by William Skink
To live, we need water, so water is a part of war. Anything vital to surviving plays into global conflict. b at MoA digs into the water angle in the Syrian/Iraq mess. It’s worth reading.
I’m going to contrast that little bit of water politics with late breaking news about a really fucking crazy last-minute lawsuit aimed at preventing the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes from taking ownership of Kerr Dam this weekend.
I’m just going to say it: I am deeply impressed with how State Sen. Bob Keenan, R-Bigfork, and former state Sen. Verdell Jackson, R-Kalispell, decided to legally frame their argument against this transfer of ownership. Because it has to do with the nation of Turkey and the spread of Islam. On the Reservation. In Montana. Seriously:
Court documents filed by Kogan suggest the nation of Turkey has sought to invest in Native American tribes because the 2009 Homeless Emergency Assistance and Rapid Transition to Housing Act makes Indian reservations “largely off-limits to federal and state regulatory and law enforcement authorities.”
“It would appear that this setting would provide Turkey and such organizations with the opportunity to more freely promote their brand of Islam on reservations and/or to pursue other potentially more dangerous activities,” the complaint states.
That includes the possibility that Turkey seeks “access to the uranium deposits and bountiful water sources surrounding the Flathead Reservation for production of yellowcake capable of later conversion to a gaseous state for eventual use in incendiary devices,” it goes on.
The complaint asks a judge to issue an emergency temporary restraining order and temporary injunction prohibiting the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission from conveying the dam to the tribes.
What do you even say to this? I entertain all kinds of conspiracy theories, but a Turkish invasion of the Flathead Reservation to spread Islam is some of the stupidest shit I’ve seen in a long time.
Keep it coming, you crazies.
JC
Yellow cake? Really? Here, this might bolster their case for them! Jeebus. No one this stupid should be allowed to live in Montana.
If it were 1965 instead of 2015 it would be the communist menace instead of Islam. When the Soviet Union fell. It took eleven years to elevate Islam to Evil Empire status, The enemy d’jour is used for all purposes, local, national and international.
Nothing new under the sun.
Yeah, first the Tibetans come to the Rez and build a Garden of 1,000 Buddhas and hold Peace Festivals of all crazy things. Now the Muslims are coming… what’ll they do? Maybe a band of roving Sufis will come and build a temple and hold whirling dance classes and Turkish Whirling Dervishes will come and grace the land with a big festival once a year, like the Buddhists.
Of course, none of that has, or will have, the impact that the Catholics had when they came to convert the barbarians to christianity and built the Mission at St. Ignatius as a reminder of the supremacy of god and the power of the U.S. Government.
But since Bush’s scare about yellow cake in Iraq worked so well — afterall the “incendiary devices” referred to above are a euphemism for nuclear bombs — why not invoke it here? Doesn’t it makes sense that if the tribe gets the dam, Turkey will get the bomb? Oh wait! Turkey already bas the bomb courtesy of NATO! Nevermind.
I came across this interesting comic: “Trying to follow what is going on in Syria and why? This comic will get you there in 5 minutes.” It is an interesting take on how climate change has affected water availability.
But the comic doesn’t take in the politics of water allocation like b at MoA does, nor does it take in the geopolitics of oil hegemony, or tribal strife fomented by endless power grabs — it just makes a feint with a reference to “tenuous political situations” combining with climate change to create devastation. But it still comes to its conclusion that Assad is a bad man, and hints that revolution is still needed to take him down, or that the “revolution” in Syria is another leg of the Arab Spring fighting monarchy/dictatorship. It’s some heavy propaganda that is making the rounds on social media (I saw it linked from Facebook to Upworthy).
Agitprop works so very easily in this country. In part it is because Americans are isolated and ignorant of others.
A brilliant piece. As I suspected, there is no America or culture to define it or sustain it. All we have is a flag, some paper money and rent seekers riding this puppy to the very bottom of the pit. It’s a mirage.
“So even though they are poor, in debt, and only able to move in a tiny world, mentally they are all little aristocrats. Therein lays the genius and opportunity of a frontier. If in the early 1800s you were a plantation owner in Virginia or a financial tycoon in New York, how do you simultaneously gain access to all those resources west of Appalachia, reduce pressure for social reform and of course not do any of the work yourself? The social architecture of the frontier answers all three questions elegantly, but it concomitantly makes a hollow society, a government without a nation underneath.” – Adam http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2015/09/the-howling-wilderness-of-mind.html
This guy you link to is so very wise and young at once, having crossed the barrier into reality-based thinking at a very young age. That post is well worth a read. Thanks.
