Without losing sympathy for the victims of violence or condoning violence, one should never forget that France is an imperialist power. It is in other lands with modern fire power defending its assets, the "collateral damage", is the deaths of innocent men, women and children, creating trauma and misery for families and friends on a greater scale than what happened in France the other night. Violence be-gets violence, war breeds war, and so the circle is perpetuated.
Until now the fight has always been, from first to last, between existing and aspiring world powers; it has always been a struggle between a power that already oppresses us and one that will soon do so; the point, however, is to finally get beyond this stale tale of two shitty choices----
-------Unlike the citizens of early Mesopotamian city-states, who assembled to govern their own affairs directly and whose active consent was needed even by a demi-god ruler like Gilgamesh before he could wage war, the voters of France assemble only to labour as servants for their bosses or consume the bread and circuses they are thrown as distraction and compensation for their servitude. The rulers of European or Middle-Eastern states wage war through the passive resignation of modern plebeans, who can do no more than reap the grave consequences of decisions they neither understand nor command. A civilisation that began as a democracy of slave-holders who elected their representatives has reached perfection in a democracy of slaves who elect their masters. From this botched experiment (which has produced nothing but irresponsibility, insanity, and impotence – transmuted by the lies of history, art and political-economy into fictions with pretty names like duty, reasonableness, and maturity) there's nothing worth defending or saving.The ferocious muslims who, unlike the era of the crusaders, now have the ability to retaliate, are right to despise it. If only they did so consistently! The first and final paragraphs from the entry for Ebla on Wikipedia read:Ebla was one of the earliest kingdoms in Syria. Its remains constitute a tell located about 55 km southwest of Aleppo near the village of Mardikh. Ebla was an important center throughout the third millennium BC and in the first half of the second millennium BC. Its discovery proved the Levant was a center of ancient, centralized civilization equal to Egypt and Mesopotamia, and ruled out the view that the latter two were the only important centers in the Near East during the early Bronze Age. Karl Moore described the first Eblaite kingdom as the first recorded world power.
As a result of the Syrian Civil War, excavations of Ebla stopped in March 2011, and large-scale looting occurred after the site came under the control of an opposition armed group. Many tunnels were dug and a crypt full of human remains was discovered; the remains were scattered and discarded by the robbers, who hoped to find jewelry and other precious artifacts. Digging all around the mound was conducted by nearby villagers with the aim of finding artifacts; some villagers removed carloads of soil suitable for making ceramic liners for bread-baking ovens from the tunnels."
The villagers of Syria know how to treat the ruins of a despicable past with the disrespect it deserves. Only people able to perform this task coherently can create anything useful, beautiful and happy out of the rubble of a miserable history. Until now the fight has always been, from first to last, between existing and aspiring world powers; it has always been a struggle between a power that already oppresses us and one that will soon do so; the point, however, is to finally get beyond this stale tale of two shitty choices. Humanity will never be happy until the last Quran is used as tinder for setting fire to the presidential palace of the last democratic republic!
