These are bleak times. I’ve been in serious conversation with some deep sources and interlocutors – those who know but don’t need to show off, privileging discretion. They are all deeply worried. This is what…
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.
There’s hardly a more graphic illustration of where the multipolar world is going than what just happened at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Beijing. Take a very good look at the official photos. This is all about positioning – and this being China, pregnant with symbolic meaning. Guess who’s in the place of honor, side by side with President Xi Jinping. And guess where the lame duck leader of the “indispensable nation” has been relegated. The Chinese can also be masters at sending a global message.
Islamic State leader Caliph Ibrahim – aka Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi – never ceases to amaze us – and most of all his powerful petrodollar-stuffed backers. The Caliph is for all practical purposes now an oil…
First thing we do, let’s kill all the myths. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is nothing but the Security Council of the Empire of Chaos. You don’t need to be a neo-Foucault hooked on Orwellian/Panopticon practices to admire the hyper-democratic”ring of steel” crossing average roads, parks and even ringing castle walls to “protect” dozens of NATO heads of state and ministers, 10,000 supporting characters and 2,000 journalists from the real world in Newport, Wales – and beyond. NATO’s summit in Wales also provides outgoing secretary-general Anders “Fogh of War” Rasmussen the chance to display his full attack dog repertoire. It’s as if he’s auditioning for a starring role in a remake of Tim Burton’s epic Mars Attacks! Fogh of War is all over the place, talking “pre-positioning of supplies, equipment” – euphemism for weapons; boosting bases and headquarters in host countries; and touting a 10,000-strong, rapid reaction “spearhead” force to respond to Russian “aggression” and deployable in a maximum of five days.
A fascinating nuclear/energy ballet involving Iran, Russia, the US and the EU is bound to determine much of what happens next in the new great game in Eurasia. Let’s start with what’s going on with the Iranian nuclear dossier. Iranian Foreign Ministry legal adviser Jamshid Momtaz has been forced to clarify that the interim nuclear deal signed by Iran and the P-5+1 nations on November 2013 is not an international treaty – yet. As we stand, the gap between the US, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany on one side, and Iran on the other side, remains very wide. Essentially, the gap that really matters is between Washington and Tehran. And that, unfortunately, translates as a few more months for the vast sabotage brigade – from US neo-cons and assorted warmongers to Israel and the House of Saud – to force the deal to collapse. One of Washington’s sabotage mantras is “breakout capability”; a dodgy concept which boils down to total centrifuge capacity/capability to produce enough enriched uranium for a single nuclear bomb. This implies an arbitrary limit on Iran’s capacity to enrich uranium.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is desperate; it is itching for a war in battlefield Ukraine at any cost. Let’s start with Pentagon supremo, US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, who has waxed lyrical over the Russian Bear’s “threat”: “When you see the build-up of Russian troops and the sophistication of those troops, the training of those troops, the heavy military equipment that’s being put along that border, of course it’s a reality, it’s a threat, it’s a possibility – absolutely.” NATO spokeswoman Oana Lungescu could not elaborate if it was “threat” or “reality”, absolutely or not, but she saw it all: “We’re not going to guess what’s on Russia’s mind, but we can see what Russia is doing on the ground – and that is of great concern. Russia has amassed around 20,000 combat-ready troops on Ukraine’s eastern border.” In trademark, minutely precise NATOspeak, Lungescu then added that Russia “most probably” would send troops into eastern Ukraine under the cover of “a humanitarian or peace-keeping mission”. And that settled it.
The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining it … A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness,…
“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…
And here’s the spin war verdict: the current Malaysia Airlines tragedy – the second in four months – is “terrorism” perpetrated by “pro-Russian separatists”, armed by Russia, and Vladimir Putin is the main culprit. End of story. Anyone who believes otherwise, shut up. Why? Because the CIA said so. Because Hillary “We came, we saw, he died” Clinton said so. Because batshit crazy Samantha “R2P” Power said so – thundering at the UN, everything duly printed by the neo-con infested Washington Post. [1] Because Anglo-American corporate media – from CNN to Fox (who tried to buy Time Warner, which owns CNN) – said so. Because the President of the United States (POTUS) said so. And mostly because Kiev had vociferously said so in the first place.
The headline news is that this Tuesday in Fortaleza, northeast Brazil, the BRICS group of emerging powers (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) fights the (Neoliberal) World (Dis)Order via a new development bank and a reserve fund set up to offset financial crises. The devil, of course, is in the details of how they’ll do it. It’s been a long and winding road since Yekaterinburg in 2009, at their first summit, up to the BRICS’s long-awaited counterpunch against the Bretton Woods consensus – the IMF and the World Bank – as well as the Japan-dominated (but largely responding to US priorities) Asian Development Bank (ADB). The BRICS Development Bank – with an initial US$50 billion in capital – will be not only BRICS-oriented, but invest in infrastructure projects and sustainable development on a global scale. The model is the Brazilian BNDES, which supports Brazilian companies investing across Latin America. In a few years, it will reach a financing capacity of up to $350 billion.