Libya And Surrounding Med Waters Invasion

[tropicalescape]

Originally Posted by mikemenza

Terrorists indeed, supporting the Western Powers that destroyed Libya allowing Extremists to take control, destroyed Iraq allowing extremists to rule half the country, destroyed Syria, allowing.. supporting the rise of ISIL.. deaths of millions, multi millions displaced.. for politics and greed.. Terrorists seem to be the people we vote for...

I think that the western powers are moving on to other interest..China will take/ play a greater roll in the middle east..I think the Chinese and the middle east have a lot to offer each other..Maybe they will be able to work out all the problems that exist regardless of who or what caused them..The Chinese have 5000 yrs. of know how and when the "New" Silk Road , One Belt One Road Inititive and the most important one concerning "our fine brotherhood" the '21st Century Maritime Silk Road' are pressed farther who knows what will happen...or not... We should all wish them well ,it breaks my heart to see the refugees from war torn places being displaced and cant fathom what hell the ones who remain must be going through..

[alansmith]

Tropical, time will tell how that all plays out with China. But from my own travels to western China I can tell you there is a deep hatred of the Han Chinese by the Muslims. I know that the Chinese have huge aspirations with Africa and the middle East. The Chinese are much more of long range strategic thinkers then our short term thinkers in gov't here. But there is deep animosity between Muslim nations and the "face" Chinese try to project. The Chinese can be ruthless when they want something. My wife is Chinese born and raised. She was shocked when I explained to her one day about what China had done in Tibet until I showed her the clips available of Chinese regulars slaughtering thousands of Tibetan monks. It was surreal.


This thread has the potential of being shut down if people don't take control of their fingertips and post in a more civilized manner. My daddy always said..."it ain't what you say, son, it is how you say it that is important." Have you ever seen Ann Cate post anything that was nasty? But yet, she can defend her point or rebut another person's point of view without any doubt what her message is...and without slander or malice. Calm down and post responsibly.

[GoingWalkabout]

Originally Posted by alansmith

Tropical, time will tell how that all plays out with China. But from my own travels to western China I can tell you there is a deep hatred of the Han Chinese by the Muslims. I know that the Chinese have huge aspirations with Africa and the middle East. The Chinese are much more of long range strategic thinkers then our short term thinkers in gov't here. But there is deep animosity between Muslim nations and the "face" Chinese try to project. The Chinese can be ruthless when they want something. My wife is Chinese born and raised. She was shocked when I explained to her one day about what China had done in Tibet until I showed her the clips available of Chinese regulars slaughtering thousands of Tibetan monks. It was surreal.


This thread has the potential of being shut down if people don't take control of their fingertips and post in a more civilized manner. My daddy always said..."it ain't what you say, son, it is how you say it that is important." Have you ever seen Ann Cate post anything that was nasty? But yet, she can defend her point or rebut another person's point of view without any doubt what her message is...and without slander or malice. Calm down and post responsibly.

AlanSmith. Your observation of China and their own Chinese Muslims up north is absolutely correct. I did take note when recently China dispatched its largest aircraft carrier to the mid east. There is however a witches brew developing in the Mid East involving unholy alliances between China, Russia and others.

You are absolutely correct when you said that China takes very long term strategic moves. Russia does the same. And both are very opportunistic.

China for instance has been on a buying spree around the globe of rare earth minerals and is now moving into energy ownership. While Russia is fixated on energy it has nurtured a relationship with Iran that goes back decades. Not many people realize, but the heavy water reactor in Iran was sold to Iran by Russia. Russia has been the hand behind the throne in Iran supplying it with military and nuclear capabilities for a long, long time. At the same time the agent state of China, North Korea is also in bed with Iran and this is why a very disturbing unholy alliance has been developing for some time before our eyes.

Russia is making a play for the energy around the Mediterranean i.e. Syria and if it can Libya, for two reasons. First, its economy is dependent on energy sales for an important part of its GDP with it holding almost a stranglehold on natural gas sales into most of Europe. Which lead to the second point. This dominance by Russia of gas exports into Europe is threatened by plans of laying pipes underneath the mediterranean from the mid east across to Italy or Greece and then from there onto the rest of Europe. This is a strategic energy income threat to Russia and a direct threat to its stranglehold it has at the moment over Europe.

