I'm starting to wonder if the way to go in life is to believe that if it isn't broken it shouldn't be fixed. Honestly, looking at the whole Middle East situation (again...it's my dissertation topic, so fuck you.) it's looking like even if it is broken it shouldn't be fixed.

See, the problems with the peace process are manifold, but they are obvious as well. And the big ones to me are 3. Firstly, there doesn't seem to be any way to actually have a Palestinian and an Israeli state, since they would immediately go to war. Secondly, the people involved aren't even being consulted anymore - the last I saw, in last week's Economist, was "The Quartet", which is the US, the UN, the European Union, and Russia, with additional help from the Jordanians, Egyptians, and Saudis. In short, everyone except the Palestinians and the Israelis. Thirdly, every time one side seems to be getting close to solving something, the other one does something deliberately provocative/stupid - the Israeli bombing of the house with the Hamas leader in it, and the bomb at Hebrew University.

Taking the points in turn, then moving on to another aspect of the problem. A whole lot of people seem to think that the solution is to have a Palestinian and an Israeli state. It seems to me a lot more likely that this would lead to two specific events. The first is that they would probably go to war, or at least posture over war for centuries. The second is that Israel would probably break out in civil war. It appears to me that one of the very few things keeping the internal conflict in Israel to a minimum is the fact that the country as a whole is at war with others, both internally and externally. I really do think that the only solution to the problem is going to entail recognition of Palestinians as a national minority and revamping of the laws currently prohibiting them from equal citizenship. It's gonna have to be a pluralist state (which, unfortunately, has generally worked so well in the past).

On the second issue: is this a return to colonialism? Have the Jews been in the Middle East long enough for us to forget that, even if we can't attribute to the Arabs any more ability to think than dogs, the Jews are essentially a European society, which is a group that has always been presumed to be able to think for itself? Why in the hell are the countries involved not the countries deciding what to do? I suspect that "The Quartet" is just going to come up with some stupid-ass plan (as usual) and try to impose it from the top, which will (as usual) fail miserably.

For the last issue, there's really not a lot to say...it just seems like (as little as I pay attention to current events) that every time it looks like the situation is starting to cool down (and evolving into something capable of being a peace process), one or the other side realizes what's happening, and, in the grand tradition of leadership everywhere, promptly shafts the civilians by killing people on the other side to start the whole thing over again.

This is me, doing the This Is Stupid Dance.

Partly, of course, the stupidity stems from the leadership. I'm thinking that I might post my thesis when I get it done, because I just don't want to go over the whole thing again right now, but someone made the point that the leadership (of both sides) is thinking like division commanders at best, rather than strategists. Like the time someone shit themselves when they realized that the Knesset was only 3 km from an Arab village, which they then had to take.

However, to continue the media theme from last rant (I've been watching too many movies lately.) I think that the problem is a constructed one, and constructed by the media.

Think about it. One of the reasons, after Sept 11th, that there was so much in the papers and etc. about terrorists, and suspected terrorists, and what's being done to catch terrorists, is because people wanted to know what was going on, and they wanted to know NOW.

This is, however, a construction. Back in the day before Vietnam - even back before CNN - you didn't expect instant updates on various situations. Now, the media has created a desire for instant information - promulgated through all outlets - that they then feed with instant information in a vicious cycle. It makes them money, gives them fame, fortune, and Pulitzers, and the consumers have yet to figure it out. The faster we have access to anything, the more of it we want. It's exactly the same pattern throughout history, with everything from food to news. Civilizations that don't have access to salt, say, tend to be satisfied with much less salt than ones that do have access to it. It is a created need.

In the case of the Middle East (and all other conflicts that "The Man" has deemed newsworthy, which does not include Tibet, for example) people want news now. However, there isn't that much news unless something is happening, so they try to find things that are happening, and distort the rational record of what is occuring.

It's like a train with the brakes off (and we've got a lot of those here in England). The people want to see SOMETHING coming out of Northern Ireland, or the Middle East, or wherever, because they've been told by the media that those areas are important, but it's not exactly like Ozzfest there - the violence and the peace aren't done according to some timetable ("10:45, Belfast bombing, 11:30 Middle East peace talks...Crap! I've got to be on Perejil at 11:07 to watch the Spanish take over!") that the media can exploit. The only thing they can do is create the events that we see. However, we've gone beyond the days when Hearst said "You furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war".

Instead, we're trying to be more sophisticated (which, frankly, usually means more like a club to the head). So the situations are manipulated. Every person who sees something on TV realizes that that act is possible - I believe that this was a contributing factor to Littleton Co, that school shootings were suddenly possible. Conseqnently, if the media refuses to give coverage to moderates on a given issue, what invariably comes across is the strident jingoistic fuckheads who believe that total annihilation of the enemy is the only possibility, and suddenly it seems like the strident jingoistic fuckheads are the ones that are going to defeat you if you don't take action against them.

If all Iever heard and believed was how the Mexicans were going to come pouring over the border and take my job, I'd probably start to believe it. Hell, until my rational-thought gene kicked in, I did believe it.

And that is the sort of thing that provokes an equal and opposite reaction. If all Israelis are presented with images of Palestinians as metaphorically-slavering barbarians at the gates of Jerusalem, of course they're not going to be pleased. If all Palestinians are told that the Israelis are colonizers who were allowed to take over Palestine because the British felt guilty about the Holocaust, of course they're going to believe that the Israelis have no right to the land. Without resorting to who is right or wrong, or where the compromise lays, both sides are presented with the image of the other as a being of unified will and consciousness that seeks to destroy them.

Consequently, you get preemptive strikes, and retaliations against preemptive strikes. What you don't get very often is a recognition that a whole fuckload of people aren't doing such things.

To place the blame with the media entirely is not right. However, it is a very large part of the problem.

I once took a class on journalism where the instructor (okay, this was a high school paper) was explaining news, saying that people rarely call you at four in the morning to say that Aunt Carrie didn't die last night. More airplanes land safely any day than fall out of the sky every year...yet all that we hear about is deaths and crashes, because it is perceived that that is what is news.

In short, news is events out of the ordinary. And I don't think that the papers are making money off of ordinary things. Quite frankly, it's not in their best interests to stop reporting the crises, and creating more crises thereby.

And as we continue to demand the latest information, the most up to date news, we are merely parasites on the media, who will manipulate anything for a profit. In other words, they've created a market that only they can fill and we're buying into it because we believed them that what they do is important.

Getting the freaks,

Channon