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For centuries Western civilization has depended heavily on war, genocide, theft, colonialism and imperialism, which it has justified using narratives premised on religion, racism and ethnic supremacy â all of which we are seeing play out in the incineration of Gaza today.Â
Itâs been so surreal watching Western rightists babbling about how savage and barbaric Muslim culture is amid the 2023 zombie resurrection of Bush-era Islamophobia, even while Western civilization amasses a mountain of 10 thousand child corpses.
By Caitlin Johnstone
CaitlinJohnstone.com.au
What we see in Gaza is a much better representation of what Western civilization is really about than all the gibberish about freedom and democracy we learned in school.
Israeli forces bombing the Gaza Strip on Oct. 10. (Al Araby, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)
Listen to Tim Foley reading this article.
![](https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/1UDnSUoroqCxShe6CBUDKiw-100x100.jpg)
When Israeli President Isaac Herzog described the assault on Gaza as a war âto save Western civilization, to save the values of Western civilization,â he wasnât really lying. He was telling the truth â just maybe not quite in the way that he meant it.
The demolition of Gaza is indeed being perpetrated in defense of Western values and is itself a perfect embodiment of Western values. Not the Western values they teach you about in school, but the hidden ones they donât want you to look at. Not the attractive packaging with the advertising slogans on the label, but the product thatâs actually inside the box.
For centuries Western civilization has depended heavily on war, genocide, theft, colonialism and imperialism, which it has justified using narratives premised on religion, racism and ethnic supremacy â all of which we are seeing play out in the incineration of Gaza today.
What we are seeing in Gaza is a much better representation of what Western civilization is really about than all the gibberish about freedom and democracy we learned about in school.
A much better representation of Western civilization than all the art and literature weâve been proudly congratulating ourselves on over the centuries.
A much better representation of Western civilization than the love and compassion we like to pretend our Judeo-Christian values revolve around.
Itâs been so surreal watching Western rightists babbling about how savage and barbaric Muslim culture is amid the 2023 zombie resurrection of Bush-era Islamophobia, even while Western civilization amasses a mountain of 10 thousand child corpses.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken with Herzog in Tel Aviv on Nov. 3. (State Department, Chuck Kennedy)
That mountain of child corpses is a much better representation of Western culture than anything Mozart, da Vinci or Shakespeare ever produced.
This is Western civilization. This is what it looks like.
Western civilization, where Julian Assange awaits his final appeal in February against U.S. extradition for journalism which exposed US war crimes.
Where we are fed a nonstop deluge of mass media propaganda to manufacture our consent for wars and aggression which have killed millions and displaced tens of millions in the 21st century alone.
Where we are kept distracted by vapid entertainment and artificial culture wars so we donât think too hard about what this civilization is and who it is killing and maiming and starving and exploiting.
Where news cycles are dominated more by celebrity gossip and Donald Trumpâs latest mouth farts than by the mass atrocities that are being actively facilitated by Western governments.
Where liberals congratulate themselves for having progressive views on race and gender while the officials they elect help rip apart childrenâs bodies with military explosives.
Where Zionist Jews center themselves and their emotions because opposition to an active genocide makes them feel like they are being persecuted, and where Israel supporters who are not Jewish still kind of feel like they are being persecuted also.
Where a giant globe-spanning empire powered by militarism, imperialism, capitalism and authoritarianism devours human flesh with an insatiable appetite while we congratulate ourselves on how much better we are than nations like Iran or China.
These are Western values. This is Western civilization.
Ask somebody to tell you what their values are and theyâll give you a bunch of pleasant-sounding words about family and love and caring or whatever. Watch their actions to see what their actual values are and youâll often get a very different story.
Thatâs us. Thatâs Western civilization. We say we value freedom, justice, truth, peace and free expression, but our actions paint a very different picture. The real Western values, the actual product inside the box underneath the attractive label, are the ones you see acted out in Gaza today.
