Group items tagged

It was less than 48 hours ago when Turkey’s prime minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, joined millions marching in Paris to pay tribute to the 17 people killed by ISIS-supporting extremists. Then, almost the moment he got back, things changed, and as the FT politely paraphrases what transpired, the "country’s president struck a much more confrontational tone." That's one way of putting it. Another is that the former PM and current president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, of NATO-member Turkey did the unthinkable: accused the west, and French citizens in particular, of staging the Charlie Hebdo murder in order to blame Muslims, even as the mayor of Ankara said "Mossad is definitely behind such incidents . . . it is boosting enmity towards Islam."

"The duplicity of the west is obvious,” Recep Tayyip Erdogan said at a press conference on Monday evening. “As Muslims we have never sided with terror or massacres: racism, hate speech, Islamophobia are behind these massacres.” His punchline: "The culprits are clear: French citizens undertook this massacre and Muslims were blamed for it,” he added. The FT is confused: "Although political leaders in Turkey have repeatedly condemned the attacks on the Charlie Hebdo magazine, a Jewish supermarket and a policewoman, a parallel narrative has emerged in the country, with conspiracy theorists blaming the murders on foreign intelligence agencies rather than radical Islamists."

The FT is further confused that Turkey is not the only place which has dared to offer conspiratorial theories: Russia is too. In Russia, some pro-Kremlin commentators sought to link the killings to geopolitical machinations by the US.    Komsomolskaya Pravda, one of Russia’s leading tabloids, ran the headline: “Did the Americans stage the terror attack in Paris?” and posted a series of interviews on its website that presented various reasons why Washington might have organised the attack. 

The United States has attempted to claim that the only way to stop the so-called "Islamic State" in Syria and Iraq is to first remove the government in Syria. Complicating this plan are developments in Libya, benefactor of NATO's last successful regime change campaign. In 2011, NATO armed, funded, and backed with a sweeping air campaign militants in Libya centered around the eastern Libyan cities of Tobruk, Derna, and Benghazi. By October 2011, NATO successfully destroyed the Libyan government, effectively handing the nation over to these militants. 

What ensued was a campaign of barbarism, genocide, and sectarian extremism as brutal in reality as what NATO claimed in fiction was perpetrated by the Libyan government ahead of its intervention. The so-called "rebels" NATO had backed were revealed to be terrorists led by Al Qaeda factions including the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) and Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). The so-called "pro-democracy protesters" Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi was poised to attack in what NATO claimed was pending "genocide" were in fact heavily armed terrorists that have festered for decades in eastern Libya. Almost immediately after NATO successfully destroyed Libya's government, its terrorist proxies were mobilized to take part in NATO's next campaign against Syria. Libyan terrorists were sent first to NATO-member Turkey were they were staged, armed, trained, and equipped, before crossing the Turkish-Syrian border to take part in the fighting. 

CNN in an article titled, "ISIS comes to Libya," claims: The black flag of ISIS flies over government buildings. Police cars carry the group's insignia. The local football stadium is used for public executions. A town in Syria or Iraq? No. A city on the coast of the Mediterranean, in Libya.  Fighters loyal to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria are now in complete control of the city of Derna, population of about 100,000, not far from the Egyptian border and just about 200 miles from the southern shores of the European Union.  The fighters are taking advantage of political chaos to rapidly expand their presence westwards along the coast, Libyan sources tell CNN. Only the black flag of Al Qaeda/ISIS has already long been flying over Libya - even at the height of NATO's intervention there in 2011.  ISIS didn't "come to" Libya, it was always there in the form of Al Qaeda's local franchises LIFG and AQIM - long-term, bitter enemies of the now deposed and assassinated Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi.

The late January visit to Armenia by Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif got little media attention, but it could have significant ramifications for geopolitics in Eurasia. Specifically, the trip could help Russia gain a trade outlet that softens the blow of Western sanctions.

Most significantly, Zarif said Iran has “no restrictions” in developing ties with Armenia, highlighting two areas in particular – transportation and trade. On both fronts, the role of Russia looms large. First, both Tehran and Yerevan have emphasized the need to make progress on the construction of the Southern Armenia Railway, a project that would better link the two countries. On the issue of trade, Zarif praised Armenia’s accession to the Russia-dominated Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) and pointed to it as a potentially important development for Iran.

a Russian angle to the construction of the Southern Armenia Railway is apparent. As Prime Minister Abrahamyan put it, “Iran and Armenia can jointly produce agricultural products and export them to Eurasia” via the proposed rail project. However, both Moscow and Tehran evidently have much greater ambitions than just providing an outlet to and from the small Armenian market. Iran’s trade with Armenia is only about $300 million per year, a tiny share of its overall trade. The 470-km rail project, which was first proposed in 2010 and has remained largely on the drawing board since then, is seen as a missing link in a North-South Eurasian trade corridor connecting the Persian Gulf to the Black Sea. Its construction would give both Iran and Russia an important alternative outlet for trade. The significance of the project is also reflected in President Vladimir Putin’s announcement back in September 2013 to contribute $429 million in financing for the multi-billion-dollar rail project. Given its current economic woes, there is no longer a guarantee that Russia could follow through on Putin’s pledge. Still, Russian diplomatic and economic interests in Iran are intensifying.

