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Paul Merrell

Chaos - not Victory - is the Empire's "Name of the Game" | Global Research - Centre for... - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5447540

war & peace banksters U.S.-foreign-policy military chaos instability

shared by Paul Merrell on 07 May 15 - No Cached
  • “Once again a country “liberated” by the West is sinking deeper and deeper into chaos.” Global Research.  This could be anyone of the countries in conflict, where Washington and its Western and Middle Eastern stooges sow war – eternal chaos, misery, death – and submission. This is precisely the point: The Washington / NATO strategy is not to ‘win’ a war or conflict, but to create ongoing – endless chaos. That’s the way (i) to control people, nations and their resources; (ii) to assures the west a continuous need for military – troops and equipment – remember more than 50% of the US GDP depends on the military industrial complex, related industries and services; and (iii) finally, a country in disarray or chaos, is broke and needs money – money with hardship conditions, ‘austerity’ money from the notorious IMF, World Bank and other associated nefarious ‘development institutions’ and money lenders; money that equals enslavement, especially with corrupt leaders that do not care for their people.
  • That’s the name of the game – in Yemen, in Ukraine, in Syria, in Iraq, in Sudan, in Central Africa, in Libya…. you name it. Who fights against whom is unimportant. ISIS / ISIL / IS / DAISH / DAESH / Al-Qaeda and whatever other names for the mercenary killer organizations you want to add to the list – are just tags to confuse. You might as well add Blackwater, Xe, Academi and all its other successive names chosen to escape easy recognition. They are prostitutes for the Zionist-Anglo-Saxon Empire, prostitutes of the lowest level. Then come elite prostitutes, like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain and other Gulf States, plus the UK and France, of course.
  • Paul Merrell on 07 May 15
     
    More and more writers are beginning to recognize that victory is no longer the goal of U.S. military and foreign policy, that ongoing instability and chaos is. A tip of the hat is due Pepe Escobar, who years ago dubbed the U.S. the "Empire of Chaos." 
Paul Merrell

Asia Times Online :: Russia, China mock divide and rule - 0 views

www.atimes.com/...WOR-02-231214.html

war & peace economic-warfare China Russia U.S.-foreign-policy

shared by Paul Merrell on 25 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • At the symposium, held in a divinely frescoed former 15th century Dominican refectory now part of the Italian parliament's library, Sergey Glazyev, on the phone from Moscow, gave a stark reading of Cold War 2.0. There's no real "government" in Kiev; the US ambassador is in charge. An anti-Russia doctrine has been hatched in Washington to foment war in Europe - and European politicians are its collaborators. Washington wants a war in Europe because it is losing the competition with China. Glazyev addressed the sanctions dementia: Russia is trying simultaneously to reorganize the politics of the International Monetary Fund, fight capital flight and minimize the effect of banks closing credit lines for many businessmen. Yet the end result of sanctions, he says, is that Europe will be the ultimate losers economically; bureaucracy in Europe has lost economic focus as American geopoliticians have taken over.
  • What he did emphasize was this was outright financial war, helped by a fifth column in the Russian establishment. The only equal component in this asymmetrical war was nuclear forces. And yet Russia would not surrender. Leontyev characterized Europe not as a historical subject but as an object: "The European project is an American project." And "democracy" had become fiction. The run on the rouble came and went like a devastating economic hurricane. Yet you don't threat a checkmate against a skilled chess player unless your firepower is stronger than Jupiter's lightning bolt. Moscow survived. Gazprom heeded the request of President Vladimir Putin and will sell its US dollar reserves on the domestic market. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier went on the record against the EU further "turning the screw" as in more counterproductive sanctions against Moscow. And at his annual press conference, Putin emphasized how Russia would weather the storm.
  • Russia could always deploy an economic "nuclear" option, declaring a moratorium on its foreign debt. Then, if Western banks seized Russian assets, Moscow could seize every Western investment in Russia. In any event, the Pentagon and NATO's aim of a shooting war in the European theater would not happen; unless Washington was foolish enough to start it.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Russia could outmaneuver Western financial markets by cutting them off from its wealth of oil and natural gas. The markets would inevitably collapse - uncontrolled chaos for the Empire of Chaos (or "controlled chaos", in Putin's own words). Imagine the crumbling of the quadrillion-plus of derivatives. It would take years for the "West" to replace Russian oil and natural gas, but the EU's economy would be instantly devastated. Just this lightning-bolt Western attack on the rouble - and oil prices - using the crushing power of Wall Street firms had already shaken European banks exposed to Russia to the core; their credit default swaps soared. Imagine those banks collapsing in a Lehman Brothers-style house of cards if Russia decided to default - thus unleashing a chain reaction. Think about a non-nuclear MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) - in fact warless. Still, Russia is self-sufficient in all kinds of energy, mineral wealth and agriculture. Europe isn't. This could become the lethal result of war by sanctions.
  • Essentially, the Empire of Chaos is bluffing, using Europe as pawns. The Empire of Chaos is as lousy at chess as it is at history. What it excels in is in upping the ante to force Russia to back down. Russia won't back down.
  • To top it off, in 2014 President Xi Jinping has deployed unprecedented diplomatic/geostrategic frenzy - ultimately tied to the long-term project of slowly but surely keeping on erasing US supremacy in Asia and rearranging the global chessboard. What Xi said in Shanghai in May encapsulates the project; "It's time for Asians to manage the affairs of Asia." At the APEC meeting in November, he doubled down, promoting an "Asia-Pacific dream". Meanwhile, frenzy is the norm. Apart from the two monster, US$725 billion gas deals - Power of Siberia and Altai pipeline - and a recent New Silk Road-related offensive in Eastern Europe, [4] virtually no one in the West remembers that in September Chinese Prime Minister Li Keiqiang signed no fewer than 38 trade deals with the Russians, including a swap deal and a fiscal deal, which imply total economic interplay.
  • A case can be made that the geopolitical shift towards Russia-China integration is arguably the greatest strategic maneuver of the last 100 years. Xi's ultimate master plan is unambiguous: a Russia-China-Germany trade/commerce alliance. German business/industry wants it badly, although German politicians still haven't got the message. Xi - and Putin - are building a new economic reality on the Eurasian ground, crammed with crucial political, economic and strategic ramifications. Of course, this will be an extremely rocky road. It has not leaked to Western corporate media yet, but independent-minded academics in Europe (yes, they do exist, almost like a secret society) are increasingly alarmed there is no alternative model to the chaotic, entropic hardcore neoliberalism/casino capitalism racket promoted by the Masters of the Universe.
  • And yet, as much as Lao Tzu, already an octogenarian, gave the young Confucius an intellectual slap on the face, the "West" could do with a wake-up call. Divide et impera? It's not working. And it's bound to fail miserably. As it stands, what we do know is that 2015 will be a hair-raising year in myriad aspects. Because from Europe to Asia, from the ruins of the Roman empire to the re-emerging Middle Kingdom, we all still remain under the sign of a fearful, dangerous, rampantly irrational Empire of Chaos.
Paul Merrell

The Maidan Massacre: US Army Orders: Sow Chaos | New Eastern Outlook - 0 views

journal-neo.org/...sacre-us-army-orders-sow-chaos

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Ukraine Maidan snipers false-flag

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Dec 17 - No Cached
  • In a dramatic development in the trial in Kiev of several Berkut police officers accused of shooting civilians in the Maidan demonstrations in February 2014, the defence has produced two Georgians who confirm that the murders were committed by foreign snipers, at least 50 of them, operating in teams. The two Georgians, Alexander Revazishvili and Koba Nergadze have agreed to testify by video from Tbilisi, if permitted, as they feared for their lives if brought to Kiev. The defence lawyer stated, “The eyewitnesses said they had seen with their own eyes a group of people who had received weapons and cartridges and who would deliver fire afterwards from the building of the Conservatoire. Nergadze also saw snipers at the roof of Hotel Ukraine. They know the individuals personally. Besides, they know the organizers and clients and are ready to give their names, as well as the names of the perpetrators.” “In all, about fifty mercenaries arrived in Kiev then and they were involved in the events on the Maidan afterwards and fired at the protesters on February 20,” Goroshinsky went on. “The mercenaries split into groups of ten men each and were dispatched to different spots where from they delivered fire.” “Each of them [the mercenaries] received $5,000 for the job done,” he said. “In other words, these people had been brought [to Kiev] with a well-specified task to create a conflict.” https://journal-neo.org/2017/12/15/the-maidan-massacre-us-army-orders-sow-chaos/
  • Paul Merrell on 16 Dec 17
     
