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Page added on September 16, 2012
A World On The Verge Of War?
Here is a summary of where the world stands:
- Unable to reach a compromise over the weekend, South Africa is now in an all out labor strike, with the police again firing rubber bullets at miners with lethal escalation guaranteed
- Back from vacation, the once again penniless citizens of Spain, Greece, and Portugal have resumed protesting austerity
- US embassies attacked, in many cases with numerous casualties, in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Morocco, Sudan, Lebanon, India, Balgadesh, Indonesia, and others.
- Japan “appropriating” China-contested islands provoking a firestorm of retaliation including demands for “war with Japan“
- The Japanese ambassador to China dying mysteriously
- Netanyahu telling Meet the Press Iran will have a nuke in six-seven months and must be stopped beforehand
- Warships from more than 25 countries, including the United States, Britain, France, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, launching a military exercise in the Straits of Hormuz
- A third US aircraft – the CVN-74 Stennis – carrier is en route to Iran with an ETA of about 10 days
- And finally, a potential catalyst to light this whole mess on fire, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard announcing that its troops are now on the ground in Syria.
From Reuters:
Members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) are providing non-military assistance in Syria and Iran may get involved militarily if its closest ally comes under attack, commander-in-chief Mohammad Ali Jafari said on Sunday.
Jafari’s statement is the first official acknowledgement that Iran has a military presence on the ground in Syria where an 18-month-old uprising has left tens of thousands dead.
Western countries and Syrian opposition groups have long suspected Iran has troops in Syria. Iran has denied this.
“A number of members of the Qods force are present in Syria but this does not constitute a military presence,” Iranian news agency ISNA quoted Jafari as saying at a news conference.
Qods is an IRGC unit set up to export Iran’s ideology. It has been accused of plotting attacks inside Iraq since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
Jafari did not indicate how many IRGC members were in Syria but said they were providing “intellectual and advisory help”.
The Islamic Republic has backed Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad since the crisis began and regards his rule as a key part of its axis of resistance against Israel and Sunni Arab states.
Jafari also said Iran would change its policy and offer military backing if Syria came under attack.
“I say specifically that if Syria came under military attack, Iran would also give military support but it … totally depends on the circumstances,” he said.
Next up: satellite photos somewhere “confirming” beyond a reasonable doubt that weapons of mass destruction are being prepared for usage, and a preemptive war is the only way to not only preserve peace, but to be awarded the Nobel prize in said activity.
What is perfectly obvious to anyone but the most jaded and biased, is that the West will use any opportunity of conflict escalation which in turn will send crude, and gas, prices soaring, to commence the launch of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve release, arguably at just the right time to push down gas prices, which as we showed on Friday have never been higher on this day in history. “Right time”, because any SPR release will have the short-term benefit of boosting Obama’s re-election chances even more, even if it means surging gas prices after the election.
The reality of course is that the bulk of upside pressure on commodity (crude and gas included) prices is as a result of the Fed and ECB’s recent monetization expansion and liquidity tsunami, which does the usual: soothes the symptoms for a few weeks, crushes volatility and creates the impression that all is well…. if only to lead to yet another far more grave outcome. And since there is now officially no limit much debt the Fed will monetize, there is so no limit on how high commodity prices will go.
So while in reality any war, supposedly one which is “regional” and “contained” will merely be a smokescreen to the central banks officially taking over ownership of the insolvent developed world, the likelihood is that a war will neither be “regional” nor “contained” as both countries that make up the axis of a future hard-backed currency, China and Russia, have already made it quite clear that any intervention by the US in regions they themselves consider strategic, such as the Senkaku Islands, Syria and/or Iran, will result in retaliation.
And retaliation by one or more rising superpowers to another fading superpower, will inevitably lead to yet another World War.
Needless to say, nobody could possibly foresee war as the outcome to the global depression ver 2.0: certainly not the Princeton historian who will be, more than anyone else, responsible for it.
10 Comments on "A World On The Verge Of War?"
James on Sun, 16th Sep 2012 10:48 pm
I am at odds trying to figure out how Israel or the West can predict how far along the Iranians are with their nuclear program. Barring any spies in the actual sites where any of this is going on. I think the West and Israel is just itching for a war no matter if the Iranians have a “weapon” or not. I believe the whole thing is control over the regions oil. If the West is wrong this time like they were in Iraq, they will lose all creditability with the rest of the world. The American people will lose what respect they have left for their government. With all the nuclear activity being done underground, and I would assume there is some kind of security in place which would only allow specific, authorized people into those underground facilities, an no spies. I don’t see how the west and Israel can say Iran will have any kind of weapon in X amount of time.
BillT on Sun, 16th Sep 2012 11:47 pm
James, oil may be a part of it, but consider…Iran is setting up a trading center that does NOT use dollars for oil and other commodities. THAT is the real threat to the dollars control over banking in the world.
Yes, Israel is fighting some religious war and is using the US as it’s support and supplier because it could not do it alone.
But, consider who else proposed deposing the dollar: Saddam, Gaddafi, and now Iran’s President. The FACT that China, Russia, Japan, India, Brazil, etc are already in the process of working out trade in other currencies makes WW3 more immediately necessary for the US to divert everyone before it can happen. Or so this is how I see it.
Pythor Sehn on Mon, 17th Sep 2012 12:24 am
Ah…it all would have been so much easier if we in the USA would just live within our means and plan for a sustainable future. It makes me wonder…does perpetual growth cause perpetual war?
energy investor on Mon, 17th Sep 2012 1:19 am
The sheer number of hot spots is a sad indictment. The internet, rather than a means for bringing peoples together is having the opposite effect.
