Pepe Escobar

Iranian Pres. Ahmadinijad, Syrian Pres. Bashar al-Asad,
Hezbollah's Nasr Ullah (Sheikh Nasrallah)

This eminently Bushist Obama "red line" business, applied to Syria, Iran or both, is becoming a tad ridiculous.

Take Pentagon head Chuck Hagel's tour of Israel and the "friendly" GCC (the de facto Gulf Counter-revolution Club) last week. US defense contractors had the Moet flowing as Hagel merrily congregated with that prodigy of democracy - United Arab Emirates (UAE) Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed - to celebrate the sale of 25 F-16 fighter jets.

There's more on the way; 48 Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD missile interceptors, at a cool US$1 billion. The Pentagon is sending one of its only two of such systems to Guam this month to counter that other threat - missiles from North Korea.

The weaponizing free fest to Israel and the Gulf petro-monarchies - missile defense, fighter jets, mega-bombs - could not but be duly hailed as the proverbial "message" to "counter Iran's nuclear ambitions", or "the air and missile threat posed by Iran", or the general "worry about Iran's pursuit of a nuclear weapon" or "Washington's determination to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons."

There's no "red line" here; just hardcore weaponizing of Israel and the GCC. Any doubts, blame it on Iran. And this while Saudi-controlled media in the Middle East - roughly everything except al-Jazeera - was breathlessly spinning that Tel Aviv is pursuing a deal to use Turkish soil for an attack on Iran.

Wait; there's more weaponizing on the way - bound to neighboring latitudes. Kraus-Maffei Wegmann (KMW) from Germany closed another $2.48 billion deal with Qatar - five years in the making - to deliver 62 Leopard 2 tanks and 24 self-propelled howitzers. Qatar is not exactly using them for the 2022 FIFA World Cup; they are bound to "friendly groups in other countries" - as in Syria's "rebels", via Turkey.

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Pepe Escobar

Welcome to the sweet abyss of an Orwellian vortex! 2013 increasingly looks like 1984. In two previous articles, for RT and for Asia Times Online [AWIP] I have looked into the superimposed levels of blowback implied by the Boston bombing.

With still so many unanswered questions regarding what took place on the ground in Boston after the bombing, it's time to look at an extra, possible Top Ten list of lingering absurdities. And this without sidestepping other unanswered crucial questions, such as why a bomb drill - organized by Craft - was going on during the marathon at which the bombing took place; and why it was vehemently denied that a bomb drill was going on. For this current set of questions, I'm grateful for the help of Asia Times Online's Bostonian readers.

Pick your Mercedes

1. Will the FBI come clean and admit they knew everything there is to know about Tamerlan Tsarnaev - after five years of monitoring/controlling him - and still lied to public opinion by swearing they knew nothing about his and his brother's identity, posting their photos and asking for the public to act ''as eyes and ears'' to identify those ''suspects''?

2. Since 9/11, the preferred FBI modus operandi is to use informants to lure ''potential'' terra-rists to act. See for example the Fast and Furious-style Iran cum Mexican cartel plot. There's a strong possibility the Tsarnaev brothers were set up. In this case, is there anyone anywhere among the vast US intel apparatus investigating the FBI investigators?

3. Will the FBI explain a tsunami of false reports by the usual, anonymous ''US officials'' of explosions or ''unexploded bombs'' - at two Boston hotels, a court house, and at the JFK library?

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Pepe Escobar

Private military operatives hired to 'work' the Boston marathon
with black backpacks, radiation detectors, tactical gear. (NN)

The writing is on the (bloody) wall. The final vestiges of the rule of law are disappearing.

The Boston bombing was major blowback. That much is certain. The question is, what level of blowback?

It could have been a covert op gone real bad. It could have been blowback from former ''freedom fighters'' - in this case ethnic Chechens - reconverted into terra-rists. It could have been straight blowback for United States foreign policy targeting Muslims, whether dispatching them to Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib or Bagram, extraordinarily renditioning them, or target assassinating them.