    "In the September 2015 issue of Oriental Review, Dr. Ivan Katchanovski, at the University of Ottawa, published a devastating paper on the Maidan killings setting out in extensive detail the conclusive evidence that it was a false flag operation and that members of the present Kiev regime, including Poroshenko himself were involved in the murders, not the government forces. His paper contains all you need to know and I highly recommend it. Here is a summary of his findings: "The paper analyzes a large amount of evidence from different publicly available sources concerning this massacre and killings of specific protestors…"This academic investigation concludes that the massacre was a false flag operation, which was rationally planned and carried out with a goal of the overthrow of the government and seizure of power. It found various evidence of the involvement of an alliance of the far right organizations, specifically the Right Sector and Svoboda, and oligarchic parties, such as Fatherland. Concealed shooters and spotters were located in at least 20 Maidan-controlled buildings or areas. The various evidence that the protesters were killed from these locations include some 70 testimonies, primarily by Maidan protesters, several videos of "snipers" targeting protesters from these buildings, comparisons of positions of the specific protesters at the time of their killing and their entry wounds, and bullet impact signs. The study uncovered various videos and photos of armed Maidan "snipers" and spotters in many of these buildings. https://journal-neo.org/2017/12/15/the-maidan-massacre-us-army-orders-sow-chaos/"
Paul Merrell

2015 Will Be All About Iran, China and Russia / Sputnik International - 0 views

sputniknews.com/...1016436434.html

war & peace economic-warfare U.S.-foreign-policy Russia China Eurasia

shared by Paul Merrell on 03 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • Fasten your seatbelts; 2015 will be a whirlwind pitting China, Russia and Iran against what I have described as the Empire of Chaos.
  • Considering that this swift move was conceived as a checkmate, Moscow’s defensive strategy was not that bad. On the key energy front, the problem remains the West’s – not Russia’s. If the EU does not buy what Gazprom has to offer, it will collapse. Moscow’s key mistake was to allow Russia's domestic industry to be financed by external, dollar-denominated debt. Talk about a monster debt trap  which can be easily manipulated by the West. The first step for Moscow should be to closely supervise its banks. Russian companies should borrow domestically and move to sell their assets abroad. Moscow should also consider implementing a system of currency controls so the basic interest rate can be brought down quickly. And don’t forget that Russia can always deploy a moratorium on debt and interest, affecting over $600 billion. That would shake the entire world's banking system to the core. Talk about an undisguised “message” forcing the US/EU economic warfare to dissolve.
  • Global oil prices are bound to remain low. All bets are off on whether a nuclear deal will be reached by this summer between Iran and the P5+1. If sanctions (actually economic war) against Iran remain and continue to seriously hurt its economy, Tehran’s reaction will be firm, and will include even more integration with Asia, not the West.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Now let’s take a look at Russian fundamentals. Russia’s government debt totals only 13.4% of its GDP. Its budget deficit in relation to GDP is only 0.5%.  If we assume a US GDP of $16.8 trillion (the figure for 2013), the US budget deficit totals 4% of GDP, versus 0.5% for Russia. The Fed is essentially a private corporation owned by regional US private banks, although it passes itself off as a state institution. US publicly held debt is equal to a whopping 74% of GDP in fiscal year 2014. Russia’s is only 13.4%. The declaration of economic war by the US and EU on Russia – via the run on the ruble and the oil derivative attack – was essentially a derivatives racket. Derivatives – in theory – may be multiplied to infinity. Derivative operators attacked both the ruble and oil prices in order to destroy the Russian economy. The problem is, the Russian economy is more soundly financed than America's.
  • So yes – it will be all about further moves towards the integration of Eurasia as the US is progressively squeezed out of Eurasia. We will see a complex geostrategic interplay progressively undermining the hegemony of the US dollar as a reserve currency and, most of all, the petrodollar. For all the immense challenges the Chinese face, all over Beijing it's easy to detect unmistakable signs of a self-assured, self-confident, fully emerged commercial superpower. President Xi Jinping and the current leadership will keep investing heavily in the urbanization drive and the fight against corruption, including at the highest levels of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Internationally, the Chinese will accelerate their overwhelming push for new 'Silk Roads' – both overland and maritime – which will underpin the long-term Chinese master strategy of unifying Eurasia with trade and commerce.
  • Russia does not need to import any raw materials. Russia can easily reverse-engineer virtually any imported technology if it needs to. Most of all, Russia can generate — from the sale of raw materials – enough credit in US dollars or euros. Russia's sale of its energy wealth — or sophisticated military gear — may decline. However, they will bring in the same amount of rubles — as the ruble has also declined.  Replacing imports with domestic Russian manufacturing makes total sense. There will be an inevitable “adjustment” phase – but that won’t take long. German car manufacturers, for instance, can no longer sell their cars in Russia due to the ruble's decline. This means they will have to relocate their factories to Russia. If they don’t, Asia – from South Korea to China — will blow them out of the market.
  • The EU's declaration of economic war against Russia makes no sense whatsoever. Russia controls, directly or indirectly, most of the oil and natural gas between Russia and China: roughly 25% of the world's supply. The Middle East is bound to remain a mess. Africa is unstable. The EU is doing everything it can to cut itself off from its most stable supply of hydrocarbons, prompting Moscow to redirect energy to China and the rest of Asia. What a gift for Beijing – as it minimizes the alarm about the US Navy playing with "containment" across the high seas.  Still, an unspoken axiom in Beijing is that the Chinese remain extremely worried about an Empire of Chaos losing more and more control, and dictating the stormy terms of the relationship between the EU and Russia. The bottom line is that Beijing would never allow itself to be in a position where the US could interfere with China's energy imports – as was the case with Japan in July 1941 when the US declared war by imposing an oil embargo, cutting off 92% of Japanese oil imports. Everyone knows a key plank of China’s spectacular surge in industrial power was the requirement for manufacturers to produce in China. If Russia did the same, its economy would be growing at a rate of over 5% per year in no time. It could grow even more if bank credit was tied only to productive investment.
  • Now imagine Russia and China jointly investing in a new gold, oil and natural resource-backed monetary union as a crucial alternative to the failed debt "democracy" model pushed by the Masters of the Universe on Wall Street, the Western central bank cartel, and neoliberal politicians. They would be showing the Global South that financing prosperity and improved standards of living by saddling future generations with debt was never meant to work in the first place. Until then, a storm will be threatening our very lives – today and tomorrow. The Masters of the Universe/Washington combo won’t give up their strategy to make Russia a pariah state cut off from trade, the transfer of funds, banking and Western credit markets and thus prone to regime change. Further on down the road, if all goes according to plan, their target will be (who else) China. And Beijing knows it. Meanwhile, expect a few bombshells to shake the EU to its foundations. Time may be running out – but for the EU, not Russia. Still, the overall trend won’t be altered; the Empire of Chaos is slowly but surely being squeezed out of Eurasia.
Gary Edwards

DHS insider update: "It has begun" « Northeast Intelligence NetworkNortheast ... - 1 views

www.homelandsecurityus.com/...7978

Cypress-bank-tax Globalist Banksters

shared by Gary Edwards on 18 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 18 Mar 13
     
    The forced confiscation of citizen savings held in Cypress bank accounts is a test by the International Bank to see if people will roll over or fight.  The Global elites are ready to pull the trigger on world wide economic collapse, and they're testing to see what the response will be. clip: "According to the most recent information provided to me from my source within the Department of Homeland Security known as "Rosebud," the final preparations are being made to deploy heavily armed federalized forces onto the streets of America. They will be deployed under the pretext of "restoring and maintaining order from the chaos brought about by the economic collapse," adding that "many will demand and embrace their deployment on the streets of America. They will get what they ask for, and more." Much like the security theater we have seen following the attacks of 9/11, we will be subjected to the jack-booted control of a federal army whose allegiance is not to the American people, but to the very architects of the chaos. "This is the reason that drones are flying over U.S. cities and farmland, and gun control legislation is on the fast track for complete implementation," stated this source. "How can people look at the situation in Cyprus and not think it won't happen here? It will, and the blowback will be unlike this country has ever seen. Surveillance, disarming the public, and conditioning the people to believe it's for their own safety is and has been  part of the plan all along. Anyone owing a gun will be demonized and described as contributing to the problem." "What happens when the middle class loses much of their wealth, or it is confiscated, by the stroke of a pen or a keyboard? What will the stores look like when people, unprepared due to the damn lies of the corporate media and the shills for the ruling elite, run to empty out everything they can get their hands on as the world, as they know it, collapses around them?" It was
Gary Edwards

The planned re-election of Obama, revolutionary style - 0 views

www.canadafreepress.com/...46516

Doug-Hagmann Obama-Czars overthrow Obama-revolution

shared by Gary Edwards on 08 May 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 08 May 12
     
