United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called the double veto a “travesty”. Then Clinton duly incited “friends of democratic Syria” to keep working for regime change, which was the object of the resolution. The copyright for this idea is held by the liberator of Libya, neo-Napoleonic French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who said Paris was already working to create a NATOGCC “Friends of the Syrian People Group” in charge of implementing the Arab League’s regime change plan.

Right on cue, Paris puppet Burhan Ghalyun, the head of the Syrian National Council (SNC) – the opposition umbrella group – also summoned these countries “friendly to the Syrian people”. Everybody knows who they are; the US, Britain, France, Israel and GCC members Qatar and Saudi Arabia. With “friends” like these, the “Syrian people” certainly don’t need enemies.

Those ‘disgusting’ BRICS

United States ambassador to the UN Susan Rice – a top cheerleader of R2P, also known as humanitarian bombing – called the double veto “disgusting”.

Even the venerable stones of the Umayyad mosque in Damascus know that only Washington has the right to wield veto power at the UN – overwhelmingly to protect the state of Israel’s right to kill Palestinian men, women and children with tanks and shelling without bothering about pesky UN resolutions.¹

Russia, vocally – and China, silently – had been adamant for weeks; forget about a UN resolution for regime change in Syria, or worse yet, opening the doors for a Libya-style NATO humanitarian bombing.

Russia has its own geopolitical reasons to consider Syria a red line; Syria hosts Russia’s only naval base in the Mediterranean, in the port of Tartus; and Syria buys Russian weapons. But, in fact, all the five BRICS – plus the overwhelmingly majority of the developing world – are in synch; forget about regime change-enabling UN resolutions, promoted by the usual suspect Western trio US-Britain-France and – the summit of hypocrisy – devised by the “democratic” House of Saud and Qatar.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will be in Damascus this Tuesday to meet with President Bashar al-Assad and discuss a serious plan to try to end the bloodshed. Lavrov has calmly explained the reasons for the Russian veto.

He had sent Russian amendments to the draft resolution directly to Clinton; “The rationality and objectivity of these amendments should not cause anyone’s doubt.” But to no avail; the resolution remained “unilateral” – demanding nothing from Syrian anti-government armed groups. Lavrov stressed, “No president with self-respect, no matter how treated, will agree to surrender inhabited localities to armed extremists without resistance.” Imagine if Homs was in Texas.

Still, the SNC now holds Moscow and Beijing “responsible for the escalating acts of killing and genocide”, and facilitators of a “license to kill”. Lavrov is imperturbable; “We have repeatedly said that we are not protecting Assad but international law. The prerogative of the UN Security Council does not envision interference in internal processes.”

Homs: Who’s killing whom?

Syria’s UN ambassador Bashar Ja’afari strongly denied the opposition’s accusation of regime forces bombing the Khadiliya neighborhood in Homs with tanks and artillery and killing over 200 people – arguing that “no sensible person” would launch such an attack the night before the UN Security Council was discussing a resolution. Without any preliminary investigation, France called it a “massacre” and a “crime against humanity”. Like France’s performance during the Algerian war?

To understand what’s at stake, it’s crucial to keep in mind who’s defecting from the Syrian army. Syria’s top military – also members of the Ba’ath Party – are almost all Alawis, the folk Shi’ite sect (10% of the overall population). They are not defecting.

The defectors are overwhelmingly Sunni troops (70% of the overall population); they are forming militias, Libya-style, heavily infiltrated by mercenaries weaponized by the GCC, and fighting government troops. The government’s response has been to target the neighborhoods where the families of these defectors live. The center of Homs nowadays is controlled by the rebels.

So what’s really happening on the ground in Homs? Here are sections from a crucial e-mail sent by a trusted Syrian Christian source:

Many Syrians are ecstatic about the double veto but Homs is very worrying. The opposition spread news about a massacre just before the vote and they quoted numbers in the hundreds … unbelievably quoted by all news channels (all based on “activists”) without any verification, only to bring the number down to something like 33 later. They never showed any bombing or taking people under rubble or any injured people … just clean-bodied men with their hands and feet tied up and shot mostly once and only in their underwear. Whatever the Syrian government has in its arsenal it seems there are very intelligent bombs that can strip and tie up people then shoot them in the head!!

The thing that we know fully well is that there are no army presence in Homs. My parents left the city then came back Saturday morning on the day of the alleged massacre and there was nothing. They usually call a hotline (115) and ask if the roads are safe and security operator will tell you to come to Homs or not. This time they told them to come and indeed there was nothing to be seen or heard. This of course doesn’t mean that most of the city and particularly the old city is under the control of the gunmen. Our old neighborhood where I grew up (the Christian Bustan al-Diwan) was completely taken over by the gunmen. YouTube videos show how the FSA cleared the army roadblock in the previous neighborhood (Bab al-Dreib) and then proceeded to destroy the one guarding our neighborhood.

People in my neighborhood did not complain of any major harassment or problem, however the “revolutionaries” did indeed break into a couple of homes that their people left either days earlier or at the time, also into a school, Homs Newspaper (operated by the Orthodox church for more than 100 years) and a few other restaurants but no other complaints. I mean, considering what these FSA do to Alawites, then the Christians are really getting very fair treatment so far.

What many believe now is that the bodies shown tied up and shot in Khalidiya and which are alleged to be “men, women and children” killed by a bombardment of the Syrian army were nothing but kidnapped Syrian soldiers. Add to them kidnapped Alawites who were not liberated (or actually exchanged). When the FSA kidnap some people, Alawites started to kidnap in return to exchange the prisoners. This doesn’t always work and some people who weren’t “exchanged for” turned up dead in Khalidiya.

All in all up to this point there really isn’t any offensive by the Syrian army on the city. The rebels continue to attack other checkpoints. People are completely in the dark as to what the government is thinking regarding Homs. It’s devastating for me to see my neighborhood become another battleground and many of my friends leaving.

All this dovetails with an explanation by fine journalist Nir Rosen, author of the indispensable Aftermath: Following the Bloodshed of America’s Wars in the Muslim World; Homs is essentially a question of rebels seizing government checkpoints – and government forces shelling a few neighborhoods with mortars. According to Rosen:

There was no fighting in Homs, just shelling from these safe locations (from the point of view of the regime), suggesting they are unable to actually attack Khalidiya with regime fighters … No opposition fighters were killed in the attack. And up to 130 people in Khaldiyeh were killed and 800 wounded (like I said not fighters). Now that’s a lot of people but if you were watching the news … you would think that Homs was destroyed while in fact this attack can also be seen as a sign of the regime’s weakness in the city.

Compare this with my Syrian source worried that “people are completely in the dark as to what the government is thinking regarding Homs”.

Imagine an armed insurrection in a mid-sized city in the US; the whole world saw how peaceful Occupy Wall Street was dealt with by billionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg. The “disgusting” BRICS have made it clear; there will be no NATOGCC humanitarian bombing of Syria. But NATOGCC may be succeeding in its plan B: to plunge Syria into civil war.

• First published at Asia Times.

1. Here’s a partial summary of US vetoes at the UN

Putin’s legendary role in rescuing Russia from the economic abyss in the 1990s, staring down the oligarchs, reasserting state control over Russian resource wealth, and repositioning Russia as an independent player in Eurasia (not to mention in America’s backyard) — these signal accomplishments assure him a place in history books. He and Dmitri Medvedev are considered the most popular leaders in the past century according to a recent VTsIOM opinion poll (Leonid Brezhnev comes next, followed by Joseph Stalin and Vladimir Lenin, with Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yelstin the least popular). He will very likely pass the 50 per cent mark in presidential elections 4 March, despite all the protests during the past two months calling for “Russia without Putin”. So why is he back in the ring?

It appears he was caught by surprise when the anti-Putin campaign exploded in November, fuelled by his decision to run again and the exposure of not a little fraud in the parliamentary elections in December. For the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the opposition was able to unite and stage impressive rallies, one after another. Despite the chilling Russian winter, they keep coming — this week saw four gathering around Moscow, totalling 130,000.

The opposition poster children even include Putin’s minister of finance Alexei Kudrin. Presidential hopefuls are Communist leader Gennadi Zyuganov (backed for the first time by the independent left forces), nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky, A Just Russia’s Sergey Mironov and the oligarch playboy Mikhail Prokhorov — none of whom stand a chance of defeating Putin. This time there are 25 televised debates which began 6 February among the contenders, who are sparring with each other and “Putin’s representative”.

Is this quixotic march back to the Kremlin heights a case of egomania? Or is it a noble attempt to both cast in stone Russia as the Eurasian counterweight to an increasingly aggressive US/NATO, and shaking up the domestic political scene to make sure it will not slump into apathy when he himself passes the torch? And if things go wrong, is this Russia’s very own White Revolution, long feared by the Russian elite, and long covetted by Western intriguers?

Russian politics has always confounded Western observers, and continues to do so. Putin is famously imperious and gets away with it. He taunted the opposition by saying he thought the original demonstrations were part of an anti-AIDS campaign, that the white ribbons were condoms. But he nonetheless sanctioned the largest political opposition rallies in the past 20 years.

US democracy-promotion NGOs such as the National Endowment for Democracy — a key player in Ukraine’s 2004 Orange Revolution — are active in Russia’s opposition, but Putin is clearly gambling that Russians can see past US efforts to manipulate them. Besides, the winners in the Duma elections were the Communists and nationalists, with pro-Western liberals placing a distant fourth — hardly the results NEDers would have wanted.

He is also famously willing to tell US politicians they wear no clothes — the latest, last week in Siberia: “Sometimes I get the impression the US doesn’t need allies, it needs vassals.” Russian foreign policy is now firmly anti-NATO, both with respect to the West’s misguided missile system and its eagerness to turn Syria into a killing field. Rumours that a Russian Iran-for-Syria deal with the West have proved empty. There are even hints that Iran may still get its defensive S-300 missiles from Russia in exchange for Russian access to the downed US drone. Iran claims to have four already and recently announced they have developed their own domestic version.

Pro-Putin rallies are almost as large as the opposition’s, with an official count of 140,000 attendees at the festive gathering Saturday. The Putinistas even bill theirs as the Anti-Orange rally. “We say no to the destruction of Russia. We say no to Orange arrogance. We say no to the American government…let’s take out the Orange trash,” political analyst Sergei Kurginyan exhorted at Moscow’s Poklonnaya Gora war memorial park. Putin thanked organisers, commenting modestly, “I share their views.”

The real reason for Putin’s return is due to the failure during his first two terms of his “sovereign democracy” to limit corruption in post-Soviet Russia. Instead of producing a modernising authoritarianism along the lines of post-war South Korea, Putin’s rule deepened corruption — the bane of late Soviet and early post-Soviet society. Instead of trading political freedom for effective governance, he clipped Russians’ civil and political rights without delivering on this vital promise. Neither did he end collusion between the state and the oligarchs. That was the handle that bad boy Alexei Navalni used to catalyse the opposition around his slogan that United Russia is the “party of swindlers and thieves”.

This was the scene in the 2000s in Ukraine, where it was possible for the NEDers to undermine the much weaker Ukrainian state and install the Western candidate Viktor Yushchenko in 2004. However, instead of addressing the problems that led to the Orange Revolution, Putin focussed on foreign threats to Russian political stability rather than paying attention to domestic factors, creating patriotic youth organisations such as Nashi (Ours) and the 4 November Day of Unity holiday – the latter quickly hijacked by Russia’s nationalists.

But Russian fears of Western interference are hardly naïve. Russia was sucked into the horrendous WWI by the British empire, suffered devastating invasions in 1919 and 1941, and another half century of the West’s Cold War against it. Further dismemberment of the Russian Federation is indeed a Western goal, which would benefit no one but a tiny comprador elite, Western multinationals and the Pentagon.

Putin’s statist sovereign democracy – with transparent elections – might not be such a bad alternative to what passes for democracy in much of the West. His new Eurasian Union could help spread a more responsible political governance across the continent. It may not be what the NED has in mind, but it would be welcomed by all the “stan” citizens, not to mention China’s beleaguered Uighurs. This “EU” is  striving not towards disintegration and weakness, but towards integration and mutual security, without any need for US/NATO bases and slick NED propaganda. The union will surely eventually include the mother of colour revolutions, Ukraine, where citizens still yearn for open borders with Russia and closer economic integration. The days of dreaming about the other EU’s Elysian Fields are over. The hard, cold reality today has bleached the colour revolutions, making white the appropriate colour for Russia’s version of political change.

Of course, the big problem — corruption — is what will make or break Putin’s third term as president. At the Russia 2012 Investment Forum in Moscow last week, Putin outlined plans to move Russia up to 20th spot from its current 120th in the World Bank index of investment attractiveness, by reducing bureaucracy and the associated bribery. “These measures are not enough. I believe that society must actively participate in the establishment of an anti-corruption agenda,” he vowed. Reforming the legal system and expanding the reach of democracy will be key to fighting corruption, not just via presidential decrees, but through empowering elected officials and voters. He confirmed this in his fourth major pre-election address this week by promising to provide better government services by decentralizing power from the federal level to municipalities and relying on the Internet.

So far things look good. For the first time since 1995 there will be a hotly contested transparently monitored presidential election, with the distinct possibility of a runoff (unless the new US Ambassador Michael McFaul keeps inviting NED darlings to Spaso House). The sort-of presidential debates, large-scale opposition rallies and the new independent League of Voters intending to ensure clean elections are a fine precedent, making sure that this time and in the future there will be an opportunity for genuine debate about Russia’s future.

Despite all attempts to forestall Russia’s colour revolution, it has begun — Russian-style — with no state collapse, but with a new articulate electorate, wise to both Kremlin politologists and Western NGOlogists. Its final destination is impossible for anyone to predict at this point.

Essentially, the GCC created an Arab League group to monitor what’s going on in Syria. The Syrian National Council – based in North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member countries Turkey and France – enthusiastically supported it. It’s telling that Syria’s neighbor Lebanon did not.

When the over 160 monitors, after one month of enquiries, issued their report … surprise! The report did not follow the official GCC line – which is that the “evil” Bashar al-Assad government is indiscriminately, and unilaterally, killing its own people, and so regime change is in order.

The Arab League’s Ministerial Committee had approved the report, with four votes in favor (Algeria, Egypt, Sudan and GCC member Oman) and only one against; guess who, Qatar – which is now presiding the Arab League because the emirate bought their (rotating) turn from the Palestinian Authority.

So the report was either ignored (by Western corporate media) or mercilessly destroyed – by Arab media, virtually all of it financed by either the House of Saud or Qatar. It was not even discussed – because it was prevented by the GCC from being translated from Arabic into English and published in the Arab League’s website.

Until it was leaked. Here it is, in full.

The report is adamant. There was no organized, lethal repression by the Syrian government against peaceful protesters. Instead, the report points to shady armed gangs as responsible for hundreds of deaths among Syrian civilians, and over one thousand among the Syrian army, using lethal tactics such as bombing of civilian buses, bombing of trains carrying diesel oil, bombing of police buses and bombing of bridges and pipelines.

Once again, the official NATOGCC version of Syria is of a popular uprising smashed by bullets and tanks. Instead, BRICS members Russia and China, and large swathes of the developing world see it as the Syrian government fighting heavily armed foreign mercenaries. The report largely confirms these suspicions.

The Syrian National Council is essentially a Muslim Brotherhood outfit affiliated with both the House of Saud and Qatar – with an uneasy Israel quietly supporting it in the background. Legitimacy is not exactly its cup of green tea. As for the Free Syrian Army, it does have its defectors, and well-meaning opponents of the Assad regime, but most of all is infested with these foreign mercenaries weaponized by the GCC, especially Salafist gangs.

Still NATOGCC, blocked from applying in Syria its one-size-fits-all model of promoting “democracy” by bombing a country and getting rid of the proverbial evil dictator, won’t be deterred. GCC leaders House of Saud and Qatar bluntly dismissed their own report and went straight to the meat of the matter; impose a NATOGCC regime change via the UN Security Council.

So the current “Arab-led drive to secure a peaceful end to the 10-month crackdown” in Syria at the UN is no less than a crude regime change drive. Usual suspects Washington, London and Paris have been forced to fall over themselves to assure the real international community this is not another mandate for NATO bombing – a la Libya. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described it as “a path for a political transition that would preserve Syria’s unity and institutions”.

But BRICS members Russia and China see it for what it is. Another BRICS member – India – alongside Pakistan and South Africa, have all raised serious objections to the NATOGCC-peddled draft UN resolution.

There won’t be another Libya-style no fly zone; after all the Assad regime is not exactly deploying Migs against civilians. A UN regime change resolution will be blocked – again – by Russia and China. Even NATOGCC is in disarray, as each block of players – Washington, Ankara, and the House of Saud-Doha duo – has a different long-term geopolitical agenda. Not to mention crucial Syrian neighbor and trading partner Iraq; Baghdad is on the record against any regime change scheme.

So here’s a suggestion to the House of Saud and Qatar; since you’re so seduced by the prospect of “democracy” in Syria, why don’t you use all your American weaponry and invade in the dead of night – like you did to Bahrain – and execute regime change by yourselves?

•  First published at Asia Times.

Speaking Sunday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called the Russian and Chinese veto a “travesty,” while labeling the Security Council “neutered.”  American Ambassador Susan Rice, meanwhile, stated that she was “disgusted” by the veto.

On NBC Nightly News (2/4/12), Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent Andrea Mitchell called the Security Council vote “just a terrible day for the United Nations and diplomacy.”  (“Diplomacy” in Washington speak, we see, entails strictly toeing the U.S. line.)

Not content with merely condemning the Security Council, the U.S. also began to plot an alternative means for intervention.

Secretary of State Clinton reassured that the U.S. would work with the Arab League to continue applying “immense pressure” on Syria, while adding pointblank that, “Assad must go.”  President Obama added much the same on Saturday, arguing that Mr. Assad had “lost all legitimacy to rule.”  (Apparently, the revealed targeting of funeral mourners in the C.I.A.’s drone campaign does not constitute the grounds on which one loses legitimacy.)

Such rhetoric, one will recall, mirrors that which presaged the NATO orchestrated demise of Gaddafi.  Of little surprise, then, that the Mossad connected Debkafile reported over the weekend that in the face of growing Russian resistance to foreign intervention, “The United States, the Europeans and the Gulf Arabs are likely to redouble their efforts to unseat Bashar Assad.”  And as if summoned on cue, the proverbial hawk Joseph Lieberman emerged on Sunday to float the idea of providing direct military support to the Free Syrian Army.

But as their plans to turn Syria into Libya 2.0 were initially impeded over the weekend, the pouting Washington elite quickly pivoted, directing their bitter ire towards a long favorite foe: Russia.

In the immediate wake of the Security Council vote, Ambassador Rise preceded to openly berate Russia on the Council floor for continuing to supply arms to the Syria government.  As she later told CNN, Russia and China “will have any future blood spilt on their hands.”  (Ms. Rice has no qualms with the blood spilt in U.S. client states like Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and so on.  Nor, needless to say, does the U.S. have any reservations about Israeli apartheid.)

Russia Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, on the other hand, argued on Monday, ahead of his Tuesday visit to Damascus, that such outbursts sounded “indecent and perhaps on the verge of hysterical.”  So much for that U.S.-Russia “reset.”

Of course, always eager to parrot the official U.S. line, the American media also quickly cast its scorn toward Russia.

As New York Times imperial messenger Thomas Friedman wrote (2/4/12), “The more Putin throws his support behind the murderous dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, the more he looks like a person buying a round-trip ticket on the Titanic — after it has already hit the iceberg.”  (Friedman is the same man who, as President Bush searched into Putin’s very soul, encouraged his readers to “keep routin’ for Putin.”)

Yet amidst all this public sulking at its U.N. rebuff, the U.S. was ultimately able to extract a measure of revenge for Russia’s diplomatic intransigence.  For as massive protests broke out onto the streets in Russia on Saturday, the U.S. press pounced.

As NBC Nightly News (2/4/12) eagerly reported, a hundred thousand hit the streets of Moscow on Saturday calling for the “end of Putin’s rule.”

While on CBS Evening News (2/4/12), Elizabeth Palmer reported from Russia on the “tens of thousands protesting against Putin and a legacy of corruption.”

And as the Washington Post adoringly wrote on the protests (2/4/12): “The temperature was below zero, which only made the crowd more joyful as well as forceful, as if mere weather could prevent them from showing their disdain for Putin.”

Completely omitted from the network news broadcasts (in addition to many stalwart liberal sources, such as Democracy Now!), was the fact that tens of thousands also turned out in support of Putin.  For as the Los Angeles Times (2/4/12) critically noted, Putin continues to enjoy more than 50 percent support within the country, “especially among the working class outside Moscow.”

Yet unwilling to acknowledge (or perhaps unable to comprehend) that people would actually be willing to hit the streets on their own volition to support Putin, the American press posited ulterior motives.

Typical of the discrediting of the pro-Putin protesters, the Washington Post wrote:

The post office brought in busloads of its workers for the counter-rally, and teachers were recruited from points nearby.

One who chose not to show up was Yulia Konstantinova, a math teacher who turned down a request from her principal and joined the anti-Putin Bolotnaya march instead. “We’re sick and tired of pretending everything is fine,” she said. “It’s not true.”

Predictably enough, as the American press dutifully reported on the political division in Russia, and swooned over those voicing their dissent with Putin, it employed a universal blackout of coordinated protests in dozens of U.S. cities called in opposition to American policy towards Iran.  A bit hard to furnish war, I suppose, if one reveals any degree of popular discord.

But with the U.S. now openly lusting not only for Damascus, but Tehran as well, one ought to expect the blackout of internal U.S. dissent to continue.  Moreover, the swift and coordinated discrediting campaign levied against Russia for bucking Washington assures that the U.S. power elite remains firmly fixated on its anticipated imperial spoils.  Any and all obstacles will simply not be tolerated.  American imperial ambitions do not die easily.

The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history.

— George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair, 1903-1950)

For anyone in two minds about what is really going on in Syria, and whether President Assad, hailed a decade ago as “A Modern Day Attaturk”, has become the latest megalomaniacal despot to whose people a US-led posse of nations must deliver “freedom” with weapons of mass, home, people, nation and livelihood destruction, here is a salutary tale from modern history.

Have the more recent saber-rattlings against Syria* been based on US-UK government papers only discovered in 2003, and since air-brushed (or erroneously omitted) from even BBC timelines on that country?

In late 2003, the year of the Iraq invasion, Matthew Jones, a Reader in International History at London’s Royal Holloway College, discovered “frighteningly frank” documents — 1957 plans between then UK Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and then President Dwight Eisenhower endorsing: “a CIA-MI6 plan to stage fake border incidents as an excuse for an invasion (of Syria) by Syria’s pro-western neighbours.”

At the heart of the plan was the assassination of the perceived power behind then President Shukri al-Quwatli. Those targeted were Abd al-Hamid Sarraj, Head of Military Intelligence; Afif al-Bizri, Chief of Syrian General Staff: and Khalid Bakdash, who headed the Syrian Communist Party.

The document was drawn up in Washington in September of 1957:

In order to facilitate the action of liberative (sic) forces, reduce the capabilities of the regime to organize and direct its military actions … to bring about the desired results in the shortest possible time, a special effort should be made to eliminate certain key individuals.

Their removal should be accomplished early in the course of the uprising and intervention, and in the light of circumstances existing at the time.

In light of President Assad’s current allegations of foreign forces, interventions and cross-border incursions, this document contains some fascinating, salutary phrases:

Once a political decision has been reached to proceed with internal disturbances in Syria, CIA is prepared, and SIS (MI6) will attempt to mount minor sabotage and coup de main (sic) incidents within Syria, working through contacts with individuals.

Incidents should not be concentrated in Damascus … care should be taken to avoid causing key leaders of the Syrian regime to take additional personal protection measures.

Further, a “necessary degree of fear … frontier incidents and (staged) border clashes”, would “provide a pretext for intervention” by Iraq and Jordan – then still under British mandate.

Syria was to be “made to appear as sponsor of plots, sabotage and violence directed against neighbouring governments … the CIA and SIS should use … capabilitites in both psychological and action fields to augment tension.”

Incursions into Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon would involve “sabotage, national conspiracies, and various strong arms activities”, were, advised the document, to be blamed on Damascus.

In late December 2011 an opposition “Syria National Council” was announced, to “liberate the country”.  Representatives met with Hilary Clinton. There now seems to be a US – endorsed “Syrian Revolutionary Council.”

The Eisenhower-Macmillan plan was for funding of the “Free Syria Committee” and “arming of political factions with paramilitary or other actionist capabilities”, within Syria.

