Pepe Escobar

The ''responsibility to protect'' (R2P) doctrine invoked to legitimize the 2011 war on Libya has just transmogrified into ''responsibility to attack'' (R2A) Syria. Just because the Obama administration says so.

On Sunday, the White House said it had ''very little doubt'' that the Bashar al-Assad government used chemical weapons against its own citizens. On Monday, Secretary of State John Kerry ramped it up to ''undeniable'' - and accused Assad of ''moral obscenity''.

So when the US bombed Fallujah with white phosphorus in late 2004 it was just taking the moral high ground. And when the US helped Saddam Hussein to gas Iranians in 1988 it was also taking the moral high ground.

The Obama administration has ruled that Assad allowed UN chemical weapons inspectors into Syria, and to celebrate their arrival unleashed a chemical weapons attack mostly against women and children only 15 kilometers away from the inspectors' hotel. If you don't believe it, you subscribe to a conspiracy theory.

Evidence? Who cares about evidence? Assad's offer of access for the inspectors came ''too late''. Anyway, the UN team is only mandated to determine whether chemical weapons were deployed - but not by who, according to UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon's spokesman.

As far as the Obama administration and UK Prime Minister David ''of Arabia'' Cameron are concerned - supported by a barrage of corporate media missiles - that's irrelevant; Obama's ''red line'' has been crossed by Assad, period. Washington and London are in no-holds-barred mode to dismiss any facts contradicting the decision. Newspeak - of the R2A kind - rules. If this all looks like Iraq 2.0 that's because it is. Time to fix the facts around the policy - all over again. Time for weapons of mass deception - all over again.

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Pepe Escobar

A picture downloaded from the US air force website
shows F-16 Fighting Falcons from the 35th and 80th
Fighter Squadrons (AFP Photo/US Air Force)

Only a few days before the 12th anniversary of 9/11, Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama might be fighting side by side with… al-Qaeda, as he was foolish enough to be trapped by his own rhetoric on Syria.

The dogs of war bark and the caravan… is Tomahawked. Amid out-of-control hysteria, the proverbial “unnamed US officials” spin like demented centrifuges.

Obama’s “kinetic operation” on Syria will fall out of the sky “in the next few days.” It will be “limited,” lasting only “three days,” or “no more than two days.” It will “send a message,” a “short, sharp attack” against less than 50 sites on a list of targets.

But then long-range bombers may “possibly” join the Tomahawk barrage, and all bets are off.

A proverbial, anonymous “senior administration official” even stressed the “desire to get it done before the president leaves for Russia next week.”

That’s it; we bomb a country like dialing a pizza delivery, and then we go to a G20 summit with the world’s emerging powers hosted by no less than Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin. Just because we need to prove that the president of the United States meant what he said: chemical weapons are a red line. And to hell who’s responsible for deploying them.

I’m not making this up. This is the core of White House spokesman Jay Carney’s message, when he said, in faultless Newspeak: “The options that are being considered do not contain within them a regime change focus.”

So the administration of “constitutional lawyer” Barack Obama is mulling how to attack Syria, bypassing the UN Security Council – which will veto, via Russia and China, the new resolution proposed by the UK; bypassing always-docile NATO; and with 91 percent of Americans against it, just to send an (explosive) political message. And all because a US president was foolish enough to get trapped in his own rhetoric.

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Pepe Escobar

I have argued that what has just happened in Egypt is a bloodbath that is not a bloodbath, conducted by a military junta responsible for a coup that is not a coup, under the guise of an Egyptian "war on terror". Yet this newspeak gambit - which easily could have been written at the White House - is just part of the picture.

Amid a thick fog of spin and competing agendas, a startling fact stands out. A poll only 10 days ago by the Egyptian Center for Media Studies and Public Opinion had already shown that 69% were against the July 3 military coup orchestrated by the Pinochet-esque Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

So the bloodbath that is not a bloodbath cannot possibly be considered legitimate - unless for a privileged coterie of Mubarakists (the so-called fulool), a bunch of corrupt oligarchs and the military-controlled Egyptian "deep state".