    Obama administration, including his czars and his closest Progressive supporters, are planning a manufactured insurgency against America. Using the media to garner both sympathy and support for his unfinished goals
    The ambition to re-elect Obama is nothing short of the plan to overthrow the US Constitutional Republic and replace it with a new world order. The article explains the carefully planned re-election of Obama, concluding that it's counting on chaos, rebellion, anger, fear and rioting. Author Doug Hagmann calls this "re-election via revolutionary style". He identifies three areas of aggressively planned chaos: economic, racial, and class warfare. Doug has a source inside the Department of HomeLand Security (DHS), which seems to be the main instrument of overthrow. The model is that of 1968 anti-war, anti-establishment, pro marxist movement. Hagmann and his inside source predict the destruction of the dollar, the seeming breakup and fall of the European Union, riots in the streets of America, and a failed attempt on Obama's life that will result in a horrific crackdown and roundup of Tea Party members. This is truly frightening stuff. Yet, Reagan era Conservative leaders like Mark Levin, Sean Hannity, and Rush Limbaugh - the guys with the megaphone - have no idea what the Federal Reserve Bankster Cartel and their Globalist cronies have pulled off here. Obama is just a stooge carrying out the final stages of a plan that has been in place at least since 1875, when Freemason Albert Pike slipped up with the aging blueprint known to insiders as the "Luciferian Document", inadvertently leaking into the public through a series of letters to a trusted American henchman. Obama himself cut his marxist - new world order teeth, teaching the Alinsky "Rules for Radicals" plan of street revolution and overthrow. Alinsky dedicated his marxist handbook to that first revolutionary, Lucifer. Amazing. And here we are, wondering what mechanisms
Gary Edwards

PETER SCHIFF: The Housing Bust Was Just A Preview For The Coming Catastrophe - Business... - 0 views

www.businessinsider.com/the-real-crash-2012-5

peter-schiff Lindsey-Williams The-Real-Crash

shared by Gary Edwards on 23 May 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 23 May 12
     
    Peter Schiff talks about his new book "The Real Crash: America's Coming Bankruptcy, How to Save Yourself and Your Country".  I caught the Coast-to-Coast "Financial Crisis Special" interview with Peter earlier this week where he spoke on the "Real Crash" issues.  Stunning stuff.  His hour on Coast was followed by Lindsey Williams who pointed out that the New World Order - Illuminati - Bankster trigger point would be signaled by a collapse in the derivatives market. The derivatives market is now over a quadrillion dollars of  casino style gambling.  This is where Banksters make huge bets on things like whether or not interest rates will go up or down.  Then they take out insurance to cover their bets, which further compounds the cost.  Recent events like the Jon Corzine MF Global gamble that the Federal Reserve Bankster Cartel would backstop explosive European sovereign bankster debt are the first indications of collapse in the derivatives market.  We now know that JP Morgan placed similar bets on a European bailout by the Federal Reserve and World Bank, and lost big.  The only difference is that Corzine robbed his clients personal accounts to cover his bets. While Schiff argues the facts on the table, the "what", Lindsay argued the "why"; claiming that this escalating debt mess is all by design.  Lindsay claims that an operational fundamental of the New World Order elites is to first overturn the USA Constitution.  Using a Machiavellian Principle known as, "out of chaos comes order", they seek to de-stabilize and overthrow the USA Constitutional Republic using massive and crushing debt to first destroy the dollar currency.  This will create massive chaos requiring martial law and government seizure of private property and production. Peter Schiff warns that the government is driving us deeper into debt at exactly the time we should be saving and investing those savings in future private sector productivity.  Lindsay argues that this is all by desig
Paul Merrell

Is Open-Ended Chaos the Desired US-Israeli Aim in the Middle East? » CounterP... - 0 views

www.counterpunch.org/...israeli-aim-in-the-middle-east

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy MENA destabilization divide-and-conquer

shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • During the last week we have seen Sunni militias take control of ever-greater swathes of eastern Syria and western Iraq. In the mainstream media, the analysis of this emerging reality has been predictably idiotic, basically centering on whether: a) Obama is to blame for this for having removed US troops in compliance with the 2008 Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) negotiated and signed by Bush. b) Obama is “man enough” to putatively resolve the problem by going back into the country and killing more people and destroying whatever remains of the country’s infrastructure. This cynically manufactured discussion has generated a number of intelligent rejoinders on the margins of the mainstream media system. These essays, written by people such as Juan Cole, Robert Parry, Robert Fisk and Gary Leupp, do a fine job of explaining the US decisions that led to the present crisis, while simultaneously reminding us how everything occurring  today was readily foreseeable as far back as 2002.
  • What none of them do, however, is consider whether the chaos now enveloping the region might, in fact, be the desired aim of policy planners in Washington and Tel Aviv. Rather, each of these analysts presumes that the events unfolding in Syria and Iraq are undesired outcomes engendered by short-sighted decision-making at the highest levels of the US government over the last 12 years. Looking at the Bush and Obama foreign policy teams—no doubt the most shallow and intellectually lazy members of that guild to occupy White House in the years since World War II—it is easy to see how they might arrive at this conclusion. But perhaps an even more compelling reason for adopting this analytical posture is that it allows these men of clear progressive tendencies to maintain one of the more hallowed, if oft-unstated, beliefs of the Anglo-Saxon world view.
  • What is that? It is the idea that our engagements with the world outside our borders—unlike those of, say, the Russians and the Chinese—are motivated by a strongly felt, albeit often corrupted, desire to better the lives of those whose countries we invade. While this belief seems logical, if not downright self-evident within our own cultural system, it is frankly laughable to many, if not most, of the billions who have grown up outside of our moralizing echo chamber. What do they know that most of us do not know, or perhaps more accurately, do not care to admit?
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • First, that we are an empire, and that all empires are, without exception, brutally and programmatically self-seeking. Second, that one of the prime goals of every empire is to foment ongoing internecine conflict in the territories whose resources and/or strategic outposts they covet. Third, that the most efficient way of sparking such open-ended internecine conflict is to brutally smash the target country’s social matrix and physical infrastructure. Fourth, that ongoing unrest has the additional perk of justifying the maintenance and expansion of the military machine that feeds the financial and political fortunes of the metropolitan elite. In short, what of the most of the world understands (and what even the most “prestigious” Anglo-Saxon analysts cannot seem to admit) is that divide and rule is about as close as it gets to a universal recourse the imperial game and that it is, therefore, as important to bear it in mind today as it was in the times of Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, the Spanish Conquistadors and the British Raj.
  • To those—and I suspect there are still many out there—for whom all this seems too neat or too conspiratorial, I would suggest a careful side-by side reading of: a) the “Clean Break” manifesto generated by the Jerusalem-based Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (IASPS) in 1996 and b) the “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” paper generated by The Project for a New American Century (PNAC) in 2000, a US group with deep personal and institutional links to the aforementioned Israeli think tank, and with the ascension of  George Bush Junior to the White House, to the most exclusive  sanctums of the US foreign policy apparatus.
  • To read the cold-blooded imperial reasoning in both of these documents—which speak, in the first case, quite openly of the need to destabilize the region so as to reshape Israel’s “strategic environment” and, in the second of the need to dramatically increase the number of US “forward bases” in the region—as I did twelve years ago, and to recognize its unmistakable relationship to the underlying aims of the wars then being started by the US in Afghanistan and Iraq, was a deeply disturbing experience. To do so now, after the US’s systematic destruction of Iraq and Libya—two notably oil-rich countries whose delicate ethnic and religious balances were well known to anyone in or out of government with more than passing interest in history—, and after the its carefully calibrated efforts to generate and maintain murderous and civilization-destroying stalemates in Syria and Egypt (something that is easily substantiated despite our media’s deafening silence on the subject), is downright blood-curdling.
  • And yet, it seems that for even very well-informed analysts, it is beyond the pale to raise the possibility that foreign policy elites in the US and Israel, like all virtually all the ambitious hegemons before them on the world stage, might have quite coldly and consciously fomented open-ended chaos in order to achieve their overlapping strategic objectives in this part of the world.
  • Paul Merrell on 17 Jun 14
     
    This is the most succinct distillation of U.S. (and Israeli) foreign policy in the Mideast and Northern Africa ("MENA") areas that I have read to date. And it's absolutely spot on. The only major portion omitted is the Israeli ambition to expand its territory drastically to encompass from the Nile River in Egypt to the Jordan River in Southwest Asia and eastward throughout the Arabian Peninsula, whilst becoming the empirical economic and military center of MENA.  
Gary Edwards

The Daily Bell - The Economist Hoists Its Battle Balloon? - 1 views

www.thedailybell.com/...mist-Hoists-Its-Battle-Balloon

economist-magazine Banksters World-Wars New-World-Order

shared by Gary Edwards on 19 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 19 Dec 13
     