CIA-MI6 planned fomenting internal uprisings and replacing the Ba’ath Communist-leaning government with a Western, user-friendly one. Expecting this to be met by public hostility, they planned to “probably need to rely first on repressive measures and arbitrary exercise of power.”

The document was signed off in both London and Washington. It was, wrote Macmillan in his diary, “a most formidable report” — a report which was “withheld even from British Chiefs of Staff …”

Washington and Whitehall had become concerned at Syria’s increasingly pro-Soviet, rather than pro-Western sympathies, and the Ba’ath (Pan Arab) and Communist party alliance, also largely allied within the Syrian army.

However, even political concerns were trumped by Syria then controlling a main pipeline from the Western bonanza of Iraq’s oil fields in those pre-Saddam Hussein days.

Briefly put, in 1957 Syria allied with Moscow (which included an agreement for military and economic aid) also recognized China – and then as now, the then Soviet Union warned the West against intervening in Syria.

Syria is unchanged as an independent minded country, and the loyalties remain. It broadly continues to be the cradle of the Pan Arab ideal of Ba’athism, standing alone since the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime.

In 1957, this independent mindedness caused Loy Henderson, a Senior State Department official, to say that “the present regime in Syria had to go …”

Ultimately, the plan was not used since British mandate or not, neighbouring countries refused to play. However, the project overtly bears striking similarity to the reality of events over the last decade in Syria – and the region.

In a near 1957 re-run, Britain’s Foreign Minister, William Hague has said President Assad “will feel emboldened” by the UN Russia-China vote in Syria’s favour.

Hilary (“We came, we saw, he died”) Clinton, has called for “friends of a democratic Syria”, to unite and rally against the Assad government:

“We need to work together to send them a clear message: you cannot hold back the future at the point of a gun”, said the woman filmed purportedly watching the extrajudicial, illegal assassination of who may be, or may be not, Osma Bin Laden and others –but certainly people were murdered by US illegal invaders at the point of lots of guns.

Supremely ironically, she was speaking in Munich (5 February) historically “the birth place of the Nazi party.”

The Russia-China veto at the UN on actions against Syria has been condemned by the US, varyingly as “disgusting”, ‘shameful”, “deplorable”, “a travesty.”

Eye opening is the list of US vetoes to be found here. Jaw dropping double standards can only be wondered at (again.).

Perhaps the bottom line is that in 1957, Iraq’s oil was at the top of the agenda, of which Syria held an important key. Today, it is Iran’s, and as Michel Chossudovsky notes so succinctly: “The road to Tehran is through Damascus.”

*  2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2008, 2011, 2012.

Such an award could be called the Lebon Prize (reversing Nobel).

If there was such an award, the statements of European and American leaders in the immediate aftermath of Russia and China’s veto of the Security Council resolution to end the killing in Syria suggest two most obvious nominees for it.

One is William Hague, Britain’s Foreign Secretary.

In the House of Commons he pronounced Bashar al-Assad’s regime to be “doomed” because there is “no way it can recover its credibility.” That may very well be the case in the long term, but in my view that Hague statement was somewhat naive at the time he made it. For its short to mid-term survival at the time of writing, and unless visiting Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is seeking to engineer Bashar al-Assad’s departure from office in a face-saving way that will protect Russia’s interests, the Syrian regime doesn’t need credibility in the outside world. It needs only enough weapons and the will to go on killing its own people. (That said there can be no doubt that Bashar al-Assad and/or his Alawite generals took the Russian and Chinese vetoes as a green light to escalate the killing. Also to be noted is that Bashar al-Assad was not the only Arab leader to draw a particular conclusion from Mubarak’s downfall. “If our people take to the streets demanding regime change, shoot them!”)

But the particular Hague statement that prompts my suggestion that he be nominated for a Lebon Prize for hypocrisy was this one. By exercising their veto “Russia and China have placed themselves on the wrong side of Arab and international opinion.”

The obvious implication is that it’s not good politics and policy to be on the wrong side of that opinion. Really? Then how do we explain the fact that all the governments of the Western world, led by America, are on the wrong side of it because of their support for the Zionist state of Israel right or wrong – unending occupation, on-going ethnic cleansing and all? There is a one-word answer. Hypocrisy.

The second most obvious nominee for a Lebon Prize for hypocrisy is Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the UN. In condemning the Russian and Chinese vetoes, she said, “For months this Council has been held hostage by a couple of members.”

Given that for the Security Council has been held hostage for decades by American vetoes to protect Israel from being called to account for its crimes, that Rice statement is – what I can say without resorting to use of the “F” word? – hypocrisy most naked and taken to its highest level

No doubt readers will have other suggestions, probably many, for nominations for a Lebon Prize for hypocrisy.

Hague also condemned China and Russia for “betraying the Syrian people”. It apparently doesn’t matter that the British and all other Western governments have been betraying the Palestinians for decades. There really is no end and no limit to the hypocrisy.

1. The Peace Prize is awarded in Oslo, Norway, while the other prizes are awarded in Stockholm, Sweden. Baruch Aba Shalev, author of a book on the Nobel Prize, has said “the Nobel Prize has come to be regarded as the best-known and most prestigious award available

There are more young people of working age out of work than at any time in recorded British history according to the latest government figures.

I started the current version of my online presence as it were in March of 2003 and have managed somehow to continue writing ever since, though I’ve had my share of blank spots along the way.

Writing on a regular basis used to be fairly easy for me but as the years have worn on and no doubt me wearing out, it gets more and more difficult for me to face up to a world that has gone from bad to worse to downright dire in the course of my lifetime.

Thus these days, I’m more often reading and thinking about events than writing about them, in an attempt to get a handle on why we inhabitants of Empire are standing by as we watch our leaders head straight for disaster yet again as they try vainly to keep the ‘good ship capitalism’ afloat. The myopia of the media is palpable in the face of the disaster that unfolds around us.

Sir Halford J Mackinder (1861–1947)…was a member of the ‘Coefficients Dining Club’ established by members of the ['socialist'] Fabian Society in 1902. The continuity of the policies of the elite is indicated by the fact Brzezinski starts from Mackinder’s thesis first propounded in 1904: “Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland: Who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island: who commands the World-Island commands the world.”¹

Eric Walberg’s otherwise excellent book Post modern imperialism geopolitics and the great games also utilizes Mackinder’s metaphor of the The Great Game to great effect, to map out what he describes as three distinct ‘games played’, the days of Mackinder’s British Empire being ‘Game 1′.

But I fear that the use of this metaphor, handy though it is in shorthanding the machinations of imperialism brings with it the danger of a kind of fatalism, reducing us to mere pawns on Brzezinski’s Grand Chessboard. A view I might add, that reinforces our fatalism as it transforms sociopaths like Brzezinski into a character out of an Ayn Rand novel, possessed of super powers and the natural inheritor of Mackinder’s haughty and arrogant view of the world.

In turn, I think it reinforces the totally false belief that there is no alternative to capitalism no matter that it’s proved itself to be a complete disaster for the planet. A kind of collective acceptance of the status quo that is reinforced by the MSM that will not entertain any kind of rational debate about the alternatives.

Not surprisingly, this Superman belief concerning the ‘inevitability’ of capitalism is the bedrock of the neoliberal view of how things work, harking back as it does to the days of Mackinder when a handful of men effectively ruled an Empire without challenge, divvying up an occupied world according to an imperial pecking order of power.

Meanwhile we get fed a diet of little more than mysticism and wishful thinking from the media pundits and when that doesn’t work the subject is simply ignored. How the MSM manages the task of totally obscuring the reality of the way capitalism actually functions can only be accomplished by constructing an entirely false reality, one that omits certain fundamental facts about the nature of capitalism, especially its history.

Thus WWI was the result of a spat between aristocrats somewhere in the Balkans and WWII was started by a deranged megalomaniac and the destruction of Iraq the result of ‘faulty intelligence’. And each time we let them get away with it, they become more emboldened, more brazen in their predations knowing full well that it will get no real opposition from its captive public.

Meanwhile…

Our busted economy is simply the result of ‘us’ spending too much, thus justifying the need to have ‘our belts tightened’. Note that for the rich 1% ‘belt tightening’ is obviously not a problem nor have any of the previous crises of capitalism and the resultant ‘belt tightening’ experienced by the rest of us affected the 1%.

‘Boom and bust’ no matter what the pundits say, is built into the very nature of capitalism. At best ‘tinkering’ with it brings a temporary reprieve from the inevitable and even the ‘tinkering’ is the result of working class intervention into the affairs of capitalism eg, the ‘welfare state’. Ultimately, the outcome every time is war and the bigger the better to chow all that surplus capital in an orgy of destruction such as we are currently witnessing. Each ‘small’ war leading inevitably to bigger and bigger wars.

Meanwhile…

SCROOGE AND CHORUS:
Christmas comes but once a year,
So you better cash in, While the spirit lingers,
It’s slipping through your fingers, Boy!
Don’t you realize Christmas can be such a Monetary joy!

/../

CHORUS:
On the first day of Christmas,
The advertising’s there, with Newspaper ads,
Billboards too,
Business Christmas cards,
And commercials on a pear tree. . .
Jingles here, jingles there, Jingles all the way.
Dashing through the snow, In a fifty-foot coup-e
O’er the fields we go, Selling all the way. . .
Deck the halls with advertising, What’s the use of compromising, Fa la la la la la la la la. — Green Christmas by Stan Freeberg

Freeberg’s cutting song on the commercialization of Christmas hit the stores in 1958. So how does our corporate media handle the paradox of Christian ‘giving’ with the making of money? Even more important, how does the MSM handle boosting Christmas sales with the fact that it’s also boosting the myth that we ‘all’ have to tighten our belts in these ‘times of austerity’? It really is a case of squaring the circle but how does the MSM achieve this miraculous result?

Every Christmas/New Year the MSM carries a slew of stories about the economy, prefacing every comment on the hoped for orgy of consumption, that retailers make 80% of their profits over the holiday period. Is this meant to make us feel bad if we don’t consume the required amount of tat?

So all the while as thousands lose their jobs, homes and social rights, the MSM is punting the idea that basically everything is okay, a temporary blip in the upward curve of capitalist ‘growth’. Spend and everything will come right? Right?

The UK economy will remain weak for the foreseeable future, but recession is not inevitable, according to a survey by the British Chambers of Commerce.”²

Thus we are exhorted to spend, spend, spend- without producing anything of substance. Even the much-touted digital revolution which would have turned the populace into ‘new media’ entrepreneurs if you listened to how the pundits describe it, relies on surplus cash to exist. Three hundred quid on a piece of electronic junk that will be ‘obsolete’ this time next year when you can’t pay the mortgage?

What it does reveal is the MSM has to avoid revealing the paradox of austerity and conspicuous consumption coexisting and the reason’s pretty obvious: the UK doesn’t produce much of anything anymore, relying instead on consumption (and its supporting infrastructure) and of course the financial sector, the mainstay of what passes for a British economy.

The end-product is a parasitical economy, the result of maintaining the rate of profit by exporting production to low-wage countries and relying on debt-fueled consumption to turn over the local economy but an economy that has become less and less relevant to international finance capital. So kiss the ‘good times’ goodbye. Any ‘recovery’, should it happen will be at a lower level of employment, with fewer real jobs, more temporary, deskilled labour, to serve a shrunken ‘middle class’ and the elite.

Social support will be cut to the absolute minimum the state can get away with. Resistance will be met with the full force of the corporate/security state with the Summer ’11 riots serving as an example of what happens when you deliberately allow ‘them’ to get on with the lootin’ anna burnin’. And so far, organized labour’s response has been half-hearted and sporadic without any clear direction of what to offer as an alternative tied as it is to the Labour Party’s coattails.

What’s left of the local economy will be hi-tech, information-based research and production as part of a global corporate, military-financial-media complex over which we have absolutely no control.

The situation is unique in the history of capitalism. The formerly Great Britain, ‘workshop to the world’, the greatest Empire the world had ever seen, the home of the Industrial Revolution, deliberately de-industrializes its economy and relies instead on its control of the global circuit of capital to produce ‘growth’ in the form of ficticious money that in turn it lent to its captive consumers at enormous rates of compound interest.

The ‘wealth’ created from the interest charged on the loans was then used to create an even greater pile of ficticious wealth by manipulating the markets on a global scale through the creation of equally ficticious financial ‘instruments’. Great fun while it lasted. Piles of dosh, in fact far too much capital and all of it ficticious, sloshing about in a system that has literally eaten itself alive.

The genesis of the current crisis can in part be traced back to Thatcher’s original decision to turn the UK into a ‘property-owning democracy’ by selling off publicly-owned housing. A decision that transformed the populace into a nation of debtors’ and most importantly, it locked them in debt for life (and beyond); a house being the single biggest investment people ever make. At the same time, entire industries were closed down and their coherent, class-conscious communities destroyed. An entire epoch wiped out in a stroke. Enter the Age of Credit.

Trapped on a treadmill of debt is it any wonder that no one wants to ‘rock the boat’? This might sound somewhat melodramatic but it would appear that only a wholesale collapse of the economy will produce the right conditions for the potential for revolutionary change to begin. But is this what we want to happen?

Meanwhile, given the the dire state of things, just as it did in the 1930s, the Empire ratchets up the case for war but war of a different kind having learned a brutal lesson from media coverage of the Vietnam War that thousands of Imperial troops dying in front of you, live on your television screens was extremely bad for business.

Just as the Imperial blueprints have made plain, the Empire, using a combination of media manipulation, hi-tech weapons and its stranglehold on international finance, can wage war ‘at a distance’ from its domestic populations. Using a professional army plus of course its mercenary minions to crush all resistance with barely a murmur from the metropolis. Imperial deaths, such as they are, are given full state/media funerals, after all one imperial death must be worth at least 100 (fill in the country) deaths.

Economic/political crisis at home equals wars abroad, it’s that simple. Is the Empire insane enough to start a nuclear war? Well as they’ve done before, they must think they can–in their terms–get away with it again. It would certainly divert our attentions away from our domestic woes- for a time. The ‘collateral damage’ would be too immense to calculate let alone contemplate thus such things are not touched upon when the MSM talks of the West ‘losing patience with Iran’ echoing the Empire’s threats of ‘taking out’ Iran’s nuclear facilities if it doesn’t behave itself and do as its told.

It’s also difficult to contemplate what the international repercussions of a ‘surgical nuclear strike’ on Iran would be. I find it inconceivable that the Russians and possibly the Chinese would not know about it in advance. The Empire, in spite of its power, can’t just go lobbing nuclear weapons about willy-nilly (and by Empire I include Israel, it’s mini-assassin) although the use of ‘Depleted Uranium‘ has barely caused a ripple of discontent in the populace, no doubt it’s not dramatic enough. The name by the way, doesn’t mean it ain’t radioactive, just less radioactive than its lethal parent U-235.

And just as importantly, it’s a test of Russia’s resolve just as in 1990 when the Empire decided that Saddam Hussein’s regime had lived past its sell-by date. What would the Russians do if the US encroached on what been traditionally, Russia’s patch? Well we know the answer to that but what of the present? Once again is it to be left to a reluctant Russia to stare down the Empire whilst we stand by, passive observers of our own, and others, fate?

1. The Elite, the ‘Great Game’ and World War III, by Prof. Mujahid Kamran
2. UK recession ‘not yet inevitable,” BBC News 10/01/2012.

What we are told is what Panetta-Petraeus, and the weapons manufacturers instruct the media to say:

– U.S. combat forces are surging in the Middle East. Earlier this week the “American carrier Carl Vinson joined the carrier Stennis in the Arabian Sea, giving commanders major naval and air assets in case Iran carries out its recent threats to close the Strait of Hormuz.”

– Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis (chief of U.S. Central Command) warned that he needed additional forces to deal with Iran and other potential threats.

– 15,000 troops are stationed in Kuwait joining the others that are there. This includes two new units — Army infantry brigades and a helicopter unit. General Mattis said that we should not take this as a build-up to war.

With the recent news of another assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist, carried out by Israeli forces (a.k.a. U.S. special forces), we are told that Israel is “pushing” the U.S. toward war. To lend credence to this, pundits last week on CNN stated that in terms of war-making, that Israel could not act alone — that it, in fact, needs the U.S. Air Force to carry out a war and attack on Iran. It is very clear to most Americans that Israel cannot carry out a war by itself — that the U.S. is involved in every decision that affects Israeli actions against Iran, and that the Pentagon began planning and training for it years ago.

The attacks on Iran and Syria are imminent even though Russia is asking the U.S. and Iran to abandon the militant rhetoric. China, upon Geitner’s recent request during his visit there this last week, has not “significantly” reduced its Iranian oil imports. Turkey has also requested the U.S. resume diplomatic efforts.¹ The U.S.’s commitment to destabilize every Muslim country in the Middle East is almost complete. Iran and Syria are among the last remnants of independent nation-states in that area of the world, with lackeys such as Saudi Arabia, and a handful of other client states prepared to do whatever the U.S. demands. It will be decades before any Muslim country will have the economic and military independence it would take to prevent the U.S. from intervening when and where it chooses.

What the U.S. media doesn’t discuss is why we seek to destabilize the entire Arab world. The reason is obvious: by destroying the infrastructure of countries that have valuable natural resources, the U.S. and Europe ensure the stability and price-fixing capacities of U.S. and European oil interests as well as artificial control over other natural resources worldwide. It is not necessary for us to steal Iraq’s or Iran’s oil. By destroying their ability to compete on the world market, our oil companies are free to set whatever prices they want, and can insist on a regulation-free environment within which to maneuver.

By manufacturing a non-existent threat, and engaging in another unwarranted, one-sided war, Obama can once again bow down to corporate America, pretend to be concerned for the welfare of the American people, and do nothing to control the war mongers.

The American people are so marginalized and disenfranchised that there is simply nothing that can be done to stop this madness. Just as we sat by and watched the destruction of Libya, the bailout of Wall Street, the theft of jobs, money and houses from right under our noses, the latest imperial assault is a done deal.

This will be a vicious war with the U.S. utilizing its “tactical” nuclear weapons (light weight nuclear devices and also drones) to destroy the Iranian nuclear plants underground.²

This represents yet another escalation of weaponry, just as did Mustard Gas in WWI; as bombing, conflagration and destruction of entire cities during WWII, culminating in nuclear war; as Agent Orange did in the American War against Vietnam; and torture and drones have in these wars in the Middle East.

We have become apt at war; we excel at it. If only we could be as apt at peace.

1. “US military operation against Iran would be a grave mistake,” RT, 1-14-12
2. Global Security describes “tactical” weapons:

   “The B61-11 can penetrate and detonate below the earth’s surface, creating a massive shock wave capable of destroying underground targets. In tests the bomb penetrates only 20 feet into dry earth, even when dropped from altitudes above 40,000 feet. But even this shallow penetration before detonation allows a much higher proportion of the explosion to be transferred into ground shock relative to a surface burst. It is not able to counter targets deeply buried under granite rock. Moreover, it has a high yield, in the hundreds of kilotons. If used in North Korea, the radioactive fallout could drift over nearby countries such as Japan.” (“Info for the B61-11 Earth Penetrating Weapons”:

   http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/systems/b61-11.htm)

   Chossudovsky, Michel, ” ‘Tactical Nuclear Weapons’ against Afghanistan?,” Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG), globalresearch.ca,  12-5-11

   EXCERPT:
   The US Air Force is using GBU-28 “bunker buster bombs” capable of creating large scale underground explosions.  The official story is that these bombs are intended to target “cave and tunnel complexes” in mountainous areas in southern Afghanistan, used as a hideaway by Osama.

   Dubbed by the Pentagon as “the Big Ones”, the GBUs (“guided bomb unit”) are 5000lb laser guided bombs with improved BLU-113 warheads, capable of penetrating  several meters of reinforced concrete. The BLU-113 is the most powerful conventional “earth penetrating warhead.”

   While the Pentagon’s “Big Ones” are classified as “conventional weapons”, the official statements fail to mention that the same “bunker buster bombs” launched from a B-52, a B-2 stealth bomber or an F-16 aircraft can also be equipped with a nuclear device. The B61-11 is the ” nuclear version” of its  ”conventional” BLU-113 counterpart. The B61-11 was developed from the old “conventional” B61-7 “gravity bomb.”

   While in the case of these “bunker buster bombs”, the distinction between “nuclear” and ”conventional” warheads is not always brought out in official statements, the impacts of the ”nuclear version” on civilians are far more devastating, in view of the toxic radioactive fallout over a large area.

Very few people in America are aware or informed regarding the devastation and massive loss of life which would occur in the case of a US-Israeli sponsored attack on Iran. The media is involved in a deliberate process of camouflage and distortion.

War preparations under a “Global Strike” Concept, centralized and coordinated by US Strategic Command (STRATCOM) are not front page news in comparison to the most insignificant issues of public concern, including the local level crime scene or the tabloid gossip reports on Hollywood celebrities.

The “Globalization of War” involving the hegemonic deployment of a formidable US-NATO military force in all major regions of the World is inconsequential in the eyes of the Western media.

The broader implications of this war are either trivialized or not mentioned. People are led to believe that war is part of a “humanitarian mandate” and that both Iran as well as Iran’s allies, namely China and Russia, constitute an unrelenting  threat to global security and “Western democracy”.

While the most advanced weapons system are used, America’s wars are never presented as “killing operations” resulting in extensive civilian casualties. While the incidence of “collateral damage” is acknowledged, US-led wars are heralded as an unquestionable instrument of “peace-making” and “democratization”.

This twisted notion that waging war is “a worthy cause”, becomes entrenched in the inner consciousness of millions of people. A  framework of “good versus evil” overshadows an understanding of the causes and devastating consequences of  war. Within this mindset, realities as well as concepts are turned upside down. War becomes peace. The lie becomes the truth. The humanitarian mandate of the Pentagon and NATO cannot be challenged.

When “going after the bad guys”, no options can be taken off the table.  An inquisitorial doctrine similar to that of the Spanish Inquisition, prevails. People are no longer allowed to think.

Iran is a country of close to 80 million people. It constitutes a major and significant regional military and economic power. It has ten percent of global oil and gas reserves, more than five times those of the United States of America.

The conquest of Iran’s oil riches is the driving force behind America’s military agenda. Iran’s oil and gas industry is the unspoken trophy of  the US led war.

While the US is on a war footing, Iran has  — for more than ten years — been actively developing its military capabilities in the eventuality of a US sponsored attack.

If hostilities were to break out between Iran and the Western military alliance, this could trigger a regional war extending from the Mediterranean to the Chinese border, potentially leading humanity into the realm of a World War III scenario.

The Russian government, in a recent statement, has warned the US and NATO that “should Iran get drawn into any political or military hardships, this will be a direct threat to our national security.” What this signifies is that Russia is Iran’s military ally and that Russia will act militarily if Iran is attacked.

Military Deployment

Iran is the target of US-Israel-NATO war plans. Advanced weapons systems have been deployed.

US and allied Special Forces as well as intelligence operatives are already on the ground inside Iran. US military drones are involved in spying and reconnaissance activities.

Bunker buster B61 tactical nuclear weapons are slated to be used against Iran in retaliation for its alleged nuclear weapons program. Ironically, in the words of US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Iran does not possess a nuclear weapons program. “Are they trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No.” The risk of armed hostilities between the US-Israel led coalition and Iran is, according to Israeli military analysts “dangerously close”.

There has been a massive deployment of troops which have been dispatched to the Middle East, not to mention the redeployment of US and allied troops previously stationed in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Nine thousand US troops have been dispatched to Israel to participate in what is described by the Israeli press as the largest joint air defense war exercise in Israeli history, The drill, called “Austere Challenge 12,” is scheduled to take place within the next few weeks Its stated purpose “is to test multiple Israeli and US air defense systems, especially the “Arrow” system, which the country specifically developed with help from the US to intercept Iranian missiles.”

Reports also suggest that substantial increase in the number of reservists who are being deployed to the Middle East. Reports confirm that reservist US Air Force personnel have been dispatched to military bases in South West Asia (Persian Gulf). From Minnesota, more than 120 Airmen including pilots, navigators, mechanics, etc. departed for the Middle East on January 8. Reservist US air force personnel from bases in North Carolina and Georgia “expect to deploy with their units in coming months”.¹

Reserve units from the US Coastguard have also been dispatched to the Middle East.²

From these local reports, however, it is impossible to establish the overall (net) increase of US reservists from different divisions of the US military, who have been assigned to “operation Iran war”.

Army reservists from the UK are also been sent to the Middle East.

US Troops to Israel

Israel has become a de facto US military outpost. US and Israeli command structures are being integrated, with close consultations between the Pentagon and Israel’s Ministry of Defense.

