Kosovo Forces Raids In Serb-majority Areas Spark New Round Of Tensions In Balkans

albanian nazis…

Not that sure

https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/05/29/why-war-with-iran-is-not-a-rational-strategy-for-saudi-arabia/

Why War With Iran is Not a Rational Strategy for Saudi Arabia

by MICHAEL DOLINER FacebookTwitterRedditEmail

Image Source: Turkish Flame – Public Domain

The navy of the Former United States has a base in Bahrain, a majority-Shi’ite, Sunni-ruled, state. It is a base first controlled by the British in 1936 when Britain still had an empire. Just above the base is the oil port, Ras Tanura, a facility the United States built during the second World War and through which most of Saudi Arabian oil flows. That is why the naval base is where it is. By locating a fleet in Bahrain, the Former US grips Saudi Arabia by the throat. It controls whether or not oil flows from Ras Tanura. And since the world needs this oil to maintain breakneck industrialism, it has the world by the throat as well.

Ostensibly, this fleet protects Ras Tanura from whatever. But technology has made the fleet obsolete. In all out war with Iran the ships could not stand a barrage of land to sea missiles. Deadly drones and cavitating torpedoes in large numbers would overwhelm any defenses. Within the first few hours it would be a smoking pile of metal filled with the corpses of American sailors. Although the fleet could close Ras Tanura if there were no war, it could not protect it in war.

The fleet, like much of the rest of the Former United States military, is a tripwire. If Iran attacks it, the story goes, that will be a New Pearl Harbor and the American population will suddenly throw off its apathy and redevelop a taste for war. So the fleet, with the sailors, is actually offered up as a sacrifice in the hopes of producing yet another “New Pearl Harbor.”

After Roosevelt maneuvered to create the first Pearl Harbor, Pearl Harbors became a habit-forming drug. The Entity, always looking for war, needed a spanking-new Pearl Harbor to whip the population into war frenzy. Like in a gunfight in a western, the bad guy has to shoot first. Gulf of Tonkin? Heigh de ho! 9/11? Whoop de do! The idea is to pretend that the enemy launched a surprise attack while you were innocently going about your business. Will it work again? I’m dubious. Drugs tend to have less effect the more you use them. And once you have seen a few false flags you develop a jaundiced view. Just the willingness to maneuver to sacrifice some of your citizens to concoct a New Pearl Harbor is a sign of cultural bankruptcy.

But this time, there is Ras Tanura. The water is very shallow near Ras Tanura and the Saudis have created sand islands in deeper water to service the huge VLCC tankers. These islands are covered by oil storage facilities, row after row of large cylindrical oil storage tanks on artificial islands impossible to protect. And then there are the pipelines that feed them. Ras Tanura is at least as vulnerable as the fleet in Bahrain. No doubt an attack on Ras Tanura would also be a trip wire, but if you attack one you might as well attack the other. There can only be one trip wire.

If such a war began, even before the first shot was fired, oil flow through the Straits of Hormuz would cease. No one would insure the sitting-duck VLCC tankers and their hundred-plus million dollar cargoes in a war zone. But the destruction of Ras Tanura would mean that even when the war ended Saudi Arabia’s oil revenue would be diminished radically, possibly forever.

Back in the day the Saudi man in the street had it pretty good. In the seventies the dole provided somewhere in the neighborhood of $25,000. But that is long gone, except in memory. Saudi Arabia has one of the fastest growing populations in the world. Since then the Saudi man in the street has fallen into poverty. If Saudi oil revenue stopped, immiseration of the Saudi population would increase dramatically. “Instability” would be the descriptive euphemism.

Mohammad bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, affectionately known as MbS in the families of those he has butchered, is the Saudi Crown Prince and de facto ruler of the country. He has kidnapped and extorted billions of dollars from other members of the royal family. I have no idea what these other members think about this high-handed lightening of their pockets, but it is hard to imagine that they liked it. MbS must fear that the royal family will not remain unified behind him if the country is destabilized and power potentially in the streets. I don’t think chopping up Kashoggi made him too many friends among journalists, other than the capons masquerading as such. How uneasy would MsB’s head rest if he lost Ras Tanura? With turmoil in the street and disgruntled royal Sheikhs to whom some relatives in the military might be loyal, the Saudi crown would lie “uneasy” on MbS’s head.