    "The first world war... Look back with angst ... Thanks to its military, economic and soft power, America is still indispensable, particularly in dealing with threats like climate change and terror, which cross borders. But unless America behaves as a leader and the guarantor of the world order, it will be inviting regional powers to test their strength by bullying neighbouring countries. The chances are that none of the world's present dangers will lead to anything that compares to the horrors of 1914. Madness, whether motivated by race, religion or tribe, usually gives ground to rational self-interest. But when it triumphs, it leads to carnage, so to assume that reason will prevail is to be culpably complacent. That is the lesson of a century ago. - Economist Magazine Dominant Social Theme: Beware the coming wars ... Free-Market Analysis: You can't make this stuff up. The top men in the globalist community have been hard at work building wars and potential wars, and now it's time to let 'er rip. This is one dominant social theme we saw coming miles away. We've been writing about its imminence for years, and predicting war and more war as internationalists try to blunt the effect of the Internet Reformation. After the Gutenberg press blew up the Middle Ages and the Roman Catholic Church besides, the globalists of the era used economic chaos, war and the invention of copyright to fight back. We predicted they would use the same tools this time around and have no reason to revise our predictions thus far. The only thing we've consistently pointed out that has not yet been addressed is the inability of the top men to launch a full-out world war because that would involve nuclear weapons. And lacking a full-out war, we have questioned how successful the strategy can be. Obviously, the top elites see something we don't. Or perhaps they are willing to risk an all-out war anyway - as they retreat into reported fully-stocked, underground "cities." Here's more fro
Paul Merrell

The new European 'arc of instability' - RT Op-Edge - 0 views

rt.com/...3-putin-russia-sovereign-swift

war & peace economic-warfare Russia U.S.-foreign-policy Eurasia

shared by Paul Merrell on 06 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • The European Council on Foreign Relations and Berlin think-tank Friedrich Ebert Stiftung have just reached more or less the same conclusion. If the dangerous stand-off between the EU and Russia over Ukraine is not solved, the EU could face, up to 2030, a military build-up in eastern Europe; a new arms race with NATO as a protagonist; and a semi-permanent “zone of instability” from the Baltic to the Balkans and the Black Sea. What these two think-tanks don’t – and won’t – ever acknowledge is that a new European “arc of instability” – from the Baltic to the Black Sea, as myself and other independent analysts have stressed – is exactly what the Empire of Chaos and its weaponized arm – NATO – are working on to prevent closer Eurasia integration. By the way, the Pentagon excels in fabricating “arcs of instability.” The previous one was – and remains – massive, stretching from the Maghreb to Xinjiang in western China across the Middle East and Central Asia.
  • Moscow has totally identified the plot; Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, once again, has made it crystal clear, in detail. And crucially, some influential sectors in Germany also did, as in members of the cultural elite destroying the notion of a new war in Europe: “Not in our name.” The same applies to those that always preach more transatlantic cooperation, extol the US’s “defining” role in Germany, and effusively praise Germany as the most American country in Europe; that’s the case of the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper – which stands for the core of the political and economic establishment in Germany. It’s still in an embryonic stage, and has not yet made Chancellor Angela Merkel see the light; but a reverse reengineering of Atlanticist relations is already in progress in Germany.
  • Meanwhile, the proverbial group of extremist US senators, plus the notorious poodles/vassals of Britain and Poland, haven’t stopped lobbying to shut Russia off from SWIFT – just as they did with Iran. This would be nothing but yet another declaration of (economic) war – or the economic counterpoint to NATO hysteria. In fairness, a great deal of the EU – especially Germany – knows this is madness. Germany’s top financial paper Handelsblatt recently published a key interview with head of VTB-Bank Andrei Kostin, which has still not been translated into any major English-language paper.
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  • Kostin went straight to the point: “Of course, there is a plan B [in the case of Russia being shut off from the SWIFT bank system], but in my personal opinion it would mean war – if this type of sanction will be introduced. America and Europe did that against Iran but with Iran at that time there were no diplomatic relations, only military containment...if Russian banks’ access to SWIFT will be prohibited, the US ambassador to Moscow should leave the same day. Diplomatic relations must be finished. Banking is the most vulnerable part of the Russian economy because the system is based so strongly on the dollar and the euro.” Next May, Russia’s Central Bank is planning to introduce an analogue to SWIFT – after key consultations with China. It’s always important to keep in mind that China set up a parallel SWIFT to do business with Iran under sanctions. But still there will be a window of four months for a lot of nasty things to happen after a Republican-controlled US Senate is empowered in January.
  • And then there’s the golden rule. Why is Russia buying so much gold? With the US dollar forced upward and gold downward, it makes total business sense to sell gas for inflated dollars and then buy cheap depressed gold; that’s what the Chinese call a “win-win.” And of course on both counts, the West loses. The Washington/Wall Street elites are fully aware that both Moscow and Beijing won’t accumulate US dollars anymore. As for the Masters of the Universe plutocrats who manipulate/control the value of the US dollar, a case can be made that one of their purposes is wrecking the US’s industrial base and the nation’s middle classes. Moscow, meanwhile, has adjusted to the new “instability.” The weak ruble has a positive effect – already stressed by President Putin – by forcing Russia to diversify its manufacturing and become more self-sufficient.
  • Of course, the problem remains for Russia to pay the foreign interest on its debt in US dollars. Moscow could always declare a moratorium in debt repayments. The ruble might go down even more. But as everyone from Lukoil to Rosneft converts more US dollars into rubles, that will drive the ruble back up. Not to mention that the ruble is shorted as it stands. The bottom line is that Moscow has learned yet another lesson for the immediate future: never become indebted to the West. What’s certain is that the Empire of Chaos won’t relent in its strategy of heating up the new arc of instability – inside Europe, across the economic/financial spectrum – and instrumentalizing its pre-fabricated New Iron Curtain from the Baltic to the Black Sea. The Kremlin seems to know exactly how high the stakes are. As The Saker told me in an email, “Putin is telling both the West and the Russian people that there is a long war in progress and that the Russian people have to morally be prepared to accept sacrifices for the survival of Russia. This is one more step in the 'coming-out' of what I call the ‘Eurasian Sovereignists’ in which the US [has] now openly declared as a Russophobic (Russia-hating and Russia-fearing) enemy, and the Europeans as a powerless colony. Military power is not directly a factor in this, the internal power balance between the pro-Western ‘Atlantic Integrationists’ and the ‘Eurasian Sovereignists’ is.” It’s all here – from the debacle of a regime (Bretton Woods) to the current, provoked crisis, all brilliantly explained by Mikhail Khazin. Russia is getting ready to rock. Is the West?
Paul Merrell

Asia Times Online :: A chessboard drenched in blood - 0 views

www.atimes.com/...CEN-01-230714.html

war & peace Ukraine Russia MH17 false-flag U.S.-foreign-policy whodunnit

shared by Paul Merrell on 23 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • "The intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." Everyone remembers the Downing Street Memo, which unveiled the Bush/Blair "policy" in the run-up to the 2003 bombing/invasion/occupation of Iraq. The "policy" was to get rid of Saddam Hussein via a lightning war. The justification was "terrorism" and (non-existent) weapons of mass destruction (WMD), which had "disappeared", mounted in trucks, deep into Syria. Forget about intelligence and facts. The tragedy of MH17 - turned, incidentally, into a WMD - might be seen as a warped rerun of imperial policy in Iraq. No need for a memo this time. The "policy" of the Empire of Chaos is clear, and <a href='http://asianmedia.com/GAAN/www/delivery/ck.php?n=a9473bc7&cb=%n' target='_blank'><img src='http://asianmedia.com/GAAN/www/delivery/avw.php?zoneid=36&cb=%n&n=a9473bc7&ct0=%c' border='0' alt='' ></a> multi-pronged; diversify the "pivot to Asia" by establishing a beachhead in Ukraine to sabotage trade between Europe and Russia; expand the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to Ukraine; break the Russia-China strategic partnership; prevent by all means the trade/economic integration of Eurasia, from the Russia-Germany partnership to the New Silk Roads converging from China to the Ruhr; keep Europe under US hegemony.
  • The key reason why Russian President Vladimir Putin did not "invade" Eastern Ukraine - as much as he's been enticed to by Washington/NATO - to stop a US military adviser-facilitated running slaughter of civilians is that he does not want to antagonize the European Union, Russia's top trading partner.
  • The MH17 tragedy may have been a horrendous mistake. But it may also have been a desperate gambit by the Kiev minions of the Empire of Chaos. By now, Russian intel may have already mastered the key facts. Washington's predictable modus operandi was to shoot from the hip, igniting and in theory winning the spin war, and doubling down by releasing the proverbial army of "top officials" brimming with social media evidence. Moscow will take time to build a meticulous case, and only then lay it out in detail.
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  • Now compare a fearful Dr Zbig with Immanuel Wallerstein - who was a huge influence in my 2007 warped geopolitical travel book Globalistan. In this piece (in Spanish) Wallerstein argues that the Empire of Chaos simply can't accept its geopolitical decadence - and that's why it has become so dangerous. Restoring its hegemony in the world-system has become the supreme obsession; and that's where the whole "policy" that is an essential background to the MH17 tragedy reveals Ukraine as the definitive do or die battleground. In Europe, everything hinges on Germany. Especially after the National Security Agency scandal and its ramifications, the key debate raging in Berlin is how to position itself geopolitically bypassing the US. And the answer, as pressed by large swathes of German big business, lies in a strategic partnership with Russia
  • The damaged MH17 starboard jet engine suggests a shape charge from an air-to-air missile - and not a Buk; that's consistent with the Russian Ministry of Defense presentation graphically highlighting an Ukrainian SU-25 shadowing MH17. Increasingly, the Buk scenario - hysterically peddled by the Empire of Chaos - is being discarded. Not to mention, again, that not a single eyewitness saw the very graphic, thick missile trace that would have been clearly visible had a Buk been used.
  • As much as Bashar al-Assad in Syria had absolutely no motive to "gas his own people" - as the hysterical narrative went at the time - the Eastern Ukraine federalists have no motive to down a civilian airliner. And as much as Washington doesn't give a damn about the current civilian slaughter in Gaza, it doesn't give a damn about the MH17 civilian deaths; the one and only obsession is to force Europeans to sanction Russia to death. Translation: break up Europe-Russia commercial and geopolitical integration.
  • Moscow, in building its case on the MH17 tragedy, will bide its time to debunk Kiev's claims and maximize its own credibility. The game now moves to the black boxes and the cockpit voice recorder. Still Ukraine will remain the do or die battlefield - a chessboard drenched in blood.
  • Paul Merrell on 23 Jul 14
     
