Wars and rumors of war...Another specific prophecy that overwhelms us in magnitude in these days - every single day there are new rumors of war.
On Monday we flagged a notable escalation in the build up to the geopolitical “main event” in Syria where, thanks largely to the West’s ambition to break Gazprom’s leverage over Europe, the US and Russia are one “accidental” run-in away from taking the “proxy” out of the term “proxy war.”
With the Kremlin now ramping up its military presence around the Assad stronghold of Latakia, the US is scrambling to do anything and everything in its power to slow the Russian build up - including putting pressure on Greece to deny Russia the use of its airspace for supply flights to Syria.
This isn’t the first time Greece has found itself in the middle of Cold War 2.0, as Athens (and notably Panagiotis Lafazanis) used Greece’s geographical position to field competing gas pipeline bids from Washington and Moscow during the height of the country’s fraught bailout negotiations.
So while we wait for Greece to pick a side between the US and Russia by either allowing Moscow to use its airspace on the way to supplying Assad or else snubbing the Kremlin and jeopardizing a potentially lucrative gas deal, at least one country has been quick to make a decision: Bulgaria...
#BreakingNews Bulgaria has denied Russia use of its airspace for supply flights to Syria ara.tv/9p2sy
Why, you ask? According to a spokeswoman, the Bulgarian foreign ministry has "enough information that makes [it] have serious doubts about the cargo of the planes, which is the reason for the refusal."
What's particularly amusing here is that all of the above (Greece's reluctance to immediately acquiesce to Washington's demands, Bulgaria's move to deny Russia use of its airspace, and the whole Syrian civil war) is the direct result of energy disputes. As mentioned above, Greece is being pulled between The Southern Gas Corridor and the Turkish Stream, while the South Stream debacle means Bulgaria has no reason not to side with the West. And of course the entire crisis in Syria all comes down the proposed Qatar-Turkey line.
So once again, it all comes down to natural gas and if the conflict in Syria has taught us anything so far, it's that when it comes to energy, the world's most powerful nations are willing to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of lives to protect their interests.
A notam issued Sept. 1 announced that, beginning Sept. 2, both ADS-B surveillance and TCAS may be unreliable in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, as well as in airspace extending approximately 200 nautical miles off shore. The situation is expected to last through Oct. 1 as a result of military exercises in the area.
But similar military exercises in the past have caused no interference with civilian ADS-B or TCAS, and AOPA is asking the FAA to explain both why the notam was issued so late and what has changed to raise these new concerns.
“We are working to get answers for our members,” said Rune Duke, AOPA director of air traffic and airspace. “This notam has caused considerable alarm and much confusion, while giving pilots little time to prepare. The long duration, ambiguous language, and short notice of this notam are all cause for serious concern. We have spoken with representatives of the FAA and the Department of Defense and will continue to pursue this until we get the answers pilots need.”
– From the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association release: AOPA Seeks Answers About ADS-B Notam
In a nutshell, it appears that aerial surveillance across much of the East Coast will be impaired until October 1 due to “military activities.” We learn from the NBAA (National Business Aviation Association) that:
Due to military activities, the TCAS and ADS-B surveillance may be unreliable in the airspace over Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida, and extending approximately 200 nautical miles offshore, from 1 a.m. EDT (0500z) Sept. 2 until midnight EDT (0459z) on Oct. 1.
Apparently, this is concerning enough that AOPA (Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association) is asking for answers. From AOPA.org:
September 4, 2015
By
AOPA is trying to get to the bottom of ambiguous notam language and determine why the aviation community was given just one day’s advance notice of military exercises that could make Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) and TCAS unreliable along a significant portion of the East Coast for a month.
A notam issued Sept. 1 announced that, beginning Sept. 2, both ADS-B surveillance and TCAS may be unreliable in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, as well as in airspace extending approximately 200 nautical miles off shore. The situation is expected to last through Oct. 1 as a result of military exercises in the area.
But similar military exercises in the past have caused no interference with civilian ADS-B or TCAS, and AOPA is asking the FAA to explain both why the notam was issued so late and what has changed to raise these new concerns.
“We are working to get answers for our members,” said Rune Duke, AOPA director of air traffic and airspace. “This notam has caused considerable alarm and much confusion, while giving pilots little time to prepare. The long duration, ambiguous language, and short notice of this notam are all cause for serious concern. We have spoken with representatives of the FAA and the Department of Defense and will continue to pursue this until we get the answers pilots need.”
