48 Articles

Saturday, May 26, 2012
Iran and Europe, "Till Death Do Us Part"
Who's suffering with the sanctions? Not the suspected "regime change" target -- the Tehran leadership. Tehran is selling energy in every currency from yuan to Indian rupees, and is engaged in wholesale barter with its customers -- especially Asian. The bottom line is clear; the EU will have to scrap its absurd Iranian oil blockade to avoid badly hurting itself and also, by extension, the US economy.

Monday, May 21, 2012
War and cheeseburgers
A specter haunts Europe. No, it's not communism; it's US rating agencies. Greece is bankrupt; the eurozone is about to crack; JP Morgan makes billion-dollar "mistakes"; there's no (jobs) future for the new generations. And yet the weaponized arm of the Western 0.1% elites occupies Chicago -- turned into an Orwellian police city-state -- to discuss "smart defense."

Sunday, May 20, 2012
NATO Occupies Sweet Home Chicago
So Chicago is just a test run -- an advanced stage, compared to Gaza or Sadr City in Baghdad, of what the RAND corporation used to call MOUT (Military Operations in Urban Terrain). NATO after all has seen the future -- and is immersing itself body and soul in the "war of the drones."

Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Will "Onshela" save Europe?
(1 comments) The technocrats are finally freaking out because if Greece, for instance, nationalizes its banks, the Spanish and French financial systems will go bust, and Germany's will be in deep trouble. Once more this is a graphic illustration of how countries across Europe are -- in the public as well as the private sector -- totally dependent on the financial system of other countries.

Friday, May 11, 2012
Long Live 'Our' Gulf Bastards
(1 comments) Just as the Sunni al-Khalifa dynasty in power in Bahrain is vowing, publicly, to keep arresting, tear-gassing, raiding their homes, confiscating their jobs and forcing pro-democracy protesters to live in non-stop fear, Bahraini Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa is being hosted in Washington by the Barack Obama administration.

Wednesday, May 9, 2012
World powers rush to plunge Syria into war
(1 comments) The new 24-hour Arabic-language channel, Sky News Arabia, a joint venture between Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahayan, owner of the English football club Manchester City, and British broadcaster BSkyB, owned by phone-hacking enabler Rupert Murdoch, described the events in Syria as "a hopeful precedent towards regime change."

Saturday, May 5, 2012
Off With King Sarko's Head
The Economist -- that is, the financial interests of the City of London -- has been so sorry for King Sarko, who was trying to "save" not only France but also Europe. That's nonsense. Bye bye bling-bling guy -- and good riddance.

Wednesday, May 2, 2012
Confessions Of An Angry Young Drone
(1 comments) Dr. Puant may claim a world first; he managed to put a drone on the divan. No one would ever be aware of the contents of their sensitive conversation had the Central Intelligence Agency -- which had Dr Puant under surveillance -- not intervened. But then the file was conveniently leaked to Medialand as an effort by the embattled Nicolas Sarkozy campaign to discredit the heavily politicized drone. The tactic may yet backfire.

Friday, April 27, 2012
A history of the world, BRIC by BRIC
China, for instance, continues to informally advance the yuan as a globalizing, if not global, currency. It's already trading in yuan with Russia and Australia, not to mention across Latin America and in the Middle East. Increasingly, the BRICS are betting on the yuan as their monetary alternative to a devalued US dollar.

Wednesday, April 18, 2012
The fast and furious Sunni revenge
(1 comments) The unruly waves of that noxious Arab Spring never had a chance of disturbing the placid waters of the Gulf. The arrival of the Fast White Man Formula 1 circus -- a spectacular public relations operation -- proves that the GCC is as "normal" as an Arab prince swinging through Monte Carlo with a blonde babe in a Ferrari 458.

Friday, April 13, 2012
The Kim Dynasty's Satellite of Love
(2 comments) Even if additional UN sanctions are applied over North Korea, those who will really suffer--just like in Iran--will be the bulk of the population, not the leadership. It has not escaped the attention of virtually the whole developing world that because of its nuclear status, no NATO or selective "international community" is threatening North Korea with military strikes, bunker buster bombs, or regime change.

Thursday, April 12, 2012
Surrender now or we'll bomb you later
(8 comments) US corporate media has already pre-empted the negotiations with the usual rhetorical missiles -- to the delight of armchair warmongers in the US Congress and vast sectors of the industrial-military complex. The "Bomb Iran" crowd will do everything in its power to merge Obama's "last chance" into the deafening drums of war.

Wednesday, April 11, 2012
What's goin' on at the Turkish-Syrian border?
(1 comments) As for the Assad police state/military apparatus, it just has to be wily enough not to be provoked into an orgy of torture, summary executions and artillery bombardment -- the necessary condition to maintain the key diplomatic support of BRICS members Russia and China. Once again, it's average Syrians, caught in the middle, who will be the tragic losers.

Thursday, April 5, 2012
We Want War, and We Want it Now
(1 comments) A full-fledged mercenary army paid for by autocrat Arabs to overthrow an Arab government is pure and simple regime change -- US rhetoric about "democracy" and "freedom" notwithstanding. It's all about classic, imperial divide and rule, profiting from pitting Sunnis against Shi'ites.

Thursday, March 29, 2012
War porn: The new safe sex
(6 comments) Like porn, war porn cannot exist without being based on a lie -- a crude representation. But unlike porn, war porn is the real thing; unlike crude, cheap snuff movies, people in war porn actually die -- in droves.

Sunday, March 25, 2012
Russia rules Pipelineistan
BP--of Gulf of Mexico polluting fame--happens to be the major stockholder of Shah Deniz 2. Azerbaijan--mired in corruption--can be reasonably described as BP country. Even his close ally Washington knows Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev is something of a Mafia boss. The Azeris, by the way, happen to be very popular in Washington courtesy of the Israeli lobby.

