Saturday, December 22, 2007

Everything Is Blowback - Our Problems, Part 2

(Not quite eveything, but the major problems which tormented us in the last century and plague us today.)

Following from the artificial nature of our problems, we can then understand that these situations are blowback from previous decisions that were unwise or of a criminal nature.

* WWII was blowback from WWI. In part, due to the revengeful Versailles Treaty, but also the support the ruling classes of Europe and America gave to Mussolini and Hitler and the tacit support for Franco, as he destroyed Spanish democracy. (WWI is the best example of how one incredibly stupid decision can have a long-lasting and devastating effect upon the future.)

* Islamic Fundamentalism is largely blowback for US hostility toward Arab and other Muslim secular nationalist regimes, the carte blanche given to Israel, support for reactionaries like the Wahabist Saudi kingdom, and for overthrowing the progressive nationalist Mossedegh in Iran.

* Al Qaeda is blowback for supporting Islamist guerrillas against the Russian-backed secular Afghani government.

* Organized crime was blowback for Prohibition.

* Drug crime was blowback for treating addiction as a crime and not a social/medical problem, thus creating a lucrative black market into which the aforementioned blowback- created organized crime could step into.

* The crack cocaine epidemic was blowback from US terrorism against Nicaragua, as the CIA imported tons of cocaine into the US to pay for Contra arms.

* Massive "illegal immigration" is blowback from the wrecking of "Third World" economies by IMF- World Bank debt servitude and the destruction of peasant farms by government subsidized "First World" crops.

*Workplace massacres (Goin' postal) are blowback for 30 years of declining working conditions and the destruction of trade unions.

And you can add your own examples of blowback...

7 comments:

  1. This is precisely the premise of my wonderful new book -- "A Shattered Peace: Versailles 1919 and the Price We Pay Today" [ www.ashatteredpeace.com] just published by Wiley. It is an exciting look at the consequences of this disaster of a Treaty that we are all paying for today!
    Best,
    David A. Andelman

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  2. Thank you for your comment. I will be looking forward to reading your book and am glad to see that you have further developed that critique.

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  3. Anonymous8:00 PM

    I agree with most of the examples you gave. We can also add that the "third world" was created after WWII... at first, emerging new countries were doing fine after the Bandung Conference...

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  4. Holiday Greetings

    Every incursion into Latin America, has Monroe Doctrine written on it.

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  5. I'm hoping 2008 will be the year of positive blowback, where masses the world over start turning back the neoliberalism that keeps us all down.

    Happy new year!

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  6. Very good list.

    Happy New Year!

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  7. Anonymous10:56 AM

    Larry, your list of blowbacks are spot on. 'So true. And Renegade Eye's addition of the Monroe Doctrine is true as well.

    'Great post.

    Larry, my previous blog Undertow is listed in your blogroll. I have a new one now at rustynode.com 'A little less political this one but hopefully still worthwhile.

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