A large number of US troops will be stationed in Israel once the war games are completed.  The assumption of this military deployment is the staging of a joint US-Israeli air attack on Iran. Military escalation towards a regional war is part of the military scenario:

Thousands of US troops began descending on Israel this week. … many would be staying up to the end of the year as part of the US-IDF deployment in readiness for a military engagement with Iran and its possible escalation into a regional conflict. They will be joined by a US aircraft carrier. The warplanes on its decks will fly missions with Israeli Air Force jets. The 9,000 US servicemen gathering in Israel in the coming weeks are mostly airmen, missile interceptor teams, marines, seamen, technicians and intelligence officers.
…
Tehran too is walking a taut tightrope. It is staging military’s maneuvers every few days to assuring the Iranian people that its leaders are fully prepared to defend the country against an American or Israeli strike on its national nuclear program. By this stratagem, Iran’s ground, sea and air forces are maintained constantly at top war readiness to thwart any surprise attack.

The joint US-Israeli drill will test multiple Israeli and US air defense systems against incoming missiles and rockets, according to the official communiqué.³

Missile defense and naval war games are being conducted simultaneously. US-Israeli war games — involving an impressive display of naval power — are slated to be held in the Persian Gulf. Meanwhile, Iran has announced that it will be conducting its own war games in the Persian Gulf in February.

An impressive deployment of troops and advanced military hardware is unfolding. Britain’s Royal Navy has dispatched her newest and most advanced warship, Type 45 destroyer HMS Daring, “which has a “stealth” design to help avoid detection by radar”.

Meanwhile, The Islamic Republic of Iran is also on a war footing. Iran’s Armed Forces is in an advanced stage of preparedness to defend the country’s borders as well as retaliate against a US-Israel led attack. Iran has completed a 10-day naval exercise near the Strait of Hormuz in December. It has now announced  that it is planning new naval drills codenamed “The Great Prophet”, which are slated to take place in February. Iran’s December war games involved the test firing of two long range missiles systems, including the Qadar (a powerful sea-to-shore missile) and the Nour surface-to-surface missile. “According to Iranian state news, the Nour is an ‘advanced radar-evading, target-seeking, guided and controlled missile’.”⁴

Additionally, the Iranian military reportedly test-fired numerous other short, medium and long-range missiles…. Iranian authorities reported that they test-fired the medium-range, surface-to-air, radar-evading Mehrab missile.⁴

Iranian Missile Tests

War games by the US-Israel coalition are being held within a short distance of Iranian territorial waters. The timing of these games coincides with those of Iran.

The crucial question: Is the Pentagon seeking to deliberately trigger a military confrontation in the Persian Gulf with a view to providing a pretext and a justification to waging an all out war on the Islamic Republic of Iran?
US military strategists admit that the US Navy would be at disadvantage in relation to Iranian forces in the narrow corridor of the Strait of Hormuz:

Despite its might and shear strength, geography literally works against U.S. naval power in the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf. The relative narrowness of the Persian Gulf makes it like a channel, at least in a strategic and military context. Figuratively speaking, the aircraft carriers and warships of the U.S. are confined to narrow waters or are closed in within the coastal waters of the Persian Gulf. … Even the Pentagon’s own war simulations have shown that a war in the Persian Gulf with Iran would spell disaster for the United States and its military.⁵

Triggering a War Pretext Incident: Provoking Iran to “Throw the First Punch”

Is the Obama administration prepared to sacrifice one or more vessels of the Fifth Fleet, resulting in extensive casualties among soldiers and sailors, with a view to mustering public support for a war on Iran on the grounds of self-defense?

As documented by Richard Sanders, the strategy of triggering a war pretext incident has been used throughout American military history.

Throughout history, war planners have used various forms of deception to trick their enemies. Because public support is so crucial to the process of initiating and waging war, the home population is also subject to deceitful stratagems. The creation of false excuses to justify going to war is a major first step in constructing public support for such deadly ventures. Perhaps the most common pretext for war is an apparently unprovoked enemy attack. Such attacks, however, are often fabricated, incited or deliberately allowed to occur. They are then exploited to arouse widespread public sympathy for the victims, demonize the attackers and build mass support for military “retaliation.”

Like schoolyard bullies who shout ‘He hit me first!’, war planners know that it is irrelevant whether the opponent really did ‘throw the first punch.’ As long as it can be made to appear that the attack was unprovoked, the bully receives license to ‘respond’ with force. Bullies and war planners are experts at taunting, teasing and threatening their opponents. If the enemy cannot be goaded into ‘firing the first shot,’ it is easy enough to lie about what happened. Sometimes, that is sufficient to rationalize a schoolyard beating or a genocidal war.

Such trickery has probably been employed by every military power throughout history. During the Roman empire, “the cause for war” — casus belli — was often invented to conceal the real reasons for war. Over the millennia, although weapons and battle strategies have changed greatly, the deceitful strategem of using pretext incidents to ignite war has remained remarkably consistent.⁶

President Roosevelt knew that Pearl Harbor was going to be attacked by Japan and did nothing to prevent it. At a November 25 1941 meeting of FDR’s war council, “Secretary of War Henry Stimson’s notes speak of the prevailing consensus:  ‘The question was how we should maneuver them [the Japanese] into … firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves.’”⁷

A massive cover-up followed Pearl Harbor a few days later, … when the Chief of Staff ordered a lid put on the affair. ‘Gentlemen,’ he told half a dozen officers, ‘this goes to the grave with us.’⁸

According to Professor Francis Boyle with reference to the ongoing showdown between the US Navy and Iran in the Persian Gulf:: “Once again, it looks to me like what FDR did in 1941 when he sacrificed the Pacific Fleet and its men at Pearl Harbor—except for the carriers—in order to get the USA into World War II despite the fervent desire of the American People and Congress to stay out. Déjà vu all over again. Back to the Future ”⁹

In contrast to the events of 1941, the US Congress in 2012 is broadly supportive of waging a war on Iran and the American people are, as a result of media disinformation, largely unaware of the devastating implications of a US-Israeli attack.

Thematic Justifications: Demonizing the Enemy

Apart from the “incident” whereby the enemy is incited to “throw the first punch”, “thematic justifications” are used to demonize the enemy and justify a casus belli. WMD and regime change in the case of Iraq (2003), Al Qaeda and the 9/11 attacks in the case of Afghanistan (2001), “regime change” and “democratization” in the case of Libya (2011).

The thematic justifications to wage war on Iran include the following:

1. Iran is accused of developing a nuclear weapons program,  2. Iran is a “Rogue State” which defies the “international community” and constitutes a threat the Western World, 3. Iran wants “to wipe Israel off the map”, 4. Iran is responsible for supporting and abetting the 9/11 terrorist attacks,  5. Iran is an authoritarian and undemocratic country thereby justifying a “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) intervention with a view to instating democracy.

In case of a war with Iran, NATO member states as well as NATO partners of the “Mediterranean Dialogue” including the Five GCC Gulf States, Saudi Arabia, Jordan would be involved.

Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States have a formidable weapons arsenal (Made in America), which would be used against Iran on behalf of the US led coalition.¹⁰

The US has more than 30 military bases and facilities including its naval base in Bahrain, US Central command (CENTCOM) headquarters in Qatar, not to mention its military installations in Pakistan, Turkey and Afghanistan (see map)

From Washington’s standpoint, Saudi Arabia’s Royal Air Force is meant to act as a proxy for the USAF, operating on the principle of “interoperability”. Saudi Arabia’s Air Force is equipped with the most advanced combat planes including (among others) the Eurofighter Typhoons, Tornado IDS, F-15 and F-15E Eagle fighters. In October 2010, Washington announced its largest arms sale in US history, a $60.5 billion purchase by Saudi Arabia. These weapons although acquired by Saudi Arabia are de facto part of a US sponsored weapons arsenal, which is to be used in close coordination and consultation with the Pentagon.

It should, nonetheless, be emphasised that there is reluctance within the ruling Saudi and Gulf States elites, to actively participating in a regional war, which would inevitably lead to Iranian retaliatory aerial attacks.

Escalation: Towards a Broader Regional War

If aerial attacks were to be launched, Iran would retaliate with missile attacks directed against Israel as well as against US military facilities in the Persian Gulf, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Iran has an advanced Russian S 300 air defense system. It is equipped with medium and long range missile capabilities: The Shahab 3 and Sejjil missiles have a range of  approximately 2,000 km, enabling them to strike targets in Israel. The Ghadr 1 has a range of 1,800 km.¹¹

The war with Iran would not be limited to aerial bombardments. A land war could follow with Turkey playing a strategic military role on behalf of the US-Israel led coalition. Turkey’s ground forces are of the order of 500,000. Iran’s are of a similar order of magnitude: 465,000 regular forces, which would immediately be deployed in border areas with Iran and Syria as well as within Syria.

Iran’s Air Force and Navy personnel are respectively of the order of 52,000 and 28,000. The Revolutionary Guards, which constitute Iran’s elite forces, are of the order of 120,000. Moreover, Iran has a significant paramilitary force called the Basij. (see Table below)

The war would also overflow into Syria (which is an ally of Iran, Palestine, Lebanon and Jordan involving the participation of  Syrian ground forces as well as Hezbollah, which effectively repealed Israel’s 2006 invasion of Lebanon. In recent developments, Iran has increased its military aid to Syria and Lebanon.

In turn, Russia has a naval base in Southern Syria and military cooperation agreements with both Syria and Iran, involving the presence of Russian military advisers. Russia is deploying warships out of its naval base in Tartus including aircraft carrying missile cruiser Admiral Kuznetsov. “The deployment … follows the US move to station the George H.W. Bush Carrier Strike Group” off the Syrian coastline.¹²

Russia’s Naval base in Tartus, Syria

Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier


Su 33 take-off from aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov in the Eastern Mediterranean

UN Security Council Resolution 1929 (June 2010) had imposed a sanctions regime on Iran which was conducive to a temporary freeze in military cooperation between Iran and Russia, as well as with China. In recent developments, it would appear that military cooperation has de facto resumed following the rebuff by both China and Russia of the December 31, 2011 economic sanctions regime imposed by Washington.

In a scenario of military escalation, Iranian troops and/or Special Forces would cross the border into Afghanistan and Iraq.

From the three existing war theaters: Afghanistan-Pakistan (Af-Pak), Iraq, Palestine, the onslaught of a war on Iran would lead to an integrated regional war.

The entire Middle East-Central Asian region extending from the Eastern Mediterranean to China’s Western frontier with Afghanistan and Pakistan would flare up, from the tip of the Arabian Peninsula to the Caspian Sea basin.

The Caucasus and Central Asia: Competing Military Alliances

What would be the involvement of America’s “partners” in the Caucasus, namely Georgia and Azerbaijan?¹³

In Azerbaijan, the government has recently distanced itself from Washington, and has turned down its participation in joint military exercises with the US. The bilateral US-Azerbaijan strategic agreement is said to be stagnating:

Baku’s desire to not to anger Moscow would seem to preclude any possibility of Azerbaijan hosting a US military facility….”¹⁴

In contrast, the Georgian government is directly supporting America’s war effort against Iran. In recent developments, the Pentagon is sponsoring the construction of makeshift US military hospitals in Georgia to be used in the eventuality of a war with Iran.¹⁵

These are 20-bed hospitals… It’s an American project. A big war between the US and Iran is beginning in the Persian Gulf. $5 billion was allocated for the construction of these 20-bed military hospitals,” Javelidze said in an interview with Georgian paper Kviris Kronika (News of the Week) … The construction is mainly paid from the American pocket. In addition, airports are being briskly built in Georgia… (Ibid)

What the military hospitals project conveys is that the Pentagon has already established detailed logistics pertaining to the transfer of wounded US servicemen from the Iran battlefield to nearby military hospitals in Georgia. These advanced preparations suggest that war plans are at a very advanced stage and that scenarios pertaining to military casualties have been established.

Military Alliances: The Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the CSTO

The countervailing military alliance to the US-NATO-Israel axis  is the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) as well as the overlapping Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). The SCO includes Kazakhstan, the People’s Republic of China, the Kyrgyz Republic, the Russian Federation, the Republic of Tajikistan and the Republic of Uzbekistan. The SCO includes seven former Soviet republics including Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Iran has observer status in the SCO.

Uzbekistan withdrew from the NATO sponsored GUUAM military cooperation agreement. In 2005, it formally evicted the US from the Karshi-Khanabad air base, known as K2.”¹⁶

Of significance, in the Kyrgyz Republic, the new elected President Almazbek Atambayev (November 2011) stated that he intends to close down the US military base at Manas when the lease expires.¹⁷

What these developments suggest is that the former Soviet republics of Central Asia have reaffirmed their relationship to Moscow, which in turn has led the consolidation of the SCO-CSTO military bloc.





Global US Military Hegemony. Russia and China

The participation of Russia and China on the side of Iran is already de facto in view of prevailing military cooperation agreements. the transfer of weapons systems and technology to Iran, as well as the presence of Russian military advisers, training personnel, in both Iran and Syria.

Russia and China are fully aware that a war on Iran is a stepping stone towards a broader war. Both countries are targeted by the US and NATO. Russia is threatened on its border with the European Union, with US-NATO AMD targeted at major Russian cities. With the exception of its Northern frontier, China is surrounded by US military bases, from the Korean peninsula to the South China Sea.

Both China and Russia are perceived by Washington as a “Global Threat”. China has been the target of veiled threats by President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The recent National Defense Review announced by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, envisages an expanded defense budget, with a view to containing Russia and China.

In recent development, Russia newly appointed Deputy Prime Minister Dmitri Rogozin has warned Washington and Brussels that “Should anything happen to Iran, should Iran get drawn into any political or military hardships, this will be a direct threat to our national security,”

Spiralling US Defense Spending: The Pentagon’s “Big Dog” Ideology

Washington’s objective  is to establish global military dominance. While the “war on terrorism” and the containment of “rogue states” still constitute the official justification and driving force, China and Russia have been tagged in US military and National Security documents as potential enemies: 

… the U.S. military … is seeking to dissuade rising powers, such as China, from challenging U.S. military dominance.¹⁸

Through spiraling defense spending and the continued growth of the US weapons industry, requiring a massive compression of all categories of government expenditure.

Implemented at the crossroads of the most serious economic crisis in American history, the ongoing increase in defense spending feeds this new undeclared arms race with China and Russia, with vast amounts of tax dollars channelled to America’s defense contractors.

The stated objective is to make the process of developing advanced weapons systems “so expensive”, that no other power on earth including China and Russia will able to compete or challenge “the Big Dog”, without jeopardizing its civilian economy. ¹⁹

[A]t the core of this strategy is the belief that the US must maintain such a large lead in crucial [military] technologies that growing powers [ Russia, China, Iran] will conclude that it is too expensive for these countries to even think about trying to run with the big dog. They will realize that it is not worth sacrificing their economic growth, said one defense consultant who was hired to draft sections of the document.¹⁸

TABLE 1 THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN: MILITARY CAPABILITIES

Total Population: 77,891,220 [2011]
Available Manpower: 46,247,556 [2011]
Fit for Military Service: 39,556,497 [2011]
Of Military Age: 1,392,483 [2011]
Active Military: 545,000 [2011]
Active Reserve: 650,000 [2011]

LAND ARMY
Total Land Weapons: 12,393
Tanks: 1,793 [2011]
Armoured Personnel Carrier/Infantry Fighting Vehicles (APC/IFV): 1,560 [2011]
Towed Artillery: 1,575 [2011]
SPGs: 865 [2011]
MLRSs: 200 [2011]
Mortars: 5,000 [2011]
Anti Tank (AT) Weapons: 1,400 [2011]
Anti-Aerial (AA) Weapons: 1,701 [2011]
Logistical Vehicles: 12,000

AIR POWER
Total Aircraft: 1,030 [2011]
Helicopters: 357 [2011]
Serviceable Airports: 319 [2011]

NAVAL POWER
Total Navy Ships: 261
Merchant Marine Strength: 74 [2011]
Major Ports & Terminals: 3 Aircraft Carriers: 0 [2011]
Destroyers: 3 [2011]
Submarines: 19 [2011]
Frigates: 5 [2011]
Patrol Craft: 198 [2011]
Mine Warfare Craft: 7 [2011]
Amphibious Assault Craft: 26 [2011]

SOURCES: Iraniandefence.com and Globalfirepower.com.

1. See fayobserver.com, December 18, 2011.
2. “Coast Guard Reservists Head to Middle East,” military.com, January 5, 2012.
3. DEBKAfile, January 6, 2012.
4. See “The Pentagon to Send US Troops to Israel. Iran is the Unspoken Target,” Global Research, January 4, 2012.
5. Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, “The Geo-Politics of the Strait of Hormuz: Could the U.S. Navy be defeated by Iran in the Persian Gulf?,” Global Research, January 8, 2012.
6. See “How to Start a War: The American Use of War Pretext Incidents,” Global Research, January 9, 2012.
7. See Patrick Buchanan, “Did FDR Provoke Pearl Harbor?” Global Research, December 7, 2011.
8. John Toland, Infamy: Pearl Harbor and its Aftermath, Doubleday, 1982, p. 321.
9. Francis Boyle, January 13, 2011, email communication to author.
10. See The Gulf Military Balance in 2010: An Overview, Center for Strategic and International Studies.
11. See Haaretz, September 28, 2009.
12. See M. K. Badrakumar, “Russia deploying warships in Syria,” Indian Punchline, November 21, 2011.
13. See Michel Chossudovsky, “The Iran War Theater’s “Northern Front”: Azerbaijan and the US Sponsored War on Iran,” Global Research, April 9, 2007.
14. “Azerbaijan: US Military Ties with Baku Are Stagnating – Experts,” EurasiaNet.org, April 25, 2011.
15. “Readies for War On Iran: US Builds Military Hospitals in Georgia,” Global Research, January 10, 2012.
16. U.S. Evicted From Air Base In Uzbekistan,” Washington Post, July 30, 2005.
17. Kyrgyzstan Says United States’ Manas Air Base Will Close, NY Times.com, November, 1, 2011.
18. Greg Jaffe, “Rumsfeld details big military shift in new document,” Wall Street Journal, March 11, 2005.
19. Michel Chossudovsky, “New Undeclared Arms Race,” Global Research, March 17, 2005.

Underneath all these interlinked plots — and the accompanying hysteria of Cold War-style headlines — there’s a never-ending thriller floating downstream: Pipelineistan. That’s the chessboard where the half-hidden twin of the Pentagon’s “long war” is played out. Virtually all current geopolitical developments are energy-related. So fasten your seat belts, it’s time to revisit Dr Zbigniew Brzezinski’s “grand chessboard” in Eurasia to find out who’s winning the Pipelineistan wars.

Got tickets to the opera?

Let’s start with Nabucco (the gas opera). Nabucco is above all a key, strategic Western powerplay; how to deliver Caspian Sea gas to Europe. Energy execs call it “opening the Southern Corridor” (of gas). The problem is this Open Sesame will only deliver if supplied by a tsunami of gas from two key “stans”: Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan.

The 3,900-kilometer Nabucco will hit five transit countries — Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Turkey — and it may end costing a staggering 26 billion euros (US$33.7 billion).¹

Construction — endlessly delayed — might start by 2013. Essentially, everything is still a bloody mess. Nobody knows about prices, or the details of transit rights. Turkey is also eager to resell the gas on its own. Moreover, if Baku and Ankara decide to develop in tandem the Shah Deniz phase II² fields in Azerbaijan to feed the pipeline, they will need an extra $20 billion in investment.

Turkmenistan’s president, the spectacularly named Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, sticks to his trademark wobbly script (Check him out singing his original hit “For You, My White Flower” ). He always says the European Union’s myriad proposals “would be studied” and cooperation with the Europeans is “a strategic priority” of his foreign policy. But the EU’s Holy Grail — an ironclad agreement to get the gas — is ever more elusive. The Russians and even the Azeris bet this will never happen.

Our man Gurbanguly, savvy operator that he is, would prefer to hatch his eggs in a Chinese basket — rather than in those far-away euro-messy lands. That’s why he wobbles — feigning he’s open to any offer. He knows better than anybody that for the Europeans Nabucco is the key to be released (a bit) from the grip of Russia’s Gazprom. At the same time he keeps in mind how to maximize his Chinese profits while not antagonizing Russia.

Every European bureaucracy (not) worth its name is behind Nabucco, ³ and most of all an eager European Commission (EC), the EU’s fat salary-infested executive branch. The EC’s do-or-die strategic priority is to link the Turkmen port of Turkmenbashi to the Absheron Peninsula in Azerbaijan via a Trans-Caspian Gas pipeline (TCGP).⁴ It’s a breeze; I did the trip on a vodka-infested Azeri cargo ship and it took me only 12 hours.

But how to pull it off? Moscow locked up all Azeri gas. Gazprom locked up all the surplus gas from Turkmenistan. The only option would be Iran. Now tell that to the US Senate – who has declared economic war⁵ against Iran.

Let’s go TAPI!

A detour to AfPak is in order. Not even the deities who lord over the Hindu Kush know if the $7.6 billion (and counting), 1,735-kilometer TAPI (Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India) pipeline will ever be built.

For Turkmenistan’s Oil and Gas Minister Bayramgeldy Nedirov, “There are no doubts that this [TAPI] project will be realized.”⁶ Pakistan and India — after infinite haggling — have finally agreed on pricing. Roughly a third of the pipeline’s cost will be financed by the Philippines-based Asian Development Bank — since both Afghanistan and Pakistan are essentially broke.

Imagine a steel serpent entering western Afghanistan towards Herat, going south underground (to prevent terrorist bombing) parallel to the Herat-Kandahar road, then taking a detour via Quetta — home of Taliban supremo Mullah Omar — to Multan in Pakistan and finally reaching Fazilka, on the Indian border.

To quote Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon, “This is the stuff dreams are made of,” since the Bill Clinton administration, way before 9/11 and the now virtually extinct GWOT (“global war on terror”). Cynics may read this as gas republic Turkmenistan — holder of the fourth-largest reserves in the world — doing better to promote economic development and security in Afghanistan than 100,000 US troops.

The gas for TAPI will come from the new South Yolotan-Osman field, which already supplies China (according to British auditor Gaffney, Cline & Associates this is the world’s second-largest gas field,⁷ after South Pars in Iran). Our man Gurbanguly, by the way, issued a decree changing the gas field’s name to Galkynys – Turkmen for “Renaissance”; after all, Gurbanguly’s reign has been baptized as “The Epoch of New Renaissance and Great Transformations”. These “transformations” have nothing to do with the Arab Spring(s).

Here we find yet another clever gambit by our man Gurbanguly. He keeps an open door to Nabucco by freeing the gas from Dauletabad field in southeast Turkmenistan to flow via a domestic pipeline to the Caspian, and then to the oh so elusive TCGP. Even the (delicious) sturgeons in the Caspian know that without a TCGP, Nabucco is DOA.

At least for a year now our man Gurbanguly has been telling every diplomat and top oil exec in sight that he rejects Russia’s interference over Turkmenistan’s gas strategy.⁸ But apparently he didn’t inform the Russians.

Russian President Dmitri Medvedev did visit Ashgabat — the Las Vegas of Central Asia — to talk business.⁹ And then, in a daring plot twist, suddenly Gazprom proclaimed its love of TAPI! Just imagine; the Americans have been dreaming of TAPI since 1996, just for rival Gazprom to barge in at overtime. No one knew what Medvedev offered to Gurbanguly so he wouldn’t keep entertaining fancy Louis Vuitton ideas. Perhaps nothing. We’ll come to that in a minute.

Ask the babushkas

TAPI’s direct competition is IPI — the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline (India, pressured by the US, has virtually dropped out; China is ready to pounce and turn it into IPC). Well, who else but Gazprom now wants to get into the IP groove as well,¹⁰ alongside China’s CNPC? The Iranian stretch of the pipeline is virtually ready. The Pakistani stretch begins in early 2012. Still another Russian chess move — and Washington never saw it coming.

Even a wooden babushka knows what Moscow does not want; the Afghan chapter of the US Empire of Bases never going away. Then there’s regime change in Syria (with the implicit end of the Russian Black Sea fleet using the port of Tartus). The North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO’s) advances in the Black Sea. The ever-expanding (at least rhetorically) US missile defense and the US’s “New Silk Road” gambit to re-penetrate Central Asia.¹¹

It was Russia that authorized the Northern Distribution Network (NDN) to supply US and NATO troops in Afghanistan,¹² an endless trek across Eurasia, including Uzbekistan — whose ghastly dictatorship US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton praised for its political “progress” — and Tajikistan. Pushing Moscow too far is not exactly a winning strategy.