    Pepe Escobar, with the big picture view of the downing of MH17. I especially appreciated this perspective: "Restoring [U.S.] hegemony in the world-system has become the supreme obsession; and that's where the whole "policy" that is an essential background to the MH17 tragedy reveals Ukraine as the definitive do or die battleground."
Paul Merrell

The Virtue of Subtlety: A U.S. Strategy Against the Islamic State - 0 views

www.forbes.com/...tegy-against-the-islamic-state

war & peace ISIL U.S.-foreign-policy

shared by Paul Merrell on 11 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • U.S. strategy is sound. It is to allow the balance of power to play out, to come in only when it absolutely must — with overwhelming force, as in Kuwait — and to avoid intervention where it cannot succeed. The tactical application of strategy is the problem. In this case the tactic is not direct intervention by the United States, save as a satisfying gesture to avenge murdered Americans. But the solution rests in doing as little as possible and forcing regional powers into the fray, then in maintaining the balance of power in this coalition. Such an American strategy is not an avoidance of responsibility. It is the use of U.S. power to force a regional solution. Sometimes the best use of American power is to go to war. Far more often, the best use of U.S. power is to withhold it. The United States cannot evade responsibility in the region. But it is enormously unimaginative to assume that carrying out that responsibility is best achieved by direct intervention. Indirect intervention is frequently more efficient and more effective.
  • The United States cannot win the game of small mosaic tiles that is emerging in Syria and Iraq. An American intervention at this microscopic level can only fail. But the principle of balance of power does not mean that balance must be maintained directly. Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia have far more at stake in this than the United States. So long as they believe that the United States will attempt to control the situation, it is perfectly rational for them to back off and watch, or act in the margins, or even hinder the Americans. The United States must turn this from a balance of power between Syria and Iraq to a balance of power among this trio of regional powers. They have far more at stake and, absent the United States, they have no choice but to involve themselves. They cannot stand by and watch a chaos that could spread to them. It is impossible to forecast how the game is played out. What is important is that the game begins. The Turks do not trust the Iranians, and neither is comfortable with the Saudis. They will cooperate, compete, manipulate and betray, just as the United States or any country might do in such a circumstance. The point is that there is a tactic that will fail: American re-involvement. There is a tactic that will succeed: the United States making it clear that while it might aid the pacification in some way, the responsibility is on regional powers. The inevitable outcome will be a regional competition that the United States can manage far better than the current chaos.
  • There is then the special case of the Islamic State. It is special because its emergence triggered the current crisis. It is special because the brutal murder of two prisoners on video showed a particular cruelty. And it is different because its ideology is similar to that of al Qaeda, which attacked the United States. It has excited particular American passions. To counter this, I would argue that the uprising by Iraq’s Sunni community was inevitable, with its marginalization by Nouri al-Maliki’s Shiite regime in Baghdad. That it took this particularly virulent form is because the more conservative elements of the Sunni community were unable or unwilling to challenge al-Maliki. But the fragmentation of Iraq into Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish regions was well underway before the Islamic State, and jihadism was deeply embedded in the Sunni community a long time ago. Moreover, although the Islamic State is brutal, its cruelty is not unique in the region. Syrian President Bashar al Assad and others may not have killed Americans or uploaded killings to YouTube, but their history of ghastly acts is comparable. Finally, the Islamic State — engaged in war with everyone around it — is much less dangerous to the United States than a small group with time on its hands, planning an attack. In any event, if the Islamic State did not exist, the threat to the United States from jihadist groups in Yemen or Libya or somewhere inside the United States would remain.
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  • The issue is whether the United States can live with this situation or whether it must reshape it. The immediate question is whether the United States has the power to reshape it and to what extent. The American interest turns on its ability to balance local forces. If that exists, the question is whether there is any other shape that can be achieved through American power that would be superior. From my point of view, there are many different shapes that can be imagined, but few that can be achieved. The American experience in Iraq highlighted the problems with counterinsurgency or being caught in a local civil war. The idea of major intervention assumes that this time it will be different. This fits one famous definition of insanity.
  • A national strategy emerges over the decades and centuries. It becomes a set of national interests into which a great deal has been invested, upon which a great deal depends and upon which many are counting. Presidents inherit national strategies, and they can modify them to some extent. But the idea that a president has the power to craft a new national strategy both overstates his power and understates the power of realities crafted by all those who came before him. We are all trapped in circumstances into which we were born and choices that were made for us. The United States has an inherent interest in Ukraine and in Syria-Iraq. Whether we should have that interest is an interesting philosophical question for a late-night discussion, followed by a sunrise when we return to reality. These places reflexively matter to the United States. The American strategy is fixed: Allow powers in the region to compete and balance against each other. When that fails, intervene with as little force and risk as possible. For example, the conflict between Iran and Iraq canceled out two rising powers until the war ended. Then Iraq invaded Kuwait and threatened to overturn the balance of power in the region. The result was Desert Storm.
  • The American strategy is fixed: Allow powers in the region to compete and balance against each other. When that fails, intervene with as little force and risk as possible. For example, the conflict between Iran and Iraq canceled out two rising powers until the war ended. Then Iraq invaded Kuwait and threatened to overturn the balance of power in the region. The result was Desert Storm. This strategy provides a model. In the Syria-Iraq region, the initial strategy is to allow the regional powers to balance each other, while providing as little support as possible to maintain the balance of power. It is crucial to understand the balance of power in detail, and to understand what might undermine it, so that any force can be applied effectively. This is the tactical part, and it is the tactical part that can go wrong. The strategy has a logic of its own. Understanding what that strategy demands is the hard part. Some nations have lost their sovereignty by not understanding what strategy demands. France in 1940 comes to mind. For the United States, there is no threat to sovereignty, but that makes the process harder: Great powers can tend to be casual because the situation is not existential. This increases the cost of doing what is necessary. The ground where we are talking about applying this model is Syria and Iraq. Both of these central governments have lost control of the country as a whole, but each remains a force. Both countries are divided by religion, and the religions are divided internally as well. In a sense the nations have ceased to exist, and the fragments they consisted of are now smaller but more complex entities.
  • This strategy provides a model. In the Syria-Iraq region, the initial strategy is to allow the regional powers to balance each other, while providing as little support as possible to maintain the balance of power. It is crucial to understand the balance of power in detail, and to understand what might undermine it, so that any force can be applied effectively. This is the tactical part, and it is the tactical part that can go wrong. The strategy has a logic of its own. Understanding what that strategy demands is the hard part. Some nations have lost their sovereignty by not understanding what strategy demands. France in 1940 comes to mind. For the United States, there is no threat to sovereignty, but that makes the process harder: Great powers can tend to be casual because the situation is not existential. This increases the cost of doing what is necessary. The ground where we are talking about applying this model is Syria and Iraq. Both of these central governments have lost control of the country as a whole, but each remains a force. Both countries are divided by religion, and the religions are divided internally as well. In a sense the nations have ceased to exist, and the fragments they consisted of are now smaller but more complex entities.
  • There is then the special case of the Islamic State. It is special because its emergence triggered the current crisis. It is special because the brutal murder of two prisoners on video showed a particular cruelty. And it is different because its ideology is similar to that of al Qaeda, which attacked the United States. It has excited particular American passions. To counter this, I would argue that the uprising by Iraq’s Sunni community was inevitable, with its marginalization by Nouri al-Maliki’s Shiite regime in Baghdad. That it took this particularly virulent form is because the more conservative elements of the Sunni community were unable or unwilling to challenge al-Maliki. But the fragmentation of Iraq into Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish regions was well underway before the Islamic State, and jihadism was deeply embedded in the Sunni community a long time ago. Moreover, although the Islamic State is brutal, its cruelty is not unique in the region. Syrian President Bashar al Assad and others may not have killed Americans or uploaded killings to YouTube, but their history of ghastly acts is comparable. Finally, the Islamic State — engaged in war with everyone around it — is much less dangerous to the United States than a small group with time on its hands, planning an attack. In any event, if the Islamic State did not exist, the threat to the United States from jihadist groups in Yemen or Libya or somewhere inside the United States would remain.
  • The issue is whether the United States can live with this situation or whether it must reshape it. The immediate question is whether the United States has the power to reshape it and to what extent. The American interest turns on its ability to balance local forces. If that exists, the question is whether there is any other shape that can be achieved through American power that would be superior. From my point of view, there are many different shapes that can be imagined, but few that can be achieved. The American experience in Iraq highlighted the problems with counterinsurgency or being caught in a local civil war. The idea of major intervention assumes that this time it will be different. This fits one famous definition of insanity.
  • Because the Islamic State operates to some extent as a conventional military force, it is vulnerable to U.S. air power. The use of air power against conventional forces that lack anti-aircraft missiles is a useful gambit. It shows that the United States is doing something, while taking little risk, assuming that the Islamic State really does not have anti-aircraft missiles. But it accomplishes little. The Islamic State will disperse its forces, denying conventional aircraft a target. Attempting to defeat the Islamic State by distinguishing its supporters from other Sunni groups and killing them will founder at the first step. The problem of counterinsurgency is identifying the insurgent. There is no reason not to bomb the Islamic State’s forces and leaders. They certainly deserve it. But there should be no illusion that bombing them will force them to capitulate or mend their ways. They are now part of the fabric of the Sunni community, and only the Sunni community can root them out. Identifying Sunnis who are anti-Islamic State and supplying them with weapons is a much better idea. It is the balance-of-power strategy that the United States follows, but this approach doesn’t have the dramatic satisfaction of blowing up the enemy. That satisfaction is not trivial, and the United States can certainly blow something up and call it the enemy, but it does not address the strategic problem. In the first place, is it really a problem for the United States?
  • There is no reason not to bomb the Islamic State’s forces and leaders. They certainly deserve it. But there should be no illusion that bombing them will force them to capitulate or mend their ways. They are now part of the fabric of the Sunni community, and only the Sunni community can root them out. Identifying Sunnis who are anti-Islamic State and supplying them with weapons is a much better idea. It is the balance-of-power strategy that the United States follows, but this approach doesn’t have the dramatic satisfaction of blowing up the enemy. That satisfaction is not trivial, and the United States can certainly blow something up and call it the enemy, but it does not address the strategic problem. In the first place, is it really a problem for the United States? The American interest is not stability but the existence of a dynamic balance of power in which all players are effectively paralyzed so that no one who would threaten the United States emerges. The Islamic State had real successes at first, but the balance of power with the Kurds and Shia has limited its expansion, and tensions within the Sunni community diverted its attention. Certainly there is the danger of intercontinental terrorism, and U.S. intelligence should be active in identifying and destroying these threats. But the re-occupation of Iraq, or Iraq plus Syria, makes no sense. The United States does not have the force needed to occupy Iraq and Syria at the same time. The demographic imbalance between available forces and the local population makes that impossible.
  • The danger is that other Islamic State franchises might emerge in other countries. But the United States would not be able to block these threats as well as the other countries in the region. Saudi Arabia must cope with any internal threat it faces not because the United States is indifferent, but because the Saudis are much better at dealing with such threats. In the end, the same can be said for the Iranians. Most important, it can also be said for the Turks. The Turks are emerging as a regional power. Their economy has grown dramatically in the past decade, their military is the largest in the region, and they are part of the Islamic world. Their government is Islamist but in no way similar to the Islamic State, which concerns Ankara. This is partly because of Ankara’s fear that the jihadist group might spread to Turkey, but more so because its impact on Iraqi Kurdistan could affect Turkey’s long-term energy plans.
  • The United States cannot win the game of small mosaic tiles that is emerging in Syria and Iraq. An American intervention at this microscopic level can only fail. But the principle of balance of power does not mean that balance must be maintained directly. Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia have far more at stake in this than the United States. So long as they believe that the United States will attempt to control the situation, it is perfectly rational for them to back off and watch, or act in the margins, or even hinder the Americans. The United States must turn this from a balance of power between Syria and Iraq to a balance of power among this trio of regional powers. They have far more at stake and, absent the United States, they have no choice but to involve themselves. They cannot stand by and watch a chaos that could spread to them. It is impossible to forecast how the game is played out. What is important is that the game begins. The Turks do not trust the Iranians, and neither is comfortable with the Saudis. They will cooperate, compete, manipulate and betray, just as the United States or any country might do in such a circumstance. The point is that there is a tactic that will fail: American re-involvement. There is a tactic that will succeed: the United States making it clear that while it might aid the pacification in some way, the responsibility is on regional powers. The inevitable outcome will be a regional competition that the United States can manage far better than the current chaos.
  • U.S. strategy is sound. It is to allow the balance of power to play out, to come in only when it absolutely must — with overwhelming force, as in Kuwait — and to avoid intervention where it cannot succeed. The tactical application of strategy is the problem. In this case the tactic is not direct intervention by the United States, save as a satisfying gesture to avenge murdered Americans. But the solution rests in doing as little as possible and forcing regional powers into the fray, then in maintaining the balance of power in this coalition. Such an American strategy is not an avoidance of responsibility. It is the use of U.S. power to force a regional solution. Sometimes the best use of American power is to go to war. Far more often, the best use of U.S. power is to withhold it. The United States cannot evade responsibility in the region. But it is enormously unimaginative to assume that carrying out that responsibility is best achieved by direct intervention. Indirect intervention is frequently more efficient and more effective.
  • Paul Merrell on 11 Sep 14
     