Militarism in China seems to question the authority of the politbureau.
The USA can’t stop meddling so everyone distrusts their intelligence and motives.
The Iranians seem to want war for some peculiar reason. Otherwise why would they keep repeating at the highest level that Israel should be destroyed. Why would they keep demonstrating the rockets that make an ideal delivery system for atomic warheads, and why would they enrich uranium past 5%.
WW1 started for far less reason.
Ken Nohe on Mon, 17th Sep 2012 2:19 am
QE3 “infinity” is a far more dangerous weapon of mass destruction than any missile in the desert. When oil rise another 20% which very few economists doubt it will, there will be turmoil all over the place: “Spring” everyday in the Arab world, “Happy” American citizens filling up their S100 tanks, “Responsible” Greeks doing their duties and tightening their belts another notch, Ingenious Mexican farmers wondering how you go from Maize to tortillas while sitting on their idle tractors, Happy Pakistanis sitting in the dark, pleased that the electricity cuts removes the dilemma of having to forbid their daughters to learn to write, over-joyous unemployed Chinese workers, occupying their new free time burning Japanese stores.
At some stage, when things get bad enough, war looks like a relief… until it arrives and the real hardship starts. What future historians will be discussing is: Could it have been otherwise? Or did human explosion, depletion of natural resources and an economic system based on perpetual and exponential growth condemned us to this unavoidable outcome? Interesting question, but I would prefer to contemplate it from the other side!
BillT on Mon, 17th Sep 2012 5:36 am
Ken, there is every reason to believe that this one will bring out the nukes. Is the Empire going to go quietly into the night? Nope! Which city/cities will be sacrificed? LA? NYC? DC? London? Paris? Tokyo? Taipei? Beijing? Tehran? Jerusalem? Or all of the above?
Arthur on Mon, 17th Sep 2012 9:24 am
Oil, protection of the dollar system, are just elements of a larger goal. The ultimate aim is to erect a single power pyramid on this planet, so that all the goyim sheeple are united in one big tent and the jews can live as kings, funded by interest payments. Thus it is written in the Talmud. The religion IS the conspiracy. And war is the only means of overthrowing an old order and replace it with a new one. Anglospere, since the Balfour Declaration in WW1, is the vehicle of choice to accomplish world government. Nations and religions need to be destroyed and to be replaced by a borderless atheist world and universal holocaust religion, worshipping a deified minority. When US, British and Israeli forces are gathering in the Gulf they are serving THAT goal; oil, dollar, holocaust denying Iran, are secondary.
Ken Nohe on Mon, 17th Sep 2012 12:34 pm
Wars do not start without a reason. When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, it didn’t happen out of the blue. Japan at the time was under a crushing oil embargo and could not wait much longer. To say that the second WW was a surprise would be a stretch. Yes Japan was a military dictatorship. Could it have been dealt with in any other way? Maybe not, we’ll never know.
Does Iran represent a similar level of risk? Netanyahu certainly thinks so but fortunately he is still lonely. The real risk is that if you place too many weapons in one place, it is rather easy for things to get out of control.
What is frightening is that insidiously, decisions like QE3 create profound disequilibriums. These are not dangerous by themselves but they quickly become the backgrounds on which other happening can take an ominous turn. Look at the the Senkaku/Daioyu Islands. From inexistent dots on the map to flash points in less than 2 weeks between countries who exchanged over 350 billion dollars of goods and services last year. You can’t do worse than that!
Arthur on Mon, 17th Sep 2012 3:59 pm
@Ken, here is the proof the attack did not come unexpected:
http://dottal.org/images/pearl_harbour_newspaper%201.jpg
One week after Japan joined the axis powers, Roosevelt got the socalled McCollum memo on his desk, pointing at a new possibility for Roosevelt to get his desired war against Germany, namely via the Japanese backdoor, now that Japan was allied with Germany. The American public was overwhelmingly against the US war participation. The trick to lure Japan into war was indeed to impose a crushing oil embargo, combined with impossible demands in order to get the ban lifted: totally giving up on the Japanese empire. Roosevelt knew that the only way out for the Japanese was to get the oil in the Dutch East Indies. But the fleet at PH was a threat in the flank. Why else would Japan, with an economy of merely 10% of that of the US, attack this collossus, other than as an act of desperation?
Arthur on Mon, 17th Sep 2012 4:17 pm
Just like today you are not told what is playing behind the scenes in our wonderful democracy. I personally know of no more revealing document than the 25 min. video in this link:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2010/12/wicked_leaks.html
(scroll down a bit). It is about a real American hero, Tyler Kent, who functioned as a clerk between Churchill and Roosevelt, from the US embassy in London and saw and read all the transatlantic cables between the two. From these it becomes clear that Roosevelt was looking for war entry, against his solumn campaign pledges, as early 1940, long before PH. Kent wanted to warn the American public about this conspiracy but he was intercepted by MI5 and thrown in jail for 5 years.
This is like Wiki-leaks but with far greater import.
It is likely that Roosevelt and Stalin were steering towards an alliance to crush Europe as early as 1933, when the Roosevelt government diplomatically recognized the human slaughterhouse USSR as one of the first acts in office.
And now we are in the same situation, where the US is looking for a pretext to attack. No doubt a second Gulf of Tonkin incident is in the works, where the attack is going to be blamed on the Iranians. Unfortunately for the US, the entire planet is watching via the internet.