Affichage des articles dont le libellé est Middle East. Afficher tous les articles
Affichage des articles dont le libellé est Middle East. Afficher tous les articles

25/08/2021

JORGE MAJFUD
T-Rex intelligence: the myopic logic of business

Jorge Majfud, 13/8/2021
Translated by Andy Barton, Tlaxcala

On 25th February 2021, USAmerican President Joe Biden ordered a military strike along the border between Syria and Iraq (on the Syrian side, of course, to not anger the authorities or media from the Iraqi protectorate) in retaliation to the attacks by a pro-Irani militia in the Iraqi city of Erbil. As expected, this action did not make the front pages of any big Western media outlet, all under the 19th-century slogan of “we were attacked for no reason, and we had to defend ourselves”.

 
A story as old as time itself. Now is not the time to review the indigenous genocide on this continent, a genocide never called by its name. We will just pick out a recent incident from 22nd August 2008, during the Barack Obama presidency. After the bombing of Azizabad in Afghanistan, USAmerican military officials (including Oliver North, convicted and pardoned for lying to Congress during the Iran-Contra affair in the ‘80s) reported that everything had gone according to plan, that the village had greeted them with applause, that a Taliban leader had been killed and that the collateral damage was minimal. Minimal. This is the sense of value of other’s lives. What they did not report at the time is that tens of people had died, including 60 children.

In a less-publicised article for future historians, on 25th February, the New York Times reported the words of the USAmerican government regarding its latest bombing campaign, according to whom “this proportionate military response was conducted together with diplomatic measures, including consultation with coalition partners”. Just like since the 19th century, the Anglo-Saxon government assumes, now without mentioning it, special global intervention rights to re-establish God’s order and profitable business. As the United States Democratic Review from New York published in 1858, in its article “Mexico’s destiny”, “this type of people does not know how to be free, and they will never know under they are educated by American democracy. For this reason, the master will govern them until, one day, they learn how to govern themselves… Providence obliges us to take control of that country… We are not going to take control of Mexico out of our own self-interest; this would be a joke that would be impossible to believe. No, we are going to take control Mexico for its own benefit, to help the eight million poor Mexicans who suffer due to despotism, anarchy and barbarism”.

Nine years earlier, Chicago’s Springfield diary analysed the offence committed by Mexicans of having gifted tax-free land to USAmerican citizens in Texas while ordering them, through ‘barbaric’ laws, to free their slaves: “our compatriots had the right to visit Mexico under the sacred right to trade”. The freedom of the masters of the land to the freedom of the market and the sacred right to private property. Nothing has changed, only the settings and the technological landscape due to the simple and inevitable progression of humanity since the turn of the millennium.