    The article is by the Chairman of Stratfor, a private intelligence company. I don't agree with its analysis because I am decidedly non-interventionist. But this article should be required reading for all who have fallen for the war fever being spread by the War Party for full-scale military invasion of Iraq and Syria. The article at least lays a sound basis for a large degree of restraint.
Paul Merrell

US hegemonic quest in Mideast creates chaos - Global Times - 0 views

www.globaltimes.cn/...902843.shtml

war & peace economic-warfare U.S.-foreign-policy China Iran New-Silk-Road

shared by Paul Merrell on 20 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • Editor's Note:With the rise of the Islamic State (IS), the conflicts in Syria and Iraq, and the struggle between Iran and the West over nuclear issues, the Middle East remained chaotic in 2014. What about 2015? What kind of role will the US play in the regional political landscape? At a seminar held by the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China, Global Times (GT) reporter Liu Zhun talked to Flynt Leverett (Flynt), former senior director of Middle East Affairs at the National Security Council (NSC), and Hillary Mann Leverett (Hillary), former director of Iran, Afghanistan and Persian Gulf Affairs at the NSC, about these issues. GT: What is your forecast of the situation of the Middle East this year?
  • Flynt: More and more negative consequences of the failed US drive for the hegemony in the Middle East will become increasingly evident. The US is struggling to come to terms with that. Washington should reconsider its basic strategy for this region, but President Barack Obama has a great belief in US' hegemonic agenda. Many analysts in the US argue that Washington should "double-down" on its strategy. But this is the wrong direction.Hillary: There will be more violence throughout the region - violence encouraged by the US. A potential difference rests on the possibility that an alternative mindset will be brought in by China as it rises. Whether Russia, with the support of China and Iran, can put Syria's conflicts on a different trajectory toward resolution is important - whether they can bring in a different paradigm for conflict resolution. I am not sure they can yet, but I am encouraged by China's rise and its focus on sovereignty and conflict resolution. GT: If the US changes its course, will the region be a better place?Flynt: Yes, it will be a better place. The historical record has proven that. For 20 years after China's revolution, the US was doing everything it could to isolate and hurt the People's Republic of China. After it gave up its hostile policies toward China, China, as well as other East Asian countries, embarked on a long and productive period of economic expansion with rising prosperity for hundreds of millions of people. The Middle East will not be perfect after the US changes its policy, but it will be better.
  • GT: But the chaos in the Middle East, much of which is driven by religious issues, is more complicated than the conflicts China encountered with the US, which were basically ideological. What do you think of the role of Islam in the chaos of the Middle East?Hillary: There has been a perception that there is something wrong with Islam and that it is the major contributor to the complications of the problems in the Middle East. But if you look historically, that is not really true. There is no evidence that Muslims are historically terrorists. The head of the IS was in an American prison, where he became more extreme in his own views and forged a network with other extremists.The perennial chaos of the Middle East, to a large extent, is caused by a long history of military penetration by Western countries such as France, the UK and now the US. GT: You suggest the US should shift its Middle East policy and pull back from trying to be a hegemon - for example, by restoring ties with Iran. What do you think of Obama's current strategy to the Middle East?Flynt: People are talking about the Obama doctrine and his being less interventionist. I don't really think that is right. I think the Obama administration is no less committed to so-called global leadership, which is actually hegemony, over strategically important areas like the Middle East. The Obama administration thinks it has a smarter way of promoting that leadership than its immediate predecessor. But that is more a tactical than strategic difference.
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  • GT: China's "One Belt and One Road" project is believed to have a major influence on the Middle East. Will it be a counterbalance of the US' influence in the region?Flynt: US power in the Persian Gulf is in relative decline. But because it is desperate to cling to its hegemonic ambitions in the region, Washington is trying to put China's interests at risk. China will decide what its interests are in the Middle East. As an analytic point, though, if China really wants to have an independent and balanced foreign policy, China will need to decide how accommodating it wants to be of US preferences and to what extent it wants to pursue its own interests, even when the US is not necessarily happy about that. I think the Middle East's engagement in the Silk Road, especially Iran, is going to be a testing ground for China. Hillary: I think the US will definitely disagree with the project. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US has really focused on trying to expand its influence, military or otherwise, on Central Asian states in a bid to put pressure on Russia. This has been a consistent theme through both Democratic and Republican administrations. China's project will unavoidably reach Central Asia, which could lessen interest in those states in aligning with various American projects and make it harder for the US to pressure Russia. Besides, as Iran is central for both Silk Roads, China's good relationship with Iran will be very problematic for the US interests, and also for its hegemonic ambitions across the entire Middle East.
Paul Merrell

