TETHYS SEA
ACCORDING TO CTFM, DESTINY, SARAH PALIN AND AOG THIS DID NOT EXIST – See the exam paper at the end of this blog.
Paleogeography - The Tethys Sea
Wikipedia – Tethys Ocean
The Tethys Ocean (Greek: Τηθύς)[1] was an ocean that existed between the continents of Gondwana and Laurasia during much of the Mesozoic era, before the opening of the Indian and Atlantic oceans during the Cretaceous period. It is also referred to as the Tethys Sea.
About 250 million years ago,[2] during the Triassic, a new ocean began forming in the southern end of the Paleo-Tethys Ocean….
Today, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, and the Indian Ocean cover the area once occupied by the Tethys Ocean, and Turkey, Iraq, and Tibet sit on Cimmeria...
Plate tectonics also provided the mechanism by which the former ocean disappeared. In plate tectonic theory, oceanic crust can subduct under continental crust.,,
70% OF THE WORLD'S OIL UNDER MUSLIM MAJORITY LANDS
THE REMAINS OF THE TETHYS SEA HAVE THE MAJORITY OF THE WORLDS OIL RESERVES AND ARE UNDER MUSLIM MAJORITY LANDS
The “Demonization” of Muslims and the Battle for Oil
By Prof Michel Chossudovsky Global Research, January 04, 2007
Throughout history, “wars of religion” have served to obscure the economic and strategic interests behind the conquest and invasion of foreign lands. “Wars of religion” were invariably fought with a view to securing control over trading routes and natural resources.
The Crusades extending from the 11th to the 14th Century are often presented by historians as “a continuous series of military-religious expeditions made by European Christians in the hope of wresting the Holy Land from the infidel Turks.” The objective of the Crusades, however, had little to do with religion. The Crusades largely consisted, through military action, in challenging the dominion of the Muslim merchant societies, which controlled the Eastern trade routes.
The “Just War” supported the Crusades. War was waged with the support of the Catholic Church, acting as an instrument of religious propaganda and indoctrination, which was used in the enlistment throughout Europe of thousands of peasants, serfs and urban vagabonds.
America’s Crusade in Central Asia and the Middle East
In the eyes of public opinion, possessing a “just cause” for waging war is central. A war is said to be Just if it is waged on moral, religious or ethical grounds.
America’s Crusade in Central Asia and the Middle East is no exception. The “war on terrorism” purports to defend the American Homeland and protect the “civilized world”. It is upheld as a “war of religion”, a “clash of civilizations”, when in fact the main objective of this war is to secure control and corporate ownership over the region’s extensive oil wealth, while also imposing under the helm of the IMF and the World Bank (now under the leadership of Paul Wolfowitz), the privatization of State enterprises and the transfer of the countries’ economic assets into the hands of foreign capital. .
The Just War theory upholds war as a “humanitarian operation”. It serves to camouflage the real objectives of the military operation, while providing a moral and principled image to the invaders. In its contemporary version, it calls for military intervention on ethical and moral grounds against “rogue states” and “Islamic terrorists”, which are threatening the Homeland.
Possessing a “just cause” for waging war is central to the Bush administration’s justification for invading and occupying both Afghanistan and Iraq.
Taught in US military academies, a modern-day version of the “Just War” theory has been embodied into US military doctrine. The “war on terrorism” and the notion of “preemption” are predicated on the right to “self defence.” They define “when it is permissible to wage war”: jus ad bellum.
Jus ad bellum serves to build a consensus within the Armed Forces command structures. It also serves to convince the troops that the enemy is “evil” and that they are fighting for a “just cause”. More generally, the Just War theory in its modern day version is an integral part of war propaganda and media disinformation, applied to gain public support for a war agenda.
The Battle for Oil. Demonization of the Enemy
War builds a humanitarian agenda. Throughout history, vilification of the enemy has been applied time and again. The Crusades consisted in demonizing the Turks as infidels and heretics, with a view to justifying military action.
Demonization serves geopolitical and economic objectives. Likewise, the campaign against “Islamic terrorism” (which is supported covertly by US intelligence) supports the conquest of oil wealth. The term “Islamo-fascism,” serves to degrade the policies, institutions, values and social fabric of Muslim countries, while also upholding the tenets of “Western democracy” and the “free market” as the only alternative for these countries.