After the huge mistakes in Iraq and Afghanistan, and confronted now by new threats amid extraordinary geopolitical shifts, senior British army officers under the incoming chief of the general staff, Sir Nick Carter, are planning potentially far-reaching reforms. An eyecatching centrepiece is the formation of the 77th Brigade, inspired by the Chindits, the guerrilla unit which operated behind enemy lines during the Burma campaign against the Japanese during the second world war.

The emphasis now is not so much on military force but "political warfare", including psychological operations (psyops), deception, and media operations (hence the numerous references in recent stories by defence journalists to "facebook warriors"). The new Chindit brigade, consisting of reservists and civilian specialists as well as regular troops, is designed to help the army win non-kinetic battles in an age of internet warfare and cyber attacks. The unit would "play a key part in enabling the UK to fight in the information age", said an army spokesman.

Disrupting communications and spreading and countering sophisticated propaganda will be the new Chindits' priorities but the environment they will operate in will be very different from that of the Burmese jungle. 1,500 or so new Chindits, who will based near Newbury in Berkshire, could provide just the kind of help Ukraine was asking for on Monday – jamming the communications of pro-Russian, and Russian, forces in the east of the country. Carter and his advisers, meanwhile, are planning to streamline the army's hierarchy, culling perhaps a third of its 500 colonels and 200 brigadiers and generals. No senior officers were sacked over Iraq or Afghanistan. The idea is to change the culture of the top brass, to encourage individuals who have demonstrated their ability – and confidence – to understand the new world, of geopolitics as well as of conflict.

The U.S. is running around in circles in the Middle East, patching together coalitions here, acquiring strange bedfellows there, and in location after location trying to figure out who the enemy of its enemy actually is. The result is just what you'd expect: chaos further undermining whatever’s left of the nations whose frailty birthed the jihadism America is trying to squash. And in a classic tale of unintended consequences, just about every time Washington has committed another blunder in the Middle East, Iran has stepped in to take advantage. Consider that country the rising power in the region and credit American clumsiness for the new Iranian ascendancy.

In response to the tragic Paris events of November 13, Central Intelligence Agency director  John Brennan  warned that “ISIL is planning additional attacks… It is clear to me that ISIL has an external agenda, that they are determined to carry out these types of attacks.” (Quoted in Daily Telegraph, November 16, 2015) Five days later following the CIA Chief’s  premonition, the Bamako Radisson Hotel Blu in Mali’s capital was the object of a terrorist attack, resulting in  21 people dead. Following the attack and the taking of hostages by the terrorists, French and Malian special forces raided the hotel. US. Africa Command (AFRICOM) also confirmed that US special forces were involved.

The Bamako terror operation was allegedly coordinated by Mokhtar Belmokhtar (aka Khaled Abu al-Abbas), leader of an affiliate of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the Islamist al-Mulathameen (Masked) Brigade, or “Those who Sign with Blood.” Belmokhtar’s group was created in 2012 in the wake of the war on Libya. His organization has also allegedly been involved in the drug trade, smuggling as well kidnapping operations of foreigners in North Africa.  While his whereabouts are said to be known, French intelligence has dubbed Belmokhtar “the uncatchable”. In June he was reported dead  as a result in a U.S. air strike in Libya. His death was subsequently denied. Based on shaky evidence, The New York Times report below (November 20) concludes that Belmokhtar’s group (together with AQIM) is unequivocally behind the Bamako attacks:

A member of Al Qaeda in Africa confirmed Saturday that the attack Friday on a hotel in Bamako, Mali, had been carried out by a jihadist group loyal to Mokhtar Belmokhtar, an Algerian operative for Al Qaeda. The Qaeda member, who spoke via an online chat, said that an audio message and a similar written statement in which the group claimed responsibility for the attack were authentic. The SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors jihadist groups, also confirmed the authenticity of the statement. The Qaeda member, who refused to be named for his protection, said that Mr. Belmokhtar’s men had collaborated with the Saharan Emirate of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, … In the audio recording, the group, known as Al Mourabitoun, says it carried out the operation in conjunction with Al Qaeda’s branch in the Islamic Maghreb. The recording was released to the Al Jazeera network and simultaneously to Al Akhbar, … The recording states: “We, in the group of the Mourabitoun [Arabic Rebel Group], in cooperation with our brothers in Al Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb, the great desert area, claim responsibility for the hostage-taking operation in the Radisson hotel in Bamako.” (emphasis added)

Riyadh was fully aware the beheading of respected Saudi Shi'ite cleric Nimr al-Nimr was a deliberate provocation bound to elicit a rash Iranian response. The Saudis calculated they could get away with it; after all they employ the best American PR machine petrodollars can buy, and are viscerally defended by the usual gaggle of nasty US neo-cons.    In a post-Orwellian world "order" where war is peace and "moderate" jihadis get a free pass, a House of Saud oil hacienda cum beheading paradise — devoid of all civilized norms of political mediation and civil society participation — heads the UN Commission on Human Rights and fattens the US industrial-military complex to the tune of billions of dollars while merrily exporting demented Wahhabi/Salafi-jihadism from MENA (Middle East-Northern Africa) to Europe and from the Caucasus to East Asia. 