Moscow also sees how Washington has antagonized virtually everyone in Pakistan, with the non-stop “war of the drones,” the non-stop violations of territorial sovereignty, the non-stop threats to barge in and “take over your nuclear arsenal”. Washington’s priority is for Islamabad to attack the Pakistani Taliban in Balochistan and thus be dragged into a civil war against not only Pashtuns but also Balochis. As Moscow – and Beijing – survey the battlefield, all they have to do is bide their time while sipping green tea.

When former reds see red
The Russian-Chinese entente is not always a Bolshoi dance.

Russia wants to sell gas to China for $400 per 1,000 cubic meters (cm), the same price it charges Europe. The wily Turkmen charge the Chinese only $250. Beijing already spent $4 billion in South Yolotan (and counting); they want all the gas they can get to supply the hugely successful Turkmenistan-Uzbekistan-Kazakhstan-China pipeline (which they built), online for two years now.¹³ Beijing is insatiable; oil major CNPC wants to import no less than 500% more gas from Central Asia by 2015.¹⁴

What this means is that for China the potentially $1 trillion-worth, 30-year gas deal with Russia may not be as imperative.¹⁵ Gazprom’s strategy boils down to two pipelines from Siberia to China. For Russia, this is absolutely essential in terms of making money out of Siberia. Geopolitical ramifications are immense. A close Russia-China steel umbilical cord may be interpreted in Europe — a virtual hostage of Gazprom — as perhaps a signal that they need Iran more than ever. At the same time Russia remains extremely uncomfortable with China’s energy onslaught all across Central Asia.

This is Beijing’s take, in a nutshell. We won’t pay European prices for Turkmen gas. And we don’t want a TCGP to Europe. China, Russia, even Iran, no one outside NATO wants the TCGP.¹⁶

So this is how it breaks down. The Turkmen may sell gas to

China and Iran. They may even sell gas to South Asia via TAPI (after all Gazprom has joined the party). But forget about selling gas to Europe — where Gazprom rules. No one knows whether our man Gurbanguly got the message.

All hail the gas Czar

Any way you look at it, there’s this inescapable feeling the Czar of Pipelineistan is Vladimir Putin (and just like the Terminator, he will be back, next March, as president, whatever his current predicament). After all, Russia produces more oil than Saudi Arabia (at least until 2015¹⁷ ) and has the world’s largest known reserves of natural gas. Around 40% of all Russian state funds come from oil and gas.

Putin’s plan is deceptively simple; Gazprom “takes over” Western Europe and thus neutralizes the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

Exhibit 1 is the Nord Stream, a $12 billion, twin 1224-km pipeline, respecting extraordinary complex environmental guidelines, launched last September. That’s gas from Siberia delivered under the Baltic Sea, bypassing problematic Ukraine, straight to Germany, Britain, the Netherlands, France, Belgium, Denmark and the Czech republic (10% of the entire EU annual gas consumption, or one third of China’s entire current gas consumption). Former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder heads the Nord Stream consortium.

Exhibit 2 is the South Stream (the shareholder agreement is already signed between Russia, Germany, France and Italy). That’s Russian gas delivered under the Black Sea to the southern part of the EU, through Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary and Slovakia. Instrumental in the deal was the quality time Putin spent with his close pal, former Italian prime minister Silvio “bunga bunga” Berlusconi.

Nord Stream drove Washington nuts. Not only it redesigned Europe’s energy configuration; it forged an unbreakable German-Russian strategic link. Putin, better than anyone, knows how pipelines hardwire governments. South Stream is driving Washington nuts because it beats Nabucco hands down, and it’s way cheaper. Talk about a geopolitical – and geoeconomic – battle.

Washington — alarmed at what the Germans deliciously dubbed the “modernization partnership” with Russia — is left to promote European “resistance” to Gazprom’s onslaught, as if Germany was Zucotti Park and Russia was the NYPD. Again here’s Pipelineistan infused with political reverberations. For instance, Germany and Italy are totally against NATO expansion. The reason? Nord and South Stream. The formidable German export machine is fueled by Russian energy; the motto might be “Put a Gazprom in my Audi”.

As William Engdahl, author of the seminal A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics in the New World Order, has observed, the “Nord Stream and South Stream are poised to leap out of the world of energy security and choreograph an altogether new power dynamic in the heart of Europe.”¹⁸

Putin’s roadmap is his paper, “A new integration project for Eurasia: The future in the making”, published by Izvestia in early October.¹⁹ It may be dismissed as megalomania, but it may also be read as an ippon — Putin loves judo — against NATO, the International Monetary Fund and neo-liberalism.

True, President Nursultan Nazarbayev of “snow leopard” Kazakhstan was already talking about a Eurasian Union way back in 1994. Putin, though, makes it clear this wouldn’t be Back In The USSR territory, but a “modern economic and currency union” stretching all across Central Asia.

For Putin, Syria is just a detail; the real thing is Eurasian integration. No wonder Atlanticists started freaking out with this suggestion of “a powerful supranational union that can become one of the poles of today’s world while being an efficient connecting link between Europe and the dynamic Asia-Pacific Region”. Compare it with US President Barack Obama and Hillary’s Pacific doctrine.²⁰

You integrate when I say so

Everything is up for grabs at the crucial intersection of hardcore geopolitics and Pipelineistan. Washington’s New Silk Road dream is not exactly a success.²¹

Moscow, for its part, now wants Pakistan to be a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).²² That also applies to China in relation to Iran. Imagine Russia, China, Pakistan, and Iran coordinating their mutual security inside a strengthened SCO, whose motto is “non-alignment, non-confrontation and non-interference in the affairs of other countries”. R2P it ain’t.

Snags abound. For China the SCO is above all about economics and trade.²³ For Russia it’s above all a security bloc,²⁴ which must absolutely find a regional solution to Afghanistan that keeps the Taliban under control and at the same time gets rid of the Afghan chapter of the US Empire of Bases.

As Pipelineistan goes, with Russia, Central Asia and Iran controlling 50% of world’s gas reserves, and with Iran and Pakistan as virtual SCO members, the name of the game becomes Asian integration — if not Eurasian. China and Russia now coordinate foreign policy in extreme detail. The trick is to connect China and Central Asia with South Asia and the Gulf — with the SCO developing as an economic/security powerhouse. In parallel, Pipelineistan may accelerate the full integration of the SCO as a counterpunch to NATO.

In realpolitik terms, that makes much more sense than a New Silk Road invented in Washington. But tell that to the Pentagon, or to a possible bomb Iran, scare China, neo-con-remote-controlled next president of the United States.

1. Hungary sees Nabucco costs quadrupling, may sue French firm, Reuters, Oct 24, 2011.
2. Shah Deniz II Natural Gas Field: What Will Azerbaijan’s Decision Be? ITGI, Nabucco or TAP?, Turkish Weekly, 18 August 2011.
3. EU banks throw their weight Nabucco pipeline, EU Observer, September 2010.
4. Trans-Caspian pipeline vital to Nabucco, Petroleum Economist, October 2011.
5. U.S. Senate Passes Iran Oil Sanctions as EU Blacklist Grows, Bloomberg, December 5, 2011.
6. Gas pipeline deal for Pakistan, India imminent, Express Tribune, November 5, 2011.
7. Second Gas of Turkmenistan, Open Central Asia, June 5 2011.
8. Gazprom Disbelief Draws Turkmen Ire , Moscow Times, 22 November 2011.
9. Russia, Turkmenistan focus on energy cooperation, Caspian problems, innovation , BSR Russia, 24 October 2010.
10. Russian gas giant fund 780-km pipeline, Pakistan Observer, August 22, 2011.
11. The United States’ “New Silk Road” Strategy: What is it? Where is it Headed?, US State Dept, September 29, 2011.
12. US Now Relies On Alternate Afghan Supply Routes, NPR, September 16, 2011.
13. China
    Pipelineistan, Asia Times Online, Dec 24, 2009.
14. Central Asia-China Gas Pipeline’s Capacity To Nearly Double, Oil and Gas Eurasia, August 29, 2011.
15. Russia, China closer to gas deal says Putin, RIA NOVOSTI, October 11.
16. China Plans To Buy All Turkmenistan’s Gas To Scuttle Sales To Europe…, Geofinancial, November 24, 2011.
17. Saudi Arabia to overtake Russia as top oil producer-IEA , Reuters, Nov 9, 2011.
18. Russia’s High Stakes Energy Geopolitics>, Global Research, November 14, 2011.
19. Izvestia publishes article by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on cooperation and interaction in the post-Soviet space.
20. China and the US: The roadmaps , Al-Jazeera, 31 Oct 2011.
21. US’s post-2014 Afghan agenda falters , Asia Times Online, Nov 4, 2011.
22. Russia endorses full SCO membership for Pakistan, Dawn, November 7, 2011.
23. SCO member states vow to strengthen economic cooperation , Xinhua, Nov. 7, 2011.
24. Russia, China don’t see US in SCO, Voice of Russia, Nov 1, 2011.

After a century of scheming in the Middle East and Central Asia by first Britain and then the US, the tables turned much faster than anyone could have imagined. As the pivotal 2011 draws to a close, it is the perfect moment to look at how we got here. The rollercoaster ride has been long and terrifying, and it is vital to understand where it is taking us.

From the 19th century on, it was clear to imperial strategists such as Cecil Rhodes and Halford MacKinder, motivated by the desire to conquer the world, that the “heartland”, Eurasia, was the key to securing the proposed world empire. WWI was supposed to clinch the deal, with the collapse of the Ottoman Caliphate leaving the Levant “free” to be carved up and secured. The Indian Raj was the empire’s base for securing Central Asia and the Far East .

But the horrors of the war led to an unforeseen result: revolution in Russia, inspiring a growing anti-imperial movement across Eurasia. Inspired by Russian revolutionaries, the Raj seethed in discontent, demanding freedom from the British yoke, and Chinese patriots coalesced around their own rapidly growing Communist movement. Historic Turkestan was now off limits, part of the Soviet Union or in the case of Afghanistan, unconquerable.

WWII erupted as Germany attempted to snatch the world empire from the British and destroy its Russian nemesis, but this merely accelerated the decline of the Euro-imperialists, their schemes exposed as relying on mass slaughter and cold, calculating privilege for the elite of the imperial centre.

When the war ended, there were hopes that imperialism would end too. The empire had been forced to ally with the Communists to defeat the Germans, and to promise to dismantle the imperial system after WWII. This new world order was to be one of independent nations competing on a level playing field. But what should have been the last gasp of this inhuman system of “free trade” in the service of empire gained a new lease on life, as the US had escaped the 20th century’s cataclysms unscathed, and its capitalists were eager to take on the mantle of empire ceded by the bankrupt Brits.

Moreover, a new, subtle but key force in the new empire was the Jewish state established by the British and Americans in the heart of the Middle East, a blatant colonial entity which draped its imperial role in the language of anti-colonial liberation. This, despite the fact that it was created by dispossessing the native Arabs, even as neighbouring Arabs in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and North Africa were gaining nominal independence from their colonial masters.

This new playing field witnessed a long, bloody match, pitting the empire’s forces against both Communists and anti-colonial forces. After millions of deaths, it culminated in the defeat of the Communists in 1991, and a new game began, with world control once again the prize.

The dreams of revolution and an end to empire were dashed, and this new world order was once again baldly imperial, as planners accelerated their plans, epitomised by the rise of the neoconservatives with their Project for a New American Century, combining market fundamentalism and imperial aggression in a deadly cocktail where there were no longer any geographical limits.

The former Communist union, especially Turkestan, with its strategic location and oil wealth, was quickly brought into the imperial orbit. Even China was accommodated, as it acceded to the world economic order established by the empire after WWII.

But the baggage of empire continued to complicate the picture. The Islamists, so useful in the destruction of the Communist bloc, resisted imperial designs. Israel, also useful throughout the post-WWII struggle against both the Communists and the 3rd world liberation forces, established itself as an independent player and even posed as the new imperial coach, penetrating to the heart of the empire and asserting its own goals of expansion and hostility against its Muslim neighbours.

At its beheast, the resulting wars have been against the Arab and Muslim world, but two decades of attempts to subdue them have merely hardened Muslims’ opposition to empire, even as the devastation caused by imperial designs increases.

Hence, the Arab Spring of 2011 and the accession to power of Islamists via the ballot box across the Middle East . Hence, the unwinnable war against the Afghan people, that brought empire to its knees in fateful 2011, even as the slaughter of insurgents and civilians increased. Yes, the imperialists managed a clever ruse, invading Libya to depose the clownish Gaddafi, but the Islamists and fiercely independent tribes there are unlikely allies of empire.

The tsunami of resistance to imperialism surged throughout 2011 around the world, while the empire’s leaders put a worldwide “missile defence” system in place. But even as radars and missiles were installed in Europe, the rising tide reached the empire’s shores in 2011, as financial crisis led to rising poverty and unrest in the imperial centre itself.

Taking inspiration from the Arab Spring, mass demonstrations in Greece and Spain erupted and Wall Street, the empire’s “heartland”, was occupied. The “99 per cent” entered the political lexicon as the people vs the ruling elite (the 1 per cent who own half of the country’s assets). Even Israel and newly capitalist Russia witnessed mass demonstrations, as ordinary citizens began to realise how the system works, or rather doesn’t work for them. How increasing disparity of wealth is the logical result of market fundamentalism and control of the economy by financial capital.

2011 will go down in history as a year as fateful as 1917, when the blinkers fell away from the common people’s eyes in Russia and they rose up against their oppressors. But while 1917 witnessed a Communist revolution against capitalism and imperialism by a small corps of professional revolutionaries, 2011 has witnessed a mass, leaderless revolution facilitated by telecommunications, and in the case of the key Middle East, inspired by Islam.

There is no Lenin, not even a Gamal Abdel-Nasser, the one Arab leader who managed to slow down the imperial steamroller in the Middle East and is still revered for his defiance. Unlike Communist revolutionaries of yore, the new leaders in the Middle East of what must be called the Islamic revolution of 2011 are not the object of veneration, something that Islam as a religion warns against.

Revolutions always start in the weakest links. Thus, the Middle East has a head start on the revolutionary process over the West, though through the growing Palestinian solidarity movement, notably the global Boycott Divestment and Sanctions campaign, the struggles of East and West are increasingly seen to be one and the same. What will be the decisive test for the new revolutionaries in the Middle East and the West itself is how well they can navigate the political shoals and landmines laid by a century of empire.

How to dismantle apartheid Israel without it unleashing nuclear war on the world? How to put an end to US world financial blackmail centred on the dollar without the US strategists taking everyone else down with them? While the empire is on the defensive, it is still powerful and as its star wanes, it will only become more lethal.

The foes of empire are popping up faster than the empire’s drones can knock them off. They are found not only in Arab (and Persian) lands, or even in a skeptical Russia and still-Communist China. As the links in the system continue to fray, they are increasingly in the heart of the empire itself. Americans and Europeans will continue to develop alternatives to empire, financially, economically and politically, in their own communities and continue to link up with their comrades-against-arms in the heart of the supposed enemy in Eurasia .

More and more Americans are involved in co-ops, worker-owned companies and other alternatives to capitalism. Some 130 million Americans are part owners of co-op businesses and credit unions. As Obama cuts funding to states, the latter considers establishing their own banks and use public pensions to fund state economic development.

There is a wealth of expertise in the “heartland” of the empire that can help show the whole world the way out of the imperial dead end. The new generation in America lacks the Cold War paranoia about socialism: Americans under 30 years old are “essentially evenly divided” as to whether they preferred “capitalism” or “socialism”, according to a 2009 Rasmussen poll.

Even as the world environment degrades, even as imperial arms continue to kill, maim and choke demonstrators and insurgents both at the heart of the empire and in the heart of the “enemy”, we can take heart in the new sense of human dignity which 2011 spawned, and fight the intrigues of empire with new vigour in 2012.

China’s Chang Kai-Shek, Korea’s Syngman Rhee, Vietnam’s President Van Thieu, Nicaragua’s Somoza and in more recent times, Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, Mexico’s Carlos Salinas de Gortari, Russia’s Boris Yeltsin, and Georgia’s Mikheil Saakashvili fit the former pattern. These friends of Washington received relatively harmless rebukes for nefarious actions.

Soviet leaders until Mikhail Gorbachev, France’s Charles de Gaulle, Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser, Indonesia’s Sukarno, Cuba’s Fidel Castro, and Venezuela’s Hugo Rafael Chavez, all of whom confronted American foreign policies, were, regardless of their acomplishments, constantly castigated by the American media.

Description of the castigated grows, graduating from being against American policies to being anti-American, then a serious threat to America and finally a danger to everyone. Nothing good can be said about them; anyone muttering kindly remarks is considered ignorant and slightly warped. After the aversion to the anti-Americans who are a danger to everyone engulfs a large percentage of the population, the media joins the bandwagon, aware it best not contradict the one-sided appraisals.

This conditioning enables U.S. foreign policy planners to gain public support for their rejection of foreign critics and for policies that disturb their critics. Initiation of wars in Vietnam, Iraq, Granada, Panama and other countries could not occur before a mention of the name of the leaders of the antagonist nations had aroused an angry emotional reaction in America’s psyche. Economic warfare against several nations could not be practiced until Americans were made to feel that the economic warfare was morally correct; a necessary action to defeat and replace the criminal leader of the impudent nation.

Despite Hillary Clinton having pressed the reset button, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin clearly broadcasts his disfavor with State Department initiatives. Has he also fallen into the Washington character crusher and being leveled due to his alleged antagonism towards America? American media’s scornful attacks on the Russian premier hint at that possibility.

The Russian Prime Minister is continually presented as a bad boy, a tyrannical, and corrupt megolomaniac who assists his cronies in pilfering Russia’s resources. Lacking is a body of verified evidence to support the allegations. Putin’s critics found an opportunity to provide evidence in the recent legislative elections in Russia and promptly accused the Russian premier of personally stealing the election, labeled him rejected by the Russian people, made him responsible for his Party’s losses, and described him as lucky. To them, Russia’s tremendous growth during Putin’s tenure is only due to high energy prices and not his leadership.

Constant repetition of these charges condition the portrait of Vladimir Putin. Are the charges true, specious, or a matter of perspective? If the facts are obscure, logic overcomes the obscurity.

Putin stole the election

The New York Times echoed the American media approach to the confusing situation.

The United States needs Russia’s cooperation on a host of issues, most notably Iran, and the Obama administration made the right decision to try to ‘reset’ the relationship. But that can’t mean giving Mr. Putin’s authoritarian ways a pass. So it was good to hear Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton express ‘serious concerns’ that the voting was neither free nor fair.¹

The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) monitored the election and presented an analysis on “free and fair” in a press release.

MOSCOW, 5 December 2011 “Despite the lack of a level playing field during the Russian State Duma elections, voters took advantage of their right to express their choice.
“The observers noted that the preparations for the elections were technically well-administered across a vast territory, but were marked by a convergence of the state and the governing party, limited political competition and a lack of fairness.

Although seven political parties ran, the prior denial of registration to certain parties had narrowed political competition. The contest was also slanted in favour of the ruling party: the election administration lacked independence, most media were partial and state authorities interfered unduly at different levels. The observers also noted that the legal framework had been improved in some respects and televised debates for all parties provided one level platform for contestants.

On election day, voting was well organized overall, but the quality of the process deteriorated considerably during the count, which was characterized by frequent procedural violations and instances of apparent manipulations, including serious indications of ballot box stuffing.

Granted the OSCE press release is only a preliminary and abbreviated summary before a final report, scheduled for its 2012 meeting. Nevertheless, its evaluation uses vague expressions — procedural violations, instances of apparent, serious indications — that don’t confirm extensive fraud.

All seven registered political parties were approved to participate in the elections. Is that a narrow field? The Party with the lowest total received only 0.3% of the vote. Did the electorate need more or want more?

Incumbent legislators, certainly those in the U.S., usually have great advantages in elections, monopolize the news and gain more media coverage. Wherever possible, the Party in power slants the election with all its power. What else is new? Proven charges of ballot stuffing and multiple voting demand investigations, but these skewing of elections are minor when compared to the disguised frauds from PACs and lobbies, many of whom control media expressions and campaign funding. Political Parties are shaped to skirt the edges of legality and do everything to assure victory. When the numerical and financial disparity between one political Party and the others is great, as it is between United Russia and its competitors, the favoritism and slant becomes more exaggerated.

By sensationalizing the alleged frauds, constantly repeating and continually re-circulating the same, the media made it difficult to gauge their actual significance. Signals were filtered out and noise amplified so that only the noise was heard. A similar happening occurred with the heavily publicized and videos. Subjectively interpreted, lacking verification and possibly being staged, an unlikely situation, but still a possibility that nobody considered to investigate, an appraisal of the condemning videos places them as images of fraud that look good on Court TV but might be insufficiently convincing for judicial courts. Undoubtedly there were severe irregularities, but were they substantiated as massive and organized or were they more driven by local exuberances and incompetent behaviors?

The table below contains significant details for resolving the debate on election validity. It shows that the election results were close to the trend in the polls and to their final readings. If United Russia (UR) did much better than the polls, then fraud would be a definite probability. By doing worse than predicted, either the UR poorly prepared the mechanisms for illegally augmenting vote totals, or the mechanisms did not exist.

The Russian people rejected Putin

The youthful, Internet-savvy Russians who have turned out in the streets in historic numbers in recent weeks want to end Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s untrammeled rule over their country, but whether they can translate their frustration to the political arena – or even whether they will remain fired up — remains an open question.²

Did voters, who were electing local delegates to the Duma, go to the polls thinking of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin? Unlikely. Interim elections reflect voter opinions on the legislature and somewhat on the president, who is Dmitry Medvedev. In Russia, as in France, the president has considerable power. He nominates the highest state officials, including the prime minister, can pass decrees without consent from the Duma, and is head of the armed forces and Security Council.

The American media might insist that Putin manages everything behind the scenes, but President Medvedev’s performance during the last four years contradicts that assertion. No question that several years ago Putin dealed with Medvedev and promised him support for the presidency in return for a promise that Medvedev would not run for a second term. Knowledge of that agreement might have disturbed voters and swayed their preferences. Nevertheless, Medvedev has operated sufficiently independent during his reign. U.S. media portrays Putin as the Russian leader. Putin is prime minister, but Russians and the U.S. State Department interacted with President Medvedev during the last four years.

Putin’s United Russia was Defeated
“It’s embarrassing enough to do poorly in an honest election. Putin’s party managed to crater despite vigorous measures to rig the vote.”³

Crater? A defeat? Steve Chapman misrepresented the election. Gaining 49.3% of the vote in a five Party system is an astonishing victory, not as large as previous United Russia victories, but a total that any European political Party would envy. In the last national elections in United Kingdom, France and Germany, no political Party received more than 36% of the vote. Don’t weep for UR. They are not too sad.

The electorate normally anguishes when the same political Party dominates its life for a decade. Lower totals for United Russia reflect that usual discontent. After ten years of power, it is surprising that Russia’s leading political organization still retains 50% support from the electorate. Evidently, the populace has not tired of United Russia’s managed economy, which features statist and nationalist positions, both of which have irked the western powers. The statist Communist Party and nationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (misnamed) showed increased vote totals from their 2007 vote totals.

Putin was lucky. Yeltsin was unlucky.
“In retrospect, Mr. Putin was lucky to inherit a recovering economy and an incipient oil- and commodity-price boom from Mr. Yeltsin.”⁴

The difference in media treatment between Boris Yeltsin’s government, which brought Russia to poverty and Vladimir Putin’s Russia, which brought Russia to a moderate prosperity, proves the thrust of this article: “There must be more than coincidence to the observation that the media’s appraisal of a world leader, which often shapes public opinion, reflects the State Department’s attitude towards the same leader.”

Putin’s Russia has its corrupt and authoritative components. Unfortunately these are common features of a nation where corruption is ingrained into the society, and authoritarian rule has been the norm.

Evgeny Yakovlev and Ekaterina Zhuravskaya, “State Capture: From Yeltsin to Putin,” explained the situation.

In contrast to Yeltsin whose political term was notorious for creating and strengthening oligarchs, Putin began his first term in the office by fighting the most famous of them: Berezovsky, Khodorkovsky, Gusinsky, and Lebedev. Fighting oligarchs was again high on the agenda during his second election campaign. In addition, Putin attempted centralization process, restricting autonomy of regional political elites and moved political and economic power from the regions to the federal center6. A new tax law, which restricted the use of individual tax breaks, was adopted, as well as a number of laws, aimed at easing the burden of business regulation. A new anti-corruption campaign was launched and some governors who were considered most corrupt, e.g. Rutskoy in Kursk region and Nazdratenko in Primorsky region, were not permitted to run for re-election. The governor of Yaroslavl region, Lisitsin, was under a criminal investigation in early fall of 2004 because of pursuing illegal paternalistic policies towards regional business.

The following graphs show the differences in operation beween “democratic” Yeltsin and “authoritative” Putin.

