Smokin' Mirrors: Smokin' Lebanon

The Isreali bombing of Lebanon has only just begun. We can be certain that, with the outright support of its largest benefactor, the United States, Isreal will just keep on dropping those bombs on Lebanese civilians.

Now let's make something clear. Everyone has a right to a resistance. If your backyard was invaded, I would have no doubt that you would fight for it, right? I know I would. So what makes the Palestinians fight so different? After all, that's what this is really all about.

Living for years and years under an oppressive occupation, the Palestinian people have long suffered mass murder at the hands of the Israeli occupiers. I don't care whose God promised what to who, all I care about it the fact that one country, who has a mass of arms and is backed by the world's most powerful nation, is killing people every day.

On the other side, of course, there have been meany deaths in Isreal at the hands of resistance fighters. This only unleashes revenge and more killing and basically does no-one any favours.

But I ask you this question. If you had to wait at checkpoints every morning just to get to work, if your wife gave birth at a checkpoint because the guards wouldn't let her through to the hospital, if your children were inside your house when it was bulldozed down, if you and your people were murdered while slumming it in a refugee camp that makes Tousleng a day camp for kiddies, all while the international community does nothing to help you, I ask you – what would you do?

The escalation of violence in the Middle East is going to effect us all. So why would the US be backing such an offensive in the Middle East? Surely Isreal doesn't imagine for a minute that the US's stretched military are going to be able to help them out of this one?

There are a lot of claims that Hezbollah are backed by Syria and Iran. Maybe they are, maybe they aren't. I'm not going to say either way, unlike just about everyone else who seems to be treading the thin line of making comments without eveidence. But one thing I will say is that the Isreali claim that Hezbollah's missiles are Iranian should be judged with great scrutiny. What's more, if they are to make such a claim, they should be providing some evidence, because this is the kind of spin used to drag other nations into a conflict, and if they do, it will not be a conflict anyone will be able to control. It will be all out world war and why ANYONE wants that is just beyond me.

I have a theory, and it's all about currency. In 2000 Iraq changed its currency to the Euro. Even the account they had with the United Nations for the ‘Oil for Food' Programme was in Euro. Since that time, there have been an increasing number of oil- producing countries switching part of their trade to Euro, such as Lybia, Iran, Russia, and Venezuela. And it makes sense. The EU has a better balance of payments than the US, for a start. It has generally become a more stable currency.

The OPEC nations (that is the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) have been losing their grip grip on oil supplies and prices, and the theory is that the Bush Administration has a lot to do with this, largely because quite a few OPEC nations want to change trading currency. So, rumours have it that Bush has been trying to set up his own ‘OPEC', starting with trouble-torn Nigeria, which have been promised an open gate into the US market. This organization will strap their oil to the US dollar, and work to undercut the OPEC nations.

After the US invasion of Iraq, the oil trading currency was changed back to the US dollar, and this is of vital importance to this theory. Many people have an opinion that the US went to war for oil, and this is almost certainly true, but what has been mainly ignored is the fact that without oil at its back, the US dollar would tumble in value and the US economy would collapse. This is a very good reason for making an example of Iraq. Now, with, well, what some people might call, a firm footing in the Middle East, the US can sway influence back to the dollar.

Or so they thought.

With the war far from the quick fix Bush has envisaged, and control slipping, it must cast its net a little wider. It can't possibly face another public raltions disaster all on its own, but it could send in it's military arm: Israel.

What convinces me of this is the almost instantaneous links that Isreal are making to Iran in this conflict, and on queue, Iran are returning the rhetoric. This is exactly what is needed to get Bush what he wants. I would also like to add here that not only is Iran sitting on one of the world's largest untapped oil reserves (the same Azadegan oil field that the Bush administration have asked the Japanese to suspend operations in, as the Japanese company INPEX is a large investor), but it also has the second largest natural gas reserves in the world, after Russia.

This week at the G8 Summit, the world leaders in attendence should have drafted a United Nations Security Council resolution, calling on an Isreali ceasefire, along with the one they have already drafted, but failed to act upon, calling for Hezbollah to disarm. Probably in full awareness that it would not be worth the paper it was written on, given that the US have vetoed every single UN Security Council resolution against Isreal, no such document was even discussed, instead, a limp, useless joint statement was released, calling on Hezbollah to release the Isreali soldiers it has captured, while asking Isreal to show "maximum restraint".

Maximum restraint. It's the same as saying "um, well, I guess it's OK that you've already killed 230 people in less than a week – all but 26 civilians – but, hey, it's cool. Just, you know, can you do it quietly?"

"Lebanon is not our enemy. We have nothing to ask from Lebanon, we have much to hope from Lebanon. We hope to live as good neighbours," said Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres said on British television last Tuesday, reported the Sydney Morning Herlad.

I'm sorry, but if my neighbour started flying over my house dumping bombs on it, I'd be feeling a little less neighbourly. I might not even lend them my lawn mower on Saturdays.

Lastly, I'd like to give the bullshit award to Condaleeza Rice this week for her comments on why George W Bush had made calls to almost every other Arab leader that week, but not called the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert. She said that the leaders "understood each other's position", adding that the United States would not support a ceasefire. Again in the SMH, "What is really happening here is that extremists have revealed their hand," she said. "They are demonstrating that they cannot tolerate the forward march of democratic moderate forces in the Middle East. And, of course, they are doing this in conjunction with sponsors in Damascus and in Tehran."

One has to wonder which Hollywood screen writer gave up their day job.