'Empire of Chaos' in the House - RT Op-Edge - 0 views

rt.com/...19-empire-saudi-usa-king-obama

war & peace economic-warfare pipelinestan-wars Saudis Russia U.S.-foreign-policy

shared by Paul Merrell on 29 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • And yet, Air Force One, we got a problem. High-level US financial sources assure this correspondent the trip is all about Obama shoring up the new King’s support for their financial/economic war on Russia as the House of Saud is starting to have second thoughts. The Saudi role in this war has been to come up with the oil price shock – which is hurting not only Russia but also Iran and Venezuela, among others. Besides, the US puppet theoretically in charge in Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, has just visited Saudi Arabia. Russia is not Iran – with all due respect to Iran. If the House of Saud really believes they are talking to the head of a superpower rather than a ventriloquist’s puppet – which is Obama’s role – they are effectively doomed. Nothing Obama says means a thing. The real ‘Masters of the Universe’ who run the ‘Empire of Chaos’ want the House of Saud to do most of their dirty work against Russia; and in a later stage they will take care of the “towel heads” - as the saying goes in Washington - over their development of nuclear missiles with Pakistan. And especially because the Saudi-launched oil price war is bound to destroy the US oil industry - against US national interests.
  • The House of Saud has absolutely nothing to gain from this undeclared financial/economic war on Russia. The Saudis have already “lost” Yemen and Iraq. Bahrain is held by mercenary troops containing the alienation of the Shia majority. They are freaking out with the possibility of ultimate “enemy” Iran reaching a nuclear deal with His Master’s Voice. They are desperate that “Assad won’t go”. They want every Muslim Brotherhood in sight – or the vicinity – jailed or beheaded. They fear any Arab Spring-style stirrings as worse than the plague. And then there’s the fake Caliphate of ISIS/ISIL/Daesh threatening to go all the way to Mecca and Medina. The House of Saud is effectively surrounded.
  • Meanwhile, as the tempest approaches, all is smiles – amid a silent family bloodbath. The powerful Sudairi clan has exacted their “revenge” as King Abdullah’s corpse was still warm. King Salman, almost 80, and with Alzheimer’s about to turn him into mush, took no time to appoint his nephew Mohammed bin Naif as deputy crown prince. And just in case nepotism was not evident enough, he also appointed his son Prince Mohammed bin Salman as defense minister. Mohammed bin Naif is a Pentagon/CIA darling; the House of Saud’s head of counterterrorism.
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  • But playing the ‘Empire of Chaos’ game – financial/economic war on Russia - is a game-changer, as in playing with fire. US/EU sanctions, attacks on the oil price and the ruble by giant derivative players as agents, are something way above the Saudi pay grade. The House of Saud swore that they didn’t change their production quota during 2014. But there was an excess supply – and it was brought into the market to help cause the oil price crash, alongside the manipulation by derivatives speculators. Scores of oil analysts still can’t figure out why the House of Saud went after Russia; all reasons are political, not economical (Russian support for Syria and Iran, the Americans agreeing with the strategy, etc.). The fact is Moscow did perceive it as a declaration of economic war by Saudi Arabia. Petroleum Intelligence Weekly, cautiously, has already hinted it may get much worse, as in “potential for disruption in Mideast Gulf monarchies.” Beware of an Emperor bearing gifts – or mourning a late King. The ‘Empire of Chaos’ is essentially asking the House of Saud to keep going kamikaze all the way against Russia. Sooner or later someone in Riyadh will realize this is the roadmap to House suicide.
Paul Merrell

The Daily Dot - The NSA has nearly complete backdoor access to Apple's iPhone - 0 views

www.dailydot.com/...ne-access-camera-mic-appelbaum

surveillance state NSA NSA-targets iPhone

shared by Paul Merrell on 31 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • The U.S. National Security Agency has the ability to snoop on nearly every communication sent from an Apple iPhone, according to leaked documents shared by security researcher Jacob Appelbaum and German news magazine Der Spiegel.  An NSA program called DROPOUTJEEP allows the agency to intercept SMS messages, access contact lists, locate a phone using cell tower data, and even activate the device’s microphone and camera. 
  • According to leaked documents, the NSA claims a 100 percent success rate when it comes to implanting iOS devices with spyware. The documents suggest that the NSA needs physical access to a device to install the spyware—something the agency has achieved by rerouting shipments of devices purchased online—but a remote version of the exploit is also in the works. Appelbaum says that presents one of two possibilities: “Either [the NSA] have a huge collection of exploits that work against Apple products, meaning they are hoarding information about critical systems that American companies produce, and sabotaging them, or Apple sabotaged it themselves,” Appelbaum said at the Chaos Communication Conference in Hamburg, Germany. 
  • “Do you think Apple helped them with that?” Appelbaum asked. “I hope Apple will clarify that.”
  • Paul Merrell on 31 Dec 13
     
    Nice image of a very revealing NSA document and an embedded video of Appelbaum's presentation at the annual Chaos Communication Conference in Hamburg, Germany.  Much of this year's conference was devoted to issues raised by this year's outing of the NSA's activities. 
Paul Merrell

Data-sharing among US law agencies amounts to 'organised chaos' - report | World news |... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...aw-enforcement-organised-chaos

surveillance state NSA FBI fusion centers federalization

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • The sharing of crucial intelligence about counter-terrorism between the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and local police departments takes place through a patchwork process that amounts to “organized chaos”, according to a new report. The report, released Tuesday by the Brennan Center for Justice, a public-policy institute at New York University law school that has a track record of being skeptical of government surveillance, found inconsistent rules, inadequate oversight, apparent wastefulness and insufficient regard for civil liberties nationwide. “This poorly organized system not only wastes time and resources; it also risks masking reliable intelligence that could be crucial to an investigation,” the report says, warning that a “din of data” is overwhelming law enforcement.
  • The Brennan Center report examined 16 major police departments across the US, along with 19 affiliated “fusion centers” – controversial data-sharing pools between federal, state and local agencies – and 14 of the FBI’s joint terrorism task force partnerships with police.
  • Despite efforts by the Department of Homeland Security, most of the fusion centers operate with “minimal oversight, or no oversight whatsoever”, the report found. Out of 19 centers reviewed, only five require independent audits of retained data.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Fusion centers have been the subject of criticism from both civil libertarians and powerful elected officials. A 2012 investigation by the bipartisan Senate permanent subcommittee on investigations of more than 80,000 fusion center documents could not find any contribution the centers had made to “disrupt[ing] an active terrorist plot”. DHS disputes the results of that investigation, as do several legislators on committees overseeing the department. Senator Tom Coburn, an Oklahoman who serves as the top Republican on the Senate government reform and homeland security committee, has emerged as a leading legislative critic of fusion centers and joint terrorism task forces, for many of the same reasons detailed in the Brennan Center report. After a government inquiry indicated many federal data-sharing efforts were duplicative, Coburn issued a statement in April calling them “a vital component of national security”, but adding, “that is not an excuse to waste taxpayer funds”.
  • And all that information is on top of the fruits of the NSA’s vast data collection efforts, which are not entirely off limits to federal law enforcement. The controversial bulk collection of Americans’ phone data has been repeatedly described by the NSA as a tool to aid the FBI in detecting domestic terrorism activity. NSA deputy director John C Inglis recently stated that the FBI cannot search directly through the NSA’s data troves, but the agency shares telephone metadata with the bureau following searches through its databases based on “reasonable articulable suspicion” of connections to specific terrorist organizations.
  • The Brennan Center report did not specifically analyze law enforcement tower dumps, but Price called the reports of them alarming. “This is another indication of the vast trove of information that state and local police are collecting about law abiding Americans,” Price said. “To date, that information does not appear to be particularly useful in preventing terror attacks.”
  • Paul Merrell on 16 Dec 13
     