Note that Saudi Arabian and Iranian oil productions increased during the 1990′s and Russian oil production dropped sharply. Demand was there, but Yeltsin’s policies neither enabled the world’s largest oil producer to produce nor prevented it from halving output within two years. Although oil production and prices bottomed, Yeltsin’s Russia did not. The GDP continued to fall, lowering to 38% of the value at the time Yeltsin took office.

Regard Putin’s administration. Oil production increased rapidly from the day he took office, up 50% in eight years. GDP increased more rapidly than oil production and prices, rising monotonically to an increase of 700% (in nominal terms) in the same eight years. In July 1997, opinion polls showed Yeltsin having about 5 percent of public support. Putin, who once had 70% approval, has been constantly castigated by the American media. Yeltsin, who fell to 5% approval, received mild rebukes.

Was Yeltsin, who created his own problems, unlucky? Was Putin, whose administration knew what to do, just lucky?

Those who continue with the crushing of Vladimir Putin are tending to bring back the era of Yeltsin and the oligarchs, a time when Russia was a paradise for five to ten persons and a weak antagonist to U.S. military adventures.

1. “Not What Mr. Putin Planned,” New York Times, December 7, 2011.
2. Washington Post, December 19, 2011.
3. Chicago Tribune, Steve Chapman, Dec. 15, 2011.
4. The Economist, February 28, 2008.

Even before the elections, on the streets of Moscow and Petersburg, in the major cities’ (and even some of the provincial ones’) classrooms and among school teachers, people had begun talking about politics, albeit a politics which does exist as of yet. After the election farce, it was not just the usual attendees of the right-wing “Marches of the Discontented” and left-wing protests taking to the streets of Moscow and Petersburg, but even those who were previously apolitical. And this is important.

It would be wrong to claim that these elections were fundamentally more fraudulent than previous ones or even the 1996 elections in which Zyuganov conceded to Yeltsin. But this time the now-traditional vote rigging was crasser than usual and occurred under different circumstances. In order to understand what precisely those circumstances are, we have to remember who the current powers that be in Russia are. Too many people have managed to forget this, and the new generation (thanks to the liberals’ successful demolition of our education system) never knew.

20 years of pillage

The USSR was dissolved by the party nomenklatura, who then undertook to seize (“privatize”) all state property while also attempting to maintain power. The current regime is merely an extension of the Yeltsin government. During the course of the 1990s everything inherited from the Soviet Union was torn asunder — a vicious process that continued throughout the decade, engendering countless local wars, widespread crime, impoverishment, marginalization, and death. As a result, an intense feeling of hatred took hold over the vast majority of the country’s population. Various scams and tricks allowed this process to continue all the way up to the economic catastrophe of 1998 — and even for a little while after that. But then the jig was up and it was time to change the signs.

The ideological project known as “Putin” was created at the end of the 90s in order to preserve Yeltsin’s oligarchic system, but with a new face (the very same system that is being exposed in London now as the court battle between Berezovsky and Abramovich unfolds). The project’s purpose was supposedly to counteract the consequences of the “roaring 90s,” which entailed rehabilitating certain elements of the Soviet past. The old Soviet hymn was brought back, having been rewritten for the fourth time by the very same author Sergei Mikhalkov, along with red flags for Victory Day and the mass production and distribution of “St. George ribbons” [trans. note: the St. George Medal was a medal of honor given to Soviet soldiers during WWII, itself an attempt by the Stalin regime to revive Russian patriotism]. They “discovered” some positive aspects of Soviet history such as the “strong state” and the “effective manager” comrade Stalin. But in the country’s social structure and economy nothing changed fundamentally: the capitalist oligarchic system was preserved and even reinforced, even if the crew at the helm changed a little bit. The bureaucracy and big capital merged into a single class, but not everyone made it. Khodorkovskii, for instance, went to jail (as he made a wrong move in the clan war). In the 2000s, the process of class formation came to an end. The ruling class crystallized and achieved a kind of semi-permanence. The division of spoils came to an end, but this new ruling class was not capable of anything, except cannibalizing the remains of the old Soviet economic and scientific achievements.

Nevertheless, a good many people took Putin seriously, although we won’t delve into this story of public deception here, the success of which was largely facilitated by rising prices for raw materials. Throughout the Putin decade the strip mining of the Soviet inheritance continued, which resulted in its virtual destruction in all spheres: the economy, education, the sciences. Scientists emigrated or died prematurely, education and the health care system were successfully and consciously laid to waste under the pretext of “reform”, and the strategic sectors of manufacturing were dismantled by consensus between foreign competitors and our home-grown parasites. If social inequality somewhat lessened during this period, it was largely due to a certain “bounce back” after the monstrous impoverishment of the population in the 90s. Russia definitively entered the ranks of the dependent countries of the “third world”, albeit one with nuclear “red button” inherited from the Soviet Union. The “middle class” — all the necessary qualifications of this term aside – did grow in size a bit during the 00s in the largest cities, but only thanks to the expansion of the ranks of managers and servants serving the ruling class, just as you would expect in a country of peripheral capitalism.

In the Putin decade feelings of disappointment and discontent slowly accumulated amongst the masses. At the beginning of the 2000s politically naïve voters had completely different hopes: an end to the widespread thievery at the top and the destruction of the economy and the return of some kind — any kind — of social justice. But what happened was the opposite. Now these frustrations and feelings of discontent are rising to the fore. The crisis that began in 2008 and continues to this day sowed seeds of uncertainty amongst the people and detonated their hopes of “stability” (and stability, after all, was the mantra of the Putin project!).

The powers that be have gotten so lazy and so caught up with their own personal enrichment that they have become completely deprofessionalized, having lost their last competent members long ago. Even in the realm of propaganda! Take for instance the recent pseudo-exposé about “Golos” [trans. note: a Russian liberal NGO doing independent election monitoring], which supposedly is carrying out orders from the American and Swedish intelligence services to destabilize Russia and recruit young students as spies. It was the most unbelievable garbage one could imagine. By comparison, the anti-dissident propaganda films of the Andropov era, which in their own time were considered quite sloppy, seem like cinematographic masterpieces on the level of Bergman and Fillini! And so it goes everywhere and with everything now in Russia. Our GLONASS satellites and Fobos-Grunt probes are falling out of the sky, our Bulava missiles do not fly, our orphanages and nursing homes are burning down, our Bulgaria river cruise ships are sinking and our Sayano-Shushenskii hydroelectric stations are crumbling. The ruling class simply does not know how to do anything anymore; except rob, cheat and steal and then divvy up the loot.

“Elections,” “Parties,” and “Leaders”

Elections in Russia have been rigged ever since the attack on the Supreme Council in 1993 and the new constitution was passed. But before that, elections to the legislature were marked by low turnout, with just about 25% of registered voters casting a ballot. For that reason, the first act of voting fraud began with inflating the number of voters, so that the elections were not ruled void. Then, with the same purpose, they removed the “Against all” option from the ballots.

During previous elections they were already resorting to audacious acts of fraud. In fact the fraud and kleptocratic politics of the powers that be evoked protests those times too. But we need to remember how they ended.

After the attack on the parliament in 1993, all its leaders — Rutskoy, Khasbulatov and others [trans. note: parliamentary opposition leaders at that time] — managed to insinuate themselves into the new political system wonderfully well. While they were in fact the losers in that battle, they were simply the losing faction and thus occupied not first, but second place in the new system. They apparently were not worried at all about all those who died in Moscow on those fateful October days in 1993.

In 1996 Yeltsin’s victory in the presidential election was facilitated by the consolidation of the ruling class. Zyuganov, who had won the first run-off, voluntarily conceded to Yeltsin. Despite its platform and all the protests that the Communist Party (CPRF) seemingly supported, this supposedly communist party simply conceded to the powers that be — and did so as soon as it could.

The protests against monetization of state benefits and the commercialization of education are some of the most recent, yet already forgotten examples of mass public actions. In 2005-2006 these protests — far larger than the ones we see today [trans. note: this article was written before the mass actions on Saturday, 10 December] in 550 cities and towns, each with participation of tens of thousands of people. What was the upshot of these protests? Some small concessions, mostly on the local level; in other words a complete flop. This was the inevitable result because the ruling class would have had to make available a significant amount of funds to the erstwhile recipients of those state benefits — funds that they already had their dirty paws on. With today’s protests, though, the government will likely gladly allow for some repeat elections in this or that contested district, as such a concession will have no effect on anything of consequence.

Right now none of the parties — not the CPRF, not Just Russia, and certainly not the Liberal-Democratic Party (LDPR) — are willing to declare the elections completely fraudulent. We are already hearing from their representatives things like: “it would be absolutely silly to give up the opportunities that increased Duma representation will offer (CPRF);” that they will create a federal “election violation investigation committee” to “make inquiries” and that “we do not recognize the results for certain districts, but there were districts where there was no vote rigging at all (Just Russia).” These are pathetic excuses made for the sake of maintaining their Duma salaries and kickbacks. They have been making these excuses their entire parliamentary career. Certainly none of these parties has raised doubts about the prevailing political system or state of social relations. Nor have any of them promised to abolish or at least substantially amend the existing constitution, alter property relations or punish those who are guilty for the ruling class’ crimes.

You have to understand something. These clowns in parliament are corrupt to the core. They sit in parliament for ten and half years doing absolutely nothing. And they do not plan to do anything. They are all just factions of a single ruling class, utilized for the management of public perception. In no way do they fundamentally differ from One Russia, except maybe in their greater degree of civility. If you believe them for even a second (having been deceived, perhaps, by their high-profile visits to opposition protests, whereby they are simply trying to accumulate political capital for future sell-outs), they will just betray you again — just like they did ten times before.

But what about the leaders of the so-called “extraparliamentary opposition?” Can we trust them? Let’s take a look:

Boris Nemtsov — formerly a close member of the oligarchic Yeltsin “family,” and one of the architects of the 1998 default and personally responsible for that economic catastrophe.¹

Ilya Yashin — former leader of Yabloko’s youth faction, who organized MGLU student protests in 2003 against tuition hikes and later recruited students to participate in his party’s protests for a modest sum of money (in 2003 it was about 200 rubles, but later 500).

Aleksei Naval’ny — by his own admission, a “Russian nationalist,” was expelled from Yabloko for nationalism, is aligned with DPNI (Movement against Illegal Immigration [trans. note: a nativist group whose politics are akin to those of the U.S. "minuteman" groups]), is a regular participant in the fascist “Russian marches,” yet despite these well-known facts, is hailed by the Russian liberal press [trans. note: and the Western media as well² ]. He is warmly received at the U.S. State Department (and here is one case where the dullards in Putin’s propaganda team are not lying). Let’s be very clear: fascists and nationalist populists have never defended the interests of the working class — they simply exploit them.

And now voicing their support for the protests are the former Putin PR rep Marat Gel’man and Chubais and Gaidar’s old pal from the privatization team Alfred Koch (and the assassin of Gusinskii’s old NTV station). All of these characters are from the same group of 90s-era parasites.

None of these people will hesitate at any moment to sell the protesters out for their own economic interests or for the sake of political capital. Once again, they are just a fraction of the ruling class. A fraction — but nothing more than that. Their struggle is one between clans. That is not ours!

Elections, elections…

What is their program? Under which slogans are they calling people into the streets? A protest under the slogan “I’m for honest elections” — such a protest constitutes an a priori defeat. Any election presided over by these forces simply cannot be “honest”. Any federal level election these days is a farce. Therefore, they will only result in the usual fraud. The only exit from this impasse is to create an extra-systemic opposition. It is pointless to hold “honest elections” or support the corrupt politicians from CPRF, Just Russia, LDPR or Yabloko. It is imperative that we begin to engage in some do-it-yourself politics, outside the pre-drawn lines of the powers that be and in direct contradiction of parliamentary cretinism.

“Honest elections” according to prevailing constitutional and electoral rules will only lead to replacing Putin with a Zhirinovskii [trans. note: the literally clownish leader of LDPR] or Sobyanin [trans. note: current mayor of Moscow and Putin protégé] or the half-fascist Naval’ny. How are they better? There will be no radical concessions on the part of the powers that be. These are people who have stolen billions of dollars, all stored away in foreign banks, and built palatial estates on the Black Sea Coast (as both Putin and the Patriarch have done).³ They have no intention of giving up these things.

“Honest elections” will in no way solve the most pressing problems of the country. They will not change Russia’s position as a raw material-supplying appendage of the West. They will not revive our devastated and thoroughly stripped manufacturing sector — not to mention our high-tech industries (robotics, electronics, aviation, biotech, etc) because we already lack the human resources necessary for it. They won’t resurrect those millions of our countrymen and women who went to an early grave, driven there by the ruling class.⁴

They will not repair our now thoroughly broken health care system and will not make it once again free and universal. “Honest elections” will not resuscitate our de facto destroyed and utterly profaned education system. They will not eliminate mass alcoholism and drug addiction or our AIDS and hepatitis epidemics. They will not undo the country’s monstrous, shameful social inequality, as a result of which some people are already killing themselves and children out of hunger (just read the news!⁵ ), whereas others are buying islands, mansions, yachts and soccer clubs for millions of dollars. Those “honest elections” will not change anything except to replace one set of snouts in the offices with another – and yet all exactly the same.

What is to be done?

The problem, of course, is not with the elections, but with capitalism. If some fools still think that all our woes stem from the fact that we do not have the kind of capitalism they have abroad (ours is the “wrong capitalism” or “underdeveloped capitalism”), just let them have a look at what is going on abroad: an economic crisis, the collapse of the financial system, declining production, mass unemployment, riots in the streets, three million families have been tossed out of their homes in the U.S. alone (and this the richest capitalist country), and the impending meltdown of the Eurozone. The peripheral countries are being hit even worse by all this.

Political rejects like Yashin, Navalny, Nemtsov, Limonov [trans. note: leader of the National Bolshevik movement, a "left-leaning" nationalist group] and others are all hoping to ride atop this wave of spontaneous and so far ideologically formless protests into the political “big leagues” (just like Zhirinovski and his ilk managed to do 20 years ago right before the collapse of the USSR). Why help them in this endeavor? A repeat of 1991 (and 1993 and 1996 and 2005) — this is the same damn rake. The country’s economy will not withstand a second 1991; there is no Soviet material reserve left to tap. It has already been devoured and pillaged. Our entrance into the WTO is literally on the horizon, which assumes, by the way, a second edition of “shock therapy” — and right now would be a great time from the ruling class’s perspective to have an occasion to tighten the screws even further.

The substantial uptick — even under the conditions of vote rigging — in the share of votes for the CPRF and Just Russia speaks to the fact that socio-economic issues are important to the voters. And it’s precisely socio-economic issues that should be in the slogans of the protesters: against joining WTO; against capitation financing of schools;⁶ against the demolition of health care and education. But so far there is not even a call for progressive taxation of the rich [trans. note: Russia has a flat tax of 13 percent]! And the current “leaders” of the “opposition” are keen on keeping even this modest demand under wraps. Therefore there is no point in following them.

If you want change — do not bother to choose between Putin and Zhirinovski, Medvedev and Navalny or Zyuganov and Nemtsov. Do not entrust your fate once again to another new, wonderful “daddy.” Instead work to create structures that reflect your own social interests. Certain comrades on the left have already claimed that the current events are a “revolution”, an “uprising”, a “revolt” and see in them the specter of a Russian Tahrir Square. This rrr-revolutionism and exaggerated self-ascribed importance is not only laughable, but shameful even. It is inexcusable to mislead the youth (who are still not all that politicized) with talk of easy fixes. In Moscow there are eleven million people, but only about seven thousand took to the streets, whereas those in the provinces remained mostly passive and indifferent.

The only thing that could save Russia (or any other country occupying the periphery of the capitalist world system) from further degradation, decay and decomposition is the overthrow of the capitalist system itself, in other words: socialist revolution. That is a worthy cause for which to live and struggle. Socialist revolution, however, will not take place by the will of some petty provocateurs like Naval’ny or Yashin, who, please note, do not strive for revolution – they actually fear it. They simply want to amalgamate themselves with the same class to which Putin, Medvedev, Abramovich, Deripaska and the like belong and join them in robbing and oppressing you. Do you really need this?

If you really want to go to protests, go with your own slogans and signs — ones that reflect your own interests, not the interests of opportunists like Naval’ny and Yashin. May we suggest some?

“Give us universal, equal and free education and let the oligarchs and bureaucrats pay for it!”

“Give us universally accessible and free health care and let the oligarchs and bureaucrats pay for it!”

“Down with the ruling class funded trade unions of FNPR! Give us free and independent trade unions!”⁷

“Down with the pro-capitalist new Labor Code! Bring back the Soviet-era KZoT!”⁸

“Down with the political police! Abolish the OPONs and the “E” Center!”⁹

“Down with clericalization of the state and schools! We demand full separation of church and state!”¹⁰

“Give us student stipends that will allow us to actually study full-time, not part-time and let the oligarchs and bureaucrats pay for it!”

“Hail to the new, democratic constitution! Power to the people, not the oligarchs and bureaucrats!”

And demand that they give you the opportunity to pronounce those slogans. If they do not, you will be taken advantage of again by the opportunists and parasites.

Do not rely on elections or career politicians to solve your problems. Career politicians are professional con-men and flimflammers. If you wish to defend your rights and your interests, create blocks of resistance to oligarchic and bureaucratic caprice at your places of work, study and residence. Fight against the introduction and/or increase of tuition and medical fees; against the closing of hospitals, schools and daycare centers; against the demolition of parks for the more churches; against the imposition of religion and obscurantism in schools; against low salaries, speed-ups and overtime; against the thievery of the utilities companies. Begin with these small things as there is no other choice!

Letting off steam and venting your frustrations at protests will not change your situation one bit. The bureaucrats and capitalists couldn’t give a damn about your angry shouts on the street. They will not lower the exorbitant utility fees, they will not increase the paltry salaries and pensions, they will not resolve the housing problem, they will not abolish the OPK¹¹ or the university entrance exam, they will not reinstate free universal health care. We need to engage in concrete battles for very concrete things.

The choice is this: class struggle or replacing one set of parasites with another. No other choice is available.

The process whereby one realizes his or her interests and fights for them is not an instantaneous one. It is not just attending one or several protests. In our country the people have for too long stopped thinking and acting in line with their own interests. But this here is the only chance to actually change things for real. Do not let yourself step on the rake again!

1. Anatolii Lantov, “‘Stoprotsentnaya lozh’ Borisa Nemtsova,” Politoline, December 27, 2010.
2. Foreign Policy magazine named Navalny one its "Top 100 Global Thinkers" for 2011. See "The FP Top 100 Global Thinkers," Foreign Policy, December 2011. The New York Times also featured a rather laudatory article about Navalny, although to its credit, it did include a disclaimer about his politics: "Five years ago, [Navalny] quit the liberal party Yabloko, frustrated with the liberals’ infighting and isolation from mainstream Russian opinion. Liberals, meanwhile, have deep reservations about him, because he espouses Russian nationalist views. He has appeared as a speaker alongside neo-Nazis and skinheads, and once starred in a video that compares dark-skinned Caucasus militants to cockroaches. While cockroaches can be killed with a slipper, he says that in the case of humans, ‘I recommend a pistol.’ See Ellen Barry, “Rousing Russia with a Phrase,” New York Times, December 9 2011.
3. For some pictures of his palatial estate on the Black Sea shore. Putin’s personal wealth is estimated at $40 billion. See “Sostoyanie Putina mozhet dostigat’ 40 milliardov dollarov,” Novy Region 2, November 16, 2007.
4. In his study on Russian mortality in the 90s, epidemiologist Neil Bennet stated that “the Russian mortality crisis of 1990-95 represents the most precipitous decline in national life expectancy ever recorded in the absence of war, oppression, famine, or major disease.” He estimated that between 1990-1995 there were 1.36 to 1.57 million premature deaths, with approximately 70% occurring amongst men. This calamitous drop coincided with the economic reforms of that same period. See N. Bennet et al., “Demographic Implications of the Russian Mortality Crisis,” World Development, 26.11 (1998): p. 1921. Boris Kagarlitskii likewise notes that, “During the Civil War, from 1918 to 1920, the Russian population fell by 2.8 million. During the years of Yeltsin’s ‘first presidency’ alone, the decline was 3.4 million.” See Boris Kagarlitskii, Russia under Yeltsin and Putin: Neoliberal Autocracy, London: Pluto Press, 2000, p. 3.
5. In January 2010, a women who had been laid off and couldn’t afford to buy food suffocated her children and then hanged herself. See Irina Gollay, “V Chelyabinske zhenschina zadushila detey iz-za bednost”, Komsomolskaya Pravda, January 25, 2010, .
6. The capitation financing scheme is explained by a local teacher and activist of the Communist Party K. Ladogin thusly: “The term “capitation financing of educational institutions” means that every middle school student in the country will get an equal amount of funding. This money will go to the school where the individual student is studying. The schools must now actively promote themselves to attract more students. The school principal should therefore become a financial manager and the vice principal a “representative of the government within the school – in other words a commissar and should “insinuate himself into the teacher collective”. He is also charged with conducting monthly testing of the students and send the results up the ladder.” See K. Ladogin, “Uchitelya dolzhny otgovarivat shkolnikov ot postupleniya v vuzy,” Skepsis, September 17, 2007, .
7. In a recent article for the Russian Analytical Digest, Irina Olimpieva provides this useful summary of the current labor union structure of Russia:

   Since the beginning of the 1990s, the Russian labor movement has been divided into two continuously warring camps—the “official” unions, affiliated with the Soviet-legacy Federation of Independent Trade Unions (FNPR) and the so-called “free” or “alternative” labor unions. Free labor unions differ from official unions in many respects, including their militant nature and conflict-based ideology, grass-roots methods of labor mobilization and organization, the economic resources that they use, and their forms of membership and leadership. Today two different modes of labor interest representation exist at the same time: the distributional mode employed mainly by the official unions and the protest mode, which is more typical for free labor unions. While official labor unions continue to dominate the organized labor scene, in recent years they have faced growing competition from their alternative counterparts. Overall, the dominance of the distributive
   system, based on cooperation between the employer and union, over the protest model signifies the preservation of the strength of management in labor relations, squeezing unions to the sidelines in serving workers. Accordingly, labor relations based on market mechanisms have not replaced the previous administrative system as many observers had once anticipated.

   See Irina Olimpieva, “‘Free’ and ‘Official’ Labor Unions in Russia: Different Modes of Labor Interest Representation,” Russian Analytical Digest 104 (October 27 2011), p. 2.

8. The new Russian Labor Code, passed in 2002 eliminated many rights long held by Russian workers and their unions (the old code was inherited from the USSR) such as overtime compensation for working over 40 hours. After the passage of the law, respected legal specialist and pro-labor activist Vladimir Mironov was moved to comment that “The practical meaning of the new labor code is that it gives the employer the legal right to force his employees to work as long as he wants. The worker gets nothing in exchange – not even token compensation.” See V. Mironov, Uzdechka dlya trudyashchikhsya, VMN, (11.01.2002), which can be read here: . See also Aleksandr Yelagin, “New Russian Labor Code Allows Employers to Gut Workers’ Rights,” Socialist Action (July 2000).
9. OPON (formerly OMON) is more or less the Russian equivalent of the U.S.’s SWAT team and is frequently deployed to break up demonstrations and/or intimidate protesters. Center “E” is the Russian Interior Ministry’s notorious “Center for Extremism Prevention,” which Amnesty International has accused of stifling dissent from journalists and activists under charges of extremist activity and using torture to extract confessions from criminal suspects. For a recently published evaluation of Center E’s performance over the last three years, see Pyoter Sarukhanov, “‘Eshnikov’ bez raboty ne ostavyat,” Novaya Gazeta, October 10, 2011.
10. In 2007 a course on Russian Orthodoxy was introduced in public schools. See Clifford J. Levy, “Welcome or Not, Orthodoxy Is Back in Russia’s Public Schools,” New York Times, September 23, 2007. See also “Otkrtoe pismo nauchnykh sotrudnikov protiv vvedeniya OPK v shkolakh i teologii v universitetakh i VAK,” Alternativy, April 4, 2008.
11. OPK stands for Fundamentals of Russian Orthodoxy Culture, a new course that has been introduced into the Russian public school curriculum.

The uprising united the usually fractious liberals, nationalists and Communists, with slogans “Swindlers and Thieves!”, “Russia without Putin!” and “Churov Resign!” – references to United Russia (UR) and election commission chief Vladimir Churov. Russian expats in more than 20 countries also demonstrated in a show of solidarity outside embassies and consulates.

