Falling leaves in an unearthly autumn light Become the frame And chip my curse away Above the waves, you can still see where we drown No looking down Oblivion’s oblivion
So, let’s quickly get everyone up to speed. Don’t worry, we’re only going to go as far back as the Six Day War in 1967, but – who knows – perhaps we’ll talk about earlier events with similar players later in this list. In 1967 though, when we begin our tale, the Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser had been handed information by the Soviet Union that Israel (hi there!) were gathering troops in preparation to invade Syria. Nasser phoned up the Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol and was like “Hey, that’s our mate, can you not?” and Eshkol was like “We’re not even, bro!” so Nasser was like “Yeah right mate, I’m just going to expel all these United Nations Emergency Forces that are here to ensure our 1949 Armistice Agreements” and then Eshkol was like “Na-uuuuuuhhhh!!” but then Nasser was just like “Er, yeah-uh! And also, you can’t use our Strait of Tiran anymore” so that made Eshkol go all red and like scream “Dude! That’s where we get all our stuff from! And that would totally be an act of war!”. Then Nasser did it anyway, because YOLO. Israel bombed the fucking shit out of Egypt, taking the entire Senai Peninsula, plus Gaza as a little souvenir trinket, but I imagine that’s the last we’ll be hearing about that tiny strip of land. Israel warned King Hussein of Jordan not to enter the war, but they also bombed the shit out of Jordan’s airbases on the first day of the war. So Jordan gave troops to support Egypt and Israel bombed the shit out of Jordan, capturing the West Bank and ensuring Jerusalem was in Israel for the first time. The combined Arab country losses were around 15’000, Israel less than a thousand. Israel also killed 15 UN peacekeepers – coz Israel gonna Israel! – and 34 American soldiers, because they’re the only country allowed to do that apparently.
Oh, and around 413’000 Palestinians were of course expelled or killed in this process, but that’s barely worth mentioning. For Israel it was just Monday.
Ok, are you sitting down? Are you paying attention? Are your ears perked and your soul open? Is your Mana marvelous and your Qi chunky? Then eyes front, attention please:
I’m going to tell you absolutely everything I know about Bella Technika:
They’re called ‘Bella Technika Yeah, you might have been wondering if I was going to count that as a thing I knew about them, but as you’ll soon see this is going to be quite slim pickings so I’ve got to take what I can get.
I’m, like, 90% sure they’re from Belgrade, Serbia Pretty sure. I’m about 99% sure they’re Eastern European, and I found one review that mentioned Belgrade so I was like “yeah”.
This is their second album Now, I wasn’t sure of this, because when I named their previous album ‘Section’ as the 33rd best album of 2019 I was even more beguiled by these mysterious Serbians than I am now. This year though? No, not getting fooled again, I’ve done my own motherfucking research, sometimes as far as the third or fourth page of Google results, and ‘Section’ was actually an outstanding debut record.
The Soviets were completely convinced that “Able Archer” was the cover for a real nuclear strike. They believed that starting from this maneuver a strike aimed at decapitating the command, control and communication centers of the Soviet army, the state apparatus and the party apparatus would be carried out with the help of the new ultra-modern and precise tactical nuclear missiles, Pershing II and cruise missiles for which you had a warning time of only five to eight minutes. With these rockets, the criminal gang in the Pentagon hoped to decapitate the Soviet army, so that they — a quote that I myself have heard — “would run around the farmhouse like a chicken with its head cut off.”
I mean, yeah, sure, you had the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, and that was a whole thing, but honestly the Cold War kind of chilled out for a long time after that. The USA and USSR hardly kissed on the mouth afterwards, but they at least came to the conclusion that they should probably take actual nuclear war and guaranteed world destruction off the table for a while. There were still working people attempting to build some sort of Communism all over the world of course, and the USA trying to support the ruling classes to beat these people down – in Angola, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and to a lesser extent Bangladesh and Ethiopia – but the world’s two biggest swinging dicks at least agreed to maybe not spray both of their piss in every direction with such ferocity that it ended all human life. That would, they both agreed, really stink.
Then – whoop-de-fucking-doo – Thatcher and Reagan were elected in 1979 and 1980. They were both united in their shared belief that they were tired of this hippy bullshit. They also both agreed that having to consider workers rights and public welfare to make sure their populations didn’t look too longingly over to the Soviet Union was a lot of work. It also required a high tax rate for the rich. And they thought fuck that. What if, yeah – here me out, OK? – we just stopped caring for 90% of our own citizens, tell them that the real enemy is the ‘Evil Empire’ of the USSR, cut all taxes for rich people so the ruling class has reason to support us, and be done with nearly all public spending apart from shit loads of fucking rockets and shit that we’ll obviously need to protect ourselves against the ‘Evil Empire’? Cool? Cool.
Necessary Evil 