And yet major trouble looms. Erratic King Salman's move of appointing his son, the supremely arrogant and supremely ignorant Prince Mohammad bin Salman to number two in the line of succession has been contested even among Wahhabi hardliners. But don't count on petrodollar-controlled Arab media to tell the story. English-language TV network Al-Arabiyya, for instance, based in the Emirates, long financed by House of Saud members, and owned by the MBC conglomerate, was bought by none other than Prince Mohammad himself, who will also buy MBC. With oil at less than $40 a barrel, largely thanks to Saudi Arabia's oil war against both Iran and Russia, Riyadh's conventional wars are taking a terrible toll. The budget has collapsed and the House of Saud has been forced to raise taxes. The illegal war on Yemen, conducted with full US acquiescence, led by — who else — Prince Mohammad, and largely carried out by the proverbial band of mercenaries, has instead handsomely profited al-Qaeda in the Arabic Peninsula (AQAP), just as the war on Syria has profited mostly Jabhat al-Nusra, a.k.a. al-Qaeda in Syria.

Saudi Arabia is essentially a huge desert island. Even though the oil hacienda is bordered by the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, the Saudis don't control what matters: the key channels of communication/energy exporting bottlenecks — the Bab el-Mandeb and the Straits of Hormuz, not to mention the Suez canal. Enter US "protection" as structured in a Mafia-style "offer you can't refuse" arrangement; we guarantee safe passage for the oil export flow through our naval patrols and you buy from us, non-stop, a festival of weapons and host our naval bases alongside other GCC minions. The "protection" used to be provided by the former British empire. So Saudi Arabia — as well as the GCC — remains essentially an Anglo-American satrapy.          Al Sharqiyya — the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia — holds only 4 million people, the overwhelming majority Shi'ites. And yet it produces no less than 80% of Saudi oil. The heart of the action is the provincial capital Al Qatif, where Nimr al-Nimr was born. We're talking about the largest oil hub on the planet, consisting of 12 crisscrossed pipelines that connect to massive Gulf oil terminals such as Dhahran and Ras Tanura.

By Pepe Escobar September 30, 2018 4:36 PM (UTC+8) Share Tweet Linkedin Print Email Share 0 Comment 0 History may one day rule this was the fateful geopolitical moment when the European Union clinched its PhD on foreign policy. Last week, EU foreign policy head Federica Mogherini and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, announced at the UN a “special purpose vehicle” (SPV) to deal with the Trump administration’s sanctions on Iran after the US unilaterally pulled out of the JCPOA,  also known as the Iran nuclear deal.

Mogherini crucially emphasized, “in practical terms, this will mean that EU member states will set up a legal entity to facilitate legitimate financial transactions with Iran and this will allow European companies to continue to trade with Iran in accordance with European Union law and could be open to other partners in the world.” The SPV, which according to Mogherini “is aimed at keeping trade with Tehran flowing while the US sanctions are in place,” could be in effect before the second stage of US sanctions begin in early November. This single initiative means Brussels is attempting to position itself as a serious geopolitical player, openly defying the US and essentially nullifying the Iran demonization campaign launched by the White House, CIA and State Department.

It may have taken a few months, but the EU-3 have finally realized what Moscow and Beijing already knew: any business with Iran – which is in the interest of all players – must bypass the US dollar. So now we come to a situation where the EU-3 will set up a multinational, state-backed, financial mechanism to help European companies conduct business with Iran in euros – and thus away from US financial enforcers. In parallel, we will have Russia and China doing business with Iran in rubles and yuan.

While Trump's Twitter activity from yesterday continues to drive media and political outrage, especially in the UK, and with the focus of the frenzied coverage being that the president retweeted a far-right U.K. leader's "anti-Muslim videos", there is actually something much more interesting concerning the context to the “Muslim Destroys A Statue Of Virgin Mary” video. That particular video shared by the president is from 2013 and shows a Free Syrian Army (FSA) commander named Omar Gharba destroying a Virgin Mary statue as the group invaded a Syrian Christian town. In a geopolitical and deeply ironic twist demonstrating the absurdity and contradictions of US foreign policy, the radical Islamist commander was actually supported by the United States at the time as part of the FSA, which the media and US government deemed "moderate".  So a sitting US president shared a video which reveals a Syrian "rebel" fighter committing war crimes who was part of one of the very groups backed by the CIA as official US policy under the Obama administration. Of course it is likely that Trump himself is not fully aware of this, yet the astounding geopolitical irony in this should not be missed, even as public outrage is reduced to merely discussing "anti-Muslim bigotry" and whether or not Trump is being "presidential".