To date under Putin, rallies have been forbidden or limited to a few hundred. Unauthorised attempts bring beatings and arrests. But most of Saturday’s protests had official sanction; Moscow officials authorised a crowd of 30,000 and did not send riot police into action when 40,000 turned up, and the follow-up rally has been authorised for 50,000.

This new embrace of Western norms indicates that Putin is deeply concerned about his weakened position. 42 per cent of Russians in September said they would vote for Putin in the presidential election, but only 31 per cent by November. And that was before the 4 December debacle. Whether this new leniency shows yet another face for the inscrutable autocrat, or is a nod to advisers, who warn that a harsh crackdown could threaten the wobbly “Restart” button and even the precious 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, is a good question.

If the latter, this would be an especially cruel irony, as the last Russian Olympics in 1980 were boycotted by the West because of Soviet actions in Afghanistan, signalling the beginning of the end of that version of the Russian bear. Just as the Soviet Union let itself be seduced by Western human rights talk resulting in the Helsinki Accords in 1975, which became a weapon in clever Western hands, so Putin et al are forced to hold their noses (or plug their ears) faced with noisy, persistent protests if the Sochi Olympics are to be a successful showcase for the new Russia.

Uncharacteristically ploddingly, Putin charged Western interference: “They heard the signal and with the support of the US State Department began active work.” It was the protesters who showed wit and resourcefulness this time: “Are we here because Hillary Clinton texted us?” Some protesters carried badminton rackets, a reference to Putin and Medvedev’s squeaky-clean sportiness. A riot police officer was photographed holding a white flower, a symbol of the protest, behind his back.

The fact is there was blatant vote rigging in some areas. This was documented, especially in Moscow, central Russia and the North Caucasus. The FOM (Fund for Social Opinion) exit poll, the most comprehensive in Russia, estimated the UR vote in Moscow at 23.6 per cent, a full 23 per cent less than the official results. Similarly in the Caucasus, there was a difference of 20.8 per cent, and in Russia as a whole a gap of 6.3 per cent between official and exit polls. FOM’s regional breakdown was mysteriously removed from the FOM site, but not before it was saved by enough observers to verify its authenticity.

The North Caucasus is dominated by local clans who are part of the power structure, so vote rigging is to be expected. But fiddling with the vote in Moscow and other large cities, where an independent-minded middle class has the latest in communications gadgets is no longer acceptable. People were observed voting in a “carousel”, taking a bus to vote up to 15 times at separate polling stations. One voter was told that if he voted for Putin’s party, there was a present waiting for him outside the booth, a bottle of vodka and plastic cups inside a plastic bag. Moscow voting stations with electronic voting machines, which are hard to mess with, reported 30 per cent for UR vs the 46.6 per cent average. Communist headquarters received thousands of calls from regional offices about ballot-box stuffing and other violations. A flustered President Dmitri Medvedev finally agreed to ordered an investigation into reports of election fraud, according to his Facebook page.

It appears the fraud was indeed necessary to preserve UR’s majority, but unfortunately for UR, it was more that the 1-2 per cent that is the upper limit of acceptable fraud in close elections in, say, the US (remember Ohio’s cliffhanger vote in 2004, with a Republican controlling the voting and a Republican company providing the notorious voting machines, that gave George W Bush just enough extra votes to steal the election from John Kerry?). Or the 2006 Mexican presidential election, which almost all observers acknowledged should have gone to the socialist Obrador?

What Russians are now living through is the neoliberal version of democracy which Russia adopted after 1991, better described as polyarchy, where factions of the ruling elite allow for some cosmetic change of faces, but where elections are controlled by the corporatised state and commented on by the corporatised media, all in league. When a populist (or even a Kerry) tries to buck this formidable machine and his support approaches a danger zone, the necessary stops can be pulled, allowing an illusion of “almost” victory for the underdog but keeping the system intact.

Of course, the corruption charge is not just about stuffing boxes or bribing voters. It is about the entire post-Soviet economic and political structure, the result of massive economic theft of state resources and widespread official corruption, resulting in personal dynasties where the 22-year-old niece of the governor of Krasnodar owns a major stake in a massive pipe factory, poultry plant and other businesses, and the 18-year-old daughter of the governor of Sverdlovsk owns a plywood mill and a dozen other local businesses. “How does all this wonderful entrepeneurial talent appear only in the children of United Russia members?” asks rising opposition star Alexei Navalny.

What about claims of Western interference? Of course. Opposition leader Vladimir Ryzhkov’s World Movement for Democracy (WMD) is a veritable franchise of the National Endowment of Democracy’s WMD. Opposition stars recently attended the NED-funded seminar “Elections in Russia: Polling and Perspectives” along with sundry Soros groupies and USAIDers. Navalny is a co-founder of the NED-funded DA! (Democratic Alternative) activist movement, as stated in his Yale World Fellows bio.

But it is far worse in, for example, Egypt, where US aid has gone and continues to go to both sides — Mubarak/ the army and democracy activists — just in case. But even here, US interference can backfire. It is no secret that Egyptian revolutionaries were trained and inspired by Colour Revolutionaries from Serbia and American pacifist legend Gene Sharp. That, in itself, is not a sin, nor are all recipients traitors. Western media/election-savvy young people mustering all the latest technology and strategies and precipitated the toppling of their dictators. Who can possibly deny this was a good thing? And now disaffected Russians and even Americans themselves are taking inspiration from their Arab fellow-dispossessed. Wow.

Besides, the Russian state has full access to all the gadgets and pamphlets and is quite good at hacking computers and devising counter-strategies, and if all else fails, beating up and arresting (and possibly worse) gadflies who dare to defy authority. All’s fair in love and war.

But at the same time, whether or not Hillary’s twitters inspired the Russian unrest, it is clearly in America’s interest to keep Russia weak, and encouraging political unrest is the perfect vehicle. Russia’s defiance on Western plans to invade Syria and Iran infuriates Washington. Washington gambles that “democracy” will bring its flunkeys to power in the Kremlin, just as it hopes that pro-US Arab liberals can be put into power with a little scheming. Very risky politics, but this is clearly what’s going on, and NED is doing its part, as it did throughout eastern Europe in the 1990s. Putin has a point.

Protest organisers met on Sunday, trying to pull together some sort of leadership council. It is most unlikely, even if a few recounts are allowed, that UR will lose its majority, but the momentum of the demonstrations will make the presidential campaign in February very heated. Putin will now face at least four serious candidates: charismatic billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov, the perennial Communist Gennady Zyuganov, Sergei Mironov of the Just Russia Party, and rising star Navalny.

Those elections will be much harder to falsify with box-stuffing and vodka payoffs, and Putin will most certainly face a runoff. Again, it is unlikely that he will lose to the corrupt playboy oligarch, the dour Communist, the ex-Putin groupie who ran as token opposition to Mr UR in 2004, or the 35-year-old black sheep of the Yabloko Party, who was kicked out for racist threats. But he will have a rough ride.

The up side of this electoral tempest is that Russian politics have come back to life. Russians are taking electoral politics seriously, and new parties are in the works as the UR begins to unravel. The new middle class that Putin’s decade of one-man rule produced is on the march, much like in Pinochet’s Chile, where a new middle class also rose up against the strongman to demand their political rights. If Putin is a true statesman, he will see the writing on the wall, seize the opportunity to entrench honest elections, and retire early, leaving a legacy as important as his role in saving Russia from the predatory neoliberals a decade ago.

Egypt’s uprising, too, started not with the starving peasants (though they soon joined in). The result, which is still in process, despite much turmoil and many setbacks, is probably the freest election in modern history anywhere, as the corporatised Egyptian state, with its control of the media and elections, was pushed aside. This allowed what was, until a few short months ago, the illegal opposition — the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis — to gain a constitutional majority virtually overnight, much like in Russia in 1917.

Russians, too, want to know that their dysfunctional state apparatus can be successfully challenged, so that real elections can take place. And how long will it be before Americans see the light and push their dysfunctional state apparatus aside and enjoy the “democracy” that the NED and Soros croon so beautifully about?

After going from defeat to defeat on the periphery of world power and not satisfied with running treasury-busting deficits in pursuit of empire building against economically weak countries, Obama has embraced a policy of encirclement and provocations against China, the world’s second largest economy and the US’s most important creditor, and Russia, the European Union’s principle oil and gas provider and the world’s second most powerful nuclear weapons power.

This paper addresses the Obama regime’s highly irrational and world-threatening escalation of imperial militarism. We examine the global military, economic and domestic political context that gives rise to these policies. We then examine the multiple points of conflict and intervention in which Washington is engaged, from Pakistan, Iran, Libya, Venezuela, Cuba and beyond. We will then analyze the rationale for military escalation against Russia and China as part of a new offensive moving beyond the Arab world (Syria, Libya) and in the face of the declining economic position of the EU and the US in the global economy. We will then outline the strategies of a declining empire, nurtured on perpetual wars, facing global economic decline, domestic discredit and a working population reeling from the long-term, large-scale dismantling of its basic social programs.

The Turn from Militarism in the Periphery to Global Military Confrontation

November 2011 is a moment of great historical import: Obama declared two major policy positions, both having tremendous strategic consequences affecting competing world powers.

Obama pronounced a policy of military encirclement of China based on stationing a maritime and aerial armada facing the Chinese coast – an overt policy designed to weaken and disrupt China’s access to raw materials and commercial and financial ties in Asia. Obama’s declaration that Asia is the priority region for US military expansion, base-building and economic alliances was directed against China, challenging Beijing in its own backyard. Obama’s iron fist policy statement, addressed to the Australian Parliament, was crystal clear in defining US imperial goals.

Our enduring interests in the region [Asia Pacific] demands our enduring presence in this region … The United States is a Pacific power and we are here to stay … As we end today’s wars [i.e. the defeats and retreats from Iraq and Afghanistan] … I have directed my national security team to make our presence and missions in the Asia Pacific a top priority … As a result, reduction in US defense spending will not … come at the expense of the Asia Pacific.¹

The precise nature of what Obama called our “presence and mission” was underlined by the new military agreement with Australia to dispatch warships, warplanes and 2500 marines to the northernmost city of Australia (Darwin) directed at China. Secretary of State Clinton has spent the better part of 2011 making highly provocative overtures to Asian countries that have maritime border conflicts with China. Clinton has forcibly injected the US into these disputes, encouraging and exacerbating the demands of Vietnam, Philippines, and Brunei in the South China Sea. Even more seriously, Washington is bolstering its military ties and sales with Japan, Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea, as well as increasing the presence of battleships, nuclear submarines and over-flights of war planes along China’s coastal waters. In line with the policy of military encirclement and provocation, the Obama-Clinton regime is promoting Asian multi-lateral trade agreements that exclude China and privilege US multi-national corporations, bankers and exporters, dubbed the “Trans-Pacific Partnership.” It currently includes mostly smaller countries, but Obama has hopes of enticing Japan and Canada to join …

Obama’s presence at the APEC meeting of East Asian leaders and his visit to Indonesia in November 2011 all revolve around efforts to secure US hegemony. Obama-Clinton hope to counter the relative decline of US economic links in the face of the geometrical growth of trade and investment ties between East Asia and China.

A most recent example of Obama-Clinton’s delusional, but destructive, efforts to deliberately disrupt China’s economic ties in Asia, is taking place in Myanmar (Burma). Clinton’s December 2011 visit to Myanmar was preceded by a decision by the Thein Sein regime to suspend a China Power Investment-funded dam project in the north of the country. According to official confidential documents released by WilkiLeaks the “Burmese NGO’s, which organized and led the campaign against the dam, were heavily funded by the US government.”² This and other provocative activity and Clinton’s speeches condemning Chinese “tied aid” pale in comparison with the long-term, large-scale interests which link Myanmar with China. China is Myanmar’s biggest trading partner and investor, including six other dam projects. Chinese companies are building new highways and rail lines across the country, opening southwestern China up for Burmese products and China is constructing oil pipelines and ports. There is a powerful dynamic of mutual economic interests that will not be disturbed by one dispute.³ Clinton’s critique of China’s billion-dollar investments in Myanmar’s infrastructure is one of the most bizarre in world history, coming in the aftermath of Washington’s brutal eight-year military presence in Iraq which destroyed $500 billion dollars of Iraqi infrastructure, according to Baghdad official estimates. Only a delusional administration could imagine that rhetorical flourishes, a three-day visit and the bankrolling of an NGO is an adequate counter-weight to deep economic ties linking Myanmar to China. The same delusional posture underlies the entire repertoire of policies informing the Obama regime’s efforts to displace China’s predominant role in Asia.

While any one policy adopted by the Obama regime does not, in itself, present an immediate threat to peace, the cumulative impact of all these policy pronouncements and the projections of military power add up to an all out comprehensive effort to isolate, intimidate and degrade China’s rise as a regional and global power. Military encirclement and alliances, exclusion of China in proposed regional economic associations, partisan intervention in regional maritime disputes and positioning technologically advanced warplanes, are all aimed to undermine China’s competitiveness and to compensate for US economic inferiority via closed political and economic networks.

Clearly White House military and economic moves and US Congressional anti-China demagogy are aimed at weakening China’s trading position and forcing its business-minded leaders into privileging US banking and business interests over and above their own enterprises. Pushed to its limits, Obama’s prioritizing a big military push could lead to a catastrophic rupture in US-Chinese economic relations. This would result in dire consequences, especially but not exclusively, on the US economy and particularly its financial system. China holds over $1.5 trillion dollars in US debt, mainly Treasury Notes, and each year purchases from $200 to $300 billion in new issues, a vital source in financing the US deficit. If Obama provokes a serious threat to China’s security interests and Beijing is forced to respond, it will not be military but economic retaliation: the sell-off of a few hundred billion dollars in T-notes and the curtailment of new purchases of US debt. The US deficit will skyrocket, its credit ratings will descend to ‘junk,’ and the financial system will ‘tremble onto collapse.’ Interest rates to attract new buyers of US debt will approach double digits. Chinese exports to the US will suffer and losses will incur due to the devaluation of the T-notes in Chinese hands. China has been diversifying its markets around the world and its huge domestic market could probably absorb most of what China loses abroad in the course of a pull-back from the US market.

While Obama strays across the Pacific to announce his military threats to China and strives to economically isolate China from the rest of Asia, the US economic presence is fast fading in what used to be its “backyard”: Quoting one Financial Times journalist, “China is the only show [in town] for Latin America.”⁴ China has displaced the US and the EU as Latin America’s principle trading partner; Beijing has poured billions in new investments and provides low interest loans.

China’s trade with India, Indonesia, Japan, Pakistan and Vietnam is increasing at a far faster rate than that of the US. The US effort to build an imperial-centered security alliance in Asia is based on fragile economic foundations. Even Australia, the anchor and linchpin of the US military thrust in Asia, is heavily dependent on mineral exports to China. Any military interruption would send the Australian economy into a tailspin.

The US economy is in no condition to replace China as a market for Asian or Australian commodity and manufacturing exports. The Asian countries must be acutely aware that there is no future advantage in tying themselves to a declining, highly militarized, empire. Obama and Clinton deceive themselves if they think they can entice Asia into a long-term alliance. The Asian’s are simply using the Obama regime’s friendly overtures as a ‘tactical device,’ a negotiating ploy, to leverage better terms in securing maritime and territorial boundaries with China.

Washington is delusional if it believes that it can convince Asia to break long-term large-scale lucrative economic ties to China in order to join an exclusive economic association with such dubious prospects. Any ‘reorientation’ of Asia, from China to the US, would require more than the presence of an American naval and airborne armada pointed at China. It would require the total restructuring of the Asian countries’ economies, class structure, and political and military elite. The most powerful economic entrepreneurial groups in Asia have deep and growing ties with China/Hong Kong, especially among the dynamic transnational Chinese business elites in the region. A turn toward Washington entails a massive counter-revolution, which substitutes colonial ‘traders’ (compradors) for established entrepreneurs. A turn to the US would require a dictatorial elite willing to cut strategic trading and investment linkages, displacing millions of workers and professionals. As much as some US-trained Asian military officers, economists, and former Wall Street financiers and billionaires might seek to ‘balance’ a US military presence with Chinese economic power, they must realize that ultimately advantage resides in working out an Asian solution.

The age of Asian “comprador capitalists” willing to sell out national industry and sovereignty in exchange for privileged access to US markets is ancient history. Whatever the boundless enthusiasm for conspicuous consumerism and Western lifestyles, which Asia and China’s new rich mindlessly celebrate, whatever the embrace of inequalities and savage capitalist exploitation of labor, there is recognition that the past history of US and European dominance precluded the growth and enrichment of an indigenous bourgeoisie and middle class. The speeches and pronouncements of Obama and Clinton reek of nostalgia for a past of neo-colonial overseers and comprador collaborators – a mindless delusion. Their attempts at political realism, in finally recognizing Asia as the economic pivot of the present world order, takes a bizarre turn in imagining that military posturing and projections of armed force will reduce China to a marginal player in the region.

Obama’s Escalation of Confrontation with Russia

The Obama regime has launched a major frontal military thrust on Russia’s borders. The US has moved forward missile sites and Air Force bases in Poland, Rumania, Turkey, Spain, Czech Republic and Bulgaria: Patriot PAC-3 anti-aircraft missile complexes in Poland; advanced radar AN/TPY-2 in Turkey; and several missile (SM-3 IA) loaded warships in Spain are among the prominent weapons encircling Russia, most only minutes away from it strategic heartland. Secondly, the Obama regime has mounted an all-out effort to secure and expand US military bases in Central Asia among former Soviet republics. Thirdly, Washington, via NATO, has launched major economic and military operations against Russia’s major trading partners in North Africa and the Middle East. The NATO war against Libya, which ousted the Gaddafi regime, has paralyzed or nullified multi-billion dollar Russian oil and gas investments, arms sales and substituted a NATO puppet for the former Russia-friendly regime.

The UN-NATO economic sanctions and US-Israeli clandestine terrorist activity aimed at Iran has undermined Russia’s lucrative billion-dollar nuclear trade and joint oil ventures. NATO, including Turkey, backed by the Gulf monarchical dictatorships, has implemented harsh sanctions and funded terrorist assaults on Syria, Russia’s last remaining ally in the region and where it has a sole naval facility (Tartus) on the Mediterranean Sea. Russia’s previous collaboration with NATO in weakening its own economic and security position is a product of the monumental misreading of NATO and especially Obama’s imperial policies. Russian President Medvedev and his Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov mistakenly assumed (like Gorbachev and Yeltsin before them) that backing US-NATO policies against Russia’s trading partners would result in some sort of “reciprocity”: US dismantling its offensive “missile shield” on its frontiers and support for Russia’s admission into the World Trade Organization. Medvedev, following his liberal pro-western illusions, fell into line and backed US-Israeli sanctions against Iran, believing the tales of a “nuclear weapons program.” Then Lavrov fell for the NATO line of “no fly zones to protect Libyan civilian lives” and voted in favor, only to feebly “protest,” much too late, that NATO was “exceeding its mandate” by bombing Libya into the Middle Ages and installing a pro-NATO puppet regime of rogues and fundamentalists. Finally when the US aimed a cleaver at Russia’s heartland by pushing ahead with an all-out effort to install missile launch sites 5 minutes by air from Moscow while organizing mass and armed assaults on Syria, did the Medvedev-Lavrov duet awake from its stupor and oppose UN sanctions. Medvedev threatened to abandon the nuclear missile reduction treaty (START) and to place medium-range missiles with 5 minute launch-time from Berlin, Paris and London.

Medvedev-Lavrov’s policy of consolidation and co-operation based on Obama’s rhetoric of “resetting relations” invited aggressive empire building: Each capitulation led to a further aggression. As a result, Russia is surrounded by missiles on its western frontier; it has suffered losses among its major trading partners in the Middle East and faces US bases in southwest and Central Asia.

Belatedly Russian officials have moved to replace the delusional Medvedev for the realist Putin, as next President. This shift to a political realist has predictably evoked a wave of hostility toward Putin in all the Western media. Obama’s aggressive policy to isolate Russia by undermining independent regimes has, however, not affected Russia’s status as a nuclear weapons power. It has only heightened tensions in Europe and perhaps ended any future chance of peaceful nuclear weapons reduction or efforts to secure a UN Security Council consensus on issues of peaceful conflict resolution. Washington, under Obama-Clinton, has turned Russia from a pliant client to a major adversary.

Putin looks to deepening and expanding ties with the East, namely China, in the face of threats from the West. The combination of Russian advanced weapons technology and energy resources and Chinese dynamic manufacturing and industrial growth are more than a match for crisis-ridden EU-USA economies wallowing in stagnation.

Obama’s military confrontation toward Russia will greatly prejudice access to Russian raw materials and definitively foreclose any long-term strategic security agreement, which would be useful in lowering the deficit and reviving the US economy.

Between Realism and Delusion: Obama’s Strategic Realignment

Obama’s recognition that the present and future center of political and economic power is moving inexorably to Asia, was a flash of political realism. After a lost decade of pouring hundreds of billions of dollars in military adventures on the margins and periphery of world politics, Washington has finally discovered that is not where the fate of nations, especially Great Powers, will be decided, except in a negative sense – of bleeding resources over lost causes. Obama’s new realism and priorities apparently are now focused on Southeast and Northeast Asia, where dynamic economies flourish, markets are growing at a double digit rate, investors are ploughing tens of billions in productive activity and trade is expanding at three times the rate of the US and the EU.

But Obama’s ‘New Realism’ is blighted by entirely delusional assumptions, which undermine any serious effort to realign US policy.

In the first place Obama’s effort to ‘enter’ into Asia is via a military build-up and not through a sharpening and upgrading of US economic competitiveness. What does the US produce for the Asian countries that will enhance its market share? Apart from arms, airplanes and agriculture, the US has few competitive industries. The US would have to comprehensively re-orient its economy, upgrade skilled labor, and transfer billions from “security” and militarism to applied innovations. But Obama works within the current military-Zionist-financial complex: He knows no other and is incapable of breaking with it.

Second, Obama-Clinton operate under the delusion that the US can exclude China or minimize its role in Asia, a policy that is undercut by the huge and growing investment and presence of all the major US multi-national corporations in China, who use it as an export platform to Asia and the rest of the world.

The US military build-up and policy of intimidation will only force China to downgrade its role as creditor financing the US debt, a policy China can pursue because the US market, while still important, is declining, as China expands its presence in its domestic, Asian, Latin American and European markets.

What once appeared to be New Realism is now revealed to be the recycling of Old Delusions: the notion that the US can return to being the supreme Pacific Power it was after World War Two. The US attempts to return to Pacific dominance under Obama-Clinton with a crippled economy, with the overhang of an over-militarized economy, and with major strategic handicaps. Over the past decade the United States foreign policy has been at the beck and call of Israel’s fifth column (the Israel “lobby”). The entire US political class is devoid of common, practical sense and national purpose. They are immersed in troglodyte debates over “indefinite detentions” and “mass immigrant expulsions”. Worse, all are on the payrolls of private corporations who sell in the US and invest in China.

Why would Obama abjure costly wars in the unprofitable periphery and then promote the same military metaphysics at the dynamic center of the world economic universe? Does Barack Obama and his advisers believe he is the Second Coming of Admiral Commodore Perry, whose 19th century warships and blockades forced Asia open to Western trade? Does he believe that military alliances will be the first stage to a subsequent period of privileged economic entry?

Does Obama believe that his regime can blockade China, as Washington did to Japan in the lead up to World War Two? It’s too late. China is much more central to the world economy, too vital even to the financing of the US debt, too bonded up with the Forbes Five Hundred multi-national corporations. To provoke China, to even fantasize about economic “exclusion” to bring down China, is to pursue policies that will totally disrupt the world economy, first and foremost the US economy!

Conclusion

Obama’s ‘crackpot realism,’ his shift from wars in the Muslim world to military confrontation in Asia, has no intrinsic worth and poses extraordinary extrinsic costs. The military methods and economic goals are totally incompatible and beyond the capacity of the US, as it is currently constituted. Washington’s policies will not ‘weaken’ Russia or China, even less intimidate them. Instead it will encourage both to adopt more adversarial positions, making it less likely that they lend a hand to Obama’s sequential wars on behalf of Israel. Already Russia has sent warships to its Syrian port, refused to support an arms embargo against Syria and Iran, and (in retrospect) criticized the NATO war against Libya. China and Russia have far too many strategic ties with the world economy to suffer any great losses from a series of US military outposts and “exclusive” alliances. Russia can aim just as many deadly nuclear missiles at the West as the US can mount from its bases in Eastern Europe.

In other words, Obama’s military escalation will not change the nuclear balance of power, but will bring Russia and China into a closer and deeper alliance. Gone are the days of Kissinger-Nixon’s “divide and conquer” strategy pitting US-Chinese trade agreements against Russian arms. Washington has a totally exaggerated significance of the current maritime spats between China and its neighbors. What unites them in economic terms is far more important in the medium and long-run. China’s Asian economic ties will erode any tenuous military links to the US.