The Muslim Brotherhood (MB) government led by Mohamed Morsi may have been utterly incompetent - trying to rewrite the Egyptian constitution; inciting hardcore fundamentalists; and bowing in debasement in front of the International Monetary Fund. But it should not be forgotten this was coupled with permanent, all-out sabotage by the "deep state".

It's true that Egypt was - and remains - on the brink of total economic collapse; the bloodbath that is not a bloodbath only followed a change in the signature on the checks, from Qatar to Saudi Arabia (and the United Arab Emirates). As Spengler has demonstrated on this site (see Islam's civil war moves to Egypt, Asia Times Online, July 8, 2013), Egypt will remain a banana republic without the bananas and dependent on foreigners to eat any. The economic disaster won't go away - not to mention the MB's cosmic resentment.

The winners, as it stands, are the House of Saud/Israel/ Pentagon axis. How did they pull it off?

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Pepe Escobar

When the going gets tough, count on the Ministry of Truth to get going.

The end of Ramadan was imminent. The jihadi chattering classes of that fuzzy entity, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), went on overdrive. It was jailbreak galore from Libya to Pakistan via Iraq. And all this in perfect synch with two successive fatwas issued by that perennial bogeyman, former Osama bin Laden sidekick Ayman "Doctor Evil" al-Zawahiri.

Imagine a rushed crisis meeting at the highest levels of the Orwellian/Panopticon complex:

"Gentlemen, we have a golden opportunity here. We are under siege by defector spy Edward Snowden - liberated by the Soviets - and that terrorist hack Greenwald. Snowden may be winning: even among US public opinion, there's a growing perception we may be more of a threat than al-Qaeda. So we must show we are vigilantly protecting our freedoms. Yes; we're gonna scream Terra, Terra, Terra!"

Instantly, we have the closing, with much fanfare, of plenty of US embassies and consulates in the "Muslim world" and a State Department "worldwide" travel alert - soon expanded by Interpol. Confusion ensues - with many trying to figure out whether backpacking in Thailand or eating fresh caviar in Baku is a surefire way of not being blown up. And right away we'll also have US and Western corporate media falling in love with the Terra Terra Terra meme all over again. And woe to those who think this has anything to do with Islamophobia. You thought that Terra was gone? No, Terra is omnipresent, omniscient, lurking everywhere. Terra Wants You. Trains and boats and planes - you're nowhere safe.

Yet the fabulous specific intel unearthed by the Ministry of Truth amounts to some lowlife jihadi boasting on the net that he and his buddies will be doing something nasty someday somewhere in multiple, unspecified locations all across Middle East-Northern Africa (MENA).

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Pepe Escobar

So what is the "extremely disappointed" Obama administration, the Orwellian/Panopticon complex and the discredited US Congress to do? Send a Navy Seal Team 6 to snatch him or to target assassinate him - turning Moscow into Abbottabad 2.0? Drone him? Poison his borscht? Shower his new house with depleted uranium? Install a no-fly zone over Russia?

Edward Snowden, under his new legal status in Russia, simply cannot be handed over to Bradley Manning's lynch mob. Legally, Washington is now as powerless as a tribal Pashtun girl facing an incoming Hellfire missile. A President of the United States (POTUS) so proud of his constitutional law pedigree - recent serial trampling of the US constitution notwithstanding, not to mention international law - seems not to have understood the message.

Barack Obama virtually screamed his lungs out telling Russian President Vladimir Putin he had to hand him Snowden "under international law". Putin repeatedly said this was not going to happen.

Obama even phoned Putin. Nothing. Washington even forced European poodles to down Bolivian President Evo Morales's plane. Worse. Moscow kept following the letter of Russian law and eventually granted temporary asylum to Snowden.

