Stephen Lendman

Washington's Greater Middle East project involves waring against the region one country at a time to replace independent regimes with client ones.

Softer targets were attacked first. Tougher ones remain, notably Iran and Syria. Subduing them may involve turning the entire region into an uncontrollable cauldron, not least because China and Russia have interests to defend.

Russia maintains a strategic naval base at Tartus, Syria, its only Mediterranean location. It considers it vital protection for its Black Sea Fleet. It's being modernized to accommodate heavy warships after 2012. Russia came to stay.

Three Russian warships now patrol Syrian waters. Unofficial sources confirm it, saying Russia's there to protect strategic and national security interests, as well as prevent war.

About 120,000 Russian citizens are in Syria. Moscow's obligated to protect them the way they aided South Ossetian Russians after Georgia attacked the province in August 2008.

Provocatively, America's nuclear carrier USS George HW Bush anchored off Syria. Its Strike Group and additional vessels are conducting maritime security and support operations nearby. The US 6th Fleet patrols the area.

Meanwhile, Washington and Turkey urged their citizens to leave Syria. A November 23 US statement said "depart immediately while commercial transportation is available." Whether something's brewing isn't known. Tough talk alone doesn't suggest it. Nonetheless, it's worrisome.

Syria's being assaulted like Libya. Heavily armed insurgents are involved. Washington orchestrated everything. Neighboring countries are involved, including Israel. Syria's blamed for defending itself. Libya redux looks possible. Continued violence and escalating tensions suggest it.

An anonymous Russian intelligence official said America "is playing a very dangerous game here. One that may result in Russia taking defensive actions to protect itself, its military installation and Russian citizens."

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Stephen Lendman

The operative word is contagion. It's malignant and spreading because it's unresolved and irresponsibly addressed.

Germany, Europe's strongest economy, just had its worst ever bond auction since 1999. Over a third of 10-year bunds offered were unsold. More on the failure below.

Comparable Italian yields jumped to 7.3%. Italy's two-year bond hit 7.7%. The inverted curve signals tougher times ahead. Italy also sold six-month bills at 6.50%, its highest rate in 14 years.

Troubled Spain had to pay 5.11% for three-month money, the highest short-term rate since formation of Europe's Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) in 1999.

Other Eurozone rates also rose, including Portugal's after Fitch downgraded its debt to junk and retained a negative outlook. Hungary was downgraded to junk as well with a negative outlook. Yields there jumped close to 10%. Belgium's in trouble. So are France and Britain. Credit default swaps on European sovereign debt and banks reached all-time highs.

Earlier in the week French bonds were hammered. Europe's debt crisis moved from periphery countries to core ones. Many believe the Eurozone can't survive, except perhaps with fewer stronger members.

The European Investment Bank (the EU's financing institution) is also being pressured. Yields on its debt rose. So did European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) bond rates. Yields on its 10-year maturities jumped from 3 3/8% to 3.88%, up from 2.68% two months ago.

In other words, not only are Eurozone countries being pressured, but institutions established to rescue them. Smart money's saying don't bet on Europe. Bet against it. Some say it also about America. Expect that chorus to grow.

Belgium's key business confidence measure was negative for three straight months. French consumer sentiment reached a two-year low.

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Wayne Madsen

The Four Masks of Hypocrisy: Which face is
that of the United States?

The Obama administration, in yet another display of the use of Orwellian language, has embarked on a military doctrine called "Mass Atrocity Prevention" (MAP), the Pentagon operational plan to implement the White House's "R2P" or "Responsibility to Protect" doctrine. Essentially, the Pentagon doctrine is crafted to militarily support the intervention of regional and worldwide international forces operating under the umbrella of NATO, UN, the African Union, the Organization of American States (OAS), the Arab League, and other organizations in the name of “humanitarian” intervention to prevent widespread massacres. The doctrine’s first major test case was in Libya, where NATO forces, in support of Western- and Saudi/Gulf potentate-backed rebel forces, ousted the 42 year-old regime of Muammar Qaddafi.

And in yet another display of oxymoronic Orwellian “Newspeak,” the main Defense Department activity for developing “Mass Atrocity Response Operations” or “MARO” is the Army’s Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute (PKSOI) at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

The new American justification for military intervention arises from Presidential Study Directive 10/PSD-10, a memorandum issued by the White House on August 4, 2011, which created an Interagency Atrocities Prevention Board and interagency review to bring administration policy in line with a new presidential policy that deems “preventing mass atrocities and genocide” a “core national security interest and a core moral responsibility of the United States.”

The new American foreign policy initiative was justified by the 2008 report of the Genocide Prevention Task Force co-chaired by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former Secretary of Defense William Cohen. The task force was heavily influenced by the neoconservative and federally-funded U.S. Institute of Peace, as well as George Soros-funded think tanks like the Center for American Progress and pro-Israeli organizations like the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

PSD-10 was largely the brain child of National Security Council staff member Samantha Power, who is married to Obama’s “propaganda czar” Cass Sunstein, and Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the UN. The White House press briefing on Obama’s Mass Atrocity Prevention doctrine specifically mentioned Syria, Libya, Sudan, Cote d’Ivoire, and Kyrgyzstan as examples of when U.S. diplomatic and stronger intervention was required. The announcement cited the Holocaust in Europe and the genocide in Rwanda as reasons for the new U.S. policy but curiously omitted the U.S.-supported Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia and the CIA-supported post-1965 coup genocide in Indonesia, the latter involving President Obama’s Indonesian step-father, a lieutenant colonel in the Indonesian army.

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Stephen Lendman

Congress is now considering legislative language to mandate indefinite military detentions of US citizens suspected of present or past associations with alleged terrorist groups, with or without evidence to prove it. More on that below.

The 2006 Military Commissions Act authorized torture and sweeping unconstitutional powers to detain, interrogate, and prosecute alleged suspects and collaborators (including US citizens), hold them (without evidence) indefinitely in military prisons, and deny them habeas and other constitutional protections.

Section 1031 of the FY 2010 Defense Authorization Act contained the 2009 Military Commissions Act (MCA). The phrase "unprivileged enemy belligerent" replaced "unlawful enemy combatant."

Language changed but not intent or lawlessness. Obama embraces the same Bush agenda, including keeping Guantanamo open after promising to close it, allowing torture there and abroad, and treating US citizens as lawlessly as foreign nationals.

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