Century 21: The Century of Terror

Today's events in Belgium follow those which until last week were happening every day in Syria, practically every week in Turkey and countless atrocities in Libya, Sudan, South Sudan, Central African Republic and elsewhere. The bottom line is that nowhere in the world today is safe and unless there is a fundamental shift in policy, nothing will change. Welcome to the Century of Terror.

As we saw in Afghanistan, a motley poorly-armed force of some 18,000 to 30,000 people (the Taliban), have fought successfully against the combined forces of NATO with their state-of-the-art equipment. As we saw in Libya, bands of terrorists, supported by NATO, wreaked havoc in Libyan society, turning the African continent's country with the highest Human Development Index into chaos.

As we saw in Syria, NATO's continued interference and arms trafficking to dubious groups on the fringes of Syrian society led to a bloody civil war which has claimed hundreds of thousands of victims and which has led to Europe's refugee crisis. Among these refugees without any doubt are hardened criminals and well-trained terrorists who have taken advantage of the European Union's Schengen Space (allowing free movement of people and goods) meaning that possibly hundreds, or thousands, hopefully not tens of thousands, of terrorists are now infiltrated among European society. As we saw in Iraq and Syria, intervention in complex societies creates the knock-on effect which is Islamic State.

The lucky ones are shot

The havoc and terror this group will be planning to perpetrate is no different from the sheer horror of living inter-ethnic strife in South Sudan, where girls and women are being brutally mass-raped, where villages and being torched and where people are being burned alive and hacked to pieces. The lucky ones are shot.

There is no doubt whatsoever that all roads lead to the 666 (The Six Lobbies: banking, energy, finance, food, pharmaceuticals, weapons) and the cutting edge of these lobbies which enforces their policy: NATO. The road from Afghanistan leads to NATO, the road from Iraq leads to NATO, the road from Kosovo and the terrorist state in the Balkans from which so many weapons flood across into Western Europe leads to NATO, the road from Libya leads to NATO, the road from Ukraine leads to NATO, the road from Syria leads to NATO and therefore the road from Islamic State leads to NATO.

Interference engenders terrorism

Interference engenders terrorism, arming groups against each other or worse, against a Government, engenders terrorism, unleashing the hordes of Baal as was the case in Libya destabilizes a country and a region and creates imbalances which engenders more terrorism.

Today, not only dark, distant corners of our globe are home to the most horrific scenes of violence but also, the very centers of power - Belgium, the European Union Headquarters, the NATO Headquarters. The facility with which terrorist operations are carried out, despite the increased surveillance, is a clear indicator that in 2016, nobody, anywhere, is safe, and security cannot be guaranteed. Therefore freedom of movement, or the right to move freely and in safety, does not exist.

This is the world we live in, and so something is evidently wrong. Our planet is polluted from the land to the seas to the skies, our rivers and lakes are drying up, our diversity of species is being decimated by the day and on the civilizational level, we are witnessing a clash of cultures on the scale that we experienced when the Crusaders were behaving in the same way one thousand years ago.

The bottom line is fanaticism, which is a reflection of lack of education, ignorance and hatred, the foundations of which are marginalization, an absence of opportunity and a sense of exclusion. The economic model does not work, for it does not provide employment for all of its citizens; indeed the entire socio-economic framework endemically fails growing swathes of the world's population and on a growing basis.

A feeling of helplessness ensues a feeling of hopelessness as year after year, human rights are cut back and the freedom everyone was promised fails to appear. While nobody is blaming NATO directly for these terrorist atrocities, the approach it takes clearly does not work and is making things worse.

And worse still is the advantage taken of such attacks to control people through the manipulation of fear. The world today is in a very dark and distressing place and in this place the 666 Lobbies consolidate their power at the expense of everybody else. It is time for a multilateral world, also but not only a unipolar one based upon NATO and its master, Washington, it is time for the rule of law to be implemented and respected rather than being flouted and disrespected, it is time for development and education and job creation schemes and not deployment of resources and interference.

The way forward is for a free flow of information from responsible journalists and agencies, not lies peddled to a gullible public that accepts everything as the gospel, the way forward is bringing important issues onto the political agenda, holding representatives responsible for their actions and the way they vote behind closed doors and along with this accountability of our elected representatives, fundamentally important is a war against corruption, a scourge which deprives communities of the means they need to develop.

Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey

Pravda.Ru 

Twitter: @TimothyBHinchey

*Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey has worked as a correspondent, journalist, deputy editor, editor, chief editor, director, project manager, executive director, partner and owner of printed and online daily, weekly, monthly and yearly publications, TV stations and media groups printed, aired and distributed in Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, East Timor, Guinea-Bissau, Portugal, Mozambique and São Tomé and Principe Isles; the Russian Foreign Ministry publication Dialog and the Cuban Foreign Ministry Official Publications. He has spent the last two decades in humanitarian projects, connecting communities, working to document and catalog disappearing languages, cultures, traditions, working to network with the LGBT communities helping to set up shelters for abused or frightened victims and as Media Partner with UN Women, working to foster the UN Women project to fight against gender violence and to strive for an end to sexism, racism and homophobia. A Vegan, he is also a Media Partner of Humane Society International, fighting for animal rights. He is Director and Chief Editor of the Portuguese version of Pravda.Ru.