Tension in the region. Cartoon of 13/01/2023 in CTXT
TR: When they woke up, what they called "tension in the region" was only two streets away.
The year came in strong and continued to be intense. While the killing continues apace in Ukraine, the US-backed criminal state of Israel continues its ethnic cleansing in Palestine. Meanwhile, Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada, and Robert Habeck, Vice Chancellor of Germany, deny genocide, proving once again that the world is still ruled by psychopaths.
Since the beginning of this so-called war in Palestine, Israel, the USA, Turkey and Iran have also bombed positions in Syria and Iraq.
As if the world wasn't bombed enough, the US and UK (in coalition with other countries) are also bombing in Yemen, after Iran seized a US oil tanker in the sea of Oman. Yemen has been at war since 2014, when the Houthi militia, with Iranian help, began fighting a Saudi-backed government.
The Yemenis insist that their raids in the Red Sea are focused only against ships trading with Israel, but all the media here tell us is that our Aliexpress orders are in danger and that our beloved capitalism is faltering because fewer containers of stuff are arriving by sea. They've twisted this nonsense so far as to talk about "shortages".
But if the Middle East is in "tension", looking at the rest of the world is not a reassuring exercise either. In Ecuador they are in a state of war against drugs, and just two streets away, in Sweden, the Minister of Civil Defence, Carl-Oskar Bohlin, asked the population to prepare for a possible war. "All Swedes must act now to increase the country's resilience in the event of war," Bohlin said.
This week I've muted Twitter/X and temporarily put aside the routine of checking the news three times a day for war fever. You don't need to be a conspiracist or alarmist to understand that what is referred to as "tension in the region" to allude to things that happen in the boondocks is increasingly global and close to home.