… been propelled – seriously – to the status of philosophical category. Perplexed global public opinion holds its breath at the (circus) best American “democracy” is able to conjure. The first cage match this coming Monday between a…
Category: Pepe Escobar
Pepe Escobar (born 1954) is a Brazilian journalist. He writes a column – The Roving Eye – for Asia Times Online, and works as an analyst for RT, Sputnik News, and Press TV as well as formerly for Al Jazeera.
Forget about those endless meetings between Sergei Lavrov and John Kerry; forget about Russia’s drive to prevent chaos from reigning in Syria; forget about the possibility of a real ceasefire being implemented and respected by US jihad proxies. Jonathan Cook is a Nazareth- based journalist and winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism Forget about the Pentagon investigating what really happened around its bombing ‘mistake’ in Deir Ezzor. The definitive proof of the Empire of Chaos’s real agenda in Syria may be found in a 2012 Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) document declassified in May last year. As you scroll down the document, you will find page 291, section C, which reads (in caps, originally): Forget about
the Pentagon investigating what really happened around its bombing ‘mistake’ in Deir Ezzor.
The Joint Sea-2016 started this Monday; that’s the fifth annual China-Russia naval drill, featuring stalwarts from both navies in action at the eastern waters of Zhanjiang, in Guangdong province, the HQ of the People’s Liberation…
The next BRICS summit, in Goa, is less than two months away. Compared to only two years ago, the geopolitical tectonic plates have moved with astonishing speed. Most BRICS nations are mired in deep crisis; Brazil’s endless political/economic/institutional debacle may yield the Kafkaesque impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff. BRICS is in a coma. What’s surviving is RC: the Russia/China strategic partnership. Yet even the partnership seems to be in trouble — with Russia still attacked by myriad metastases of Hybrid War. The — Exceptionalist — Hegemon remains powerful, and the opposition is dazed and confused. Or is it?
Dilma Rousseff entered the Senate and calmly stared down her accusers. She left with her head held high after exhorting those Senators to vote with their conscience. Most of those politicians present probably had no idea what conscience means; they’re no more than corrupt messenger boys. But the Brazilian collective unconscious – Jung to the rescue – will be marked. President Dilma Rousseff, in a detailed, occasionally emotional speech, defended herself with honor and dignity from accusations she committed a “crime of responsibility”. She was not actually facing a political cesspool, but that ‘Angel of History’ so beloved by Walter Benjamin. History will judge her kindly.
So Turkish President, a.k.a. Sultan Recep Tayyip Erdogan is about to make a high-profile visit to Tehran – the date has not yet been set – to essentially kick start the ATM (Ankara-Tehran-Moscow) coalition in Syria. Trends Anyone as much as hinting at such a massive geopolitical tectonic shift a few weeks ago would be branded a madman. So how did the impossible happen? A major strategic game-changer – Russia using an airfield in Iran to send bombers against jihadis in Syria – had already taken place, with its aftermath spectacularly misreported by the usual, clueless US corporate media suspects. Then, there’s what Turkey’s Prime Minister, Binali Yildirim, said last Saturday in Istanbul: “The most important priority for us is to stop the bloodshed [in Syria] as soon as possible.” The rest are irrelevant “details.”
Russian Tu-22M3 Backfire bombers – as well as Sukhoi-34 fighter bombers – leave from the Iranian Hamadan airfield to bomb jihadis and assorted «moderate rebels» in Syria, and immediately we’ve got ourselves a major, unforeseen…
What “Drill, Baby, Drill” Means in the South China Sea There is a blue hole in the South China Sea. Longdong («Dragon Hole») is an astonishing 300,89 meters deep, in deep blue waters around Yongle, a major coral reef in the Paracel islands (or Xisha, in their Chinese denomination). Cynics may argue that after the recent ruling in The Hague largely against China’s «nine-dash line», the whole South China Sea would be more like a black – not blue – geopolitical hole, where serious turbulence is all but inevitable. I have examined before how the South China Sea’s history is now colliding with imperatives derived from the Westphalian system, and how the US’s «pivot to Asia» is accelerating conflict.
The South China Sea is and will continue to be the ultimate geopolitical flashpoint of the young 21st century – way ahead of the Middle East or Russia’s western borderlands. No less than the future of Asia – as well as the East-West balance of power – is at stake. To understand the Big Picture, we need to go back to 1890 when Alfred Mahan, then president of the US Naval College, wrote the seminal The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783. Mahan’s central thesis is that the US should go global in search of new markets, and protect these new trade routes through a network of naval bases.
The Sultan of (Emergency) Swing Amidst an astonishing, relentless, wide-ranging purge that shows no signs of abating, with 60,000 – and counting – civil servants, academics, judges, prosecutors, policemen, soldiers jailed, fired, suspended or stripped…