Madder than hell —ride into the Collapse wars.
The origin gordian knot that was allegedly cut with a sword by Alexander (“the great”), is nothing compared to the total overshoot mess of human nations at loggerheads with each other, and all now dependent on fossil fuel supplies for day to day, year to year, for survival against invasion or starvation.
Apart from conquest, Alexanders empire collapsed from the negatives of conquest — expenditure of lives and resources, and deaths from the transmission of new and unfamiliar infectious diseases. Land Empires of large size and difficult geography couldn’t transport perishable food-stuffs far enough to make a large political entity viable.
The modern state of Israel is a part of the USA fossil — fueled military empire, that took over global management from declining UK management after the huge mess left over from the colonial — oil — territory conflicts of WWII. Nothing was actually settled. The human cultural and national conflicts continued, but most outright conflict was sublimated into growth of population and technological accelerations through the distribution of cheap oil. I won’t use the word race, because we are all of the same species, prone to magnifying our subtle but diverse mixtures of skin pigmentation and physical traits.
We glorify our tribal identities. Each generation acquires new means of local tribal differentiation, process known as “schizmo-genesis”. We acquire cultural differences and markers with pride. Acquiring identity is not a matter of choice. It is more like ducklings getting “imprinted” with the appearance of their mother, which normally works well for ducks. Humans manage over a longer childhood period, to learn to trust the accustomed behaviour and appearance of suitable mates and social colleagues. We overcome “stranger-fear” with accustomed familiars. Out of ordinary generates instinctive fears.
The great acceleration from fossil fuels, in particular cheap oil, in one human lifetime, has multiplied human populations eight times, along with affluence, and technological intensity. The date of takeoff is around 1950, in this interesting review paper — “The Anthropocene: From Global Change to Planetary Stewardship (2011)” —
The great acceleration has not been evenly distributed. Non OECD population ballooned fastest, but benefited least from increases in GDP. Altogether the increase in human impacts on this planet have been just “graphic”.
It is the volume of the cube that measures the total “Anthropocene” impact on this biosphere. It is apparent that the biggest dimensions, as our human impact magnifiers, are affluence and technology, according the units of scales used here, which I hope are related to energy use per capita. The big energy supplier for all the mining and distributive global machinery is middle east oil.
The global inequality is magnified. OECD nations (colonial empires) get the energy = GDP benefits, and non-OECD get most of the population overshoot. Of course its much more complex than this abstraction can show. Non-OECD nations had the brakes taken off without stopping a higher fertility rate. Technology was employed against high infant mortality rates, and shorter lifespans, such as vaccinations, public health measures, organized child care. Food productivity shot up with fossil fueled chemical inputs of fertilizers and pesticides. Rivers were dammed for hydro-power and field irrigations.
All the more people in non-OECD nations to grow food and mine resources for us. Energy and mineral resources were in consumed in highest volumes by OECD nations, likewise for the creation of accumulated greenhouse gas emissions.
Israel is most definitively a colony of the OECD west. Forget about religion and holocausts for a moment. Conflicts and inter-tribal slaughter are a par for the course of history. We have had a bunch of technologically literate, west European peoples, with deep social and political connections to the most powerful nations at the end of WW2, put a flag — stake into the heart of the middle east, the richest oil — energy wealth resource supply region of the planet. They are determined to “develop” their own nation, by wresting land and control off the native inhabitants. Most importantly the inhabitants did not really have a supportive government, (what a luxury!) with military forces for civil protection, nor the backing of the ostensible great power winners of WW2, and so are evicted almost totally from the initial area of conquest, which declares itself to be Israel, final promised land for the Jews. It was also a post WW2 spoils of victory for the west just waiting for the taking.
Demographic figures from the site “Jewish Virtual Library” summarize the takeover. In 1947 Palestine area population was 630,000 jews, and 1,324,000 non-jews. Literally overnight, in reverse Pogrom, called the “Nakba”, the Jewish militia forces kicked off their national “great acceleration” with expelling all its non-jewish inhabitants and forcefully acquiring their property and wealth. This must have required quite a lot of coordinated planning. Like as if these victims didn’t deserve what they had. In 1950 the jewish population is 1,203,000 and non-jews are 167,100. The missing million are mostly forced out.