This article is from CaitlinJohnstone.com.au and re-published with permission.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, on the record, is now sending an unmistakable message: Forget the Suez Canal. The way to go is the Northern Sea Route â which the Chinese, in the framework of the Russia-China strategic partnership, call the Arctic Silk Road.
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/escobar-how-yemen-changed-everything
FRIDAY, DEC 29, 2023
Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Cradle,
In a single move, Yemen’s Ansarallah has checkmated the West and its rules-based order…
![](https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/styles/inline_image_mobile/public/inline-images/53bab4f8-a5a9-11ee-ae7b-00163e02.jpg?itok=9sioX5JM)
Whether invented in northern India, eastern China or Central Asia â from Persia to Turkestan â chess is an Asian game. In chess, there always comes a time when a simple pawn is able to upset the whole chessboard, usually via a move in the back rank whose effect simply cannot be calculated.
Yes, a pawn can impose a seismic checkmate. Thatâs where we are, geopolitically, right now.
The cascading effects of a single move on the chessboard â Yemenâs Ansarallah stunning and carefully targeted blockade of the Red Sea â reach way beyond global shipping, supply chains, and The War of Economic Corridors. Not to mention the reduction of the much-lauded US Navy force projection to irrelevancy.
Yemen’s resistance movement, Ansarallah, has made it very clear that any Israel-affiliated or Israel-destined vessel will be intercepted. While the West bristles at this, and imagines itself a target, the rest of the world fully understands that all other shipping is free to pass. Russian tankers â as well as Chinese, Iranian, and Global South ships â continue to move undisturbed across the Bab al-Mandeb (narrowest point: 33 km) and the Red Sea.Â
Only the Hegemon is disturbed by this challenge to its ‘rules-based order.’ It is outraged that Western vessels delivering energy or goods to law-breaking Israel can be impeded, and that the supply chain has been severed and plunged into deep crisis. The pinpointed target is the Israeli economy, which is already bleeding heavily. A single Yemeni move proves to be more efficient than a torrent of imperial sanctions.Â
It is the tantalizing possibility of this single move turning into a paradigm shift â with no return â that is adding to the Hegemonâs apoplexy. Especially because imperial humiliation is deeply embedded in the paradigm shift.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, on the record, is now sending an unmistakable message: Forget the Suez Canal. The way to go is the Northern Sea Route â which the Chinese, in the framework of the Russia-China strategic partnership, call the Arctic Silk Road.
![](https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/styles/inline_image_mobile/public/inline-images/180a6182-a5aa-11ee-b4d0-00163e02.jpg?itok=-nQxc9qq)
Map of North-East and North-West Passage shipping routes
For the dumbfounded Europeans, the Russians have detailed three options: First, sail 15,000 miles around the Cap of Good Hope. Second, use Russia’s cheaper and faster Northern Sea Route. Third, send the cargo via Russian Railways.
Rosatom, which oversees the Northern Sea Route, has emphasized that non-ice-class ships are now able to sail throughout summer and autumn, and year-round navigation will soon be possible with the help of a fleet of nuclear icebreakers.
All that as direct consequences of the single Yemeni move. What next? Yemen entering BRICS+ at the summit in Kazan in late 2024, under the Russian presidency?
The new architecture will be framed in West Asia
The US-led Armada put together for Operation Genocide Protection, which collapsed even before birth, may have been set up to âwarn Iran,â apart from giving Ansarallah a scare. Just as the Houthis, Tehran is hardly intimidated because, as West Asia analyst ace Alastair Crooke succinctly put it: âSykes-Picot is dead.â
This is a quantum shift on the chessboard. It means West Asian powers will frame the new regional architecture from now on, not the US Navy âprojection.âÂ
That carries an ineffable corollary: those eleven US aircraft carrier task forces, for all practical purposes, are essentially worthless.