At the very least, this is certainly something to be aware of... especially inlight of Chinese warships in The Bering Sea for the first time ever.
I’ve always said that the U.S. Government would start a World War when it was pushed to the brink of having to disclose that fact that it no longer has any gold and that the U.S. financial and economic system is nothing but one massive Ponzi scheme that rests on an unaccountably enormous maze of derivatives, debt and fraud. We saw evidence of no gold in the cupboard when the Fed failed to deliver on Germany’s request for immediate repatriation of over 600 tonnes of gold. That saga is still being written.
Following this line of thinking, it makes senses that the mainstream media is not questioning or spending resources on reporting the escalating military activities in Syria. Especially in light of the fact that the mainstream media has caught on to the fact that the U.S. Government is primary cause of the refugee problem in Europe.
I wasn’t shocked when the U.S. Government announced that it was ramping up its military efforts in Syria to “fight ISIS,” or whatever conjured up acronym is being used to labal the world’s newest “boogieman.”
This is clearly a thinly disguised attempt to move into Syria and remove the Assad Government, which would enable the U.S. Government to achieve the dual purpose of moving forward with the pipeline that Big Oil wants to put through Syria and to consolidate U.S. military control around the Middle East.
And I was equally unimpressed when Russia announced that it would be moving military equipment and personnel into and around the Assad Government stronghold areas in order to help fortify the “effort” against ISIS.
We saw this movie playing in September 2013, when the Obama regime tried to toss out Assad and put its own puppet in power. Russia drew a line in the sand from which Obama backed off.
This time around it looks a bit more serious. Literally a few days after Russia announced its reinforced military presence in Syria, the U.S. exercised its control over the Greek Government by imploring it to block Russia from using Greek airspace.
Yesterday Bulgaria announced that it would deny Russia use of its airspace for military transport planes, which were ostensibly transporting humanitarian supplies to Syria.
This is a clear escalation in the military conflict that has been slowly heating up between Russia and the United States. Perhaps the most troubling aspect of what is fomenting is not the finger-pointing propaganda between the U.S. and Russian Governments, but the fact that the media – especially in the U.S. – is spending very little resources on covering and reporting this brewing war.
The cover stories for the big wars throughout history have always been religious or political in nature. But the root cause can always be traced to underlying economic causes. We know the entire world is plunging into a deep recession. With the global balance of economic power shifting from West to East – perhaps best symbolized by the massive flow of gold from West to East – my biggest fear is that the U.S. will act in desperation in order to cling to the global hegemonic power that is slipping from its grasp…this is how the big wars always start. The only difference is that historically, the Empire in collapse did not possess weapon which could literally incinerate the earth…
U.S. naval forces operating in and around the Strait of Hormuz, a critical shipping lane, are “routinely approached by Iranian warships and aircraft” on a “nearly daily basis,” according to a Pentagon official familiar with operations in the region.
During these interactions between U.S. and Iranian forces, American aircraft and ships are routinely photographed by the Iranians for intelligence purposes, according to the official, who said that most confrontations between the sides are “conducted in a safe and professional manner.”
The disclosure of these daily run-ins comes following the release of footage by the Iranian military purporting to show a reconnaissance mission over a U.S. aircraft carrier station in the Strait of Hormuz.
The clip, which was filmed at the end of August and is punctuated by dramatic music, shows U.S. personnel aboard the ship and shots of U.S. warplanes stationed on it.
Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps “drones have carried out such missions many times; although the drone remains for a long time above the [American crew’s] heads, they didn’t notice it,” Iran’s state-control media reported in Persian at the time, according to a translation by the Middle East Media Research Institute. “In some cases, [the American crew] did notice the IRGC drone awhile after the filming and tried to drive it off by sending a helicopter or fighter jet after it.”
“U.S. Naval forces are routinely approached by Iranian warships and aircraft as they operate in the region, with the majority of all interaction by the Iranians conducted in a safe and professional manner,” the official said. “This happens on a near daily basis.”
A fourth industrial explosion has rocked China, this time in the Zhejiang province.