The US led war in the broader Middle East Central Asian region consists in gaining control over more than sixty percent of the world’s reserves of oil and natural gas. The Anglo-American oil giants also seek to gain control over oil and gas pipeline routes out of the region. (See table and maps below).
Muslim countries including Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Yemen, Libya, Nigeria, Algeria, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, possess between 66.2 and 75.9 percent of total oil reserves, depending on the source and methodology of the estimate. (See table below).
In contrast, the United States of America has barely 2 percent of total oil reserves. Western countries including its major oil producers ( Canada, the US, Norway, the UK, Denmark and Australia) control approximately 4 percent of total oil reserves. (In the alternative estimate of the Oil and Gas Journal which includes Canada’s oil sands, this percentage would be of the the order of 16.5%. See table below).
The largest share of the World’s oil reserves lies in a region extending (North) from the tip of Yemen to the Caspian sea basin and (East) from the Eastern Mediterranean coastline to the Persian Gulf. This broader Middle East- Central Asian region, which is the theatre of the US-led “war on terrorism” encompasses according to the estimates of World Oil, more than sixty percent of the World’s oil reserves. (See table below).
Iraq has five times more oil than the United States.
Muslim countries possess at least 16 times more oil than the Western countries.
The major non-Muslim oil reserve countries are Venezuela, Russia, Mexico, China and Brazil. (See table)
Demonization is applied to an enemy, which possesses three quarters of the world’s oil reserves. “Axis of evil”, “rogue States”, “failed nations”, “Islamic terrorists”: demonization and vilification are the ideological pillars of America’s “war on terror”. They serve as a casus belli for waging the battle for oil.
The Battle for Oil requires the demonization of those who possess the oil. The enemy is characterized as evil, with a view to justifying military action including the mass killing of civilians. The Middle East Central Asian region is heavily militarized. (See map). The oil fields are encircled: NATO war ships stationed in the Eastern Mediterranean (as part of a UN “peace keeping” operation), US Carrier Strike Groups and Destroyer Squadrons in the Persian Gulf and the Arabian deployed as part of the “war on terrorism”.
USS Enterprise Strike Group
The ultimate objective, combining military action, covert intelligence operations and war propaganda, is to break down the national fabric and transform sovereign countries into open economic territories, where natural resources can be plundered and confiscated under “free market” supervision. This control also extends to strategic oil and gas pipeline corridors (e.g. Afghanistan).
Demonization is a PSYOP, used to sway public opinion and build a consensus in favour of war. Psychological warfare is directly sponsored by the Pentagon and the US intelligence apparatus. It is not limited to assassinating or executing the rulers of Muslim countries, it extends to entire populations. It also targets Muslims in Western Europe and North America. It purports to break national consciousness and the ability to resist the invader. It denigrates Islam. It creates social divisions. It is intended to divide national societies and ultimately trigger “civil war”. While it creates an environment which facilitates the outright appropriation of the countries’ resources, at the same time, it potentially backlashes, creates a new national consciousness, develops inter-ethnic solidarity, brings people together in confronting the invaders.
It is worth noting that the triggering of sectarian divisions and “civil wars” is contemplated in the process of redrawing of the map of the Middle East, where countries are slated to be broken up and transformed into territories. The map of the New Middle East, although not official, has been used by the US National War Academy. It was recently published in the Armed Forces Journal (June 2006). In this map, nation states are broken up, international borders are redefined along sectarian-ethnic lines, broadly in accordance with the interests of the Anglo-American oil giants (See Map below). The map has also been used in a training program at NATO’s Defence College for senior military officers.
MAP OF THE NEW MIDDLE EAST
Note: The following map was prepared by Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters. It was published in the Armed Forces Journal in June 2006, Peters is a retired colonel of the U.S. National War Academy. (Map Copyright Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters 2006).
The Oil Lies in Muslim Lands
The oil lies in Muslim lands. Vilification of the enemy is part and parcel of Eurasia energy geopolitics. It is a direct function of the geographic distribution of the World’s oil and gas reserves. If the oil were in countries occupied predominantly by Buddhists or Hindus, one would expect that US foreign policy would be directed against Buddhists and Hindus, who would also be the object of vilification..
