I remember a U.S. admiral, at the time when the EU were considering setting up a rapid reaction force within NATO, saying that this was fine as long as the U.S. continued to "dominate" NATO. "Dominate" figured largely in the interview. Since the Second World War American policy has been geared to such dominance, from Vietnam, the Congo, Indonesia, Nicaragua, Panama, the list goes on, right down to forbidding spectators to bring into the Sydney Olympic stadia soft drinks not made by the official sponsor. It is all-pervasive. The U.S. runs the world as a protection racket: rule your country any way you like internally, so long as we take what we want financially, when we want it, on our terms. Oh, and don't talk about it. Unlike domestic protection rackets, there are no police out there to help you. The U.N.? The U.S. used its veto for the first time in the U.N. Security Council in 1972. Since then it has used its veto more than thirty times on the Middle East issue alone.
So how did Saddam Hussein and the Taliban, to name the most recent symbols of evil, fall from grace, as they were both sponsored, supported and brought to power by the U.S? They were disobedient, they thought themselves free of their master. The penalty for such disobedience is severe: it has cost the lives of several hundred thousand Iraqi children and several thousand Afghan civilians. The Dark Lord Sauron is the U.S. government in its various personifications - is it too fanciful to note that Sauron begins with SAU, an anagram of USA?
The U.S uses its power ruthlessly to accumulate wealth for itself and to impoverish the rest of the world to maintain that "disparity". Yet it lacks, maybe, the One Ring. This is where fear chills the blood, that 'maybe'. What might that One Ring be and the other Rings - the nine Ringwraiths, the Nazgul? There are various contenders for the Ringwraiths - Tony Blair fits the bill completely - but we are hard pushed to find nine leaders or countries outside the U.S. who blindly and utterly follow the U.S. in everything. No, the Ringwraiths are U.S. creatures, subservient to the executive will: the Judiciary, Congress, Senate, Pentagon, CIA, Big Business, Republican party, Democratic Party, U.S. Media. All roam the world in different ways and the Pentagon and the CIA certainly have no shortage of Orcs at their disposal.
The Internet is the most likely candidate for the One Ring. This is perhaps why the U.K. government seeks greater powers to monitor Internet access. The one means of communication beyond the reach of government. At present. The U.K. government, obedient and willing to please as ever. Blair as Gollum springs to mind, with Gollum's desperate desire to serve the master of the One Ring. It would certainly be unduly flattering to Tony Blair to cast him as Saruman, the wizard who believes he can talk with Sauron from his castle at Isengard through the palantir - a sort of video link - and still retain his independence. That grandiosity surely is paralleled in Ariel Sharon. Sharon, who maintains that no-one has the right to put Israel or the Jewish people on trial whilst claiming the right to put others on trial. This belief in the inherent superiority of his race/state has an echo in the book, as Saruman's Orcs are not just ordinary Orcs but the Uruk-hai who consider themselves to be superior to other races. Sharon professes loyalty to the U.S. whilst pursuing his own aims, affecting not to acknowledge that the U.S., if it chose, could bring him to heel instantly.
Gandalf it was who crushed Saruman but where is Gandalf, Frodo, The Shire? Where indeed. We are at the start of the trilogy and if events are in any way to mirror the book we need the good guys and fast. In that life is more complicated than fiction and bearing in mind that Frodo is a halfling (literally a 'little guy'), the answer is that we are all Frodos, all live in The Shire (including all the millions of decent Americans who are not aware of what is being done in their name). If the Internet is the One Ring then Gandalf is perhaps personified in those people who use the Internet wisely, who take risks to provide perspectives which reveal what is really happening, who are not corrupted by its power. Even Gandalf was aware of his susceptibility to its power. We Frodos need to read what is out there, to share what we know, to speak out. Unlike the book, our task is to preserve the freedom of the One Ring, not to destroy it. This way is dangerous, as it was for the Nine Walkers (Frodo, remember, was not alone).
This task is urgent and necessary otherwise we stand accused as was the German nation under Nazism. History will say of us: 'you were there, you knew and you said and did nothing'. For our prosperity in the West has been and is being bought at the price of others' poverty and that prosperity counts for nothing anyway if we are not free but bound in the darkness.