The Edward Snowden saga has turned the Pentagon's Full Spectrum Dominance doctrine on its Hydra-head. Not only because of the humbling of the whole US security state apparatus, but also for exploding the myth of Full Spectrum Dominance by POTUS.

Obama revealed himself once again as a mediocre politician and an incompetent negotiator. Putin devoured him as a succulent serving of eggs benedict. Glenn Greenwald will be inflicting death by a thousand leaks - because he is in charge of Snowden's digital treasure chest. And Snowden took a taxi and left the airport - on his own terms.

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Pepe Escobar

In a show trial/kangaroo court with an American twist, worthy of the Cultural Revolution in 1960s China, Bradley Manning was predictably found guilty of multiple counts of violating the Espionage Act.

If only Walter Benjamin were alive to see the Angel of History once again throwing one of his trademark lightning bolts of irony; Manning was pronounced guilty of being a spy - by a Pentagon judge - just next door to Spy Central, the NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland.

The prosecution, applying the full force of the US government, derided Manning as a "traitor" - not a whistleblower. Manning indeed betrayed the Pentagon's Full Spectrum Dominance doctrine - detailing how the imperial industrial-military-surveillance complex kills civilians with impunity (as in the "Collateral Murder" video); how the imperial wars on Afghanistan and Iraq were being (mis)conducted; what goes on in the Guantanamo gulag; and how the State Department bullies US satrapies. He betrayed the Imperial Masters of the Universe, and as this is not a Marvel Comics summer blockbuster he had to go down.

US corporate media went on overdrive emphasizing a "balance" narrative - as in imperial benevolence - because Manning was found not guilty of aiding the enemy. According to the circular logic of the US government, hammered over and over again during the show trial, to publish sensitive information on the Internet means spying (and Manning was found guilty of that).

So if the enemy accesses this information on the Internet, you are enabling the enemy. Manning being found not guilty of aiding the enemy but mostly guilty of everything else still delivers the chilling message - translated into decades of (military) jail time, possibly well into the 22nd century. As if 11 months in solitary confinement - often kept naked and sleepless - in a 6 x 12 foot windowless cell at Quantico, Virginia, was not torture enough. Ah yes; the United States does not do torture.

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Pepe Escobar

Mr Bo was removed from his post in March 2012

The larger-than-life geopolitical-economic question of our time, arguably, is not Syria, Iran, or even NSA spying. It's all about China; how on Earth the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will be successful in tweaking Beijing's economic growth model, and how China will manage its now slowed-down ascension.

But first there's no less than a "trial of the century" to get rid of.

Disgraced former Politburo superstar Bo Xilai - of the "Chongqing model" fame - was finally indicted this week, accused of relatively minor charges of accepting bribes of US$3.2 million and embezzling roughly $800,000.

The fascinating screenplay opens with how Chinese media reacted to it. Three minutes before Xinhua announced it, the People's Daily was already meticulously drawing a distinction between "Bo Xilai's personal issues" and "the successes in the economic and social development" of Chongqing.

Fifteen minutes later, Xinhua followed with a commentary essentially warning that Bo had fallen because a local "tiger" had become too powerful; and thus "the nation's long-term stability can only be secured by protecting the authority of the central leadership".

Also 15 minutes after, the Global Times sealed the deal, stressing that corrupt Party bigwigs like Bo were "a cancer" and should be dealt with by the letter of the law.

The problem is all this heavy artillery does not even begin to tell the story.

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Pepe Escobar

Amidst the incessant rumble in the (Washington) jungle about a possible Obama administration military adventure in Syria, new information has come to light. And what a piece of Pipelineistan information that is.

Picture Iraqi Oil Minister Abdelkarim al-Luaybi, Syrian Oil Minister Sufian Allaw, and the current Iranian caretaker Oil Minister Mohammad Aliabadi getting together in the port of Assalouyeh, southern Iran, to sign a memorandum of understanding for the construction of the Iran-Iraq-Syria gas pipeline, no less.