When the Tianjin explosion happened right after China’s currency devaluation (i.e. currency war), Natural News was told by Chinese dissidents that the United States was engaged in “kinetic retaliation” against China for its cyber warfare attacks and currency moves. Naysayers insisted Tianjin was just a “random event” and wouldn’t be repeated.
Then a retaliatory explosion destroyed a U.S. military weapons depot in Tokyo. A sabotage device was found on the scene, all but proving the explosion was deliberate sabotage.
Soon after, another massive explosion ripped through China’s Shandong province, followed by a third industrial explosion at the same time Chinese warships were spotted off the coast of Alaska. Suddenly, “coincidence theorists” began to silently slink away, hoping no one would remember how they said the explosions were just random chance and wouldn’t continue.
As I wrote just five days ago, “Watch for yet more war posturing, currency devaluation moves, debt dumping attacks, cyber warfare, strategic hacking and “unexplained” explosions throughout the remainder of 2015. These are not random events. They are all part of the war with China that has already begun.”
Now, a fourth industrial explosion confirms the pattern. As Reuters now reports:
An explosion shook a chemical plant in the Chinese province of Zhejiang, state media said on Monday, though there were no immediate reports of casualties in a country on edge after blasts killed more than 160 people last month. The blast caused a fire and thick smoke to bellow from the plant in Lishui city shortly before midnight, state radio said on its official Weibo microblog.
A baby boy turned to flotsam. Washed up on the shore, face down in the mud. His family, refugees from Syria’s civil war, had tried to reach Greece, but their over-crowded raft overturned in the Mediterranean Sea and he drowned along with his brother and mother. The viral image of 3-year-old Aylan Kurdi’s lifeless little body on a Turkish beach has shaken the conscience of the West and wrenched America’s attention to the refugee crisis now rocking Europe.
Newsflash to the oblivious citizenry of the power-projecting “free world”: this is what war looks like. This times ten million. That which is mere “foreign policy” to you and your government is desperation and death to those on the receiving end of it.
Another newsflash: this is what war displacement looks like, both in the sea and on dry land. What you see in his face is the anguish felt right this very moment by the many millions of mothers and fathers driven from their homes and sources of livelihood throughout the countries shattered by weapons from the West: Iraq, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Palestine, Ukraine, and more.
It is a shame that the curiosity, empathy, and imagination of most are so stunted that they require such vivid imagery as this showing up in their news feeds to feel concern for the havoc wreaked by their governments’ policies.
And then they are stirred, not enough to actually learn a damn thing about it, but only enough to be manipulated into demanding— or at least countenancing — more of the very same kind of intervention that caused the tragedies in the first place.
Warmongers in government and the media are perversely but predictably trying to conscript Aylan’s corpse into their march to escalation. They are contending that Aylan died because the West has not intervened against Syria’s dictator Bashar al-Assad, and that it must do so now to spare other children the same fate.
Um, no, Aylan’s family were Kurdish refugees from Kobani who had to flee that city when it was besieged, not by Assad, but by Assad’s enemy: ISIS.
And ISIS is running rampant in that part of Syria only because the US-led West and its regional allies have given them cover by supporting and arming the jihadist-dominated uprising against Assad.
The West has been intervening in Syria heavily since at least 2012. Indeed, it is Western intervention that has exacerbated and prolonged the conflict, which has now claimed a quarter of a million lives.
But because much of the intervention has been covert and by proxy, it has received little media coverage and public attention. So the “blowback” that results from it, including Aylan’s death, can be conveniently blamed on alleged “non-intervention” and used to justify more overt and direct intervention.
In this way, governments have long exploited public obliviousness and gullibility to get their wars.
As bad as the refugee crisis is now, just imagine what it will be like as all of Syria’s many religious minorities desperately flee from these hyper-violent and hyper-sectarian Sunnis, armed to the teeth with Western weapons.
You are troubled by that picture you saw on Facebook. Good. It means your heart hasn’t been completely hardened by nationalistic and xenophobic indoctrination. But don’t let it make you susceptible to war party manipulation. And don’t just “raise awareness” of it by liking and sharing the tragedy and then forgetting about it in a month. To truly contribute to justice for Aylan, work to set things right.
And the first step to setting things right is understanding. Make it a project to learn about the role of foreign intervention in the Syrian Civil War that is creating so many of these refugees, and in the wars roiling the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia in general. And once you’ve acquired understanding for yourself, work to spread it to others.
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