War and Culture

For two weeks, in late March and early April 2007 fifteen British navy personnel received intense media coverage after being snatched from the Persian Gulf by an Iranian boat. Iran paraded the prisoners before cameras for rehearsed apologies which created outrage in America and even in Britain. Since the British were close to but apparently not in Iranian waters their abduction was an act of war (recall the Barbary pirates) and their treatment violated international laws protecting prisoners. But England’s fellow EU states, obligated by law to come to her defense, looked away. Their commerce with Iran, principally Germany whose $6.2 billion in bank-credits backed ultimately by German tax payers supports German corporations in Iran and covers Iran’s trade deficit with Europe left their governments indifferent to the prisoners’ and to the issues at stake. Eurabia strikes again. 

And after all, Britain has betrayed them many times, not least into the partitions, financial deals and surrenders that triggered WW II. 

Perhaps this is part of the wages of the ”war on terror.” After all, are we at war with Iran? Their leaders often say that they are at war with us while our leaders engage in extended diplomatic processes of obscure design. It seems that what Joseph Conrad called “the flabby, weak-eyed, pretending devil of rapacious and pitiless folly” has struck again; has moved in, perhaps for the duration… (more…)