A rogue State of affairs

DOOMSCROLLING through the scenes of doom emerging from the lands of ancient great civilisations they now call the Middle East, I try to wrap my head around the latest act of savage aggression by the current empire, and in doing so, try to follow the advice of Arundhati Roy, 'to never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple.'

- By Dr. Prabhath Sirisena

Ruins of the Gate of All Nations in the ancient city of Persepolis (5th century BCE) in Iran

I teach business, among other things, to people living on the periphery of the imperial core, and in this line of work one cannot escape the simple fact that war is great business. And since war is business, as with everything else to do with business, one must try to time it well. For instance, we now know weekends are great for illegal strikes against other sovereign nations because the financial markets are closed. There is enough time for the initial panic to settle down, and perhaps even for some quick victories, so that the minor matter of human suffering can be largely ignored in the calculation of what stocks to hold and what to sell. The financial gods must be appeased before anyone else.

War has always been great business for its funders, but now that we are fighting corporatist wars (not even badly disguised as ideological wars anymore), the truism has become truer. The imperial military suppliers such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman receive the significant part of the one and a half trillion dollars the empire allocates for its Department of War, and as Iran was getting bombed, the shareholders had reason to dance in the (Wall)streets. For decades now the Middle East has been a fertile testing ground for their death-bringers, and this was a moment to celebrate the expansion of arable land for bombs.