Inanity, Insanity, Iranity...

I don't know if it's depression or outrage, a sputtering spitting gnashing of teeth, but the bottom line is I can't snark like I did last summer.

Perhaps it is the winter.

The Danish winter is famous for that -- especially winters like this, with little snow, the gray clouds, the damp chill, month after month of November...

The worst is the tail end, when the light starts coming back -- you get a day like yesterday with sunshine and you go out wearing your spring jacket.

Then you wake up to a Sunday like today, which has no sun or even hint of a promise.

I haven't seen any statistics, but I'd bet April is the month with the most suicides in this country...

On the other hand, it can also be the news -- and it isn't the news as such, but mindless repetition of inanity, even insanity.

Our Enemy d'jour, Iran, for example -- the Danish radio, which in many ways fulfills its public service obligations, continues to barf this garbage about how "we are afraid" they are developing the Bomb...

In the next breath, the past few days, actually, the Foreign Minister blathers on about how we need to take part in the Antimissile Shield the American Military-Industrial complex has been bilking the American taxpayer for (hundreds of) billions of good old (depreciating) dollars for a boondoggle that makes the Maginot Line look like a good investment.

The Maginot Line would have worked, that is assuming the Germans were even stupider than they were and attacked where the French had decided they "were supposed to".

The antimissile defense is a defense against a shadow in our collective imagination. "Rogue" states are not going to attack us with nuke tipped rockets. If they did, they would be a sea of bubbling molten glass before next morning.

Terraists are going to attack us, sure -- but with weapons and at a time of their choosing, probably rather low-tech and therefore reliable.

The end result of the Global War on Terraism or whatever the buzzword is today is obvious -- if you can't see it, let me introduce you to our old friend, George Orwell...

Iran?

How many know even the basic facts?

Back in the 50's they had a democracy, a president and democratic gov't!

However, this guy, Mossedeq was a scoundrel -- he actually wanted the money for the oil being pumped out of the ground should go into the public coffers and be used for the benefit of the nation! That is, he didn't want to honor the "contracts" the corrupt Reza Shah had entered into with western oil companies.

THEREFORE, our "intelligence" agencies had him "deposed". In his place was they placed the Shah on the Peacock Throne.

The Shah was a "good boy", one "of ours", the oil went where it should as well as the money. His reward was a lot of military hardware and equipment to help his secret police along. The secret police were necessary, as they are for any despotism.

The only difference between the atrocities of the Shah regime and the later neighboring one in Iraq is -- well, there wasn't any real difference, at least not for many, many years while Iraq defended us against the madmen in Iran.

The madmen? O, yeah!

In a way similar to Poland, where an oppressive regime had controlled the country in an iron grip and the Church was a bastion of resistance, in Iran it was the Ummah, the community of Islam which nurtured the national identity for a generation.

The Brits, always culturally sensitive owned the oil, paid little for it and had drinking fountains Iranians were forbidden to drink from.

I swear, if Ayatollah Khommeni had honored the oil contracts and other important western economic interests, he would never had been portrayed as the Big Ugly.

Hell, Saddam was our "boy" for almost a generation and got guns and bombs, nuclear and bio-warfare technology. His gassing the Iranians and "his own people" was no fugging problem -- until he upset the apple cart and invaded Kuwait...

But all that was an anomaly -- our "intelligence" agencies have otherwise never toppled functioning democracies or propped up oppressive dictatorships -- except, of course, where it was in our (economic) interests.

Who needs any more reports from the Third Galaxy?

Our own world is going to hell in a hand basket just fine on its own.

(By the way, the day here in Denmark turned out to be full of sunshine and the forest floor is cribbling and crabbling with life and the promise of Spring!)