An eyewitness view of the new world war

Paul Sheehan gives An eyewitness view of the new world war in which the evil Muslim bogeyman is waging World War III. Every indicator we have says that we should get used to the concept. And of course, the chief perpetrators are Iran and Saudi Arabia. Yet again, we are being set up for another war in another oil-producing country. (Who would've thought?)

His conclusion is that:

Jihad and shahada have been the common denominators of the otherwise unrelated bloodshed in Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines and the violent arc of a dozen Islamic states from Pakistan to Morocco. It is the common denominator of bloodshed in Britain, France, Spain, Holland and the United States, all the scenes of terrorist attacks, and Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Germany and Italy, where growing Muslim threats and violence are part of what is now a global confrontation between Western values and medievalism.

Emphasis Mine

So instead of the International Communist Conspiracy, we now have the International Islamic Conspiracy.

Paul Sheehan visits the spot where Hizzbolah guerillas ambushed an IDF patrol killing six (6) and capturing two (2) soldiers, and how the guerillas lured an IDF tank and Humvee into a landmine, killing all the soldiers.

Mr. Sheehan puts this failure of the IDF down to the guerillas knowing the terrain and what the responses the IDF would make to certain events. A patrol of two (2) Humvees is sent out to investigate an alarm on the border fence, and a tank and a Humvee is sent out in response to an ambush. The IDF had become completely predictable.

Here the guerillas achieved an edge over the IDF. This is rather galling when a Western country is bested by a medieval one.

We have two (2) signifiers of very great import today

• Western values
• Medievalism

Mr. Sheehan has presented them as a polarity. Indeed, 500 years ago, they would have been indistinguishable. This was when Europe was the cultural and economic backwater.

These only make sense in a Capitalist culture.

The "Western values" is a geographical placement of cultural norms. In this case, "Western values" are really those of the European Capitalists to distinguish themselves from the corruption of the Orient (the East).

"Medievalism" is a temporal separation of the Capitalists from their Feudal predecessors in Europe. What had gone before was barbaric and looked down upon.

So these two (2) terms are to identify Capitalists by geography (the "West" i.e Europe) and time ("post-medieval").

The term, "Medievalism", also has religious and social dimensions. The medieval society was one of uniform religious beliefs and norms which were stringently enforced by the Catholic Church. From this flowed the social dimension as a Christian one. Western Medieval European society was a Christian society (aka Christendom).

It is probably in this context that Mr. Sheehan refers to "medievalism" as meaning an Islamic dominated society.

This is classic prejudice of a Capitalist against any religion: they are ll interchangeable. Islam can be subsituted for Christianity without loss of relevance in any historical analogy.

Instead of realising that there are a multitude of different movements with differing motives and means within Islamic countries and communities, Mr. Sheehan and other Capitalist propagandists are creating this monolithic enemy. This did not even exist during the years of the USSR, but it was convenient for the Capitalists to say so in order to keep their populations living in fear of the other.