Doug's Darkworld

Well, I’m back. Maybe not literally back, but back to blogging. July was a very rough month for me on a personal level, but I made it through and am a better person for it. I’m also vastly more free than I was a month ago, nothing like having options to help keep one’s perspective. And then there’s the little matter of the world going to shit. For those who are reasonably aware of what’s going on in the world, the consensus view is along the lines of  “this isn’t going to end well.” Colonialism is exacerbating our problems as a species, and has about run its course as an economic ideology. (I know, we’ve pretended since World War Two that colonialism has gone away, the exact same way that renaming the Department of War as the Department of Defence made war as a national policy go away.) Moving right along, some highlights of the ongoing madness.

Looks like Qaddafi is on his way out. He’ll probably end up in some western (IE colonial) prison with little to no chance of a fair trial, held as an example to anyone with would defy the west’s might.  On the one hand, couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. On the other hand, NATO’s war on Libya was just as much a war crime as anything Qaddafi has done, and none of the leaders who ordered that will be going on trial. This is why they hate us. Not all of them, but the blatant hypocrisy and evil of the west intervening on “humanitarian” grounds when it is painfully obvious we are just seizing the moment in a blatant attempt to replace Qaddafi with a regime more pliable to western manipulation is not lost on many people in the region. Coming soon … Libyan suicide bombers. Mark my words, the western intervention in Libya will end no better than the intervention in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Speaking of which, these two are both still bloody messes with no end in sight. I don’t know what horrifies me more, the endless carnage we have unleashed, or the fawning obsequious US media pretending that there’s something noble about the deaths of Americans in these far away lands, pretending that these senseless deaths are about protecting our freedoms. Um, fighting with local tribes on the other side of the planet, is about as far away from “protecting our freedoms” as it is possible to get. Literally. This is another reason I am so pessimistic about America, so many people have bought into this, and other, virulent tripe. The rich have stolen everything, and most Americans are blaming each other or groups even more disadvantaged than they for their problems. Yes, it’s poor, gay, illegal, HIV positive, Latino immigrants that are causing all the problems!

In summation, 2011 is some sort of twisted blend of 1928 and 1938, and God only knows what’s going to happen next. And since God doesn’t exist except as a metaphysical concept, that means no one knows. And frankly, there’s tons of intelligent commentary out there on current events for those who care to look, Aljazeerah is a good start, or Haaretz, or Antiwar.com. I’m not sure what I can add to the discussion, another reason I haven’t been writing. Or having been writing on Doug’s Darkworld to be more exact. I have been working on my novel. A fictional account of a man whose life began with a childhood in a besieged city. It went downhill from there.

There’s other stuff going on in the world as well. Global warming continues apace. We’re all going to be killed by a doomsday comet in 2012. Michael Jackson is still dead. What should I write about? I dunno, I’m open to suggestions.

(The above image is claimed as Fair Use under US copyright law. It’s a rebel tank rolling into Tripoli. That so many “historic” moments in the past century involve tanks rolling into somewhere should give us pause. They are just the armoured knights of our time, the end development of the Roman centurion. Sigh.)