    The ongoing federalization of state and local law enforcement continues unabated. Today's "fusion centers" have antecedents in the regional "intelligence centers" begun under the guise of Reagan's War on Drugs™, but shifted into a much higher gear under the guise of Bush II's War on Terror™.
Paul Merrell

Tomgram: Engelhardt, The Bermuda Triangle of National Security | TomDispatch - 0 views

www.tomdispatch.com/..._triangle_of_national_security

secret-government national-security-state post-constitutional-America

shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • As with a magician, sometimes you have to look where he isn’t pointing to catch sight of reality.  With that in mind, I’d like to nominate British journalist Patrick Cockburn for a prize.  In the midst of the recent headlines, in the most important article no one noticed, he pointed out something genuinely unnerving about our world.
  • Yes, we’re all aware that the U.S. invasion of Iraq didn’t exactly work out as planned and that Afghanistan has been a nearly 13-year disaster, even though the U.S. faced the most ragtag of minority insurgencies in both places.  What, however, about the monumental struggle that used to be called the Global War on Terror?  After all, we got Osama bin Laden.  It took a while, but SEAL Team 6 shot him down in his hideout in Pakistan.  And for years, thanks to the CIA’s drone assassination campaigns in the Pakistani tribal borderlands, Yemen, and Somalia (as well as a full scale hunter-killer operation in Iraq while we were still occupying that country), we’ve been told that endless key al-Qaeda “lieutenants” have been sent to their deaths and that al-Qaeda in Afghanistan has been reduced to 50-100 members. Yet Cockburn concludes: “Twelve years after the ‘war on terror’ was launched it has visibly failed and al-Qaeda-type jihadis, once confined to a few camps in Afghanistan, today rule whole provinces in the heart of the Middle East.”  Look across that region today and from Pakistan to Libya, you see the rise, not the fall, of jihadis of every type.  In Syria and parts of Iraq, groups that have associated themselves with al-Qaeda now have a controlling military presence in territories the size of, as Cockburn points out, Great Britain.  He calls al-Qaeda’s recent rise as the jihadi brand name of choice and the failure of the U.S. campaign against it “perhaps the most extraordinary development of the 21st century.”  And that, unlike the claims we've been hearing at the top of the news for weeks now, might not be an exaggeration.
  • Looked at another way, despite what had just happened to the Pentagon and those towers in New York, on September 12, 2001, the globe’s “sole superpower” had remarkably few enemies.  Small numbers of jihadis scattered mostly in the backlands of the planet and centered in an impoverished, decimated country -- Afghanistan -- with the most retro regime on Earth.  There were, in addition, three rickety “rogue states” (North Korea, Iraq, and Iran) singled out for enemy status but incapable of harming the U.S., and that was that. The world, as Dick Cheney & Co. took for granted, looked ready to be dominated by the only (angry) hyperpower left after centuries of imperial rivalry.  The U.S. military, its technological capability unrivaled by any state or possible grouping of states, was to be let loose to bring the Greater Middle East to heel in a decisive way.  Between that regular military and para-militarizing intelligence agencies, the planet was to be scoured of enemies, the “swamp drained” in up to 60 countries.  The result would be a Pax Americana in the Middle East, and perhaps even globally, into the distant future.  It was to be legendary.  And no method -- not torture, abuse, kidnapping, the creation of “black sites,” detention without charges, assassination, the creation of secret law, or surveillance on a previously unimaginable scale -- was to be left out of the toolkit used to birth this new all-American planet.  The “gloves” were to be taken off in a big way.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Thirteen years later, those plans, those dreams are down the drain.  The Greater Middle East is in chaos.  The U.S. seems incapable of intervening in a meaningful way just about anywhere on Earth despite the fact that its military remains unchallenged on a global level.  It’s little short of mind-blowing.  And it couldn’t have been more unexpected for those in power in Washington and perhaps for Americans generally.  This is perhaps why, despite changing American attitudes on interventions and future involvement abroad, it’s been so hard to take in, so little focused upon here -- even in the bogus, politicized discussions of American “strength” and “weakness” which circle around the latest Russian events, as they had previously around the crises in Iran and Syria. Somehow, with what in any age would have seemed like a classic winning hand, Washington never put a card on that “table” (on which all “options” were always being kept open) that wasn’t trumped.  Events in Ukraine and the Crimea seem to be part of this. The Chinese had an evocative phrase for times of dynastic collapse: “chaos under heaven.”  Moments when it seems as if the planet itself is shifting on its axis don’t come often, but they may indeed feel like chaos under heaven -- an increasingly apt phrase for a world in which no country seems to exert much control, tensions are rising in hard to identify ways, and the very climate, the very habitability of the planet is increasingly at risk.
  • Paul Merrell on 10 Apr 14
     
    Incrediby perceptive essay by Tom Engelhardt on the state of the national security state.
Paul Merrell

Obama's Gun-Running Operation: Weapons and Support for "Islamic Terrorists" in Syria an... - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5450832

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Obama CIA Benghazi-coverup Iraq Syria ISIL must-read

shared by Paul Merrell on 30 May 15 - No Cached
  • Newly disclosed Pentagon documents prove what we’ve known for a while now: the Obama administration knew as early as 2012 that weapons were being sent from Benghazi, Libya, to rebels in Syria. The U.S. government also knew at the time that: “the Salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood, and [Al Qaeda in Iraq were] the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria.” But did they just “know” or was it part of the plan? These official documents of the Obama administration add to the large  amount of evidence proving that the actual chaos and havoc wreaked by extremist groups in the Middle East was deliberately created by the U.S. and its allies and is not the result of a “failed foreign policy”.
  • Although the documents do not reveal who was responsible for sending weapons to Syria, it is quite obvious from the language used in the documents that it was a US initiative and the CIA presence in Benghazi at the time suggests that US intelligence was behind this gun-running operation.
  • Paul Merrell on 30 May 15
     
    A must-read. The alternative press is on to Obama's "secret" strategy to overthrow the Syrian government and trifurcate Iraq. This article provides lots of links to support its conclusion.
Paul Merrell

"Washington's Determination to Drive the World to War": Will Putin Realize That Russia ... - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5395050

war & peace Ukraine U.S.-foreign-policy Russia Europe economic sanctions

shared by Paul Merrell on 06 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • By Russia’s low key and unthreatening response to Washington’s aggression, thereby giving the West the mistaken signal that Russia is weak and fearful, the Russian government has encouraged Washington’s drive to war.
  • The amazing thing about Russia finding herself on the defensive about sanctions is that Russia, not Washington or the impotent EU, holds all the cards.  Putin can bring down the economies of Europe and throw all of Europe into political and economic chaos simply by turning off the energy supply. Putin would not have to turn off the energy supply for very long before Europe tells Washington good-bye and comes to terms with Russia. The longer Putin waits, the longer Europe has to prepare against Russia’s best weapon that can be used to peacefully resolve the conflict that Washington has orchestrated. Washington’s aggressive moves against Russia will not stop until Putin realizes that he, not Washington, holds the cards, and plays them. The world has had enough of Washington, its constant lies, its constant wars, and its bullying.  Putin would do well to spend a few hours with Belisarius, Justinian the Great’s great general.
  • “When I treat with my enemies,” Belisarius said, “I am more accustomed to give than to receive counsel; but I hold in one hand inevitable ruin, in the other peace and freedom.” That is precisely the position that Vladimir Putin is in with regard to Europe.  In one hand he holds the ruin of Europe.  In the other peace and freedom in the relations between Russia and Europe. He needs to call up the dumbshit European “leaders” and tell them. If Putin does not put his foot down hard and make clear to the Europeans what the stakes are, Washington will succeed in its determination to drive the world to war, and “exceptional and indispensable” Americans will die along with all the rest.
  • Paul Merrell on 06 Aug 14
     
    Paul Craig Roberts thinks he has spotted Europe's jugular vein in the sanctions war over Ukraine. I'll need some time to think about this. Roberts is correct on the location of the jugular vein. But how might the Empire of Chaos with its capitol in Washington, D.C. respond? We've got rabid neocons in control of the Dark State.
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