Our president, Nicolas Sarkozy, has floated the idea of a Mediterranean Union to bring together the states around our middle sea, and his first problem was with the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, who was most upset that this might exclude Germany, although most of it did not historically form part of the Roman Empire which once included all riparian states.
Now Mouamar Khadhafi, the Libyan leader has expressed his objection to the idea, since he believes that it would seem to exclude many Arab states and also Africa south of the Sahara. Furthermore, he no doubt has no wish to be involved in any dealings with the present occupying rulers of Palestine.
This does not mean that the general idea of cooperation has no value for all those states which have a mutual interest in reducing polution and other problems in and around our sea, but the question arises of whether or not any kind of Union is the right solution.
The trouble comes from the very fact that it was suggested by someone who seems unable to understand either history or the need for justice to put an end to disputes. There is sadly every sign that our present government has the intention of poking its nose into the affairs of the Lebanon, where its predecessor in the 1920's had the disastrous idea of deliberately creating an unworkable confessionalist constitution to limit the powers of pan-Arab movements then likely to challenge the pattern of Franco-British colonialism in the Near and Middle East.
At the same time, it is keen to create problems for Syria, whose main present aim is to recover its territory under enemy occupation, since any such difficulties would please the Bush régime in the USA. Obviously enough, the USA have no national interests whatsoever in that region, but the current régime has decided that it must interfere to protect the ill-gotten gains of the invading thieves who now so brutally occupy the Holy Land.
Because they have ample supplies of their own, the USA have no genuine need of the energy supplies from the Middle East, whether that be from Iran, Iraq, or any of the other states around the oil and gas rich Arabo-Persian Gulf. However, the greed of their companies drives whichever administration is supposed to be in power in the USA to seek to control every commodity in the world to the exclusive advantage of those in charge of these companies. These people in charge then transport vast quantities of fossil fuels over considerable distances, but this is to make more money than they could make if they only sold locally produced fuels. In the long term, the people of the USA suffer as much as everyone else from the effects of this greed, and thereby have less and less ability to break free from bondage to their masters.
It is unlikely that any possible cooperation around the Mediterranean can succeed if it is proposed by our president, unless and until he decides that he really does want our country to treat with other states on equal terms and does not give any support to external interference or any form of imported injustice.
As a friend has recently written, our president wraps himself in a cloak of Gaullism, but does everything to overturn the true legacy left to France and to the world by the General, and he now hopes even to bring our country's armed forces back under the command of whichever régime rules the USA on behalf of their corporate bosses.
On the other hand, to be positive, we ordinary citizens have an absolute duty to look upon our brothers and sisters around the Mediterranean, and recognise that we have a mutual interest in promoting peace and justice for all as well as in preserving the best of our ancient and valuable civilisation, which these gluttonous foreign interests wish to destroy to replace it with a grubby anti-culture based on wealth alone.
Footnote:
My good friend Michael Feltham has commented on my suggestion that the USA held ample supplies of fossil fuels, that "The USA now could not support its huge abuse and consumption of oil from indigenous reserves". He goes on to tell me that there is a lack of refining capacity and adds "The oil majors were not prepared to invest any of their obscene wealth in building new conforming plant and elected instead to import as many oil producers set up their own refinery sites to maximise their local profits". He blames the current crisis on "greed", but adds that the oil companies in the USA "cannot now lift sufficient local oil and gas to meet the - perhaps falsely inflated - consumption demand." After referring to the "insanity" of the situation, he ends that "US profligate consumption is now I believe a matter of moral turpitude which is why they have never accepted Kyoto." (I alone am responsible for adding the emphasis to the word "now".)
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