Everyone across West Asia is well aware that Ansarallahâs missiles are capable of hitting Saudi and Emirati oil fields and knocking them out of commission. So it is little wonder that Riyadh and Abu Dhabi would never accept becoming part of a US-led maritime force to challenge the Yemeni resistance. Â
Add to it the role of underwater drones now in the possession of Russia and Iran. Think of fifty of these aimed at a US aircraft carrier: it has no defense. While the Americans still have very advanced submarines, they cannot keep the Bab al-Mandeb and the Red Sea open to Western operators.Â
On the energy front, Moscow and Tehran donât even need to think â at least not yet â about using the ânuclearâ option or cutting off potentially at least 25 percent, and up, of the world oil supply. As one Persian Gulf analyst succinctly describes it, âthat would irretrievably implode the international financial system.â
For those still determined to support the genocide in Gaza there have been warnings. Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani has mentioned it explicitly. Tehran has already called for a total oil and gas embargo against nations that support Israel.
A total naval blockade of Israel, meticulously engineered, remains a distinct possibility. Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Commander Hossein Salami said Israel may âsoon face the closure of the Mediterranean Sea, the Strait of Gibraltar, and other waterways.â
Keep in mind weâre not yet even talking about a possible blockade of the Strait of Hormuz; weâre still on the Red Sea/Bab al-Mandeb.Â
Because if the Straussian neo-cons in the Beltway get really unhinged by the paradigm shift and act in desperation to âteach a lessonâ to Iran, a chokepoint Hormuz-Bab al-Mandeb combo blockade might skyrocket the price of oil to at least $500 a barrel, triggering the implosion of the $618 trillion derivatives market and crashing the entire international banking system.
The paper tiger is in a jam
Mao Zedong was right after all: the US may be in fact a paper tiger. Putin, though, is way more careful, cold, and calculating. With this Russian president, itâs all about an asymmetric response, exactly when no one is expecting it.
That brings us to the prime working hypothesis perhaps capable of explaining the shadow play masking the single Ansarallah move on the chessboard.
When Pulitzer-winning investigative journalist Sy (Seymour) Hersh proved how Team Biden blew up the Nord Stream pipelines, there was no Russian response to what was, in effect, an act of terrorism against Gazprom, against Germany, against the EU, and against a bunch of European companies. Yet Yemen, now, with a simple blockade, turns global shipping upside down.
So what is more vulnerable?
The physical networks of global energy supply (Pipelineistan) or the Thalassocracy, states that derive their power from naval supremacy?
Russia privileges Pipelineistan: see, for instance, the Nord Streams and Power of Siberia 1 and 2. But the US, the Hegemon, always relied on its thalassocratic power, heir to âBritannia rules the waves.â
Well, not anymore. And, surprisingly, getting there did not even entail the ânuclearâ option, the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, which Washington games and scaremongers like crazy.
Of course, we wonât have a smoking gun. But itâs a fascinating proposition that the single Yemeni move may have been coordinated at the highest level between three BRICS members â Russia, China, and Iran, the neocon new âaxis of evilâ â plus other two BRICS+, energy powerhouses Saudi Arabia and the UAE. As in, âif you do it, weâve got your backâ.Â
None of that, of course, detracts from Yemeni purity: their defense of Palestine is a sacred duty.
Western imperialism and then turbo-capitalism have always been obsessed with gobbling up Yemen, a process that Isa Blumi, in his splendid book Destroying Yemen, described as ânecessarily stripping Yemenis of their historic role as the economic, cultural, spiritual, and political engine for much of the Indian Ocean world.â
Yemen, though, is unconquerable and, true to a local proverb, âdeadlyâ (Yemen Fataakah). As part of the Axis of Resistance, Yemen’s Ansarallah is now a key actor in a complex Eurasia-wide drama that redefines Heartland connectivity; and alongside China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the India-Iran-Russia-led International North-South Transportation Corridor (INSTC), and Russia’s new Northern Sea Route, also includes control over strategic chokepoints around the Mediterranean Seas and the Arabian peninsula.
This is another trade connectivity paradigm entirely, smashing to bits Western colonial and neocolonial control of Afro-Eurasia. So yes, BRICS+ supports Yemen, who with a single move has presented Pax Americana with The Mother of All Geopolitical Jams.