In the Middle East war theatre, Iran and Syria, which are part of the “axis of evil”, are the next targets according to official US statements.
US sponsored “civil wars” have also been conducted in several other strategic oil and gas regions including Nigeria, the Sudan, Colombia, Somalia, Yemen, Angola, not to mention Chechnya and several republics of the former Soviet Union. Ongoing US sponsored “civil wars”, which often include the channelling of covert support to paramilitary groups, have been triggered in the Darfur region of Sudan as well as in Somalia, Darfur possesses extensive oil reserves. In Somalia, lucrative concessions have already been granted to four Anglo-American oil giants.
“According to documents obtained by The Times, nearly two-thirds of Somalia was allocated to the American oil giants Conoco, Amoco [now part of BP], Chevron and Phillips in the final years before Somalia’s pro-U.S. President Mohamed Siad Barre was overthrown and the nation plunged into chaos in January, 1991. Industry sources said the companies holding the rights to the most promising concessions are hoping that the Bush Administration’s decision to send U.S. troops to safeguard aid shipments to Somalia will also help protect their multimillion-dollar investments there.” (America’s Interests in Somalia, Global Research, 2002)
Globalization and the Conquest of the World’s Energy Resources
The collective demonization of Muslims, including the vilification of Islam, applied Worldwide, constitutes at the ideological level, an instrument of conquest of the World’s energy resources. It is part of the broader economic, political mechanisms underlying the New World Order.
Michel Chossudovsky is the author of the international best seller “The Globalization of Poverty ” published in eleven languages. He is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Center for Research on Globalization, at www.globalresearch.ca . He is also a contributor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. His most recent book is entitled: America’s “War on Terrorism”, Global Research, 2005.
Eye-Opening Graphic: Map of Muslim Countries that the U.S. and Israel Have Bombed
Loonwatch.com By Danios on 13 December 2011
http://i1.wp.com/www.loonwatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/us_soldiers.jpg
Pro-Israel propagandist Jeffrey Goldberg made an inadvertent but profound admission the other day when he said: “[T]he U.S. have been waging a three-decade war for domination of the Middle East.”
This “three-decade war for domination of the Middle East” becomes apparent when we consider how many Muslim countries the peace-loving United States and her “stalwart ally” Israel have bombed:
During Bill Clinton’s presidency, the U.S. bombed Iraq, Afghanistan, and Sudan.
In the time of George Bush, the U.S. bombed Afghanistan, Yemen, Iraq, Pakistan, and Somalia.
Under Barack Obama, the U.S. is currently bombing Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Libya. According to some reports (see here and here), we can add Iran to this ever-expanding list. [Update: An Informed Comment reader named Shannon pointed out that in fact the United States bombed Iran in 1988 during Operating Praying Mantis, an act that “cannot be justified” according to the International Court of Justice.]
Thanks to American arms and funding, our “stalwart ally” Israel has bombed every single one of its neighbors, including Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt. Israel has also bombed Tunisia and Iraq (how many times can Americans and Israelis bomb this country?).
The total number of Muslim countries that America and Israel have bombed comes to fourteen: Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Iran, Sudan, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, and Tunisia.
Meanwhile, the U.S. has military bases in several countries in the Greater Middle East, including Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Turkey, Pakistan, UAE, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, Djibouti, Kyrgyzstan, Somalia, Ethiopia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Chad. The U.S. also used to have a base in Eritrea and demanded another one in 2010. [Update: There is a minor error here pointed out to me by Prof. Juan Cole: the U.S. troops stationed in Uzbekistan are using an Uzbek, not American, base. However, this makes little substantive difference: there is still a U.S. military presence in that country, which was my point.]
I wonder where those silly Muslims come up with the conspiratorial, absolutely irrational idea that the U.S. is waging war against the Muslim world?
If you haven’t already seen this video, I strongly suggest you watch it:
With seven active wars in seven different Muslim countries, it is quite an amazing thing that Americans can have the audacity to ask: “why are Muslims so violent and warlike?”
But, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The New York Times reports that President Barack Obama “widened” the war, which is now being waged across “two continents” in “roughly a dozen countries — from the deserts of North Africa, to the mountains of Pakistan, to former Soviet republics,” using “robotic drones and commando teams” as well as “contractors” and “local operatives.”
