Category: Afghanistan

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The Trump-administration on the Prowl: Venezuela, Greenland, Iran – and NATO

Image of oil wells on a huge field at sunset and dollar notes in the background, half-transparent.
Image licensed via Adobe CC

Anyone with the least bit of knowledge of recent history (past couple of decades) and the main characters involved knows: It’s not about anything but oil. And that sad excuse for a man being US-president who is not only fighting for his ‘job’, but also probably has to fulfill more or less secret promises to industry leaders. Rather less secret, I should think…

When we look into history these things can become clearer, since patterns emerge. It’s not about conspiracy theories but facts.

Facts are, and have been as long as the industrial revolution and cars as well as factories clamored for ever more oil and gasoline and petrol and… you name it – especially in the US – that this dire need of fuels triggered all kinds of wars and pushy international behaviour.

Fuels made from fossils, in short.
It’s shameful to watch how the second time in office makes this person even more ruthless, reckless and actually disgusting.

I know a lot about Iran, I love that old, wonderful culture and language. I know how much the people there suffer from the internal affairs a regime of apparently religiously motivated clerical leadership creates for them in severe restraints to personal freedom and denial of the basic human rights.

Yet, there are signs that since threats don’t work with Iran’s regime and international support is strong, triggering uprisings is the next step a country like the US famous for its ruthless interventions and conquering when to their advantage, ‘protecting their interests’ (‘dohhh’…in foreign countries??) – will stoop to.

Let’s be very aware: Even with more enlightened and very capable leaders at the top the US usually looked out for their own monetary and resources’ needs – not those of others. Look at confirmed chronicles and stories, Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan, South-America (Chile, Columbia, Nicaragua/Iran…you name any, literally any of them, they consider South America to be their ‘backyard’), Irak, now Venezuela; it’s criminal. Period.

The first to condemn when also to their advantage the last to pull back; almost all the time, with a few fine leaders as exceptions.

The CIA as well as other secret services are part of the system: They determine the knowledge that will be handed down to any new president as soon as he’s inaugurated. (I feel for them sometimes: They all turn grey on top inside of days, after that…)

Iran now: It’s ‘bang full’ of oil and other natural resources. So, after cancelling the contracts for control of uranium enrichment without cause and then bullying and threatening for a couple of years and then realizing that there’s EU, UNO and even some NATO members to be reckoned with – they now try again differently?

The CIA was involved when the last Shah was ‘sent packing’: He had become unable to control the starving masses who saw him and his entourage live in luxury while they weren’t even able to read. The so-called White Revolution was ‘too little too late’. The Islamic Revolution for the past four decades removed Iran’s oil for discount prices from their reach.

The US’s own oil deposits are not nearly enough to feed that greed. That dire need: Keep ‘promises’ and keep US population on the road, because the car is their (second) best-loved device, right after weapons, so it seems.

I beg the pardon of the good ones; but the smart ones over there know what I mean.

Again, be very wary of a country like the US who literally use any means – especially with this ‘leader’ – to reach their self-centered goals.

Author’s Note: The idea of people feeling threatened by all kinds of things, making up conspiracy theories to fit their particular view of the world, is wide-spread. Especially these days. Yet:
There are historical facts known at the respective university departments too. Which can be found in books you can find in all major libraries.
I know that too, because I studied the subject. I received my M.A. degree for English, US-American and Persian language, literature and culture almost 20 years ago, from a well-known university in Germany.
I feel dedicated to the concept of being careful about your facts.
I summarize things here that can be found in more detail elsewhere.
But some things that happen at the moment have reasons that can only be guessed at, this very moment.
The intelligent guesses we can make stem from all those historical facts and the patterns that emerge over time, because it’s the same thing over and over again.
Bluntly put: It’s just too obvious but partners of NATO are not free to say so in front of cameras. The contracts we are bound to as members of NATO and other alliances compel people to keep quiet in public.
That’s why historical documents are so important for a deeper understanding: They show what at the time had been handled behind the scenes as well.

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Migration, ‘Illegal Aliens’ and the War: ‘Desparate Times’ Call for Desparate Measures? – Ridiculous Right-wing Cover-ups

Image by HazarMan from Pixabay

There they all are: Gathering speed and momentum: “Illegal aliens”, “migrants” are being blamed for difficulties. It’s an age-old argument, and just as ridiculous and stupid as the ‘war effort’ and its ‘necessities’: Kill people into the bargain? Just because you crave money, power and attention of the wealthy circles…?

The patterns are there, in history, for everyone to look up.

There is a new effort at getting Trump to leave, an impeachment, perhaps… I wonder how long it will take until those blind wealthy idiots start to realize who it is that keeps them wealthy: Exactly those ‘illegal aliens’, among others, they now so furiously kick out of the country.

