Friday 37th of Lockdown: 1972 photograph of Churchill's Chum and top Nazi War Criminal Martin Bormann in Buenos Aires? BCfm Online Politics Show presented by Tony Gosling
https://politicsthisweek.wordpress.com/2020/04/27/friday-37th-of-lockdown-whatever-happened-to-democracy-in-bristol-bcfm-politics-show-presented-by-tony-gosling/
Will Trump go to war with Iran to save America’s oil industry? by Scott Ritter [below]
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/486598-trump-iran-war-oil/
World War 3: How Japan could be ‘glove over US fist’ in fight against China
WORLD WAR 3 fears have intensified as Donald Trump ramps up his coronavirus rhetoric against China - but an unearthed documentary suggests Japan, in a strategic sense, could be "the glove over Washington's fist".
By JOEL DAY PUBLISHED: 13:24, Fri, 01May20
https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1276471/world-war-3-Donald-trump- coronavirus-china-wuhan-biological-warfare-south-china-sea-spt
Yesterday evening US President Donald Trump undercut his own intelligence service agencies by suggesting he had seen evidence to back up claims the coronavirus originated in a Chinese Laboratory. Not long before, the US national intelligence director’s office said it was still investigating how the virus began.
The office went as far as to say it had determined COVID-19 "was not man made or genetically modified".
China has hit back at Trump’s claims, consistently rejecting the lab theory.
It has used the US’ response to the coronavirus crisis as a point of attack.
The US is currently the world's worst affected country by the virus, with over one million confirmed cases and 63,000 deaths.
The pandemic will only add fuel to an existing feud between the two nations.
According to military base maps, the US appears to be closing in around Chinese shores – though the latter has remained completely independent of the US on its own soil.
Investigative journalist John Pilger explored this in his 2016 documentary ‘The Coming War on China’, in which he described the encirclement as a “giant noose” with missiles, bombers, and warships pointed towards China.
In the same documentary, James Bradley, an author and China expert, explained the extent to which the US appeared as a threat to Beijing, and how it has utilised countries in Asia and the surrounding area.
He said: “If you were in Beijing, standing on top of the tallest building and looking out at the Pacific Ocean, you’d see American warships.
“You’d see Guam is about to sink because there’s so many missiles pointed at China....
Will Trump go to war with Iran to save America’s oil industry?
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/486598-trump-iran-war-oil/
Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer. @RealScottRitter 22Apr20
It’s believed that a US-Iran war would disrupt the flow of Middle Eastern oil and, as such, should be avoided at all costs. With US oil futures trading in the negative, has the risk of such a war suddenly become attractive?
Last week, nearly a dozen Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy (IRGCN) vessels harassed a formation of US Navy and Coast Guard ships operating in international waters in the northern Persian Gulf. According to the US Navy, approximately 11 Iranian fast patrol boats conducted “dangerous and harassing approaches” of a flotilla of six vessels, repeatedly crossing the bows and sterns of the American ships at high speeds.
The US and Iranian navies have faced off against each other several times over the years, employing similar harassing tactics, but always stopping short of actual confrontation.
As such, President Donald Trump’s tweet on Wednesday, instructing the US Navy “to shoot down and destroy any and all Iranian gunboats if they harass our ships at sea,” seemed like an unnecessary and dangerous escalation, especially given the history of the US-Iranian confrontation in the region and the potentially devastating consequences of such.
Almost immediately after Trump released his Tweet, the price of oil rebounded. Futures contracts for West Texas Intermediate (WTI) spiked to $13.49, after previously dropping to historic lows, bottoming-out at nearly negative $37. Likewise, Brent futures, which benchmark around 60 percent of global crude purchases, jumped $1.20 higher to $20.53 per barrel, after trading as low as $15.98. Normally the cause-and-effect relationship between the threat of war and the rise in oil prices would be viewed in a negative light. But these are not normal times.
Iran has repeatedly sent a message to the US, its Gulf Arab allies and the rest of the world, that if the US expanded its “maximum pressure” campaign by sanctioning Iran’s oil and gas industry, thereby denying Iran access to global markets, then Iran was fully capable of retaliating in kind, closing down the Strait of Hormuz to oil tanker traffic and destroying critical oil production infrastructure. That message was reiterated in the May 2019 attacks – for which Iran, however, never claimed responsibility....
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