THE 21st CENTURY: AN ERA OF FRAUD

In the last years of the 20th century fraud entered US foreign policy in a new way. On false pretenses Washington dismantled Yugoslavia and Serbia in order to advance an undeclared agenda. In the 21st…

Planet of FEAR: Make Trade, Not WAR Or Vice Versa, Beware Falcons of War

Facing the gleaming Doha skyline on a Persian Gulf winter carries the merit of a panoramic perspective. Most nations around it are going into melt down and the remaining ones – with the exception of Iran – exhibit neither the political leadership nor the economic and institutional infrastructure to do anything other than to meekly accept whatever tsunami hits their shores. They are nothing but scared spectators. The Empire of Chaos has enough warmongering hardware pre-positioned within spitting distance to turn the whole of Southwest Asia into ashes – as a gaggle of usual suspects in the Beltway, neocon or neoliberalcon, still can’t find a cure to their itching to «really win the next war» in a sort of exponential Shock and Awe.

AS GOES SYRIA, SO GOES THE WORLD

The US engagement in the Middle East has an unexplored impetus and if allowed to continue unchecked will have unexpected and world-changing consequences. The world has become inured to war. Since 2000, the US alone…

China Gears Up to Launch Middle East Pivot Policy: Xi Visits Iran, Saudi, ……

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s first official visit to the Middle East next week is a signal of Beijing’s intention to be a major player in Mid East affairs. Against the background of extremely intensive international contacts since the assumption of the Chinese presidency in March 2013, Xi Jinping’s first Middle East tour from Jan. 19 to Jan. 23 will include Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Iran. The Chinese leader has chosen the Middle East to be his first foreign destination of the year 2016 – a status generally used to indicate China’s focus on a particular region or country. The preparations for the visit started about a year before the Saudi-Arabia-Iran spat and many things have happened since then. The Iran nuclear talks ended up in agreement, Russia launched its military operations in Syria and the Sunni-Shia stand-off exacerbated.

FINANCIAL COLLAPSE LEADS TO WAR

[Author’s note: This is a rerun from March of last year, whose time has finally come. With the new year, a sea change seems to have occurred in the financial markets: instead of “melting up,”…

South China Sea Crisis and “Battle for Oil”

A long brewing crisis of both regional and global proportions has been festering in the South China Sea in recent years between claimants to a variety of islands, reefs and shoals and more importantly access…