That’s something Swede needs to read.
Unfortunately it’s posted at a site ran by a guy named Dimitry, so we’re engaging in crimethink here and the frontiersmen will pooh-pooh us… but I like the guy’s insight that the drive to subjugate and profit off the frontier is what our country is all about. Nothing more, nothing less.
Most of us gain wisdom as we age, but to have true insight at a young age is unusual. Like a certain young guy, let’s say his initials are PW, derivative knowledge attained from exposure to pseudo culture can fill the head with conformist wisdom, mistaken as insight, and in a country like ours, that’s enough to get by. To look at the landscape with original insight is a rarity. It takes a de Tocqueville looking in from the outside to tell us who we are.
Sorry, but Dmitry is on a roll. Chickens do sometimes come home to roost. If we have a system of perpetual war, why can’t we have a perpetual parade of war criminals marching publicly toward their just reward? Silly question, I know. http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2015/09/eventual-consequences.html
“Keep it coming, Crazies”? Or the crazies keep coming?
Welcome to American non-imperialism.
“This may be the most surprising of President Obama’s foreign-policy legacies: not just that he presided over a humanitarian and cultural disaster of epochal proportions, but that he soothed the American people into feeling no responsibility for the tragedy.
Starvation in Biafra a generation ago sparked a movement. Synagogues and churches a decade ago mobilized to relieve misery in Darfur. When the Taliban in 2001 destroyed ancient statues of Buddha at Bamiyan, the world was appalled at the lost heritage.
Today the Islamic State is blowing up precious cultural monuments in Palmyra, and half of all Syrians have been displaced — as if, on a proportional basis, 160 million Americans had been made homeless. More than a quarter-million have been killed. Yet the “Save Darfur” signs have not given way to “Save Syria.”
One reason is that Obama — who ran for president on the promise of restoring the United States’ moral stature — has constantly reassured Americans that doing nothing is the smart and moral policy. He has argued, at times, that there was nothing the United States could do, belittling the Syrian opposition as “former doctors, farmers, pharmacists and so forth.”
He has argued that we would only make things worse — “I am more mindful probably than most,” he told the New Republic in 2013, “of not only our incredible strengths and capabilities, but also our limitations.”
He has implied that because we can’t solve every problem, maybe we shouldn’t solve any. “How do I weigh tens of thousands who’ve been killed in Syria versus the tens of thousands who are currently being killed in the Congo?” he asked (though at the time thousands were not being killed in Congo).-Washington Post
“doing nothing is the smart and moral policy”
What a laugher. What some people think is “doing nothing” is really us doing a lot to create the scenario that is happening. The middle east is exactly where our dark foreign policy wants it — making Syria a safe place for oil and gas from Saudi Arabia and Qatar to transit to Europe. And making it impossible for Russian and Iranian oil and gas to transit to Europe.
Make no mistake — this “doing nothing” is actually WWIII being played out in the early stages by waging an energy (and information) war. Ukraine is just another aspect of it, as is the S. China Sea.
And what spurred Japan into attacking us at Pearl Harbor? The U.S. shutting off oil supplies to it. The U.S. would love nothing more than for the early stages of WWIII to escalate beyond an energy war by instigating the Russians and/or Iranians to attack one of our “allies.” Then the war will get real to Americans. And inevitably follow us home.
Best comment from Liz’s first link.
“Remember, if you open your hymnal to Hansen 11:22, “Verily it shall come to pass, that as mankind’s fossil fuel iniquities pile upon iniquities, even as the Babylonian Temple of Marduk reached toward the richie havens, that this great Evil shall raise the heat of the pot until the frog shall boileth over, and fill the skies with dense clouds of water vapor, from which shall rain upon the whole world for forty days and forty nights.”
That is, if climate theory is based on real physics instead of End Times evangelism, because the world today clearly has way too fracking many evangelists already.
It’s drought, it’s cyclical, it’s been going on since the Year Dot.”