nd while multiple media outlets, for example NPR, continue to claim the videos are "unverified" and "have no context" or are of "murky origins" (as the Washington Post wrongly claims), this particular video especially was widely shared and discussed among the world's top Syria analysts and Middle East scholars at the time. The video was taken in 2013 and shows the Wahhabi cleric and FSA commander smashing the Christian statue in connection with the US-backed group's prior attack on Yakubiya in Idlib province. The book, The Islamic State: Combating The Caliphate Without Borders, authored by counter-terrorism experts Yonah and Dean Alexander, gives his full name as Omar Gharba al-Khojji and like vast numbers of FSA fighters he eventually jointed ISIS (some online sources alternately list his name as Omar Raghba).

akubiyah was a mostly Christian village principally comprised of Armenian Orthodox and Catholic churches which after being taken over by the FSA was subsequently held by ISIS. The local Christians saw no distinction between the invading FSA and ISIS fighters as it was primarily the US-backed FSA which began massacring Christians and looting churches. Even the US government funded Voice of America news had this to say based on an interview with a Christian survivor: Christian refugees described to VOA the execution of a half dozen of their co-religionists in the northwestern village of al-Yakubiye, in Idlib province, by Sunni Muslims aligned with the Western-backed Free Syrian Army. Rahel, a 45-year-old former teacher, said, “Al Nusra didn’t come to our village; the people who came were from villages close by, and they were Free Syrian Army.”   ...Nearly a third of Syria’s Christians, an estimated 600,000, have fled the country. Before the war, Christians accounted for about 10 percent of Syria’s population of 22 million. And The Daily Beast also confirmed at the time that "nearly all Christians have fled [Yakubiyah] after half a dozen were executed with their heads chopped off and about 20 more were kidnapped" by the US sponsored FSA. Furthermore, an October 2013 report in Arabic media confirmed that, Terrorists belonging to al-Nusra front broke into homes in Yakubiyah in Syria's Idlib province, killed a Chrisitan man and destroyed a Virgin Mary statue. Upon arrival at a house that had the statue of virgin Mary, Wahhabi cleric, Omar Gharba' carried the statue of the Virgin Mary after it was taken over by militants from the "Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant" (ISIL) and broke it by throwing it on the ground. He stated that he and his fellow Wahhabis won't tolerate any form of worship except strict Wahhabism of Saudi Arabia.   "God willing, Only God will be worshipped in the land of the Levant," the terrorist who destroyed the statue said, noting that "no other idol will be worshiped after these days . We won't accept but the religion of Allah and the Sunnah of our Prophet Mohammed bin Abdullah." In 2012 and 2013 Omar Gharba's name appeared somewhat frequently in Western news reports as he was interviewed on a few occasions and presented as a "moderate" rebel, for example by BBC Arabic in 2012. The below video is one such example of Omar Gharba insisting that he and his fellow FSA militants would be tolerant and respectful of Christians and other religious minorities should they inherit power by toppling the Assad government  - though he was subsequently outed as the destroyer of the Virgin Mary statue, as the edit of the video interview makes clear.

Previously, when looking at the real underlying national interests responsible for the deteriorating situation in Syria, which eventually may and/or will devolve into all out war with hundreds of thousands killed, we made it very clear that it was always and only about the gas, or gas pipelines to be exact, and specifically those involving the tiny but uber-wealthy state of Qatar. Needless to say, the official spin on events has no mention of this ulterior motive, and the popular, propaganda machine, especially from those powers supporting the Syrian "rebels" which include Israel, the US and the Arabian states tries to generate public and democratic support by portraying Assad as a brutal, chemical weapons-using dictator, in line with the tried and true script used once already in Iraq. On the other hand, there is Russia (and to a lesser extent China: for China's strategic interests in mid-east pipelines, read here), which has been portrayed as the main supporter of the "evil" Assad regime, and thus eager to preserve the status quo without a military intervention

However, one question that has so far remained unanswered, and a very sensitive one now that the US is on the verge of voting to arm the Syrian rebels, is who was arming said group of Al-Qaeda supported militants up until now. Now, finally, courtesy of the FT we have the (less than surprising) answer, which goes back to our original thesis, and proves that, as so often happens in the middle east, it is once again all about the natural resources. From the FT: The tiny gas-rich state of Qatar has spent as much as $3bn over the past two years supporting the rebellion in Syria, far exceeding any other government, but is now being nudged aside by Saudi Arabia as the prime source of arms to rebels.