The FBI, predictably, is not admitting any of these three options. It sticks to a convoluted screenplay worthy of those cocaine-fueled Hollywood nights in the 1980s; a couple of bad guys who ''hate our freedoms'' because...they do.

As I've written elsewhere in a sort of preamble for this article, there are inter-galactic holes in the story of the Tsarnaev brothers. Now we also know - via their mother - that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was monitoring elder brother Tamerlan for at least five years. In a subsequent interview to CNN's Piers Morgan, the mother actually talked, significantly, about ''counseling''.

At the same time, the FBI was forced to admit it had in early 2011 accepted a ''foreign government'' (code for Russia) request to take a closer look on Tamerlan. This, apparently, they did - and found nothing terrorist activity-worthy.

So what happened afterwards? Some IQ above 50 in the FBI must have noticed they now had access to a precious Chechen-American asset. So Tamerlan became an FBI informant. They could play him like a fiddle - like so many patsies before.

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Pepe Escobar

Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani (L), Emir of Qatar, key backer
of Syrian opposition, shakes hands with United Nations Secretary
General Ban Ki-Moon before their meeting on September 25 dur-
ing the General Assembly at UN headquarters in New York.

[Article originally published on Sep. 28, 2012]

Make no mistake - the Emir of Qatar is on a roll

What an entrance at the UN General Assembly in New York; Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani called for an Arab coalition of the willing-style invasion of Syria, no less. [1]

In the words of the Emir, "It is better for the Arab countries themselves to interfere out of their national, humanitarian, political and military duties, and to do what is necessary to stop the bloodshed in Syria." He stressed Arab countries had a "military duty" to invade.

What he means by "Arab countries" is the petromonarchies of the Gulf Counter-Revolution Club (GCC), previously known as Gulf Cooperation Council - with implicit help from Turkey, with which the GCC has a wide-ranging strategic agreement. Every shisha house in the Middle East knows that Doha, Riyadh and Ankara have been weaponizing/financing/providing logistical help to the various strands of the armed Syrian opposition engaged in regime change.

The Emir even quoted a "similar precedent" for an invasion, when "Arab forces intervened in Lebanon" in the 1970s. By the way, during a great deal of the 1970s the Emir himself was engaged in more mundane interventions, such as letting his hair down alongside other Gulf royals in select Club Med destinations.

So is the Emir now preaching an Arab version of the R2P ("responsibility to protect") doctrine advanced by The Three Graces of Humanitarian Intervention (Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice and Samantha Power)?

This is certainly bound to go down well in Washington - not to mention Ankara and even Paris, considering French president Francois Hollande has just called for UN protection of "liberated zones" in Syria.

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Pepe Escobar

Paris - And now some breaking news coming from the Islamic Emirate of Syriastan. This program is brought to you by the NATOGCC corporation. Please also tune in for a word from our individual sponsors, the United States government, Britain, France, Turkey, the House of Saud and the Emir of Qatar.

It all started early this week, with a proclamation by the elusive leader of al-Qaeda Central, Ayman "The Doctor" al-Zawahiri, hidden somewhere in the Pakistani tribal areas; how come Double O Bama with his license to kill (list) and prime drone fleet cannot find him?

Al-Zawahiri called for all the Islamist brigades in the Jihad Inc business fighting the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to found an Islamic emirate, the passport du jour leading to an Islamic caliphate.

Two days later, the Islamic State of Iraq - for all practical purposes al-Qaeda in Iraq - announced, via a video starring its leader Abu Bakr al-Husseini al-Qurashi al-Baghdadi, a mergers and acquisition spectacular; from now on, it would be united with the Syrian jihadist group Jabhat al-Nusra, and be referred to as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

But then, the next day, the head of Jabhat al-Nusra, the shady Abu Muhammad al-Joulani, said that yes, we do pledge our allegiance to al-Qaeda Sheikh, Doctor al-Zawahiri, but there has been no M&A business [Mergers & Acquisitions - Ed.] whatsoever with al-Qaeda in Iraq.

