Summer Most Heat Moon
Well. The dogs have encouraged me to see another dawn. No, this is not some heroic clawback from the edge of terminal illness attained by the promise of canine companionship, rather it’s occasioned by canine demand for outside and food. So, here I am posting an Aurora just after a Nocturne. This might not be unusual for many, but for me, it’s downright odd.
The front page of the three papers I read consistently all feature the Malaysian Airlines disaster. The New York Times follows it with a long story about preparation by Israel for a ground assault on the Gaza Strip. Grim news from a part of the world that has been and continues to be a flashpoint for international conflicts.
Crimea, a major part of the Ukrainian/Russian violence, has featured in many wars and as part of the Great Game, the struggle between Great Britain and Russia for control in Central Asia. The Middle East, not far away, and its oil resources has become more prominent of late, particularly since the partition of Israel and Palestine. No one covers themselves with glory in any of these disputes and the politics are intractable, the product of ancient grudges coupled with the very modern demand for oil.
The ancient grudges often have their roots in this region’s other primary export, monotheistic religions. Though there were many polytheistic faiths in cultures there-from Babylonia to Assyria to Persepolis-it was with the Abrahamic covenant and the Egyptian diaspora of his descendants that monotheism began its ascendancy. In sequence came Christianity, then Islam both variants of that original turn toward one god.
The bitter soup concocted from petroleum and theological certainty, endemic to all three faiths, has bloodied nations and peoples over the whole globe. Where will it end? Oddly enough climate change might bring a peace of sorts in both central Asia and the Middle East. As the world backs away from its dependence on carbon based fuels, the relative importance of the oil rich regions and their conduits to markets (much of Central Asia, with pipelines headed toward China and toward the West) will decline.
Could be.
