Roots, Oily Roots.
I read quite a funny letter in Green Anarchist (GA), a newspaper devoted to the (their words) the destruction of civilization. GA are anarcho-primitivists who believe that the only way we can live in a free society and be in harmony with nature is to go back to a pre-civilisation way of living. I’m not proposing debating anarcho-primitivistism right now, I’m not a follower of their ideology, but I’ll listen to them…anyway back to the letter:

---

STOP THE WAR

Please great leaders, stop the war. Its all your fault, not mine. I don’t want to change the way I live. I want the latest computers, lots of places to go in my car, using lots of oil I can afford. I want to carry on buying lots of things. I don’t want to do anything for myself. I want to go on partying I want to eat lots of food from all over the world and I want it brought to me on lorries. I want to carry on doing this pointless job that produces no food or roof for me, I want work to continue to be done by others for me. I want to continue playing games all the time.
But I hate this guilty feeling I get when I hear about all these uneducated (foreigners) getting killed. So please stop the war. It’s all your fault. Thanks very much for being my scapegoat and please keep the goodies coming, otherwise we will make new leaders who will.

All the best to you and yours,

Love and peace

A complacent liberal.

---

Food for thought. Any protestors reading this and feeling got at; don’t take it personally. But I do think it makes the point that the roots of this conflict go deeper that the chaff of WMD and ‘Regime Change’ the mainstream media discusses. We all know the war with Iraq is not the end of the war on terror/war for control; as Ann Pettifor of the New Economics Foundation pointed out, "Whereas earlier empires bankrolled their colonies, this empire is bankrolled by, and therefore vulnerable to, its 'colonies'. The US requires the rest of the world to channel $4bn a day into its coffers to enable its people to live beyond their means." The war without end will be paid for with our social fabric. And lots of blood sacrifices. (more on this here on Bristol Indymedia.)