Puzzled infidels from Washington to Beijing may be entitled to believe this is straight from Monty Python - but it's actually deadly serious; especially as the House of Saud, the Emir of Qatar, the neo-Ottoman Erdogan in Turkey and King Playstation from Jordan - vastly supported by Washington - continue to weaponize the Syrian "rebels" to Kingdom Come. And one of the top beneficiaries of this weaponizing orgy has been - who else - the M&A gang now known as the Islamic State of the Iraq and Levant.

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Pepe Escobar

Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, is welcomed on his arrival in Durban, South Africa, Tuesday, March 26, 2013. Vladimir Putin is on a working visit and set to meet with South African officials on Tuesday before attending a meeting with the leaders of Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRICS) during an Africa Dialogue Forum in Durban on Wednesday. (AP Photo/RIA-Novosti, Alexei Druzhinin, Presidential Press Service, Pool)

Reports on the premature death of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) have been greatly exaggerated. Western corporate media is flooded with such nonsense, perpetrated in this particular case by the head of Morgan Stanley Investment Management.

Reality spells otherwise. The BRICS meet in Durban, South Africa, this Tuesday to, among other steps, create their own credit rating agency, sidelining the dictatorship - or at least "biased agendas", in New Delhi's diplomatic take - of the Moody's/Standard & Poor's variety. They will also further advance the idea of the BRICS Development Bank, with a seed capital of US$50 billion (only structural details need to be finalized), helping infrastructure and sustainable development projects.

Crucially, the US and the European Union won't have stakes in this Bank of the South - a concrete alternative, pushed especially by India and Brazil, to the Western-dominated World Bank and the Bretton Woods system.

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Pepe Escobar

Uncle Marx never thought about this one: history repeating itself as double tragedy after already being a farce in the first place. Let's examine the case in hand. First of all, take a close look at this Wall Street Journal op-ed from September 2002, in the hysterical run-up towards the invasion of Iraq.

Title: The Case for Toppling Saddam. Author: Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu - then out of the Israeli government. It's all here:

[a] "dictator who is rapidly expanding his arsenal of biological and chemical weapons" and "who is feverishly trying to acquire nuclear weapons"; the Saddam equals Hitler parallel; the portrayal of (de facto nuclear power) Israel as helpless victims of Palestinian "terror"; the claim that Saddam could produce nuclear fuel "in centrifuges the size of washing machines that can be hidden throughout the country - and Iraq is a very big country"; the cheerleading of a unilateral pre-emptive strike; and the inevitable conclusion that "nothing less than dismantling his regime will do''.

Fast-forward over 10 years to this week in Israel. The scene: press conference of Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu and visiting US President Barack Obama. Anyone watching it live on al-Jazeera, from the Middle East to East Asia, must have thought they were watching a geopolitical Back to the Future - and frankly, Michael J Fox at least oozed charm. No charm here; this was more like an eerie, suit-and-tie Return of the Living Dead. Bibi and Obama were at pains to stress the US-Israel bond was "eternal".

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Pepe Escobar

The Enchanters came / Cold and old,
Making day gray / And the age of gold
Passed away, / For men fell
Under their spell, / Were doomed to gloom.
Joy fled, / There came instead,
Grief, unbelief, / Lies, sighs,
Lust, mistrust, / Guile, bile,
Hearts grew unkind, / Minds blind,
Glum and numb, / Without hope or scope.
There was hate between states,
A life of strife, / Gaols and wails,
Dont's, wont's, / Chants, shants,
No face with grace, / None glad, all sad.
W H Auden, The Golden Age

We have, unfortunately, no post-modern version of Dante guided by Virgil to tell a startled world what is really happening in Europe in the wake of the recent Italian general election.