Even more worrisome, the Washington Post reports that America’s “secret wars” are waged by “Special Operations forces” in “75 countries” (and “that number will likely reach 120″); in other words, the United States will have engaged in military acts in over 60% of the world’s nation-states. After all of this, Americans will turn around and ask: “why are Muslims so violent and warlike?”
Could it possibly be more obvious that the War on Terror is just a pretext for global domination?
* * * * *
Every four years, Americans get the illusion of choice: the choice between Democrat and Republican. In terms of foreign policy, the difference is like the difference between Coke and Pepsi. In the last election, John McCain sang a variation of the famous Beach Boys song “Barbara Ann,” changing the lyrics to “bomb, bomb, bomb Iran!”; meanwhile, Barack Obama hinted at expanding the war to Pakistan. The American voter was given the choice not between war and peace, but between war against Iran or war against Pakistan.
In the national discourse, there exists a bipartisan consensus on the need for perpetual war: both candidates agreed on the need to expand the War on of Terror and attack more Muslim countries. There was no confusion about whether or not to bomb, invade, and occupy–the question was only where to do this. If the Muslim world were imagined to be a turkey, the question was then only whether to begin munching on the leg first or to start with the breast.
President Barack Obama may have disagreed with his predecessor’s tactics, but he agreed with the Bush/Cheney world view. Obama may have thought we could move around troops here and there–let’s move some of these troops from Iraq to Afghanistan–but he did not disagree with the basic premise, overall methods, and goals of the Bush/Cheney War on of Terror.
Interestingly, Obama was considered to be “the peace candidate”; even more absurd of course was that he ended up winning the Noble Peace Prize. While it is true that the Democratic Obama has tended to use less hawkish language, in terms of actions Obama has a worse record than Bush: Obama has expanded the War on of Terror, both in terms of covert and overt wars.
Why did a “liberal” Democrat (Barack Obama) end up being more warlike than a “hawkish” Republican (George Bush)? There is of course the obvious explanation of war inertia. But aside from this, there must be something deeper, which is apparent if we look at the situation between what were historically the two large parties in Israel.
Western media (see Time Magazine, for example), portrays the Labor Party as “dovish” and Likud as “hawkish”. Certainly, in terms of rhetoric this is true. But, is it really true? According to experts in the field–such as Prof. Noam Chomsky and Dr. Norman Finkelstein–Labor has had a far worse track record toward Palestinians than the Likud. Labor and Likud play good cop, bad cop toward Palestinians–or rather bad cop, badder cop. But while the two parties disagree on rhetoric and tactics, they share similar overall goals.
The same is the case with Democrats and Republicans. The Democrats use softer rhetoric, whereas the Republicans continually push the national discourse (the “center”) rightward. But, because a Democratic president must counter the accusation that he is “weak” on matters of “defense” (Orwell: offense is defense), he must be Strong and Tough against Terrorism. Effectively this means that his war policy becomes virtually indistinguishable from that of the political right.
Furthermore, President Barack Obama has done something that no Republican could do: he has brought bipartisan consensus to the state of perpetual and global war. During the reign of George Bush, prominent liberal progressives criticized his warlike policies. In fact, this was one of the motivating factors behind electing Obama, who would bring “Change.” Yet, when Obama brought more of the same, most liberal progressives fell silent, a hypocrisy that did not go unnoticed by conservatives.
It took a “liberal” Democrat to expand the War on of Terror and give it bipartisan consensus, just as it took a conservative Republican (Richard Nixon) to make peace with Communist China.
Under the two-party system, it really does not matter which side wins. A Republican candidate might sound more warlike than a Democrat, but once in office, he softens his position somewhat due to Democratic opposition (even though most of the Democrats won’t vote against war resolutions). Meanwhile, a Democrat president must prove that he is Strong and Tough against Terrorism, so he hardens his position. In the end, Democratic and Republican presidents are moved to the political “center” (which keeps getting pushed ever more to the right), so that the two are virtually indistinguishable from each other. Perhaps Barack Obama was onto something when he said:
There’s not a liberal America or a conservative America; there’s the United States of America.
It is true: America’s politicians are united in their endorsement of perpetual and global war.
