumption) will save us in the 11th hour. 

People are selfish and myopic, or at least the society that they have formed is. How to change that is a tough nut to crack. The old anarchist dream that when this massive modern edifice collapses that we will close ranks and work voluntarily towards our collective survival is the best possible scenario I can imagine. Hell, I'm even down for the far more popular belief that Jesus will show up in the final act and fix it all up in a jiffy.

"The only hope is that our Civilization will collapse at a certain point, as always happens in history. Then, out of barbarity, a renaissance." -Pierre Schaeffer

Regurgitated thoughts half digested

So once again I sit down to my strange machine and try to regurgitate my mind onto this surreal space we call the internet. Why, might you ask. Because the unfathomable depths of absurdity that is this world we live in is something that I feel is worth contemplating.

For example, I read several articles glorifying the people who managed to overthrow their government in Ukraine, much of it saying that this was 'fulfilling the democratic aspirations of the people'. First of all, say what you will of Yanukovych, the man was elected, and overthrowing an elected leader because he is doing what those who voted for him desire is about as undemocratic as you can get. Add that to the fact that the oppositions goal of joining the EU is illogical considering the economic block has no interest in the Ukraine joining, that the only way their entire economy is even viable is with Russian help and you got yourself some people protesting reality as much as anything. Not that that isn't heroic in and of itself; and basically the premise of virtually all revolutions. Having said that, loyalty to democracy for democracy's sake is idiotic anyway. Hitler and Bush were both elected, and their respective citizens supported those two maniacs, so why not Yanukovych? I just can't get over the fact that people are so quick to sympathize with protesters even if they haven't got the foggiest idea why they are doing it.   

Now lets get to something a bit more important, the economic rise of China. People all over the place are getting all sorts of worked up about this, none more so than Americans. Lets consider for a moment that every country that industrialized to become a mover and shaker in the world did so through organized pillaging on a massive scale. This was inevitably done through the barrel of a gun and was the reason for a lot of the murder over the past 150 years. Now look at China, they did it without having to take anything from anyone; except maybe their own people's ability to see the sun or have political opinions. Now one would think that the other economically powerful countries that achieved that status by rather ruthlessly murdering, robbing and raping every damn corner of the globe for generations would have the cognizance to tip their hats to China's remarkable accomplishment. But NOOOOO, they have contracted a case of convenient historical amnesia and thus can go on about 'human rights issues' and not following trade rules. Pretty sure the millions of people (past, present and future) who had to die and suffer for Europe and North America to become developed would have something to say about human rights. 

Somehow its fanaticism when someone wants to enact Sharia law, but its totally different when we impose our made up ideals/hypocrisies upon other societies, often through the use of explosives that fly through the air and kill with the greatest of ease. We accuse China of censorship and then seek to imprison or kill those who dare publish the raw facts of how the American Empire is run. The public loves 'reality tv' but isn't interested in anything resembling fact based reporting on actual events. 

I wonder if the day will ever come when the world has the courage to look in the mirror and realize that all our societies, culture, religion, ideals and the rest is nothing but a bunch of clutter and that anyone who is willing to get excited over it is a hoarder of the most pernicious kind of crap. We are all people, the hour is late, we might be doomed already, can't we just accept that we need to stop judging each other as if we had a leg to stand on. If this hellacious clutter cluster fuck ever stops I suspect we all look around and within us, and realize that the whole shithouse need never have been built, and deep as the shit may be, we would be better off without it.

Age of Oblivion

What sort of era are we entering into?

Let us consider a few stories that will hopefully paint some pictures that might help us answer that question. 

During the midst of a massive demonstration in Kiev, Ukraine thousands of protesters received texts at the same moment from their government saying- "Dear subscriber, you are registered as a participant in a mass disturbance.". 

The Pentagon decided not issue a new medal to honor drone pilots  and cyber warriors after uproar over the decision to rank this decoration above some medals given to troops wounded or killed in battle.

Our planets newest country, South Sudan, descended into civil war when its two largest ethnic groups started attacking one another, making an already uncertain future look grim.

A member of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria blew himself and 21 of his comrades up when he mistakenly used real explosives during a training session at a training camp north of Baghdad. 

Regular Mexicans in Michoacan formed self defense groups and started waging war against the local drug cartel because it had been terrorizing the local population, the government responded by sending in federal forces to try and control these groups and prevent them from succeeding where the government has systematically failed. 

Members of the American media have citing an exceptionally cold winter as evidence that climate change isn't occurring because the phrase 'global warming' was used in the past by those raising the issue.

We live in odd times folks. An era so chock full of hypocrisy, contradiction and people that the earth, our mighty living home in vastness of space, seems to be revolting against our behavior. It's hard to imagine where things will go from here, and for that reason most people seem determined not to think about it. The Age of Oblivion, where you must focus entirely upon the present because the past is too full of horrifying warnings and the future is shrouded in too many terrible possibilities to consider. 

"We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." -H.P. Lovecraft 1926

It would seem to me that rather than choosing one we have opted for going completely insane and plunging ourselves into a darker age than any of us can fathom. I think the saddest part is that the only positive answer I hear from anyone is that science and technology will save us... why not just believe in God if you are going to go that route?