Adam Roberts om krigsdjävlarna och deras motiv

 

Adam Roberts Digital editor

Hello from London, Here’s some advice. Don’t kick off a war unless you’ve given it a spot of thought first. Perhaps you think that’s obvious. Surely those who toy with the fate of thousands, even millions, of their fellow humans, don’t do so casually? Those pulling the trigger, you might hope, try to be rational. Perhaps they even ask if it is right or wrong. Back when I studied how wars began, I immersed myself in scholarship on the possible structural reasons for it. Increasingly, I’ve come to suspect something that expert commentators prefer not to admit. Plain idiocy and impulsiveness matter far more than typically thought. Two decades ago I wrote a book relating how a clutch of daredevil mercenaries—a Lebanese financier dubbed “Smelly”, a British SAS veteran, a son of a British prime minister—had just tried to execute a private war to topple an oil-rich African dictatorship. They failed, spectacularly. The main protagonist, Simon Mann, dropped dead a few days ago, apparently of a heart attack. What had driven him to launch his “Wonga Coup”? He was bored, wallowing in mid-life frustration, and thought a quick war would be fun. It was a casual throw of the dice, fatal for others. Sound familiar? Early in 2022, almost nobody in Russia saw a need to invade Ukraine. Vladimir Putin, you might recall, hooted derisively at Western suggestions he would launch a war. Only a tiny handful of his closest advisers and planners knew of his half-baked plan. Mr Putin was sure his surprise war would last only a few days and end decisively in Russia’s favour. Three years on, and an estimated 200,000 Russian deaths later, not to mention the Ukrainian ones, Russia sits upon some tracts of eastern Ukraine. His own, casual, throw of the dice has been hugely more consequential, and fatal. Then there’s the possibility that the world just dodged a nuclear conflict. The escalation of cross-border attacks between India and Pakistan in recent days was truly alarming. It was becoming thinkable, as tension worsened, that one or other side could judge that the threat (or actual use) of a nuclear weapon made some sort of sense. I don’t say that to be alarmist. I lived in the region for five years and spent a lot of time talking to military folk, spies, diplomats, politicians and academics both in India and Pakistan. I crossed between the countries pretty regularly. I also spent time in Kashmir, where a nasty mixture of repression and state-backed terrorism mean peace is impossible.  Having done all of that, I don’t believe the civilian leaders of either India and Pakistan really want a full-scale war, let alone a nuclear one. But they have casually allowed relations to fester. The way they address each other has become so bitter, and the thinking of many who wield power so small-minded, that they have left space wide open for the idiocy factor again—the casual throw of geopolitical dice. Who threw them? This time around it was, apparently, a group of three terrorists inside Kashmir. But there will always be some individual eager to do so: a religious extremist, an enraged man, a military spy hoping for a promotion or a general thinking of his place in history. India and Pakistan have done a miserable job of closing down that space. As a result, they have invited near-randomness to have far too much sway over their fates. Next time they might be far less lucky.

(Jag tog mig friheten att citera en hel krönika från The Independent, och hoppas det är okej.)

Banksy eller en av hans likar...

 

Avfallsprodukternas nya herradöme

Det Donald Trump representerar historiskt är avfallsprodukternas tid. Han kommer inte att lämna någonting gott efter sig, utom enskild egendom till hagalna ättlingar, nya oljeavfallsprodukter, och annat avfall på hög konsumtion och noll miljöstrategi. Inga goda ideér, ingen framsynt politik, inget brotherhood of man, utan bara jag, jag, jag och mina infall och avfall. 

Kristersson verkar ligga i vågskvalpet efter Trump och likaså föredra avfallsprodukterna framför en fungerande miljöpolitik, föredra det egotrippade renoveringskalaset och dess oerhörda högar av avfall framför en sund och jämlik bostadspolitik. Föredra sitt eget fifflande med bostäder och taxiresor framför en gedigen moralisk hållning. Det är avfallsvarelsernas härliga skittillvaro. De som bara tar och tar och efter sin död lämnar efter sig skräp och en stadigt ökande kurva av materialistiska skithögar, små uppvisningar som ska påminna om deras betydelse, och prat prat prat med noll effekt på problemen i världen. Inte ens Israel kunde man markera mot i den här krokryggiga regeringen. Nej vapenhandeln är ju viktigare. Vår lilla skitmarknad och vår lilla skitnivå. 40.000 döda i Gaza är inte så viktigt när man kan ha ett litet uppvisningsparty med drinkar i Rosenbad. Och dessutom tjäna mördarpengar på vapenaktier man investerat i.

Så, om ni känner er hemma med att mest lämna avfall efter er, så kan ni säkert trivas i den här tiden. Good luck with that total shit!

Dagens citat

"De näbbiga tanternas akvarium..."

Var jag nu fick det ifrån.

Men det är väl nåt jag sett eller hört.

Vårvinter i Lappland

 

Dagens ord

 Bara en svag människa måste ständigt visa sig stark.

Stöld av tid, dröm, gemensam verklighet...

 

Med särskild hälsning till stortjuvarna Putin, Trump, Netanyahu, plus några självförträffliga svenska skolförstörare och andra med storartade eller småsnåla girighetsproblem.