Why would Qatar want to become involved in Syria where they have little invested?  A map reveals that the kingdom is a geographic prisoner in a small enclave on the Persian Gulf coast.   It relies upon the export of LNG, because it is restricted by Saudi Arabia from building pipelines to distant markets.  In 2009, the proposal of a pipeline to Europe through Saudi Arabia and Turkey to the Nabucco pipeline was considered, but Saudi Arabia that is angered by its smaller and much louder brother has blocked any overland expansion.   Already the largest LNG producer, Qatar will not increase the production of LNG.  The market is becoming glutted with eight new facilities in Australia coming online between 2014 and 2020.   A saturated North American gas market and a far more competitive Asian market leaves only Europe.  The discovery in 2009 of a new gas field near Israel, Lebanon, Cyprus, and Syria opened new possibilities to bypass the Saudi Barrier and to secure a new source of income.  Pipelines are in place already in Turkey to receive the gas.  Only Al-Assad is in the way.

China said on Monday it was willing to consider any application from NATO-member Turkey to join a Russian and Chinese-led security bloc, after Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said his country could join.China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan formed the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in 2001 to fight threats posed by radical Islam and drug trafficking from neighbouring Afghanistan.Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said Turkey was already a "dialogue partner" of the regional bloc and had for a long time closely cooperated with it.China attached great importance to Turkey's wish to strengthen that cooperation, he told a news briefing.

Erdogan was quoted on Sunday as saying that Turkey did not need to join the European Union "at all costs" and could instead become part of the SCO. Turkish government spokesman Numan Kurtulmus said on Monday that closer ties with the SCO would not mean Turkey turning its back on other allies."Turkey, with its history, culture, geopolitics and potential, is one of the few countries in the world that can cooperate with every corner of the world simultaneously," he told a news conference in the capital Ankara."A step taken (with the SCO) does not mean it will end Turkey’s relations with another country." Turkish membership of the bloc would nonetheless be likely to alarm Western allies and fellow NATO members.Having long been critical of Turkey's record on democratic freedoms, European leaders have been alarmed by Erdogan's crackdown on opponents since a failed coup attempt in July, and Turkey's prospects of joining the EU look more remote than ever after 11 years of negotiations.

US-based corporate-financier funded policy think tank, the Brookings Institution, published a particularly incoherent piece titled, “Should we work with the devil we know against the Islamic State?” The piece’s author, a senior fellow in the Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings, Daniel Byman, claims (emphasis added): Saudi Arabia has proven a major source of terrorist recruits and financing, while the Syria-Turkey border was a major crossing point for Islamic State recruits. Both countries [Saudi Arabia and Turkey] still have much to do, but that’s the point—if the Trump administration alienates them, the Islamic State problem will get much worse. With the United States on the other side in Syria, Turkey and Saudi Arabia might send anti-aircraft weapons to Syrian rebels and otherwise escalate the fighting in ways dangerous for international terrorism—actions that, so far, the United States has helped reduce. In essence, Byman is admitting what the rest of the world already long ago concluded – the vast fighting capacity the so-called “Islamic State” (ISIS) possesses is not only a result of immense state sponsorship, it is sponsored by two of America’s closest allies in the region – Saudi Arabia and NATO-member Turkey.

Byman’s other ‘moral metrics’ for opposing Syria include “supporting terrorism against Israel” and being otherwise opposed to “U.S. interests,” but neither accusation is qualified. In reality, Byman is admitting that the US is aligned with two of the largest regional sponsors of terrorism, including sponsors aiding and abetting ISIS itself, and seeks to depose the Syrian government because it otherwise opposes US interests. Byman then claims: Assad’s regime is the primary culprit in a war that has killed roughly half a million Syrians and driven millions more into long-term exile. Byman also laments that an Assad victory would create more refugees still – apparently oblivious to the “successful” regime change the US carried out in Libya in 2011, leaving the nation a failed state and the epicenter of the current and still ongoing regional refugee crisis. In his eagerness to blame the Syrian government for the ongoing war, Byman strategically omits his own direct role and those of other US policymakers who, for years before the war began, advocated and plotted for its fruition.

As early as 2007, US journalists like Pulitzer Prize-winner Seymour Hersh warned of US policymakers plotting with Saudi Arabia to use militants aligned with Al Qaeda to overthrow the governments of both Syria and Iran. In his article, “The Redirection: Is the Administration’s new policy benefitting our enemies in the war on terrorism?,” Hersh prophetically reported (emphasis added): To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda. Byman himself, in 2009, would sign his name to a Brookings policy paper titled, “Which Path to Persia?: Options for a New American Strategy Toward Iran” (PDF), in which he and other US policymakers would advocate the use of terrorism, color revolutions, staged provocations, sanctions and a vast array of other methods to provoke war with and overthrow the government of Iran. As a prerequisite for war with Iran, the paper noted that Syria would need to be dealt with. In 2011, it became clear that many of the methods described in minute detail in the Brookings policy paper were put into practice, targeting the government in Damascus, not Tehran.

President Barack Obama has ordered a waiver of restrictions on military aid for foreign forces and others in Syria, deeming it “essential to the national security interests” of the US to allow exceptions from provisions in the four-decades-old Arms Export Control Act.