Obama’s “crackpot realism” views the world market through military lenses. Military arrogance toward Asia has led to a rupture with Pakistan, its most compliant client regime in South Asia. NATO deliberately slaughtered 24 Pakistani soldiers and thumbed their nose at the Pakistani generals, while China and Russia condemned the attack and gained influence.

In the end, the military and exclusionary posture toward China will fail. Washington will overplay its hand and frighten its business-oriented erstwhile Asian partners who only want to play off a US military presence to gain tactical economic advantage. They certainly do not want a new US instigated Cold War dividing and weakening the dynamic intra-Asian trade and investment. Obama and his minions will quickly learn that Asia’s current leaders do not have permanent allies — only permanent interests. In the final analysis, China figures prominently in configuring a new Asia-centric world economy. Washington may claim to have a ‘permanent Pacific presence,’ but until it demonstrates it can take care of its “basic business at home,” like arranging its own finances and balancing its current account deficits, the US Naval command may end up renting its naval facilities to Asian exporters and shippers, transporting goods for them, and protecting them by pursuing pirates, contrabandists and narco-traffickers. Come to think about it, Obama might reduce the US trade deficit with Asia by renting out the Seventh Fleet to patrol the Straits, instead of wasting US taxpayer money bullying successful Asian economic powers.

1. CNN.com, Nov. 16, 2011.
2. Financial Times, Dec. 2, 2011, p. 2.
3. FT, December 2, 2011, p.2.
4. FT, Nov. 23, 2011, p.6.

Post-Soviet Russian politics over the past two decades has been a rollercoaster. Until the founding of United Russia in 2001, a short decade ago, the Russian Communist Party was the largest political force in the country. By uniting the Westernisers and soft nationalists around his charismatic leadership, Putin was able to push the Communists aside and capture 1/2 the seats in 2003, UR’s debut. Within a few weeks an additional 78 MPs climbed on the bandwagon, giving UR the magic two-thirds. With this election, the Communists have now recovered, almost doubling their vote to 20 per cent, an underestimate of their real support, given who has the money and who controls media and election procedures. “The Communists are the only real party out there,” admitted one Western banker in Moscow, and are now attracting even liberals disillusioned with UR.

In his first two terms as president, Putin transformed Russia, with UR his political fig leaf, restoring state power in the economy, centralizing political control, guaranteeing a piece of the pie for almost all, while hiding the many deep social and political problems – corruption, violence, gangs, mafia, drugs, despair, and on and on. Relying on Soviet-era prestige and Russia’s vast material resources, UR has been the vehicle for creating a crude but powerful national force that keeps chugging alone, even as the West descends into financial chaos and self-inflicts wounds in pursuing will-o-the-wisp imperial wars around the world.

Of course, the Duma is not much more than a prestigious sandbox, an expensive talk shop which can’t take any real initiative without a nod from above. The whole electoral process is heavily in UR’s favour, with a brutal 7 per cent popular vote necessary for initiation into the club, and persistent rumours that the also-ran Communists, Liberal Democrats and Fair Russia quietly cut deals to divvy up the seats in less than transparent proportional elections. UR is able to mobilise the vast administrative apparatus, the fortunes of oligarchs, the private and public airwaves. It is for all intents and purposes invincible. The elections, however, are still an important barometer of public mood, and the almost daily opinion polls make too blatant vote-rigging a risk, given the Russian elite’s proclaimed insistence that Russia is “democratically” governed.

The general outlines of post-Soviet Russia as shaped by UR-Putin have now become clear: Russia will not join the West as a subservient “postmodern state”, the neocon version of Kant’s world order, where nations give up their sovereignty to a “higher” organisation in the interests of world peace. (Kant envisioned a neutral United Nations, as opposed to the unipolar imperial order established with the collapse of the Soviet Union.) The early post-Soviet Yelstin crowd seemed willing to join the US-led imperial order, but there were enough savvy patriots who were not duped by US professed intentions and who raised the alarm and put the breaks on this process in time.

It will do whatever is necessary for its security and national/federal sovereignty (Chechnya and Georgian wars, missile defence), and work with others to lessen dependency on the US order (Latin America, India, China, gas/oil deals with Europe). To pursue this, it is developing new international structures especially in Eurasia (SCO, CSTO, the new regional customs union and proposed Eurasian Economic Community) to counter-balance US-controlled structures and prepare for the inevitable collapse of US empire.

But at the same time, the new Russian political-economic elite is still very much a part of the US-led economic order, based on the dollar and the Bretton Woods financial institutions, with billions of dollars stashed abroad, and children attending elite foreign schools both in Europe and now in the heart of capitalist Russia. But US hopes to wipe Russia as a major force off the political map were dashed, and even the most Atlantophile Russians balk at becoming the latest Latvia.

In contrast to old Soviet-era policies, this Russian strategy is manageable in the face of hostile powers. It accepts the international framework the US established after WWII and even new additions like the International Criminal Court and the Kyoto Protocols which the US rejects, and thus does not face the anti-communist reaction of Soviet years by Western liberals and conservatives. It no longer threatens the interests of the ruling elites of other countries, making Russia an attractive partner for many countries who seek to remain free from US imperial control. These polices enjoy a broad consensus inside Russia, ensuring UR-Putin’s continued domination of Russian politics for the time being.

For an objective outside observer, the Russia fashioned by Putin and UR plays a positive force in world politics and economics, though it is not above playing its own games; for instance, in Belarus, possibly in Kyrgyzstan, using its transit route to Afghanistan as a bargaining chip with the US, regardless of the justness of the NATO occupation of Afghanistan. It let down longtime ally Gaddafi in Libya, has jilted Iran on nuclear power and weapons sales in the interests of placating the US, not done much for the Serbs, especially in Kosovo (yet). If NATO pushes hard, Russia will back down, unless its direct and vital interests are threatened. The best Russia can do for countries threatened by US empire is support their appeals to international law and wield its veto at the UN Security Council.

It should no longer be “empire vs Communism”, the zero-sum game which the US fashioned in the 20th century to counter the “Soviet threat”, though just what the game adds up to now is entirely the responsibility of the empire to determine, rather than the non-empire independents like Russia, all of whom are trying to survive in the face of pressures to accept a subservient role as “postmodern states”. Russia has forfeited claims to be the gravedigger of capitalism and by extension imperialism, and just wants a fair shake in a fairer world order. At the same time, leaders in the Kremlin are under no illusion about the reality of US empire; that, for all their smiles, its leaders see Russia (along with China) as the enemy; and that “Western policies always aim at the eventual dismemberment and demise of Russia,” writes vineyardsaker.blogspot.

“They just don’t believe that the Soviet way to oppose the US was the correct one,” the Russian-American analyst continues. Rather than being an active midwife of a new world order opposed to imperialism (Soviet policy), Russia is playing a waiting game — the age-old policy of retreat used against the Mongols, the French and the Nazis. “Americans play Monopoly, Russians chess,” quips Spengler at Asia Times. Afghanistan looms large as another Vietnam, and the US is busily adding Libya, Syria, Iran, who-knows-where next to its overfull plate of indigestible goodies. At times, it is wise to sit back and wait for the straw that breaks the ogre’s (excuse me, camel’s) back. A fool’s mate comes about when your opponent is bankrupt, and it certainly looks like this is how the current game is shaping up.

UR will no doubt continue its slide, and even Putin himself come 4 March may find himself in a runoff with some dark-horse challenger, as it is also clear that UR-Putin are unable to face down the corrupt administrative minions who keep “the party of crooks and thieves” in power. However, the cautious, patriotic policies of the 2000s as sketched above have been set for the near future. Perhaps the world financial crisis will turn Russians back to their tried and at-least-partially true socialist heritage to make sure the country survives. But its domestic and foreign policies will not be too much different from the ones UR has put its (rubber) stamp on, policies which are effectively the work of Putin as Mr UR.

US Secretary of State Hillary “we came, we saw, he died” Clinton set the scene on Indonesian TV a few weeks ago, when she prophesied there would be “a civil war” in Syria, with a well financed and “well-armed opposition” crammed with army deserters.

Now it’s up to NATOGCC to make it happen. NATOGCC is of course the now fully accomplished symbiosis between selected North Atlantic Treaty Organization members such as Britain and France and selected petromonarchies of the Gulf Cooperation Council, aka the Gulf Counter-revolution Club, such as Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

So feel free to bask in the glow of yet another mercenary paradise.

The NATOGCC war

The Libyans formerly known as rebels, with explicit consent from Transitional National Council (TNC) chairman Mustafa Abdul NATO, aka Jalil, have already shipped to Syria — via Turkey — 600 highly motivated troops fresh from toppling the Gaddafi regime, to fight alongside the Free Syria Army (FSA). This followed a secret meeting in Istanbul between the TNC and the Syrian “rebels,” rebranded as Syrian National Council.

The trigger-happy Libyans have access to a wealth of weapons plundered from the Gaddafi’s regimes military depots or gently “donated” by NATO and Qatar. A delicious parallel may already be traced with the House of Saud in the 1980s — which gave the green light for hardcore Islamists to go fight in Afghanistan, instead of raising hell at home.

For the TNC, better keep those testosterone-heavy, unemployed warriors away in the Middle East rather than raising hell in Northern Africa. And for NATO member Turkey, in the absence of war (blame those pesky Russians and Chinese), the next best option is to rely on mercenaries to do the job.

The pressure is relentless. Diplomats in Brussels confirmed to Asia Times Online that NATOGCC operatives have set up a command center in Iskenderun, in Hatay province in Turkey. Crucial Aleppo, in northwest Syria, is very close to the Turkish-Syrian border. The cover story for this command center is to engineer “humanitarian corridors” to Syria.

Although these “humanitarians” come from NATO members US, Canada and France, and GCC members Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE, their cover is that they’re only innocent “monitors,” and not part of NATO. Needless to say these humanitarians consist of ground, naval, air force and engineering specialists. Their mission: infiltrate northern Syria, especially Idlib, Rastan, Homs but most of all the big prize, Aleppo, the largest city in Syria, with at least 2.5 million people, the majority of which are Sunni and Kurdish.

Even before this news from Brussels, the French satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaine, as well as the Turkish daily Milliyet, had already revealed that commandos from French intelligence and the British MI6 are training the FSA in urban guerrilla techniques, in Hatay in southern Turkey and in Tripoli, in northern Lebanon. Weapons — from shotguns to Israeli machine guns and RPGs — have been smuggled en masse.

It’s no secret in Syria that armed gangs — from Salafis to petty criminals — have been attacking regular soldiers, the police and even civilians since the early stages of the protest movement. Of roughly 3,500 people killed during the past seven months, a large number of civilians and more than 1,100 soldiers were killed by these gangs.

And then there are the deserters. So when the Assad regime insists the current Syrian tragedy is to a great extent incited by well-paid and well-armed elements — not to mention mercenaries — at the service of foreign powers, it is essentially correct.

In Homs, a local source tells Asia Times Online that as far as the FSA is concerned, “it’s clear that they are just a nice media cover for criminals. They had a video of themselves in Baba Amr in which they appeared like complete idiots (here it is, with captions conveniently!). But whoever these kids or guys are, they have lots of support amongst the Sunni population. Also, they are connected within the community, whether rich or poor. A Christian woman who teaches at a private school just outside Homs which has largely Sunni students had her car stopped and stolen by some gang. When she came to Homs she made some phone calls and her car was returned. So whoever stole her car outside city limits had connections to middle to high class people in the city and they were able to return the car. This tells me of the infiltration of the dogma of the revolution in Homs. The ‘concept’ of FSA is probably supported enough, and just the people of poor areas like Baba Amr, Bayada and Khalidiyya can self-sustain the FSA.”

Round up the usual votes

Just as in Libya, the Arab League also duly fulfilled its doormat function for NATOGCC, voting for harsh sanctions that include a freeze of Syrian government assets, no more trade deals with the central bank and no more Arab investment. In short: economic war. The Lebanese paper L’Orient Le Jour politely called it “a political euphemism.” Of the 22 League members, 19 voted — Syria was already suspended. Iraq — where the government is majority Shi’ite — and Lebanon — where Hezbollah is part of the government — were the only ones that “dissociated” themselves from the vote.

Meanwhile, the nasty opportunist game of musical chairs – the Syrian version – is also in effect. The Syrian National Council and its Islamist cohorts totally rejected any dialogue with the Bashar al-Assad regime. The secretary-general of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, Riad Chakfi, pulled a “Libyan rebel” and implored the Turkish army to invade northern Syria and establish a buffer zone. Dodgy exiles such as former vice-president Abdelhalim Khaddam — exiled in Paris — and another vice-president, Rifaat al-Assad — exiled in Spain — are under the illusion that the Muslim Brotherhood (which will be the top power in a “new” Syria) would allow them to sit on the throne.

This is downright silly because the name of the game in a “new” Syria will be the House of Saud. The House of Saud is the crucial link between the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt (which is getting closer and closer to taking power); the AKP party in Turkey (which is essentially a Muslim Brotherhood lite); and the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria. The Saudis are crucial investors in Turkey. They are positioning themselves as major investors in Egypt. And they’re dying to become a major investor in “new” Syria.

Then there’s the key question of Turkey’s game. In the Syrian dossier, Turkey is not a mediator anymore; it has become a brash advocate of regime change. Forget about the Tehran-Damascus-Ankara entente, which was a reality not along ago, in 2010. Forget about soft power and the much-advertised foreign policy of “zero problems with our neighbors,” coined by Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.

Davutoglu himself announced Turkey’s own sanctions on Syria — a replay of the Arab League’s, with freezing of the government’s financial assets and no transactions with the central bank. Davutoglu insists a military buffer zone inside Syria, along the border with Turkey, is “not on the agenda” — but that’s exactly what those shady NATOGCC “humanitarian monitors” are up to. Since mid-November Turkish media has been ablaze detailing plans for a no-fly zone in northern Syria and the aforementioned buffer zone stretching as far as Aleppo.

The motive? Ask “prophet” Hillary Clinton: to foment civil war.

Showdown, Club Med style

In its mad rush to sell the Turkish political model to the majority-Sunni parts of the Arab world (yet the GCC is not buying), Turkey may be severely miscalculating its crucial relations with both Russia and Iran. Around 70% of Turkey’s energy is imported from Russia and Iran. Not to mention that both Russia and Iran are fuming with Turkey bowing to NATO pressure to host a radar station as part of missile defense.

Russia has very clear ideas about the Syrian scenario. The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has been more than explicit for weeks now: “We absolutely do not accept a scenario of military intervention in Syria.”

Last week’s meeting of the deputy foreign ministers of the emergent BRICS group (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), in Moscow, was unmistakable.

The BRICS essentially drew the red lines. No excuse whatsoever for a foreign intervention in Syria, as in “any external interference in Syria’s affairs, not in accordance with the UN Charter, should be excluded.” No “bomb bomb Iran”; instead, dialogue and negotiations. And no additional sanctions, deemed “counterproductive>” The BRICS clearly see how the Libya scenario is slowly morphing into the modified NATOGCC war.

To add extra sauce, the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov — equipped with nuclear missiles — has already left Murmansk towards the Eastern Mediterranean, alongside the destroyer Admiral Chabanenko and the frigate Ladny. They will arrive at the Tartus naval base, in Syria, in mid-January, and will be met by other ships from the Russian fleet in the Black Sea.

Tartus, hosting around 600 military and technicians from the Russian Defense Ministry, is a center of maintenance and refueling for the Russian Black Sea fleet. It will be a thrill to watch whether the Russians will invite members of the George H W Bush Carrier Strike Group — now also in the Eastern Mediterranean — for a volleyball match.

It’s fair to argue that masses of Syrians want something other than the Assad regime — but certainly not some variant of humanitarian bombing, not to mention civil war. They saw NATO’s legacy in Libya — virtually the whole infrastructure of the country destroyed, cities bombed to dust, tens of thousands of dead and wounded, al-Qaeda-linked fanatics wielding power in Tripoli, widespread ethnic hatred. They don’t want a brand new massacre. But NATOGCC does.

The Russian investigative journalist, Nikolay Starikov, has written a book which discusses the role of unknown snipers in the destabilization of countries targeted for regime change by the United States and its allies. The following article attempts to elucidate some historical examples of this technique with a view to providing a background within which to understand the current cover war on the people of Syria by death squads in the service of Western intelligence.

Romania, 1989

In Susanne Brandstätter’s documentary Checkmate: Strategy of a Revolution aired on Arte television station some years ago,  Western intelligence officials revealed how  death squads were used to destabilize Romania and turn its people against the head of state Nicolai Ceaucescu.

Brandstätter’s film is a must see for anyone interested in how Western intelligence agencies, human rights groups and the corporate press collude in the systematic destruction of countries whose leadership conflicts with the interests of big capital and empire.

Former secret agent with the French secret service, the DGSE(La Direction générale de la sécurité extérieure) Dominique Fonvielle, spoke candidly about the role of Western intelligence operatives in destabilizing the Romanian population.

How do you organize a revolution? I believe the first step is to locate oppositional forces in a given country. It is sufficient to have a highly developed intelligence service in order to determine which people are credible enough to have influence at their hands to destabilize the people to the disadvantage of the ruling regime.

This open and rare admission of Western sponsorship of terrorism was justified on the grounds of the “greater good” brought to Romania by free-market capitalism. It was necessary, according to the strategists of Romania’s “revolution”, for some people to die.

Today, Romania remains one of the poorest countries in Europe. A report on Euractiv reads:

Most Romanians associate the last two decades with a continuous process of impoverishment and deteriorating living standards, according to Romania’s Life Quality Research Institute, quoted by the Financiarul daily.

The western intelligence officials interviewed in the documentary also revealed how the Western press played a central role in disinformation. For example, the victims of Western-backed snipers were photographed by presented to the world as evidence of a crazed dictator who was “killing his own people”.

To this day, there is a Museum in the back streets of Timisoara Romania which promotes the myth of the “Romanian Revolution”.  The Arte documentary was one of the rare occasions when the mainstream press revealed some of  the dark secrets of Western liberal democracy. The documentary caused a scandal when it was aired in France, with the prestigious Le Monde Diplomatique discussing the moral dilemma of the West’s support of terror in its desire to spread ‘democracy’.

Since the destruction of Libya and the ongoing cover war on Syria, Le Monde Diplomatique has stood safely on the side of political correction, condemning Bashar Al Assad for the crimes of the DGSE and the CIA. In its current edition, the front page article reads Ou est la gauche? Where is the left ? Certainly not in the pages of Le Monde Diplomatique !

Russia, 1993

During Boris Yeltsin’s counter-revolution in Russia in 1993, when the Russian parliament was bombed resulting in the deaths of thousands of people, Yeltsin’s counter-revolutionaries made extensive use of snipers. According to many eye witness reports, snipers were seen shooting civilians from the building opposite the US embassy in Moscow. The snipers were attributed to the Soviet government by the international media.

Venezuela, 2002

In 2002, the CIA attempted to overthrow Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela, in a military coup. On the 11th of April 2002, an opposition march towards the presidential palace was organized by the US-backed Venezuelan opposition. Snipers hidden in buildings near the palace opened fire on protestors killing 18. The Venezuelan and international media claimed that Chavez was “killing his own people” thereby justifying the military coup presented as a humanitarian intervention.  It was subsequently proved that the coup had been organized by the CIA but the identity of the snipers was never established.

Thailand, April 2010

On April 12th 2010, Christian Science Monitor published a detailed report of the riots in Thailand between “red-shirt” activists and the Thai government. The article headline read: ‘Thailand’s red shirt protests darken with unknown snipers, parade of coffins’.

Like their counterparts in Tunisia, Thailand’s red shirts were calling for the resignation of the Thai prime minister. While a heavy-handed response by the Thai security forces to the protestors was indicated in the report, the government’s version of events was also reported:

Mr. Abhisit has used solemn televised addresses to tell his story. He has blamed rogue gunmen, or “terrorists,” for the intense violence (at least 21 people died and 800 were injured) and emphasized the need for a full investigation into the killings of both soldiers and protesters. State television has broadcast repeated images of soldiers coming under fire from bullets and explosives.

The CSM report went on to quote Thai military officials and unnamed Western diplomats:

Military observers say Thai troops stumbled into a trap set by agents provocateurs with military expertise. By pinning down soldiers after dark and sparking chaotic battles with unarmed protesters, the unknown gunmen ensured heavy casualties on both sides.

Some were caught on camera and seen by reporters, including this one. Snipers targeted military ground commanders, indicating a degree of advance planning and knowledge of Army movements, say Western diplomats briefed by Thai officials. While leaders of the demonstrations have disowned the use of firearms and say their struggle is nonviolent, it is unclear whether radicals in the movement knew of the trap.

“You can’t claim to be a peaceful political movement and have an arsenal of weapons out the back if needed. You can’t have it both ways,” says a Western diplomat in regular contact with protest leaders.

The CSM article also explores the possibility that the snipers could be rogue elements in the Thai military, agents provocateurs used to justify a crack down on democratic opposition. Thailand’s ruling elite is currently coming under pressure from a George Soros funded colour revolution hysteria called the Red Shirts.

Kyrgystan, June 2010

Ethnic violence broke out in the Central Asian republic of  Kirgystan  in June 2010. It was widely reported that unknown snipers opened fire on members of the Uzbek minority in Kyrgystan. Eurasia.net reports:

In many Uzbek mahallas, inhabitants offer convincing testimony of gunmen targeting their neighborhoods from vantage points. Men barricaded into the Arygali Niyazov neighborhood, for example, testified to seeing gunmen on the upper floors of a nearby medical institute hostel with a view over the district’s narrow streets. They said that during the height of the violence these gunmen were covering attackers and looters, assaulting their area with sniper fire. Men in other Uzbek neighborhoods tell similar stories.

Among the rumours and unconfirmed reports circulating in Kyrgyzstan after the 2010 violence were claims that water supplies to Uzbek areas were about to be  poisoned. Such rumours had also been spread against the Ceaucescu regime in Romania during the CIA- backed coup in 1989. Eurasia.net goes on to claim that:

Many people are convinced that they’ve seen foreign mercenaries acting as snipers. These alleged foreign combatants are distinguished by their appearance – inhabitants report seeing black snipers and tall, blonde, female snipers from the Baltic states. The idea that English snipers have been roaming the streets of Osh shooting at Uzbeks is also popular. There’ve been no independent corroborations of such sightings by foreign journalists or representatives of international organizations.

None of these reports have been independently investigated or corroborated. It is therefore impossible to draw any hard conclusions from these stories.

Ethnic violence against Uzbek citizens in Kyrgyzstan occurred pari pasu with a popular revolt against the US-backed regime, which many analysts have attributed to the machinations of Moscow.

The Bakiyev régime came to power in a CIA-backed people-power coup known to the world as the Tulip Revolution in 2005.

Located to the West of China and bordering Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan hosts one of America’s biggest and most important military bases in Central Asia, the Manas Air Base, which is vital for the NATO occupation of neighbouring Afghanistan.

Despite initial worries,US/Kyrgyz relations have remained good under the regime of President Roza Otunbayeva. This is not surprising as Otunbayeva had previously participated in the US-created Tulip Revolution in 2004, taking power as foreign minister.

To date no proper investigation has been conducted into the origins of the ethnic violence that spread throughout  the south of Kyryzstan in 2010, nor have the marauding gangs of unknown snipers been identified and apprehended.

Given the geo-strategic and geo-political importance of Kyrgyzstan to both the United States and Russia, and the formers track-record of using death squads to divide and weaken countries so as to maintain US domination, US involvement in the dissemination of terrorism in Kyrgyzstan cannot be ruled out. One effective way of maintaining a grip on Central Asian countries would be to exacerbate ethnic tensions.

In August 6th 2008, the Russian newspaper Kommersa`nt reported that a US arms cache had been found in a house in the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek, which was being rented by two American citizens. The US embassy claimed the arms were being used for “anti-terrorism” exercises. However, this was not confirmed by Kyrgyz authorities.

Covert US military support to terrorist groups in the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia proved to be an effective strategy in creating the conditions for “humanitarian” bombing in 1999. An effective means of  keeping the government in Bishkek firmly on America’s side would be to insist on a US and European presence in the country to help “protect” the Uzbek minority.

Military intervention similar to that in the former Yugoslavia by the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe  has already been advocated by the New York Times, whose misleading article on the riots on June 24th 2010 has the headline “Kyrgyzstan asks European Security Body for Police Teams”. The article is misleading as the headline contradicts the actual report which cites a Kyrgyz official stating:

A government spokesman said officials had discussed an outside police presence with the O.S.C.E., but said he could not confirm that a request for a deployment had been made.

