At this point, I am wondering if anybody really has the slightest idea how the United States of America, not yet old enough to be considered a fledging civilisation, got itself into the holy mess in which it now finds itself. The Pentagon has enlisted the services of a range of ‘pastors’ to pray over the ailing warmongering President not for forgiveness but for victory! This has bolstered the belief among several fundamentalist Christian sects within the MAGA faithful that the second coming of Christ may be already upon us, and Armageddon following not far behind.
The Pope is effectively castigated as the anti-Christ by the Catholic Vice -President. The illegal war unleashed on Iran has become cast as a Christian Crusade against ‘infidels’ - Islam and Arabs, despite the fact that Iranians are not Arabic people. They are Aryan. Arabs, like Jews are Semites. Jews are people who share a Faith culture that is not Christian. Catholics are Christians. Zionism is not a faith culture. It is a supremacist political ideology that believes one ‘race’ of people (themselves) have been ‘chosen’ by the bible to rule everybody else. Aye, right!
The world is truly upside down when it falls to people who don’t take the Bible as gospel have to explain ‘who’s who’ to the people who allegedly live by it!
By the time of publication the cease-fire in the US-Israeli war may well have come and gone, in which case we are all in even more trouble, but necessity being the mother of invention, I am counting on the USA finding more ‘creative narratives’ aka lies to their camp followers to enable then to avoid further military aggression.
The USA and Israel have been politically weakened by the war. The ‘Invincible’ myth has been challenged and found wanting. The fact that Iran exposed it simply by ‘standing its ground’ has also weakened European leaders who failed to call the President’s bluff, and act against his economic threats of tariffs, at a much earlier stage. Their reluctance to be further drawn into the USA-Zionist axis of global aggression left the USA isolated, and unable to even exercise sufficient influence on Netanyahu despite Israel’s reliance on USA finance and weaponry.
A humiliation that passed almost without a whisper from main media sources was the USA request to the United Nations Security Council, which it has consistently frustrated for some time, to undertake responsibility to open the Strait of Hormuz, by force if necessary. It was a last resort following NATO’s refusal and potentially provided an opening for its European allies to find a legal route to come to America’s aid. China and Russia vetoed the request.
An increasingly erratic President then publicly indicated a willingness to drop a nuclear bomb on Iran. That moment will not be forgotten in the corridors of world power and may have sealed the fate of both the 47th president of the USA, and over a longer time frame, the State of Israel.
Closer to home, the fallout may yet shorten the life of the Coalition Government, down South.
The Coalition government depends on a number of Independent TDs for stability. Many of these TDs represent rural constituencies and owe their position to small farmers, self-employed sole-traders and rural dwellers who are not recently ‘blow-in’ high-paid professionals escaping the social, economic, and emotional pressures of city life. For a diverse complexity of reasons, these social and economic groupings are feeling the greatest impact of the increase in fuel costs. They are not classified as ‘woke’!
The Irish government had already introduced measures to alleviate the increase in cost but in total these amount, at best, to some 22 cents per litre when the increase amounts to double figures in euros per litre in some cases. Having failed to secure a meeting with respective ministers, these rural stakeholders have taken to the streets. this week, those in power and in opposition were not so much facing the sound of marching feet as the growl of trucks and tractors strategically blocking the movement of fuel supplies.
Within three days, the movement of fuel supplies and traffic was coming to a standstill across major cities and rural filling stations and the government threatening to send in the army. Other ministers are warning that protesters are ‘straying into criminal behaviour.’
At the time of writing, there has been no movement on the part of the government to meet the protesters but already at least two TDS on the government benches have been spotted in the ranks of the protestors, and one of these is publicly calling on the government to provide greater financial relief. The Irish Hauliers Association has hedged its bets by not participating in the protest but not employing condemnatory language either and declaring it is also pressing for greater support.
I have no doubt that by the time the Impartial Reporter goes to press ‘law and order’ will have been restored but the cracks that have been exposed in the coalition will not be healed so easily as the impact of the war on Iran continues to play out across more than the price of fuel.
For those of is in the North, the impact of the protest was reminiscent of the Loyalist Workers’ Strike, without the verbal abuse and intimidation of the protesters for the greater part, although one Dublin TD from the left was verbally set upon by a group of protesters for reasons unconnected with the protest.
It raises some interesting questions for the political opposition as well. The ‘left’ always seems flummoxed when the ‘petty bourgeoisie’ rather than the waged worker take to the streets but have generally supported the call to the government to meet the protestors and work out a solution. It raises the question of how Sinn Féin Ministers in the North might respond to such a protest here. I suspect they might join the protest and deflect the responsibility to the ‘real’ government in London.
Share