A White House press release Thursday announced that foreign fighters in Syria supporting US special operations “to combat terrorism in Syria” would be excused from restrictions on military assistance. “I hereby determine that the transaction, encompassing the provision of defense articles and services to foreign forces, irregular forces, groups, or individuals engaged in supporting or facilitating ongoing U.S. military operations to counter terrorism in Syria, is essential to the national security interests of the United States,” President Obama affirmed in the presidential determination and waiver. The order delegates responsibility to the US secretary of state to work with and report to Congress on weapons export proposals, requiring 15 days of notice before they are authorized. Obama announced a similar waiver of the Arms Export Control Act in September 2013, following the Ghouta chemical attack in August of that year. That order facilitated the transfer of US military weaponry to "select vetted members" of opposition forces battling Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, while Thursday's order appears less narrow in scope. Last year, Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2016, which allocated nearly $500 million to arm and train "moderate rebels" in Syria, despite a failed Pentagon program abandoned earlier in 2015. The challenge of differentiating between terrorist forces, such as Al-Nusra, and more moderate forces in Syria has been acknowledged by press secretaries in recent State Department briefings

The “counterterrorism” pretext is just a “convenient misappropriation of language,” aimed at arming various militants to battle the Syrian Army and its allies, believes geopolitical analyst Patrick Henningsen. “Putting this under the banner of fighting terrorism … follows on [from] a sort of fantasy concept that’s been pushed out as a talking point for the last year and a half, that if we train and equip the ‘moderate opposition’ they will fight [Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL)],” Henningsen told RT. “They want to open the floodgates basically for trafficking weapons to religious extremists and militants and terrorist groups, internationally recognized terrorist groups … it’s all being done still under this kind of false pretense of the fight against ISIS, that somehow ‘moderate’ rebels, if they even exist, will turn their weapons and fight against ISIS. And we know from the facts on the ground, from the beginning, that [this] simply has not been the case. This is to arm the opposition to fight the Syrian government and to fight Russian forces. This is a desperate move on the part of the lame duck president.” President Obama’s decision could lead to an almost immediate escalation of the conflict and basically put the US in a situation of “waging a proxy war against the Russians and Syrians,” a former Pentagon official, Michael Maloof, told RT. “The rebels, whom we cannot identify, are going to be getting some very sophisticated weapons. Potentially, I should say, man-portable air defense systems, which can knock down Russian and Syrian aircraft,” Maloof said. “And the fact too, that we have stocks already in Europe, that can easily be transferred with this waiver. Under the waiver, it’s supposed to be a 15-day notification to Congress, but Congress, as of tonight, Washington time, is going to be out of session until January. So these arms can go within hours.”

It’s hard to overestimate the value of planning in advance, especially when it comes to getting reservations in popular restaurants and invading countries by military force. In the week of the May 9th Victory Day two significant failures took place  each one remarkable in its own way. Each event went completely unreported by the Western corporate and government media, but discussed on Social Media.

In the following three weeks after the incident with the USS Florida, while Russia was preparing for Victory Day celebrations and all eyes were on Moscow, attention of Ukrainians was fully concentrated on the visit of Victoria Nuland to Kiev on April 26th allegedly to discuss the implementation of the Minsk II Agreement and the future elections in Donetsk and Lugansk republics. Since the day when President Putin said that the republics can have their elections anytime they want, the question of these elections ceased to be a subject of blackmail toward the Kremlin.   It appeared that the true reason for Nuland’s visit could be located to the west of Kiev, rather than the east. Just recently, Robert D. Kaplan, a former Stratfor’s Chief Geopolitical Analyst, and currently a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) has published a book “In Europe’s Shadow” where he lays out a plan to reunite Romania with “its lost province of Moldova.” Nuland visited Moldova back in January, with the task to coerce Moldova’s government and its oligarchs to change the country’s Constitution provision of neutrality. Before she left, she gave a short speech at the American Embassy in Bucharest after a private dinner with PM Ciolos and President Klaus. “We powerfully support the desire of the people in Moldova to have responsible leaders who can implement reforms. This is the best way to assure the future of Moldova. Romania and the United States, in conjunction with NATO, have support programs in place to assure the security of Moldova but the government has to work to implement these programs.”

Moldova is one of the poorest countries in Eastern Europe, and its economy heavily relies on Russia. According to the CIA Fact Book: Moldova’s annual remittances of about $1.12 billion comes from the roughly one million Moldovans working in Europe, Russia, and other former Soviet Bloc countries; Moldova imports almost all of its energy supplies from Russia and Ukraine; Moldova’s dependence on Russian energy is underscored by a more than $5 billion debt to Russian natural gas supplier Gazprom; Moldova signed an Association Agreement and a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement with the EU during fall 2014, however its biggest trade partner remains Russia. Everyone understands that a NATO membership will cut all economic ties with Russia, including jobs, and it will turn Moldova into a failed state, or in the CIA doublespeak, the country would stop being vulnerable to “Russian pressure.” Apparently, the failure of Moldova as a state, and its disappearance as a nation is also what the EU wants. On January 6, the new Moldovan Ambassador to Germany was presenting his credentials when, out of the blue, the German president asked the new ambassador what the procedure was for Republic of Moldova to formally unite with Romania. On May 4th, the Katehon reported on Vladimir Plahotniuc’s (the infamous Moldavian oligarch and mafia boss) visit to the US and his meeting with Victoria Nuland there. As the Victory Day celebration was approaching, we all fully anticipated from the US to conduct terror acts, military excursions/drills, and political and legal attacks on Russia as the US and the EU always do to harass Russia during its major national and Church holidays.