65 Kilometers from Ras Tanura is the city of Qatif. Qatif is an ancient city with a rich history. It was once the main port in the Persian Gulf and is home to a large hostile Shi’ite population that has a long and bloody history with the Saudi rulers. It also supplies more than half the work force in the oil industry in the neighborhood, especially at Ras Tanura. In more or less constant rebellion since 2010, the Shi’a are not likely to flock to the aid of MbS. “After the Iraqi government crackdown in 1973, several Shi’ites fled to Qom, Iran, among them Sheikh Hassan al-Saffar, the most prominent Saudi Shi’ite political figure and the architect of Shi’ite political activism in Saudi Arabia.” Having fled from Qatif to Iraq to escape the Saudis he had to flee again. Iran gave him refuge, educated him and protected him from Saudi and Iraqi malevolence. . He now lives in Qatif again. Israa al-Ghomgham, the nearly-beheaded female protester is also from Qatif.

Saudi Arabia needs the Shi’ites in Qatif, who are hostile to them, to produce its oil. They can’t just wipe out the rebellion. But as soon as war breaks out, Iran can attack Ras Tanura. What will this population do? Iraq shows that the Former United States is unrestrained in its barbarism in victory. Why wouldn’t Iran attack Ras Tanura? Once you are in a war with the Entity nothing can be gained by restraint. What will this population that runs the Saudi oil industry do? I don’t know and I suspect, neither does MbS. Does he imagine the war will leave Ras Tanura untouched? Will the Shi’ite workers, lead by a man who spent most of his childhood and young adulthood in Iran, which gave him sanctuary when he fled Sunni persecution, remaining as they are now? Does MbS count on the dazzle of a New Pearl Harbor to galvanize inhabitants of the Former United States into saving them by forcing this Shi’a population to remain loyal and run their gas station in the midst of a war with Iran? Good luck. What macabre joke could be a better recipe for disaster? Given the vulnerability of Ras Tanura and the fragile political situation, Saudi support for a war with Iran is irrational to the point of being imbecilic.

Saudi Arabia is the jewel of dollar hegemony-– the restriction of the sale of oil to dollar contracts that allows the Former United States to borrow without repaying. Dollar hegemony is now disintegrating, and even Saudi Arabia is looking to escape it. Given Ras Tanura’s vulnerability and Saudi Arabia’s instability, war with Iran is an irrational choice for Saudi Arabia. MbS might be acting irrationally, but on the other hand, the fleet in Bahrain, useless in a war with Iran, controls Ras Tanura. Is it possible that the Former United States now threatens Ras Tanura with the fleet and thus forces Saudi Arabia to support dollar hegemony, buy tons of American weapons, and claim to want war with Iran? To speculate wildly, is the threat of a war with Iran a pretext to reassert The Entity’s control over Saudi Arabia?

Of course the most plausible explanation is that all these tools-of-fools are out of their collective gourd.

Maybe I miss understood, if it’s the US running to crash aground, it’s look alike and I am waiting for it since decades … !

“Without disinformation, NATO would crumble”

by Manlio Dinucci

https://www.voltairenet.org/article206332.html

VOLTAIRE NETWORK | ROME (ITALY) | 27 APRIL 2019

FRANÇAIS ITALIANO TÜRKÇE ESPAÑOL PORTUGUÊS NORSK

Q: What is the result of the Symposium in Florence?

Michel Chossudovsky: The event was a great success, with the participation of speakers from the United States, Europe and Russia. We presented the history of NATO. We identified and carefully documented its crimes against humanity. And at the end of the Symposium, we presented the “Declaration of Florence,” a way of exiting the war system.

Q: In your introduction, you affirmed that the Atlantic Alliance is not a true alliance…

Michel Chossudovsky: On the contrary, under the appearance of a multinational military alliance, it is the Pentagon which dominates the decision-making mechanisms of NATO. The USA controls the command structures of NATO, which are incorporated with those of the United States. The Supreme Allied Commander in Europe (SACEUR) is always a US General nominated by Washington. The Secretary General, currently Jens Stoltenberg, is essentially a bureaucrat who handles public relations. He has no decision-making role.