There is no evidence in the article of any request by the Kyrgyz government for military intervention. In fact, the article presents much evidence to the contrary. However, before the reader has a chance to read the explanation of the Kyrgyz government, the New York Times writer presents the now all too horribly familiar narrative of oppressed peoples begging the West to come and bomb or occupy their country:

Ethnic Uzbeks in the south have clamored for international intervention. Many Uzbeks said they were attacked in their neighborhoods not only by civilian mobs, but also by the Kyrgyz military and police officers.

Only towards the end of the article do we find out that the Kyrgyz authorities blamed the US-backed dictator for fomenting ethnic violence in the country, through the use of Islamic jihadists in Uzbekistan. This policy of using ethnic tension to create an environment of fear in order to prop up an extremely unpopular dictatorship, the policy of using Islamic Jihadism as a political tool to create what former US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Bzrezinski called “ an arc of crisis”, ties in well with the history of US involvement in Central Asia from the creation of Al Qaida in Afghanistan in 1978 to the present day.

Again, the question persists, who were the “unknown snipers” terrorizing the Uzbek population, where did their weapons come from and who would benefit from ethnic conflict in Central Asia’s geopolitical hotspot?

Tunisia, January 2011

On January 16th 2011, CNN reported that ‘’armed gangs’’ were fighting Tunisian security forces.  Many of the murders committed throughout the Tunisian uprising were by “unknown snipers”. There were also videos posted on the internet showing Swedish nationals detained by Tunisian security forces. The men were clearly armed with sniper rifles. Russia Today aired the dramatic pictures.

In spite of articles by professor Michel Chossudovsky, William Engdahl and  others showing how the uprisings in North Africa were following the patterns of US backed people-power coups rather than genuinely popular revolutions, left wing parties and organizations continued to believe the version of events presented to them by Al Jazeera and the mainstream press. Had the left taken a left from old Lenin’s book they would have transposed his comments on the February/March revolution in Russia thus:

The  whole course of events in the January/February Revolution clearly shows that the British, French and American embassies, with their agents and “connections”,… directly organized a plot.. in conjunction with a section of the generals and army and Tunisian garrison officers, with the express object of deposing Ben Ali

What the left did not understand is that sometimes it is necessary for imperialism to overthrow some of its clients. A suitable successor to Ben Ali could always be found among the feudalists of the Muslim Brotherhood who now look likely to take power.

In their revolutionary sloganeering and arrogant insistence that the events in Tunisia and Egypt were “spontaneous and popular uprisings” they committed what Lenin identified as the most dangerous sins in a revolution; namely, the substitution of the abstract for the concrete. In other words, left wing groups were simply fooled by the sophistication of the Western backed “Arab Spring” events.

That is why the violence of the demonstrators and, in particular, the widespread use of snipers possibly linked to Western intelligence was the great unthought of the Tunisian uprising. The same techniques would be used in Libya a few weeks later, forcing the left to back track and modifiy its initial enthusiasm for the CIA’s “Arab Spring”.

When we are talking about the” left” here, we are referring to genuine left wing parties, that is to say, parties who supported the Great People’s Socialist Libyan Arab Jamahirya in their long and brave fight against Western imperialism, not the infantile petty bourgeois dupes who supported NATO’s Benghazi terrorists.  The blatant idiocy of such a stance should be crystal clear to anyone who understands global politics and class struggle.

Egypt, 2011

On October 20th 2011, the Telegraph newspaper published an article entitled, “Our brother died for a better Egypt”. According to the Telegraph, Mina Daniel, an anti-government activist in Cairo, had been ‘shot from an unknown sniper, wounding him fatally in the chest”

Inexplicably, the article is no longer available on the Telegraph’s website for online perusal. But a google search for ‘Egypt, unknown sniper, Telegraph’ clearly shows the above quoted explanation for Mina Daniel’s death. So, who could these “unknown snipers’’ be?

On February 6th Al Jazeera reported that Egyptian journalist, Ahmad Mahmoud, was shot by snipers as he attempted to cover clashes between Egyptian security forces and protestors. Referring to statements made by Mahmoud’s wife, Enas Abdel-Alim, the Al Jazeera article insinuates that Mahmoud may have been killed by Egyptian security forces:

Abdel-Alim said several eyewitnesses told her a uniformed police captain with Egypt’s notorious Central Security forces yelled at her husband to stop filming. Before Mahmoud even had a chance to react, she said, a sniper shot him.

While the Al Jazeera article advances the theory that the snipers were agents of the Mubarak regime, their role in the uprising still remains a mystery. Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based television stations owned by the Emir Hamid Bin Khalifa Al Thani, played a key role in provoking protests in Tunisia and Egypt before launching a campaign of unmitigated pro-NATO war propaganda and lies during the destruction of Libya.

The Qatari channel has been a central participant in the current covert war waged by NATO agencies and their clients against the Republic of Syria. Al Jazeera’s incessant disinformation against Libya and Syria resulted in the resignation of several prominent journalists such as Beirut station chief Ghassan Bin Jeddo and senior Al Jazeera executive Wadah Khanfar who was forced to resign after a Wikileaks cable revealed he was a co-operating with the Central Intelligence Agency.

Many people were killed during the US-backed colour revolution in Egypt. Although, the killings have been attributed to former US semi-client Hosni Mubarak, the involvement of Western intelligence cannot be ruled out. However, it should be pointed out that the role of unknown snipers in mass demonstrations remains complex and multi-faceted and therefore one should not jump to conclusions. For example, after the Bloody Sunday massacre (Domhnach na Fola) in Derry, Ireland 1972, where peaceful demonstrators were shot dead by the British army, British officials claimed that they had come under fire from snipers. But the 30 year long Bloody Sunday  inquiry subsequently proved this to be false.  But the question persists once more,  who were the snipers in Egypt and whose purposes did they serve?

Libya,  2011

During the destabilization of Libya, a video was aired by Al Jazeera purporting to show peaceful “pro-democracy” demonstrators being fired upon by “Gaddafi’s forces”. The video was edited to convince the viewer that anti-Gaddafi demonstrators were being murdered by the security forces. However, the unedited version of the video is available on utube. It clearly shows pro-Gaddafi demonstrators with Green flags being fired upon by unknown snipers. The attribution of NATO-linked crimes to the security forces of the Libyan Jamahirya was a constant feature of the brutal media war waged against the Libyan people.

Syria, 2011

The people of Syria have been beset by death squads and snipers since the outbreak of violence there in March. Hundreds of Syrian soldiers and security personnel have been murdered, tortured and mutilated by Salafist and Muslim Brotherhood militants. Yet the international media corporations continue to spread the pathetic lie that the deaths are the result of Bashar Al Assad’s dictatorship.

When I visited Syria in April of this year, I personally encountered merchants and citizens in Hama who told me they had seen armed terrorists roaming the streets of that once peaceful city, terrorizing the neighbourhood. I recall speaking to a fruit seller in the city of Hama who  spoke about the horror he had witnessed that day. As he described the scenes of violence to me, my attention was arrested by a newspaper headline in English from the Washington Post  shown on Syrian television: “CIA backs Syrian opposition”. The Central Intelligence Agency provides training and funding for groups who do the bidding of US imperialist interests. The history of the CIA shows that backing opposition forces means providing them with arms and finance, actions illegal under international law.

A few days later, while at a hostel in the ancient, cultured city of Aleppo, I spoke to a Syrian business man and his family. The business man ran many hotels in the city and was pro-Assad. He told me that he used to watch Al Jazeera television but now had doubts about their honesty. As we conversed, the Al Jazeera television in the background showed scenes of Syrian soldiers beating and torturing protestors. “ Now if that is true, it is simply unacceptable” he said. It is sometimes impossible to verify whether the images shown on television are true or not. Many of the crimes attributed to the Syrian army have been committed by the armed gangs, such as the dumping of mutilated bodies into the river in Hama, presented to the world as more proof of the crimes of the Assad regime.

There is a minority of innocent opponents of the Assad regime who believe everything they see and hear on Al Jazeera and the other pro-Western satellite stations. These people simply do not understand the intricacies of international politics.

But the facts on the ground show that most people in Syria support the government. Syrians have access to all internet websites and international TV channels. They can watch BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera, read the New York Times online or Le Monde before tuning into their own state media. In this respect, many Syrians are more informed about international politics than the average European or American. Most Europeans and Americans believe their own media. Few are capable of reading the Syrian press in original Arabic or watching Syrian television. The Western powers are the masters of discourse, who own the means of communication. The Arab Spring has been the most horrifying example of the wanton abuse of this power.

Disinformation is effective in sowing the seeds of doubt among those who are seduced by Western propaganda. Syrian state media has disproved hundreds of Al Jazeera lies since the beginning of this conflict.  Yet the western media has refused to even report the Syrian government’s position lest fair coverage of the other side of this story encourage a modicum of critical thought in the public mind.

Conclusion.

The use of mercenaries, death squads and snipers by Western intelligence agencies is well documented.  No rational government attempting to stay in power would resort to unknown snipers to intimidate its opponents. Shooting at innocent protestors would be counterproductive in the face of unmitigated pressure from Western governments determined to install a client regime in Damascus. Shooting of unarmed protestors is only acceptable in dictatorships that enjoy the unconditional support of Western governments such as Bahrain, Honduras or Colombia.

A government which is so massively supported by the population of Syria would not sabotage its own survival by setting snipers against the protests of a small minority.

The opposition to the Syrian regime is, in fact, miniscule. Tear gas, mass arrests and other non lethal methods would be perfectly sufficient for a government wishing to control unarmed demonstrators.

Snipers are used to create terror, fear and anti-regime propaganda. They are an integral feature of Western sponsored regime change. If one were to make a serious criticism of the Syrian government over the past few months, it is that they have failed to implement effective anti-terrorism measures in the country. The Syrian people want troops on the streets and the roofs of public buildings. In the weeks and months ahead, the Syrian armed forces will probably rely more and more on their Russian military specialists to strengthen the country’s defenses as the Western crusade begun in Libya in March spreads to the Levant. There is no conclusive proof that the snipers murdering men, women and children in Syria are the agents of Western imperialism. But there is overwhelming proof that Western imperialism is attempting to destroy the Syrian state. As in Libya, they have never once mentioned the possibility of negotiations between the so-called opposition and the Syrian government. The West wants regime change and is determined to repeat the slaughter in Libya to achieve this geopolitical objective.

It now looks likely that the cradle of civilization and science will be overrun by semi-literate barbarians as the terminal decline of the West plays itself out in the deserts of the East.

As they examine the regional chessboard and the formidable array of forces aligned against them, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the military dictatorship of the mullahtariat in Tehran must face, simultaneously, superpower Washington, bomb-happy North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members, nuclear power Israel, all Sunni Arab absolute monarchies, and even Sunni-majority, secular Turkey.

Meanwhile, on their side, the Islamic Republic can only count on Moscow. Not as bad a hand as it may seem.

Syria is Iran’s undisputed key ally in the Arab world — while Russia, alongside China, are the key geopolitical allies. China, for the moment, is making it clear that any solution for Syria must be negotiated.

Russia’s one and only naval base in the Mediterranean is at the Syrian port of Tartus. Not by accident, Russia has installed its S-300 air defense system — one of the best all-altitude surface-to-air missile systems in the world, comparable to the American Patriot — in Tartus. The update to the even more sophisticated S-400 system is imminent.

From Moscow’s — as well as Tehran’s — perspective, regime change in Damascus is a no-no. It will mean virtual expulsion of the Russian and Iranian navies from the Mediterranean.

Yet key lateral moves by the West are already on. Diplomats in Brussels confirmed to Asia Times Online that the former Libyan “rebels” — now trying to come up with a credible government — have already given the go-ahead for NATO to build a sprawling military base in Cyrenaica.

NATO has no final say in such matters. This is decided by the boss — the Pentagon — interested in emboldening Africom in coordination with NATO. As many as 20,000 boots are expected to be deployed on the ground in Libya — at least 12,000 of them Europeans. They will be responsible for Libya’s “internal security”, but also be on alert for possible, further military campaigns targeted at — who else — Syria and Iran.

Bring those Shi’ites down

As much as the latest “coalition of the willing” — which by the way repeats the Libya model — is against the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria, it also represents a Christian/Sunni war against Shi’ites, be they the Alawite minority in Syria or the Shi’ite majorities in Iran, Iraq and Lebanon.

This is part and parcel of the “strategic opportunity” identified by the powerful Israel lobby in Washington; if we strike against the Damascus-Tehran link, we deal a mortal blow to Hezbollah in Lebanon. That, ideologues believe, can now be sold to world public opinion under the cover of the former Arab Spring — now “Arab Winter” after a metamorphosis, before “Arab Summer”, into the Arab counter-revolution).

As Tehran sees it, what’s really going on regarding Syria is a “humanitarian” cover for a complex anti-Shi’ite and anti-Iran operation.

The road map is already clear. A fractious, unrepresentative Syrian National Council — Libya-style — is already in place. Same for a heavily armed Sunni “insurgency” crisscrossing the borders in Lebanon and Turkey. Sanctions are already essentially hurting the Syrian middle class. A relentless, international campaign of vilification of the Assad regime has been deployed. And psy ops abound, with the aim of seducing sections of the Syrian army to defect (it’s not working).

A report¹ by a Qatar-based researcher for the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) even comes close to admitting that the self-described “Free Syria Army” is basically a bunch of hardcore Islamists, plus a few genuine army defectors, but mostly radicalized Muslim Brotherhood bought, paid for and weaponized by the US, Israel, the Gulf monarchies and Turkey. There’s nothing “pro-democracy” about this lot – as incessantly sold by Western corporate and Saudi-owned media.

As for the National Council, based in Washington and London and sprinkled with the usual dodgy exiles, its program calls for governing Syria alongside the same military that has been — a la the Egyptian military junta — shooting civilian protesters. Makes one think that the only sensible solution would be for the people in Syria to topple the police state Assad regime, while being vehemently against the dodgy Syrian National Council.

This year’s model (dictator)

Then there’s the usually misguided and misinformed West, which believes that the Arab League, now no more than a puppet of US foreign policy, is siding with the democratic aspirations of the Syrian people. Angry Arab blogger As’ad Abu Khalil is correct when he says that after the fall of president Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, “the League is now an extension of the Gulf Cooperation Council [GCC]“.

The GCC is in fact the Gulf Counter-revolution Club. Their favorite sport is to privilege “model” dictators — starting with themselves, but also including Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen and the little kings of Jordan and Morocco, who will be annexed to the GCC because they wish they were in the Persian Gulf (geography dictates they aren’t). On the other hand, the GCC abhors “bad” dictators — the snuffed-out Muammar Gaddafi and Assad, who not by accident are from secular republics.

The House of Saud, Jordan and rising Qatar are more than comfortable doing the US’s and Israel’s bidding. The House of Saud — the GCC’s top dog — invaded Bahrain with 1,500 troops to smash pro-democracy protests very much like the ones in Egypt and Syria. The House of Saud helped the ruling, Sunni al-Khalifa dynasty in 70% Shi’ite Bahrain to conduct widespread torture; Bahrainis confirm that everyone tortured was forced to confess direct links with “evil” Tehran.

In Egypt, the House of Saud supported Mubarak even after he was deposed. Now it supports — with over US$4 billion so far — a military junta that basically wants to keep power, unchecked, over a “democratic” facade.

The House of Saud couldn’t possibly coexist with a successful, democratic Egypt. Anyone believing the House of Saud’s claim to defend human rights and democracy in the Middle East should check into an asylum.

The Arab League — also a House of Saud extension — gave a green card to NATO to bomb a member state. It suspended Syria on November 12 — as it had done with Libya on February 22 — because, unlike in Libya, US and European designs in the United Nations Security Council were duly vetoed by Russia and China.

Welcome to a “new” Arab League where if you don’t prostrate in front of the GCC altar, you’re condemned to regime change.

Worshipping the GCC can’t compare to worshipping the Pentagon and NATO. Jordan and Morocco are members of NATO’s Mediterranean dialogue, and Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are members of NATO’s Istanbul Cooperation Initiative. In addition, Jordan and the UAE are the only Arabic Troop Contributing Nations for NATO in Afghanistan.

Ivo Daalder, the Obama administration’s ambassador to NATO, has already ordered Libya to enter the Mediterranean Dialogue, alongside Morocco, Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Mauritania and Israel. And early this month he told the Atlantic Council what’s needed for an attack on Syria; an “urgent necessity” (such as giving the impression Assad is going to raze Homs to the ground); “regional support” (that will come in a flash from the GCC/Arab League); and a UN mandate (it won’t happen, as Russia and China had made it clear).

So one may expect exactly that from the “coalition of the willing”; some black ops blamed on the Assad regime; immediate support from GCC/Arab League; and probably unilateral action, because via the UN is a no-no.

The Greater Middle East dream

No wonder some sound minds in Damascus, watching the tea leaves, decided to take some action. Damascus did send secret couriers to sound out Washington’s mood. The price to be left alone; to cut all ties with Tehran, for good. The Assad regime was left wondering what would they get in return.

The Alawites, roughly 12% of the population and members of the ruling elite, won’t desert the Assad regime. Christians and Druze expect only the worst from a possible, hardcore, Muslim Brotherhood-dominated new order. Same for a crucial neighbor, the Nuri al-Maliki government in Baghdad.

Russia knows that if the current Libyan model is reproduced in Syria — and with Lebanon already under a de facto NATO blockade — the Mediterranean will indeed become that dream, a NATO lake, which is code for total US control.

Moscow also sees that in the US-conceived Greater Middle East — and talk about “great”, spanning from Mauritania to Kazakhstan — the only countries that are not linked with NATO through myriad “partnerships” are, apart from Syria: Lebanon, Eritrea, Sudan and Iran.

As for the Pentagon, the name of the game is “repositioning”. As in if you leave Iraq you go somewhere else in the “arc of instability”, preferably the Gulf. There are 40,000 US troops already in the Gulf — 23,000 of them in Kuwait. A secret army for the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency is being trained by former Blackwater, “repositioned” as Xe, in the UAE. A NATO of the Gulf is being born. NATOGCC, anyone?

When the US neo-conservatives ruled the universe — that was only a few years ago — the motto was “Real men go to Tehran”. An update is in order. Call it “Real men go to Tehran via Damascus only if they have the balls to stare down Moscow”.

1. See “Revolutionary road: Among the Syrian opposition.”

By virtue of the START and SORT treaties on the reduction of offensive weapons signed by the two great nuclear powers, the number of these was reduced to several thousand.

In 2010, a new treaty of this kind was signed by the two powers.

Since then the greatest efforts have been dedicated to improving direction, scope and precision and to the deception of adversary defence. Huge amounts of money have been invested in the military sphere.

Very few persons in the world, other than a handful of thinkers and scientists, notice and warn about the fact that the explosion of 100 nuclear strategic weapons would suffice to put an end to human life on the planet. The great majority would have an end that would be as inexorable as it would be horrible, resulting from the Nuclear Winter that would be generated.

The number of countries possessing nuclear weapons at this time has gone up to eight; five of them are members of the Security Council: the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France and China. India and Pakistan acquired the nature of countries possessing nuclear weapons in 1974 and 1998 respectively. The seven aforementioned countries acknowledge this nature.

By contrast, Israel has never acknowledged its nature as a nuclear country. Nevertheless, it is calculated that it possesses between 200 and 500 weapons of this type, without taking the hint when the world becomes concerned by the extremely serious problems that the outbreak of a war in the region producing a large part of the energy moving industry and agriculture on the planet would bring.

Thanks to possessing weapons of mass destruction, Israel has been able to play its role as the instrument of imperialism and colonialism in that Middle Eastern region.

We are not dealing with the legitimate right of the Israeli people to live and work in peace and freedom; we are dealing precisely with the rights for freedom and peace of the other peoples in the region.

While Israel was speedily creating a nuclear arsenal, in 1981 it attacked and destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak. It did exactly the same thing to the Syrian reactor at Dayr az-Zawr in 2007, an occurrence of which world opinion was oddly not informed.

The UN and the IAEA were perfectly well aware of that event. Such actions had the support of the United States and the Atlantic Alliance.

There is nothing odd about the fact that the most senior Israeli authorities are now proclaiming their intention of doing the same thing with Iran. That country, immensely wealthy in oil and gas, had been the victim of the conspiracies of Great Britain and the United States, whose oil companies were pillaging their resources. Their armed forces were equipped with the most modern weaponry of the US war industry.

Shah Reza Pahlevi also hoped to be supplied with nuclear weapons. Nobody was attacking his research centers. The Israeli war was waged against the Arab Muslims. Not against those in Iran, because they had become a NATO bastion that was aiming at the heart of the USSR.

The masses in that nation, deeply religious, under the leadership of the Ayatollah Khomeini, challenging the power of those weapons, ousted the Shah from his throne and disarmed one of the best equipped armies in the world without a shot being fired.

Due to their capacity for struggle, the number of inhabitants and the size of the country, an aggression against Iran bears no similarity with the war adventures of Israel in Iraq and Syria. A bloody war would inevitably break out. We can have no doubts about that.

Israel has a large number of nuclear weapons and the capacity of having them reach any point in Europe, Asia, Africa and Oceania. I am wondering: does the IAEA have the moral right to sanction and smother a country if it intends to do what Israel has done in the heart of the Middle East, for its own defence?

I really think that no country in the world should possess nuclear weapons and that energy should be put at the service of the human species. Without that spirit of cooperation, humankind marches inexorably towards its own destruction. Among the citizens of Israel themselves, a hard-working and intelligent people without a doubt, many do not agree with that absurd, irrational policy that is also taking them down the road to total destruction.

What is being said these days in the world on the economic situation?

International news agencies inform that President Barack Obama of the United States and his Chinese peer Hu Jintao presented differing trade agendas, underlining the growing tensions between the two major world economies.

Reuters states that Obama used his speech to threaten China with economic sanctions unless it starts to play according to the rules. Undoubtedly, such rules are US interests.

The news agency states that Obama is embarked on the re-election battle for next year and his Republican opposition is accusing him of not being severe enough with China.

News printed on Thursday and Friday shows the realities we are living much better.

The best informed US agency AP reports that the supreme Iranian leader warned the United States and Israel that Iran’s answer would be energetic if its arch-enemies were to launch a military attack on Iran.

The German news agency informed that China had stated that, as always, it believed dialogue and cooperation were the only way of active rapprochement to solve the problem.

Russia was also opposed to punitive measures against Iran.

Germany rejected the military option but revealed itself to be for strong sanctions against Iran.

The United Kingdom and France advocate strong and energetic sanctions.

The Russian Federation assured that it would do everything possible to avoid a military operation against Iran and it criticized the IAEA report.

Konstantin Kosachov, head of the Duma Foreign Affairs Committee, stated that a military operation against Iran could bring very serious consequences and Russia would have to put all its weight into smoothing feelings over. According to EFE, he criticized statements by the US, France and Israel about the possible use of force and that the launching of a military operation against Iran is getting closer day by day.

Edward Spannaus, editor of the US magazine EIR, stated that the attack against Iran would end up as World War III.

The US Defence Secretary himself, after a trip to Israel a few days ago, acknowledged that he was not able to get any commitment from the Israeli government on prior consultation with the US on an attack against Iran. Those are the extremes we have reached.

The US under-secretary for political and military affairs harshly revealed the empire’s sinister aims.

On Saturday, Andrew Shapiro, Under-Secretary for Political and Military Affairs of the United States stated that Israel and the United States shall embark on more important joint manoeuvres that are of greater transcendence in the history of the allies.

At the Washington Institute for Middle Eastern Policy, Shapiro announced that more than 5,000 US and Israeli armed forces troops will take part in the manoeuvres simulating the defence of Israel’s ballistic missiles.

He added that Israeli technology was becoming essential to improve US national security and to protect US troops.

Shapiro emphasized the support of the Obama government for Israel, in spite of comments on Friday by a senior US official who expressed his concern about Israel not warning the US before starting military action against Iranian nuclear installations.

He said that US relations with Israeli security are broader, more profound and more intense than ever before.

According to him, the US supports Israel because it is in US national interest to do so. It is the solid Israeli military force that is deterring possible aggressors and helps to promote peace and stability.

Today, on November 13, Susan Rice, US ambassador to the UN, told the BBC that the possibility of military intervention in Iran was not only still on the table but that it was a real option that is growing because of Iranian conduct.

She insisted that the US administration is reaching the conclusion that it will be necessary to end the current regime in Iran in order to prevent it from creating a nuclear arsenal. Rice acknowledged that she was convinced that the change in regime is going to be the US’ only option there.

We do not need to add a single word.

• Read Part One here.