Every political junkie on the planet has to be glued to the ongoing Brazilian House of Cards, consistently offering an unparalleled feast of cheap thrills.The latest cliffhanger was the leak of a conversation between one of the key operators involved in the oil giant Petrobras corruption scandal and a senator and short-lived Minister of Planning in the usurper interim government currently replacing President Dilma Rousseff while she is undergoing an impeachment trial by the Senate.  Call the leak a short autopsy of what from the beginning should have been defined as golpeachment; a mix of coup (“golpe”, in Portuguese) and impeachment, which took place in a one/two sequential vote in the Brazilian Congress and Senate, as a notorious congregation of crooks investigated for myriad offenses and crimes seized power in Brasilia in a full-fledged Buffon’s Opera. I call their scam Provisional Banana Scoundrel Republic (PBSR).  

The leak/autopsy duly unveiled how the PBSR cancer progressed.  One of the key plotters outlines the coup; stresses how it should protect Brazilian plutocracy/kleptocracy from unintended consequences of the ongoing, two-year-old Car Wash corruption investigation; and how the Left – from President Rousseff to Lula and the Workers’ Party – should be criminalized for good. 

The rest would be history, including the demolition of recently acquired social and workers’ rights via the imposition of a neoliberal restoration; total reversion in foreign policy, with geopolitical and geoeconomic relations back to a colonized mindset; and the reestablishment of a conservative, neoliberal, rentier hegemonic class lording over a socially-oriented, democratic society. That fits in with the current Brazilian Congress and Senate dominated by “BBB” interests. “BBB” stands for Beef (the powerful agribusiness lobby); Bullet (the weapons and private security complex); and Bible (evangelical fanatics), all supported by corporate media. Many of these unsavory characters are connected and/or represent the toxic Brazilian rural aristocracy – which are in fact heirs to nobility titles handed over to slave owners. It was going all so swell after only a few days – even with the former head of the lower house, notorious crook Eduardo Cunha, temporarily sidelined; Cunha – the ringleader of a campaign financing scam inside Congress – de facto had become the Prime Minister of the puppet former Vice-President and current, interim President Michel Temer. 

On June 28th 2009, Honduran soldiers marched into the bedroom of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya while he was in his pajamas and forced him at gunpoint to walk into a waiting jet and exiled him to Costa Rica. Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton condemned the ouster of the Honduran President as a coup as she called for “the full restoration of democratic order in Honduras.” The “democratic order” Clinton was suggesting was not to restore Zelaya as the legitimate president but a president (or more like a U.S. Puppet) that Washington finds suitable for its interests. Roberto Micheletti replaced Zelaya as an interim president. Micheletti lived in the U.S. (Florida) early in his life. Hillary Clinton’s involvement in the overthrow of the democratically elected president of Honduras Manual Zelaya is clear while most of the main-stream media ignores Clinton’s involvement in destroying yet another democracy in Central America by the U.S. government. Central America has experienced U.S. orchestrated coups and civil wars in the past including Guatemala (1954), Costa Rica (mid 1950’’s and 1970-71) and civil wars in Nicaragua (1981-90) and El Salvador (1981-92).

In a memo to President Obama, former National Security Agency insiders explain how NSA leaders botched intelligence collection and analysis before 9/11, covered up the mistakes, and violated the constitutional rights of the American people, all while wasting billions of dollars and misleading the public. January 7, 2014 MEMORANDUM FOR: The President FROM: Former NSA Senior Executives/Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) SUBJECT: Input for Your Decisions on NSA

Signed/ William Binney, former Technical Director, World Geopolitical & Military Analysis; Co-founder of the SIGINT Automation Research Center. Thomas Drake, former Defense Intelligence Senior Executive Service, NSA Edward Loomis, former Chief, SIGINT Automation Research Center, NSA J. Kirk Wiebe, former Senior Analyst, SIGINT Automation Research Center, NSA PREPARED UNDER AUSPICES OF AD HOC STEERING GROUP, VETERAN INTELLIGENCE PROFESSIONALS FOR SANITY

Here's the US's exceptionalist promotion of "democracy" in action; Washington has recognized a coup d'etat in Ukraine that regime-changed a - for all its glaring faults - democratically elected government. And here is Russian President Vladimir Putin, already last year, talking about how Russia and China decided to trade in roubles and yuan, and stressing how Russia needs to quit the "excessive monopoly" of the US dollar. He had to be aware the Empire would strike back. Now there's more; Russian presidential adviser Sergey Glazyev <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> told RIA Novosti, "Russia will abandon the US dollar as a reserve currency if the United States initiates sanctions against the Russian Federation." So the Empire struck back by giving "a little help" to regime change in the Ukraine. And Moscow counter-punched by taking control of Crimea in less than a day without firing a shot - with or without crack Spetsnaz brigades (UK-based think tanks say they are; Putin says they are not).

