Jul 042019
 
 July 4, 2019  Posted by at 7:14 pm Primers Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,


Odilon Redon The Birth of Venus II c.1910

 

How do you define terror? Perhaps, because of the way the term has evolved in the English language, one wouldn’t call the west ‘terrorists’ per se, but ‘we’ are certainly spreading terror and terrorizing very large groups of people. Yeah, bring on the tanks and parade them around town. Add a marching band that plays some war tunes.

The ‘official’ storyline : at the request of the US, Gibraltar police and UK marines have seized an oil tanker in Gibraltar. The super-tanker, 1000 feet (330 meters) long, carrying 2 million barrels, had stopped there after sailing all around the Cape of Good Hope instead of taking the Suez canal on its way, ostensibly, from Iran to Syria.

And, according to the storyline as presented to and in the western press, because the EU still has sanctions on Iran, the British seized the ship. Another little detail I really appreciate is that Spain’s acting foreign minister, Josep Borrell, said Madrid was looking into the seizure and how it may affect Spanish sovereignty since Spain does not recognize the waters around Gibraltar as British.

That Borrell guy is the newly picked EU foreign policy czar, and according to some sources he’s supportive of Iran and critical of Israel. Them’s the webs we weave. He’s certainly in favor of Palestinian statehood. But we’re wandering…

Why did the tanker take that giant detour along the African coastline? Because potential problems were anticipated in the Suez canal. But also: why dock in Gibraltar? Because no problems were anticipated there. However, the US had been following the ship all along, and set this up.

A trap, a set-up, give it a name. I would think this is about Iran, not about sanctions on Syria; that’s just a convenient excuse. Moreover, as people have been pointing out, there have been countless arms deliveries to Syrian rebels in the past years (yes, that’s illegal) which were not seized.

 

The sanctions on Syria were always aimed at one goal: getting rid of Assad. That purpose failed either miserably or spectacularly, depending on your point of view. It did achieve one thing though, and if I were you I wouldn’t be too sure this was not the goal all along.

That is, out of a pre-war population of 22 million, the United Nations in 2016 identified 13.5 million Syrians requiring humanitarian assistance; over 6 million are internally displaced within Syria, and around 5 million are refugees outside of Syria. About half a million are estimated to have died, the same number as in Iraq.

And Assad is still there and probably stronger than ever. But it doesn’t even matter whether the US/UK/EU regime change efforts are successful or not, and I have no doubt they’ve always known this. Their aim is to create chaos as a war tactic, and kill as many people as they can. How do you define terror, terrorism? However you define it, ‘we’ are spreading it.

That grossly failed attempt to depose Assad has left Europe with a refugee problem it may never be able to control. And the only reason there is such a problem is that Europe, in particular Britain and France, along with the US, tried to bomb these people’s homelands out of existence. Because their leaders didn’t want to conform to “our standards”, i.e. have our oil companies seize and control their supplies.

 

But while you weren’t looking some things changed, irreversibly so. The US and Europe are no longer the undisputed and overwhelming global military power they once were. Russia has become a target they cannot even consider attacking anymore, because their armies, assembled in NATO, wouldn’t stand a chance.

China is not yet at the ‘might’ level of Russia, but US and NATO are in no position to attack a country of 1.4 billion people either. Their military prominence ended around the turn of the century/millennium, and they’re not going to get it back. Better make peace fast.

So what we’ve seen for a few decades now is proxy wars. In which Russia in particular has been reluctant to engage but decisive when it does. Moscow didn’t want to let Assad go, and so they made sure he stayed. Syria is Russia’s one single stronghold in the Middle East, and deemed indispensable.

Meanwhile, as over half of Syrians, some 11 million people, have been forced to flee their homes, with millions of them traumatized by war, ‘we’ elect to seize a tanker allegedly headed for a refinery in the country, so we can make sure all those people have no oil or less oil for a while longer.

So the refugees that do have the courage and will to return will find it that much harder to rebuild their homes and towns, and will tell those still abroad not to join them. At the same time Assad is doing fine, he may be the target of the sanctions but he doesn’t suffer from them, his people do.

 

Yes, let’s parade some tanks around town. And let’s praise the heroic UK marines who seized an utterly defenseless oil tanker manned by a bunch of dirt-poor Philippinos. Yay! There is probably some profound irony that explains why Trump and Bolton and Pompeo want a military parade at the very moment the US military must concede defeat in all theaters but the propaganda one.

Still there it is. The only people the US, the west, can still credibly threaten, are defenseless civilians, women, children. The leaders of nations are out of reach. Maduro, Assad, let alone Putin or Xi.

Happy 4th of July. Not sure how independent you yourself are, but I can see a few people who did achieve independence from western terror. Just not the poor, the ones that count. But don’t look at the tanks, look at the wind instead. The winds are shifting.

 

 

 

 

Home Forums The Winds are Shifting

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  • #48372

    Odilon Redon The Birth of Venus II c.1910   How do you define terror? Perhaps, because of the way the term has evolved in the English language, o
    [See the full post at: The Winds are Shifting]

    #48376
    VietnamVet
    Participant

    July 4th is a good day to declare independence from global oligarchs and the “five-eyes” intelligence community. Add, nationalist oligarchs, Donald Trump, and politicians, Boris Johnson, and we have a three-ring circus. None give a damn for the little people. Just getting richer from raking in flight capital from spreading chaos. Once upon a time, Democracy, the Fourth Estate and the Rule of Law provided common sense rules to rein in aristocracy’s excesses, no more. There is no finer example today than the United Kingdom. It is about to lose Northern Ireland and Scotland. Its armed forces seized a Panamanian flagged oil tanker which is either an act of war or piracy. Disappearing Sergei and Yulia Skripal. Arming Jihadists. Using dead children in false flag poison gas attacks. Bombing Syria, Iraq and Libya. Flooding Europe with millions of refugees.

    Before it is too late, now, is the time to restore government by and for the people.

    #48377
    zerosum
    Participant

    “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose”—”the more things change, the more they continue to be the same thing,

    Now, …. we have the web to keep us informed.

    #48378
    ezlxa1949
    Participant

    The winds are not shifting for others. In the Australian media at the moment are stories about the help given by Swedish diplomats in North Korea to secure the release of an Australian citizen. One report is here. “We are so very grateful,” intoned our PM.

    Surely a precedent exists now for Swedish diplomats to secure the release of Julian Assange from his unlawful detention.

    #48379
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    Happy 4th of July. Not sure how independent you yourself are, but I can see a few people who did achieve independence from western terror. Just not the poor, the ones that count. But don’t look at the tanks, look at the wind instead. The winds are shifting.

    As independent as a Usian can be; given we are the property of the U.S. government as long as we hold US passports.
    Some of us “poor” have been able to relocate; the day I was hired by a U.S. company to work in Thailand, I had less than $100 USD to my name.
    The afternoon I landed in BKK I had $400 USD in my pocket (monthly expense amount).
    The very best thing I had when I arrived was zero debt; to this day (17 years later), I still have zero debt.
    Zero debt is absolutely required for true independence; IMO…
    And, yes indeed: The winds are finally shifting; it will be interesting to see what the Eurasian countries will do with their newly acquired independence from the hegemon.
    And can they keep it? That’s the real question…

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