On the surface, Italians voted an overwhelming "No" - against austerity (imposed the German way); against more taxes; against budget cuts in theory designed to save the euro. In the words of the center-left mayor of Florence, Matteo Renzi, "Our citizens have spoken loud and clear but maybe their message has not been fully grasped." In fact it was.

There are four main characters in this morality/existential play worthy of the wackiest tradition of commedia dell 'arte.

The Pyrrhic winner is Pier Luigi Bersani, the leader of the center-left coalition; yet he is unable to form a government. The undisputed loser is former Goldman Sachs technocrat and caretaker Prime Minister Mario Monti.

And then there are the actual winners; "two clowns" - at least from a German point of view and also the City of London's, via The Economist. The "clowns" are maverick comedian Beppe Grillo's 5 Star movement; and notorious billionaire and former prime minister Silvio "Bunga Bunga" Berlusconi.

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Pepe Escobar

Now that would be some movie; the story of a man of the people who rises against all odds to become the political Elvis of Latin America. Bigger than Elvis, actually; a president who won 13 out of 14 national democratic elections. No chance you will ever see such a movie winning an Oscar - much less produced in Hollywood. Unless, of course, Oliver Stone convinces HBO* about a cable/DVD special.

How enlightening to watch world leaders' reactions to the death of Venezuela's El Comandante Hugo Chávez. Uruguay's President José Mújica - a man who actually shuns 90% of his salary because he insists he covers his basic necessities with much less - once again reminded everyone how he qualified Chávez as "the most generous leader I ever met", while praising the "fortress of democracy" of which Chávez was a great builder.

Compare it with US President Barack Obama - in what sounds like a dormant cut and paste by some White House intern - reaffirming US support for "the Venezuelan people". Would that be "the people" who have been electing and re-electing Chávez non-stop since the late 1990s? Or would that be "the people" who trade Martinis in Miami demonizing him as an evil communist?

El Comandante may have left the building - his body defeated by cancer - but the post-mortem demonization will go on forever. One key reason stands out. Venezuela holds the largest oil reserves in the world. Washington and that crumbling Kafkaesque citadel also known as the European Union sing All You Need is Love non-stop to those ghastly, feudal Persian Gulf petro-monarchs (but not to "the people") in return for their oil. By contrast, in Venezuela El Comandante came up with the subversive idea of using oil wealth to at least alleviate the problems of most of his people. Western turbo-capitalism, as is well known, does not do redistribution of wealth and empowerment of communitarian values.

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Pepe Escobar

What was the parade of European poodles thinking - that Tehran would just roll over and absorb the European Union's oil embargo, scheduled to start on July 1?

No wonder Brussels was caught as a Gucci deer in the headlights when the news started to flow that Tehran would pre-empt the move and immediately slap its own embargo of crude oil exports to six European Union countries - deeply in crisis Club Med members Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain plus recession-hit France and the Netherlands.

It took virtually no time for Iran's Oil Ministry and then the Foreign Ministry to deny it; such a decision, technically, would have to be officially announced by the Supreme National Security Council, which also deals with the nuclear negotiations.

But only the deaf, dumb and blind wouldn't understand the message; blowback for the ridiculously counter-productive European sanctions/oil embargo package will only plunge vast swathes of Europe further into deep economic pain.

Iran supplies 500,000 barrels of oil a day to the EU. The mere threat of an Iranian embargo has already provoked an oil price spike.

Assuming Club Med countries would be able to get oil from other sources - and that's not a given; Saudi Arabia wants high oil prices with a vengeance - they would have to reconfigure their refineries to process it. Inevitably there would be shortages of gasoline; the average Italian, for instance, is already furious with the skyrocketing price of gas at the pump.

Perhaps those tens of thousands of useless Brussels bureaucrats carrying their multicolored files up and down should do something meaningful and send a letter to Washington officially congratulating the Americans for further impoverishing tens of millions of EU citizens.

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