Millions to spend on that programme – send them out?

When so many of those ‘migrants’ work hard and thus provide revenue and profits, make more businesses that actually employ more people…?

Who else really makes the money? Managers? They so often start the problems, because while getting millions of severance payments the ‘little folk’ are left in the ‘clear’…

So, quickly covering up, blaming the wrong ones; making more war, because that not only sells weapons you then produce more of, employing people that way.

In the meantime you send the ‘little people’ to the front, to get killed. Cannon fodder. Right?
Yes, right-wing politics. Covering it up: The scandals and the mismanagement.

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USA, Politics and Clearing up a Mess: The Trump Legacy

chessboard with pieces and hands moving one
In a democracy that is working – even if more or less – clearing up the mess of predecessors is a central part of the work.

The longer predecessors had time to mess it up, the longer the clearing can take. World politics these days are fraught with pain and fear, not altogether new, but at the time being, very central and basic again: Nuclear war?

Whom to blame?

The facts:

    • The two existing ‘superpowers’ – the Soviet Union/Russia and the US – have been constantly balancing their power and fighting all across the globe, including in diplomatic talks, since WWII.
    • The so-called ‘proxy wars’ in many countries in the past and present are signs of that.
    • Afghanistan is one of the most afflicted countries around the world, and has been for centuries:
        • In 18th and 19th century world politics, the wars between Britain and France and Russia partly were fought there; Afghanistan as ‘gate to India’ – a tool.
        • In the course of the 20th century numerous times, the Soviet Union and then Russia with the US fought there in proxy uprisings. Afghanistan a central region in several directions and seen as a gate yet again.
        • The civil war there raged for more than 30 years, leaving the country almost without any kind of infrastructure or healthy professions people could use to earn a living.
        • To leave it to self-destruct or leave it to those who would destroy it, would be bordering not only on the insane, but be basically a crime committed against its population whose majority is innocently suffering.
      • The USA under the Trump government terminated the INF-contracts that had been signed after, altogether, decades of negotiations in 1987 to finally end the Cold War after 40 years.
      • Trump had instated several supreme court justices of his own political believes.
        Let’s remember: In order to change the US-constitution the supreme court is crucial.
      • Trump had initiated the attack on the Capitol.
      • Putin and Trump were the best of political friends. The massive manipulation of elections from inside Russia in favour of Trump are proven without doubt.

These are some of the most important facts in regard to the situation we are facing now. Ukraine is, alas, one more country used as a proxy and recently put on the map again, because of that.

It pains me to write it – yet the only chance at peace we have – and ultimately survival, prevent a nuclear war, that is – is the reinstatement of contracts or agreements that make both of these ‘superpowers’ and their allies feel safe enough again.

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Afghanistan – Tragic Past and Present

Map of Asia showing Afghanistan and a dove of peace
Afghanistan’s recent past and actual present are fraught with death and destruction, inequality, and crime against girls and women, alas. But there is more to the whole than just that.

There are several reasons that I today treat this subject in some depth here, instead of posting somewhere else online:

    • Afghanistan not only through the past two decades was a platform for international power games.
    • Since at least the 18th century British interests made it the region considered the ‘gateway to India’.
    • Its geographic coordinates as well have made it a starting point and turnstile for almost any of the global powers of the last 200-300 years: Russia, England, France and the US.
    • For over 40 years, ever since I can remember starting to watch news and understanding them, Afghanistan has seen civil war, fostered by all those powers, sometimes at the same time, sometimes in turns, to make sure they kept influence and – power.
    • Natural resources around it as well are part of the overall interests and ‘games’ being played.

To try and live in Afghanistan is a challenge at least, and these days probably much more a daring enterprise for anyone concerned about a civil life
(Link above: World Happiness Report 2019, UN).

The influences and interests I mentioned are emulated by internal groups and traditional tribe systems that force farmers in some regions to a crop of drugs instead of livestock and agricultural harvest.

International politics have created – literally and figuratively – burned earth in many parts of this globe, be that in South America, Africa or Asia.

Almost none of the countries has been a stage of so much cruelty and death over such a long time, as Afghanistan has been.

Imperialistic politics over the centuries have a lot to answer for.

Making peace is a sometimes challenging task, not to say awe-inspiring. But it is worth it, any time and every time.

Note: As a German born and bred I have been raised to high education and a ‘social and political conscience’. Spreading knowledge and wisdom about such matters is my way of fulfilling this sense of responsibility. Recent German history of the past 100 years is fraught with some dreadful events. This sense of responsibility stems from there.

Exemplary links to start from for more in-depth information:

 

Picture of a dove of peace with olive branch in beak

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