Putin's assessment of what happened in Ukraine is factually correct; "an anti-constitutional takeover and armed seizure of power". It's open to endless, mostly nasty debate whether the Kremlin overreacted or not. Considering the record of outright demonization of both Russia and Putin going on for years - and now reaching fever pitch - the Kremlin's swift reaction was quite measured. Putin applied Sun Tzu to the letter, and now plays the US against the EU. He has made it clear Moscow does not need to "invade" Ukraine. The 1997 Ukraine-Russia partition treaty specifically allows Russian troops in Crimea. And Russia after all is an active proponent of state sovereignty; it's under this principle that Moscow refuses a Western "intervention" in Syria. What he left the door open for is - oh cosmic irony of ironies - an American invention/intervention (and that, predictably, was undetectable by Western corporate media); the UN's R2P - "responsibility to protect" - in case the Western-aligned fascists and neo-nazis in Ukraine threaten Russians or Russian-speaking civilians with armed conflict. Samantha Power should be proud of herself.

The "West" once again has learned you don't mess with Russian intelligence, which in a nutshell preempted in Crimea a replica of the coup in Kiev, largely precipitated by UNA-UNSO - a shady, ultra-rightwing, crack paramilitary NATO-linked force using Ukraine as base, as exposed by William Engdahl. And Crimea was an even murkier operation, because those neo-nazis from Western Ukraine were in tandem with Tatar jihadis (the House of Saud will be heavily tempted to finance them from now on). The Kremlin is factually correct when pointing out that the coup was essentially conducted by fascists and ultra-right "nationalists" - Western code for neo-nazis. Svoboda ("Freedom") party political council member Yury Noyevy even admitted openly that using EU integration as a pretext "is a means to break our ties with Russia." Western corporate media always conveniently forgets that Svoboda - as well as the Right Sector fascists - follow in the steps of Galician fascist/terrorist Stepan Bandera, a notorious asset of a basket of "Western" intel agencies. Now Svoboda has managed to insert no less than six bigwigs as part of the new regime in Kiev.

While Europe is furiously scrambling to find alternative sources of energy should Gazprom pull the plug on natgas exports to Germany and Europe (the imminent surge in Ukraine gas prices by 40% is probably the best indication of what the outcome would be), Russia is preparing the announcement of the "Holy Grail" energy deal with none other than China, a move which would send geopolitical shockwaves around the world and bind the two nations in a commodity-backed axis. One which, as some especially on these pages, have suggested would lay the groundwork for a new joint, commodity-backed reserve currency that bypasses the dollar, something which Russia implied moments ago when its finance minister Siluanov said that Russia may refrain from foreign borrowing this year. Translated: bypass western purchases of Russian debt, funded by Chinese purchases of US Treasurys, and go straight to the source. Here is what will likely happen next, as explained by Reuters:

Igor Sechin gathered media in Tokyo the next day to warn Western governments that more sanctions over Moscow's seizure of the Black Sea peninsula from Ukraine would be counter-productive.   The underlying message from the head of Russia's biggest oil company, Rosneft, was clear: If Europe and the United States isolate Russia, Moscow will look East for new business, energy deals, military contracts and political alliances.    The Holy Grail for Moscow is a natural gas supply deal with China that is apparently now close after years of negotiations. If it can be signed when Putin visits China in May, he will be able to hold it up to show that global power has shifted eastwards and he does not need the West. More details on the revelation of said "Holy Grail": State-owned Russian gas firm Gazprom hopes to pump 38 billion cubic meters (bcm) of natural gas per year to China from 2018 via the first pipeline between the world's largest producer of conventional gas to the largest consumer.   "May is in our plans," a Gazprom spokesman said, when asked about the timing of an agreement. A company source said: "It would be logical to expect the deal during Putin's visit to China."

Summarizing what should be and is painfully obvious to all, but apparently to the White House, which keeps prodding at Russia, is the following: "The worse Russia's relations are with the West, the closer Russia will want to be to China. If China supports you, no one can say you're isolated," said Vasily Kashin, a China expert at the Analysis of Strategies and Technologies (CAST) think thank. Bingo. And now add bilateral trade denominated in either Rubles or Renminbi (or gold), add Iran, Iraq, India, and soon the Saudis (China's largest foreign source of crude, whose crown prince also happened to meet president Xi Jinping last week to expand trade further) and wave goodbye to the petrodollar.