Home » The Watercooler for 02/23/12 1:00 AM
The Watercooler for 02/23/12 1:00 AM
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http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/NB15Ak01.html
snip
Not surprisingly, Russia and China see the disaster looming: They see the US-Gulf Cooperation Council project as threatening fitna (civil and religious strife), and risking sectarian war. It directly threatens their own security: Russia is not at risk in the Caucuses from Shi'ite Islam; but from fired-up Salafism: Iran in fact is all that stands geographically between the now quiescent Salafism in the Central Asian republics and the stoking of it happening in the Middle East.
It is not hard to imagine that Russians see that this current of Islam that historically has been the most violent could, in due course, be redirected by the US towards their Asian allies - just as it has been pointed towards Syria. Equally, China is just as sensitive about its own Muslim community. It can see too that the Western "project", were it to succeed, potentially would give the US huge leverage over China's growing energy requirements - and hence its economy.
What is extraordinary is that European states have not woken up to the fact that it is they who have most to lose in this "great game". They too have an alienated, disenchanted Muslim population, and are far from self-sufficient in energy - unlike the US. Their placing of the Israeli interest, refracted at them from the prism of essentially domestic American political needs, blindly followed, seems to repeat the history of the 2003 Gulf war: Another war "project" that fissured Europe, closed off policy options, and brought terrorism to European streets.
98% of the narrative (and situation) has nothing to do with Israel.
almost all of the tensions would exist if Palestine was pastoral
we have a carbon footprint to blame, a demograhic trend of 3 billion working age adults and 1.6 billion full time jobs
overlay that with the age of the populations of countries/regions
the answer to that question has been to pass out weapons and have the surplus young men take care of that problem by killing each other off for centuries now
religion is what sanctions the killing, at different times it was in the Americas, the world's biggest bloodbaths of the last couple of decades has been Africa despite our attention elsewhere
why nukes get so much attention is they don't just kill off the surplus population
otherwise the worlds attention would be on Congo
Bombings kill 33 across Baghdad
At least 33 people have been killed and dozens injured in a wave of bombings and shootings across the Iraqi capital Baghdad.
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