More on the War-ons or War on the Morons

Posted by Matthew Crouch at 17:38

Whenever I get messages about trans-Atlantic email I have sent to friends back home bouncing back I always suspect it’s the CIA/FBI/Military Industrial Complex continuing waging its incompetent “War on Terror”. War on Drugs, War on Terrors, War on Iraq’s, War on Afghanistan’s, War on Islam’s, what else again are we at War on? When did the American’s become such a nation of War-ons? (I like making all those words plural as it’s a bit of suburban Appalachian dialect from back home to do that when referring to some particular subject at hand). If you ask me this all looks like a 21st century version of the crusades gone totally corporate.

I knew nothing about Yemen prior to the U.S.S. Cole getting a hole blown into the side of it offshore there a few years ago. Certainly I do find the rise of rag tag pirate like ships in the waters near Arabia curious and anachronistic but in this day and age you never know who are the pirates without CNN or Al Jazeera there to tell you who the bad guys really are (and to really understand that you have to read between the lines). I just want to go to all these media made “bad" or "dangerous" places that are full of "threats” to go decide for myself. Those images and stories from the happy painted corpse like talking heads are such a smooth suppository that it is hard to question anything in the news anymore. I worry about my desire to travel to forbidden countries to find out about these places for myself; perhaps it is some knee jerk reaction on my part to the continuing death toll of American's and Iraqi's that is the true cost of the Bush II Administration’s war for Corporate supremacy in the Gulf. Sometimes my friends back home sealed up in the safety and isolation of the states worry about my persistent desire to travel off the typical tourist tracts of destinations. I understand their concern and I appreciate it. Considering that I never hardly even get out of Brussels though it isn’t likely to happen. But part of me wishes they wouldn’t worry like that because falling in love with what I’ve read about Yemen is something hard to articulate here. I do want to go there before I get much older or before the planet gets any more cruel – I doubt I’ll ever get there as I am not British and the British are so much better about going to unique places than the Americans who never go anywhere interesting unless it is to kill people. And the British do go to such places routinely without problems and the Americans don’t. The British just seem to go everywhere toting a microphone connected to a tape recorder to perhaps use as a media weapon later but still that is entirely different than carrying a gun with bullets for blood whenever they go abroad. I want to be a better person by doing something like going to such a place like Yemen. It doesn’t help though when a close friend says “I have a really bad feeling about this idea of yours”. It is already hard enough for me even to open up my mind enough to go against the grain and just consider going to such a place like the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. I don’t think I ever will but I would like to see somewhere off the tourist tract: Like Samarqand, Isphahan or Sana’a. I do feel that would be a remarkable accomplishment despite the unknown dangers but when you remember the states itself is in the top ten list of dangerous places to visit, right up there with those places – just ask my old coworker back home who only a few weeks ago was shot to death behind his house, for no other apparent reason than sport, after work about that – Well why not? In the back of my mind perhaps is this idea that independent travel (and not insulated for western values holiday resorts) is a way of doing something good in today’s troubled world. It is my way of stepping out from under the burden of how to think that the states is forcing on the English speaking world: Be afraid, stay at home, tape up your windows, lock your doors, carry a machine gun – the world wants to kill you. And, like, meanwhile whole vast countries and communities of decent people live in places like Iran and Pakistan and even yes perhaps in gun toting Yemen.

Personally I want proof that the US and/or Zionist types aren’t actually behind those masked men doing the beheadings we’re seeing in the media at the moment. It isn’t entirely implausible that western types are causing this sort of shock and horror to play out just to give a decent religion like Islam a bad name. After all Islam is the enemy because Islam has an alternative to Capitalism and the Oligarchs around the world cannot allow that! I mean when I watch the news about the beheadings I feel I am being compelled by the media to believe in their witch hunt tactics that the people doing the beheading are Muslims and therefore bad and well that is not exactly a trial by jury (whether true or not). Which I admit is more than the person being beheaded is getting but still if we are to be better than that we must also be able to have a court of law determine the crime and the facts about all of this after it happens. Not by a TV witch hunt being played out opportunistically for political means as appalling events unfold. Is it entirely beyond the Bush II administrations master plan (disguised behind its veil of idiocy) to control the world to not behead its own people if that would further their sinister cause? But you can bet Kerry would never point the finger if it were.

Speaking of Kerry – come election time it is always a matter of choosing the lesser of two evils and in this election that is (as we all very well know) going to be easy. I have never seen a President in person much less shook his hand or seen one of my Ohio representatives close up face to face. Here though I have seen a Royal or two and shook hands with more than just one or two politicians in office. So I love Belgium it’s a much more interactive country. But if you are in the states between now and “election” time just be careful being around all those politicians! God knows the Bush II regime would kill anyone (Kerry or Michael Moore to name a few) who would stand in their way! So duck if you hear bullets and stay out of harms way! Perhaps Kerry should come up with a new slogan about traveling abroad to defeat the bushies. There was a saying my grandmother had that I got wrong here in these blogettes that my father corrected… She said “Vote Democrat, you might go to Hell for it but at least you’ll have a dollar in your pocket for when you get there”.