The United States has a long history of bipartisan consensus when it comes to waging wars of aggression. In 1846, the country was divided between the hawkish Democratic party led by President James K. Polk and the supposedly dovish Whig party. Polk’s administration saber-rattled against Mexico in order to justify invading and occupying their land. Meanwhile, “[t]he Whig party was presumably against the war,” but “they were not so powerfully against the military action that they would stop it by denying men and money for the operation” (p.153 of Prof. Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States). In fact, the “Whigs joined Democrats in voting overwhelmingly for the war resolution, 174 to 14.” They did so, because “[t]hey did not want to risk the accusation that they were putting American soldiers in peril by depriving them of the materials necessary to fight.” The only dissenters were “a small group of antislavery Whigs, or a ‘little knot of ultraists,’ as one Massachusetts Congressman who voted for the war measure put it.” Perhaps among them was Ron Paul’s great grandfather.
The measure passed the Congress (174 to 14) and the Senate (40 to 2), “Whigs joining Democrats.” The Whigs “could only harry the administration with a barrage of verbiage while voting for every appropriation which the military campaigns required.” In any case, “the United States would be giving the blessings of liberty and democracy” to the Mexicans. Any of this sound familiar?
Flash forward to today and we see the establishment left consistently supporting America’s wars of aggression. Even while these avowed liberals criticize right-wingers for warmongering against Iran, they themselves often saber-rattle against Pakistan and even Saudi Arabia. The right thinks we’re doing something great in Iraq and wants to expand the war to Iran (which we may already have done). Meanwhile, the left thinks we were right to bomb Afghanistan and that we should expand the war to Pakistan (which we’ve already done). Neither left or right opposes foreign wars altogether. The difference is only with regard to the names of the countries we bomb, which doesn’t really matter since the truth is that we are bombing all of them now.
This is because both left and right agree with the Supreme Islamophobic Myth: that Islam (or radical Islam) is the greatest threat to world peace. This inevitably leads to the central tenet of Islamophobia, which is to endorse the Supreme Islamophobic Crime: bombing, invading, and occupying Muslim lands.
Peace can only be attained when one is disabused of this mother of nationalistic myths. This can only be done by realizing that it is the United States that is the greatest threat to peace in the region (look at the map!). Consider that the U.S. has bombed at least a dozen Muslim countries in recent history, whereas zero Muslim countries have bombed the U.S. If “wars of aggression” constitute “the supreme international crime”–as decided during the Nuremberg Trials–then what does it say about the situation when America has initiated multiple wars of aggression against the Muslim world whereas no single Muslim country has done so against the United States?
No Muslim country has attacked us because the risks of doing so are far too great; it would mean almost certain destruction. This is why, even though the map of the Middle East in the image above looks like it does, no Muslim country has the audacity to retaliate. Meanwhile, the U.S.–as the world’s only superpower–can attack multiple smaller countries without fear of significant retaliation to the American heartland. Therefore, it only makes sense for people of conscience, especially Americans, to be highly critical of U.S. foreign policy.
* * * * *
Something else troubling I’ve noticed about the national discourse is how even those opposed to war (or at least one set of wars) will frame their opposition in financial terms. The primary argument to convince Americans against war seems not to be the fact that war is immoral, that bombing countries and killing so many countless civilians is morally repugnant, but rather that it’s just too costly to do so. It’s our wallets, not our soul, that is at stake.
Another argument that takes precedence over the moral argument includes the idea that too many of our troops are dying (victim inversion); alternatively, it is argued (rightfully) that such wars increase the likelihood of terrorism against us (another example of victim inversion).
During the Nuremberg Trials, it was decided that initiating a war of aggression constituted “the supreme international crime”:
To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.
Of what moral character would you consider a Nazi official if he argued against Hitler’s wars on the basis of “it will cost too much German tax payer money” or “it will kill too many German soldiers” or “it may result in retaliation against Germany?” (Refer to Glenn Greenwald’s article on Godwin’s law.)
Would it not be better to use as one’s central argument against America’s wars that it is morally repugnant to bomb and kill people?
Danios was the Brass Crescent Award Honorary Mention for Best Writer in 2010 and the Brass Crescent Award Winner for Best Writer in 2011.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.