Russia is dancing with the Iranians believing it will be able to control them and basically carve up the mid east energy reserves together. Now steps in China realizing that there is now a new strategic change going on in this region and it wants in on the action. It has long term energy needs that it wants to protect.

All in all we are witnessing in my opinion a reshaping of the mid east not seen since the time of the British and to a lesser degree French carve up.

So you have dangerous players in alliances that may well use these alliances to push the West out of the mid east resulting in a global balance of power shift the likes we haven't seen since the end of the second world war.

Enough of my musings. It is my view that this whole region of the mediterranean is a very dangerous area for sailors.

[alansmith]

GoneWalk, "recently China dispatched its largest aircraft carrier to the mid east", I want to tease you a little bit about this statement. FWIW, the Chinese Navy, currently, only has one aircraft carrier. I can't remember who they bought it from. But it was old and tired and someone's Navy sold it to the Chinese. Currently the Chinese leadership fully understands that in order to be a "player" and "project power" one needs aircraft carriers. I understand that they are building a new one. But there 'largest' carrier, if the story is correct, is their "sole" old and tired carrier.


China is also in international litigation with Japan, Vietnam, Philippines, and others over it's aggressive policies of claiming islands as their own. They are building up their navy as fast as possible.

[John Casey]

Originally Posted by bustermaw

We broke Libya and it needs to be fixed.Wow,what a statement.
Rarely have I come across such a crass announcement as this.
Sure ! we destroyed a whole country and murdered it's president whilst making thousands of it's inhabitants homeless,but hey ! it was in the name of democracy.(so that's all right then ).
I'm not quite sure what point I can make after this.(Speechless )

Bustermaw, nice to meet you.

"We broke it" is a statement of culpability. We, the west in the form of NATO, plus an expanded coalition that included a number of Arab countries, acted under the premise of protecting the Libyan population.

It was that population that killed Gadafi BTW not the coalition.

The decision makers (read politicians) fell short on what to do post conflict, as tends to happen, leading to the terrible state of affairs we now have.

I'm sure you'll agree it's an easy argument that those same governments need to help rectify the awful situation that can still get worse.

Until that happens, not a good place to do any sailing, which was the original message of this thread.

I was as far north as Malta to Hammamet Tunisia and back and the impact could be seen that far away with the Italian CG and Navy patrolling for refugees at all hours.

Take care.

[GoingWalkabout]

Originally Posted by alansmith

GoneWalk, "recently China dispatched its largest aircraft carrier to the mid east", I want to tease you a little bit about this statement. FWIW, the Chinese Navy, currently, only has one aircraft carrier. I can't remember who they bought it from. But it was old and tired and someone's Navy sold it to the Chinese. Currently the Chinese leadership fully understands that in order to be a "player" and "project power" one needs aircraft carriers. I understand that they are building a new one. But there 'largest' carrier, if the story is correct, is their "sole" old and tired carrier.


China is also in international litigation with Japan, Vietnam, Philippines, and others over it's aggressive policies of claiming islands as their own. They are building up their navy as fast as possible.

Yes you are correct but they are building a second carrier. Glad to see a fellow on CF who knows their China stuff. And you are right about them having other fronts but they can't help themselves when they see so much of the mid east up for grabs.

This is an interesting synopsis of the China carrier developments.
Since the 1970s, the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has expressed interest in operating an aircraft carrier as part of its blue water aspirations.[1] In 2011, People's Liberation Army Chief of the General Staff Chen Bingde confirmed that China was constructing at least one aircraft carrier.[2] On 25 September 2012, China's first aircraft carrier, Liaoning, was commissioned. On 31 December 2015 it was reported by several news sources that China was building a second aircraft carrier using entirely indigenous design.[3]

Since 1985, China has acquired four retired aircraft carriers for study, the Australian HMAS Melbourne and the ex-Soviet carriers Minsk, Kiev and Varyag. Reports state that two 60,000 ton Type 089 aircraft carriers based on Varyag are due to be finished by 2015.[4] Sukhoi Su-33s are the aircraft most likely to be flown from these carriers,[5] but China has also developed its own multirole fighter, the Shenyang J-15.[6]

[avb3]

Closed.

Way off topic, way too political, way too many rude comments. Those have been deleted.