Hi there hello audient, how've you been? The end, they say, is near. Some say this end is the apocalypse. Others call it "a new Middle Ages" ..sorry, I mean "East". Some say 'end' with the meaning of goal - for example the goal of the war on Iran - and shift the definition of 'end' according to the means they can afford... War as capitalism in other means I guess. Due to the unfortunate combination of our illustrious MC being quite unwell, and Sagi having seemingly fallen down a particularly steep and slippery economico-theologico-geo-politico rabbit-hole-o - - ..it might have become a tad monological at times. The thread that starts us off concerns the "raw" nature, or feel, of this war. American liberals opine over Bush that bothered to lie at least; he spoke around the oil, not through it (or to it for that matter). But the political chaos of this war - the lack of inhibitions in doing, as Chancellor Merz says, "our dirty work" - does serve to expose a hand that prefers to remain invisible (Max Weber would say it has spiritual aspirations). And it also exposes a structure, and a problem, with a long, seldom discussed, history. The invisible hands of the "secular" west's global capitalism can be uncannily traced to the first Crusade in 1095; where a power-drunk Pope called for the destruction of the vile race that defiles the Holy Land (incidentally solving much internal strife and crime, as the first 70% of his speech suggest)... Seen in this more nuanced lens, this conflict was a long time coming. The seeming insanity of everything about this war, the feeling that no one is holding the Westphalian reins, leaves only the most ancient of hands to steer the course of events. But the real issue is one of Sovereignty - a secularized (Christian) theological concept based on their conception of 'God' (and the violence that this concept did to the Jewish 'Hashem'). This problem never stops rearing its head whenever Christians find themselves in conflict; the Eastern/Western Church schism, the Crusades that were used to "blow off steam" of intra-Christian aggression ("Go attack the heretic Muslim! (instead of robbing our clergy...) We must save the Holy Land!"), the way that an Other like itself (universalist, potentially Imperial, economically relevant) immediately conjures messianic fires in the religious (and supposedly "secular") world, aching for an apocalypse. The peace of Westphalia took all that religious animosity of yet another Christian schism (the Reformation), and channeled it inwards; classic Augustinian move. If "all" cannot resolve the problem of sovereignty - i.e. how to respect difference under a metaphysics that presupposes access to, and comprehension of, both God's totality and infinity. The very logic of Westphalia is already Protestant; access to God, to the Sovereign, was only further internalized by Luther who gave it to the "individual" believer, but the indivisible, absolute sovereignty of 'God' remains. Its claim remains; now in individual hearts that can snap at any moment, spontaneously, as if manifesting destiny. And this is the framework through which we read this conflict. Considering the westphalian system and the effects of forcing it on the Middle East, the reasons for which this system was forced and enforced in the first place (hint: it's not to bring any enlightenment, and certainly not democracy, to the yum yum oil-rich region), the fact that it caused a structurally antisemitic pressure that resulted in the solution of "Israel," its uncanny protection by 'western liberal democracies' (often blatantly double-standardized...), and also dissolve the nagging question of "does Israel have a right to exist" The rest is up to you, audient. Are you still there..?...