Q: Another theme you raised was that of the US military bases in Italy and other European countries, including in the East, despite the fact that the Warsaw Pact has not existed since 1991, and despite the promise made to Gorbachev that no extension of NATO towards the East would ever occur. What is the purpose of these bases?

Michel Chossudovsky: NATO’s tacit objective – an important theme in our debate in Florence – is to implement, under a different denomination, the de facto “military occupation” of Western Europe. The United States not only continue to “occupy” the ex-members of the Second World War “Axis countries” (Italy, Germany), but have used the badge of NATO to set up US military bases in all of Western Europe, and, thereafter, in Eastern Europe in the wake of the Cold War, and in the Balkans in the wake of the NATO war against Yugoslavia (Serbia-Montenegro).

Q: What has changed in terms of the possible use of nuclear weapons?

Michel Chossudovsky: Immediately after the Cold War, a new nuclear doctrine was formulated, focused on the preventive use of nuclear weapons, in other words, on a nuclear first strike as a means of self-defence. Within the framework of USA-NATO interventions, presented as peace-keeping measures, a new generation of “low power” and “non-usable” nuclear weapons was created, described as “inoffensive for civilians”. US political leaders consider them to be “bombs for pacification.” The Cold War agreements, which established certain safety measures, have now been abandoned. The concept of “Mutually Assured Destruction,” relative to the use of nuclear weapons, has been replaced by the doctrine of preventive nuclear war.

Q: NATO was “obsolete” at the beginning of the Trump presidency, but now it has been rebooted by the White House. What relation is there between the arms race and the economic crisis?

Michel Chossudovsky: War and globalisation go hand in hand. Militarisation relies on the imposition of macro-economic restructuration in the target countries. It imposes military spending in order to support the war economy to the detriment of civil economy. It leads to economic destabilisation and the loss of the power of national institutions. An example – recently President Trump proposed huge budget cuts in the health and teaching sectors, and in social infrastructures, although he has asked for a massive increase in the budget of the Pentagon. At the beginning of his administration, President Trump confirmed the increase of expenditure in the military nuclear programme, launched by Obama, from 1,000 to 1,200 billions of dollars, claiming that this would serve to make the world safer. All over the European Union, the increase in military spending, coupled with austerity measures, is leading to the demise of what used to be called “the Welfare State.” Now, under US pressure, NATO is engaged in increasing military spending, and Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg declares that this is the correct decision to “guarantee the safety of our population.” The military interventions are coupled with concomitant acts of economic sabotage and financial manipulation. The final objective is the conquest of both human and material resources and of political institutions. The acts of war support a process of total economic conquest. The hegemonic project of the United States is to transform countries and international sovereign institutions into territories which are open for their penetration. One of their instruments is the imposition of heavy penalties on debt-ridden countries. The imposition of lethal macro-economic reforms serves to impoverish vast sectors of the world population.

Q: What is now, and what will become the role of the medias?

Michel Chossudovsky: Without the disinformation broadcast, in general, by almost all the medias, the military programme of the USA-NATO would collapse like a house of cards. The imminent dangers of a new war with the most modern weapons and the atomic peril are not the sort of news that makes the headlines. War is presented as an act of pacification. War criminals are depicted as pacifiers. War becomes peace. Reality is reversed. When lies become truth, there is no going back.

If interested by more infos about NATO and Europe, there is many you wouldn’t found in the Medias

https://www.voltairenet.org/spip.php?page=recherche&recherche=NATO&lang=en

yes it was another destruction done by both Islamic mercenaries and NATO. Al Qaeda playing a critical role in the wars in Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia

at the time i was fooled by propaganda, (i had a full time job it was around 2000 and thought BBC was still credible) . Have not looked into the history of the conflict but am pretty sure your information given here is more than accurate.

Have kept an eye on the syrian war since just before Russia entered. And people look at me like i have tinfoil hat on when i tell them USA is ISIS and was the authour of its inception

Finally an excellent post. Thanks for explaining this. I was always wondering why Bill Clinton sent our planes in, painted in NATO colors killings thousands.