Certainly there is one place I am not interested in traveling to despite all the brilliant historical monuments that remain there to be seen – Those Israeli’s can justify even state sanctioned murder in the name of defense just like the American’s can get away with anything in the name of their many war-ons. Nowadays a government if it is wealthy enough can exercise capital punishment beyond their national boundaries without even a trial by jury or representation for the accused in the hallowed name of Democracy and its defense.

 

The Old 3 C Highway and the New 3 C Highway

Posted by Matthew Crouch at 23:28

There is a strange route here that no one seems to say anything nice about called the “Ah twahlf” (A-12) which connects Brussels/Brussel/Bruxelles to Antwerp(en). It’s a road to nowhere sort of road that looks much more like a large multi-lane road in say Dallas, Texas than a European roadway. Imagine seemingly endless concrete, tarmac, the typically Belgian over use of electric freeway lights to ward off the threat of the dark of night. Alongside the tarmac stretch are various industries overtaking charming small rural farms, the kind of old time agricultural settlement with a sway back barn attached to the house and the barn taking up a good two thirds of the building all contain underneath heavy, last a lifetime, terra cotta roof tiles. The little farms, usually with a more modern less interesting detached new house nearby give way to a forgotten row of brick houses attached to one another before giving way to shopping stretches to house the Wal-mart of Europe: Ikea. When the rectangularity of aluminum shed architecture, nothing more than a modern military-esque quonson hut to house shopping, industry or heath facilities give way to deluxe family saunas, garden stores, furniture stores, or even a brewery of some devilish Belgian brew; when you have passed even a car showroom that features “smart” cars stacked like pasteries inside a turning display case you know the other city Bru-town or A’pen depending on your direction isn’t far off. In the odorama department American fast food culinary smells await mixed in with the omnipresent smell in Flanders of diesel. This roadway for the driver features cameras to monitor traffickers speed with the promise of an expensive future post and traffic lights at the regular interval of cross streets just when you maintained a swift velocity... It’s the sort of pace that sends over caffeinated commuters here to the nearby E-19 for a non-stop effect without traffic lights of the super highway except that road is usually twice a day stop and go bumper to bumper parking lot disguised as traffic. When you live in Brussels and you have to travel by car to Antwerp(en) you can pick your poison with the A-12 or the E-19`, personally the A-12 is more interesting if you take a breath relax and pace yourself. It’s all more evidence that the metropolitan regions of Brussels and Antwerp have collided so that Antwerp has defaulted into being Brussels North: A conclusion which begs the question is Charleroi then Brussels South? The subsequent inevitable question is Leuven Brussels East then? To which one must then ask what about Gent? Is Gent nothing more than a provincial upper economic class suburban west side story of Bru-town? My guess is that sometime in this century Belgium, if it sticks together, will be the largest city in Europe. Take my advice and take the train if you are lucky you will end up on a old Belgian train which has the unusual charm of something bought on sale from the economic demise of the old Soviet realm. But really riding these trains can transport you via imaginary expressways back in time to behind the old Iron Curtain and instead of just taking a short trip to Antwerp(en) you can imagine yourself en route from Moscow to Chernobyl.

Back home in Dollville there was a strange road that angled off the typical north south transportation and power grid in a North-East/South-West direction called the Old 3 C Highway. The old 3 C is something of an Ohio version of the old A-12. Like the A-12 there is an alternative to the 3 C that is considered better, faster, the I-71 but then taking the old 3 C is an anachronistic choice for the anarchist at heart. I’ve heard the 3 C's stood for the three large cities of Ohio; connecting Cincinnati to Cleveland by way of Columbus. It's a road of former tract houses converted (by way of paneled over windows) into Adult Bookstore's alongside forgotten strip malls and former gas stations now used car lots. Lots of wide open spaces between rusty chain link fences lined by weeds. At intersections the ubiquitous “fast food” fry pit ensemble of the same monotonous choices. Occasionally a depressing oddity occurs with a strange church appearing in a converted failed fast food establishment. This old highway is a dusty sort of forgettable place connecting tarmac lots to gravel filled fields not even of interest to the student of Commercial Archeology (not too many rusty old neon signs to photograph). The old 3 C must have had its hay day during some post war (World War II) McCarthy era ideology of a senseless compulsion towards a sort of diluted economic expansionism across the land of a people that once belonged to a non European society.

In the world of today we blindly contend with a different sort of 3 C's. They are a variation on the same theme and yet one would think these three new words would be part of every Anglophones everyday vocabulary: Corporatist, Corporatism, Corporat-ocracy. There were days these suffixed ideas were used to articulate difficult threats much like the word Islamist is thrown about currently. But why these 3 C’s aren’t part of the talk of the day from the 24-7 media outlets to the arbitrary conversations of passers-by within electronically monitored and climate controlled aisles under the stark white of fluorescent lights of mega retail establishments? Certainly each of the new 3 C's can be applied to the state of the states.

Corporatist: One who works for and believes in the trickle down pyramid economic theory where money is confined to a small number of people at the top and meanwhile the large hard working base is maintained at slave wages.

Corporatism: Similar to despotism, fascism or Nazism except rather than the criminal wielding of power being confined to one individual it is controlled by an invisible board of directors who like puppeteers employ Corporatists to be the brawny puppets.

Corporat-ocracy: The end result of Democracy when corporations become large enough to buy all the political representation necessary to utilize a Nation as a corporate smokescreen to cover corporate economic exploitations i.e.) the United States of America Inc.