The Nakba came as a great shock, and led to the million or so refugees defining their national identity as “Palestinians” in a great hurry. This is now the first rule of existence in this fossil fuelled, IPAT overshoot world. Be a national nasty with formidable defensive military or be stripped of everything you have. Without the capacity to defend or strike back, you are walking victim-hood.
Its clear that Israel has wide backing from within the USA, and its AUKUS alliance. Israel by necessity established high tech, corporations, and weapons industries, as pressured by surviving its intrusive invasion into already volatile and crazy middle east national politics. For example, Rafael, with deep ties to the USA industrial weapons complex. Plus a sizeable nuclear weapons arsenal, which is the next big step up in national nastiness.
Israel displays pathologies rather typical of end of fossil fuel era national nastiness. Its a security police state, armed to the teeth, fully dependent on food imports. Expanding its population means extending like a fungus into Palestine West Bank, with gated community settlements, roads and infrastructure forming an armed military settler encirclement of remaining Palestinian people. The fungus invasion towards oil continues.
I don’t know why exactly AUKUS alliance (Australia, United Kingdom, United States) is even a thing. Our “shared values” are actually shared dependence on oil supply to keep using everything else, a common language and a heritage of expansionism and colonial invasion, used as a solution to domestic ecological overshoot. The UK is fast sinking into its collapse helped by its deranged political elites overall silliness, and the USA government is a total puppet appendage of the energy — military corporate complex, that it depends on for global relevance. Their is no notion left in AUKUS politics of sustainable ways of life of a distinctive peoples that relates to a native ecosystem. All are totally dependent on oil imports from the middle-east, and so they absolutely need and support Israel as nasty nation armed to the teeth in the middle east sufficient to keep Arab governments cowed to maintain our vital imports. Nothing else explains their support of the Israel government squashing the Hamas rebellion, and firings and denunciations of anyone who dare says otherwise. This reminds me of the historical horrors expressed by similar colonial governments when Haiti declared independence after overthrow of their occupational rape by France.
Even sillier has been the AUKUS boosting of the Ukraine conflict with Russia, by the USA via NATO and CIA political involvement with its NAZI styled nationalist cultural groups. Again, Ukrainian national identity was required to to have military nastiness backed up by USA weapons. When faced against the much larger Russian Oil based super-power, this was always going to be insufficient. But the conflict has taken out some of the EU competitive demand in the global oil and gas market, by sinking their economies, blowing up their gas pipelines from Russian, and for a while at least puts downward pressure on supply prices for AUKUS nations. In this oil supply declining world, every other nation is your oil demand competitor, and the USA means to eventually take out all of them.
Israel thus serves, from AUKUS point of view, as a military empire outpost, and Palestinian peoples are merely serving as exploited war — captive slaves, and rebellious nuisances, “animals”, “grass to be mowed”, reflecting tribal Israel OECD and Palestinian non-OECD origins.
Hamas of course, can point from any time now into the future, to the original “Nakba” planning and actions. Now it is planning and ingenuity against a now heavily armed opponent, and say, “This is how you rescue your own nation”. Of course the plan was to stir up a vicious Israel revenge attack, which momentarily reveals the global truths of fossil fueled industrial culture.
Israel felt secure as protected by its huge long automated wall around Gaza Strip to keep out Hamas. So much so its policy is concentrating on evicting and bulldozing yet more Palestinians from the West Bank, and extending its fossil-fueled fungal population slow advance towards middle east oil. Its Minister of Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir being a rabid expansionist for more jewish settlements.
There is a lot of history passed by since then, especially at “great acceleration” fossil fueled overshoot rates, so this essay stops here. More is planned, but I always get side-tracked.
Here is my national Australian Broadcasting Corporation recent investigation focused on the outbursts of Hamas hostilities, and failures of Israeli security. Yes, how could they be so careless?