At Asia Times Online and also elsewhere I have been arguing that this prospective Pipelinestan node is one of the fundamental reasons for the proxy war in Syria. Against the interests of Washington, for whom integrating Iran is anathema, the pipeline bypasses two crucial foreign actors in Syria - prime "rebel" weaponizer Qatar (as a gas producer) and logistical "rebel" supporter Turkey (as the self-described privileged energy crossroads between East and West).

The US$10 billion, 6,000 kilometer pipeline is set to start in Iran's South Pars gas field (the largest in the world, shared with Qatar), and run via Iraq, Syria and ultimately to Lebanon. Then it could go under the Mediterranean to Greece and beyond; be linked to the Arab gas pipeline; or both.

Before the end of August, three working groups will be discussing the complex technical, financial and legal aspects involved. Once finance is secured - and that's far from certain, considering the proxy war in Syria - the pipeline could be online by 2018. Tehran hopes that the final agreement will be signed before the end of the year.

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Pepe Escobar

Dashte Laili, Northern Afghanistan (Everything Afghanistan)

I've got to confess that Anna Badkhen beat me to it. Sometimes I have the feeling the world is a carpet. She went one up, writing a marvelously evocative book with the same title, centered on a village in Northern Afghanistan so remote that Google Maps cannot find it.

This is a book for those who love the Silk Road; who love Afghanistan; who love carpets; and all of the above. The Roving Eye fits all these descriptions; no wonder Badkhen's delicate tale projected me on a magic carpet ride down memory lane, as I retraced my own steps over the years in bits and pieces of the Silk Road, from Balkh to Bukhara, from Herat to Hamadan; and all these roads, of course, were paved with carpets.

Historic Khorasan - which includes Northern Afghanistan - is quite special. Around Balkh, Turkomen have been spinning wool for 7,000 years. People are born on carpets. They pray on carpets. They sleep on carpets. They even adorn their tombs with carpets.

When Alexander the Great conquered Khorasan in 327 BC he sent his mum, Olympias, a carpet as a souvenir of his victory in Balkh. Balkh is the fabled feudal capital, now in ruins (blame the Mongols) about 36 kilometers southwest of Oqa - the beyond-the-reach-of-the-NSA village in the salt-frosted Afghan desert where Badkhen chose to follow one year in the life of Thawra's mud-and-dung loom room as she weaves a yusufi, a magnificent carpet.

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Pepe Escobar

Hi, my name is Mostafa and I'll be your moderate insurgent today. I'm addressing you all because we badly need your help. We could have started a Facebook page, like We Need Your Weapons or something, or ask the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights to make a YouTube video, but I prefer to speak straight to your heart.

Our Supreme Commander, the blessed General Salim Idriss, has acknowledged we are now receiving many new weapons from many friendly Arab countries, which helped us "destroy more than 90 armored vehicles" of the Syrian regime. And Amrika helped us to get the guns, of course. But we need more.

Your President Mr Obama told the Blessed King of Saudi Arabia last Friday that he is committed to providing more support for us. Your Secretary of State Mr Kerry said on Saturday there must be more support for us "in order to have an impact on the ground". Your CIA said they will make sure only moderate insurgents get the weapons, and not the bad guys.

But your Congress is blocking our weapons. Oh people from Congress!

Don't be such a spoiler! We have such a brotherhood of nations here. People from 29 different countries! OK, there are a lot of Salafis, a bit hot headed. But for us they are all brothers. In fact most of us are moderate insurgents.

Don't you like moderates? Remember when you wanted to talk to the moderate Taliban? Now you're talking to the moderate Taliban! And the Pakistani Taliban, they are now even sending their people here to help us! The other day they raised a big, white Taliban flag somewhere in the Turkish-Syrian border. That was a blessed moment.

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