Sunday, March 25, 2012
China's riders on the storm
Bo, wily and media-savvy, was sort of a pop star in China as the top promoter of the so-called Chongqing Model: a back-to-the-past, partly Maoist-inspired push for more state control of the economy, better social services, a harsh crackdown on the local mafia and an effort to promote wealth redistribution, thus alleviating social inequality.

Sunday, March 18, 2012
War, Pipelineistan-style
So as Washington has been impotent to disrupt Pipelineistan moves in Central Asia -- by isolating Iran and bypassing Russia -- it's now going ballistic to prevent by all means the crucial integration of Southwest Asia and South Asia, from Iran's giant South Pars gas field to Pakistan's Balochistan and Sindh provinces.

Friday, March 9, 2012
Why Putin is driving Washington nuts
(5 comments) Putin will be an ultra-tough negotiator on all fronts. They know Moscow will apply increasingly closer coordination with China; on thwarting permanent NATO bases in Afghanistan; on facilitating Pakistan's strategic autonomy; on opposing missile defense; on ensuring Iran is not attacked.

Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Is Bibi the Bully wagging the American dog?
(1 comments) According to a recent poll in Israel, 34% are against bombing Iran. But 42% are in favor if the US is at least supporting it. How sweet it is to enroll a superpower to fight your fictional "existential threats."

Thursday, March 1, 2012
What's at stake in Iran's elections
Parliamentary elections this Friday in Iran are far from being free and fair. Well, at least that's a step beyond those paragons of democracy--the election-free Persian Gulf monarchies. In Iran, this time the problem is there's no opposition; it's cons (conservatives) against neo-cons.

Monday, February 27, 2012
Six degrees of (Iranian) separation
Iranian Ashgar Farhadi's A Separation was a shoe-in for an Oscar in the Best Foreign Language Film category, even though it should have been the best movie of 2011 in any language. The director's acceptance speech also provides food for thought for US neo-con and Israel lobby warmongers.

Saturday, February 25, 2012
What is Iran's Supreme Leader's game?
(1 comments) Saudi Arabia has been tethered to the United States since its foundation as a modern state in the 1930s. The "Catholic marriage", as the relationship was described in its heyday, has broken, replaced in the view of the exasperated Saudis as an "Islamic marriage" that increasing elevates China and will likely define the power dynamic in the Middle East over the next decade.

Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Real cowards go to Tehran
Goldman Sachs has just placed Iran as one of the "Next 11" in the developing world after the BRICS, only one among five developing nations with above average "productivity and sustainability of growth." Perhaps a Persian Britney Spears should be singing "Baby, sanction me one more time."

Thursday, February 16, 2012
US wants SWIFT war on Iran
(5 comments) The vultures, jackals and hyenas of regime change/war can never be appeased in their sanction lust. The US is now forcing the EU to cut off Iran from Brussels-based SWIFT -- the independent telecom mechanism/clearinghouse used by every bank in the world to exchange financial data (its official name is Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications).

Friday, February 10, 2012
The return of the Keyboard Warriors
(2 comments) From Republican chicken hawks to public intellectuals, right-wing America is erupting in renewed neo-conservative revolt. The year 2012 is the new 2002; Iran is the new Iraq. Whatever the highway -- real men go to Tehran via Damascus, or real men go to Tehran non-stop -- they want a war, and they want it now.

Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Syria through a glass, darkly
The usual, unnamed "government officials" have already leaked to CNN that the White House has asked the Pentagon to simulate game scenarios for a direct US military intervention in favor of the rebels. So a NATOGCC intervention bypassing the UN remains a solid possibility; a false-flag operation blamed on the Assad regime might be the perfect casus belli.

Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Syria and those 'disgusting' BRICS
(1 comments) United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called the double veto on Syria by Russia and China a "travesty", while US ambassador to the UN Susan Rice says it was "disgusting". Now it's time to get on with Plan B - to plunge Syria into civil war.

Saturday, February 4, 2012
Exposed: The Arab agenda in Syria
The report points to shady armed gangs as responsible for hundreds of deaths among Syrian civilians, and over 1,000 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.

Saturday, January 28, 2012
The Iranian oil embargo blowback
(3 comments) All across Eurasia trade is fast moving away from the US dollar. The Asian Dollar Exclusion Zone, crucially, also means that Asia is slowly disengaging itself from Western banks. The movement may be led by China -- but it's irreversibly transnational. Once again, follow the money.

Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Europe at war with Iran
(1 comments) We have a post-surrealist situation of Britain's Big Oil -- via BP -- imploring for the US to exempt it from sanctions, otherwise European energy security will be at risk. Britain also happens to be an implacable foe of Tehran's regime, but still relies on Iran to "save" Europe from the claws of Gazprom. You can't make this stuff up.

Friday, January 20, 2012
The US-GCC Fatal Attraction
(1 comments) For Russia, regime change in Iran is a no-no. Russia's deputy prime minister and former envoy to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, has already stated, unequivocally, "Iran is our close neighbor, just south of the Caucasus. 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."

Monday, January 9, 2012
The road map to the Afghan endgame
Afghan president Hamid Karzai wanted the office to be either in Turkey or Saudi Arabia. The Obama administration applied some screws -- Karzai had to accept Qatar. So much for the "sovereignty" of the man informally known as the mayor of Kabul.

Friday, January 6, 2012
The US-Iran economic war
(2 comments) The regime in Tehran will keep selling oil, will keep enriching uranium and, most of all, won't fall. Like a Hellfire missile hitting a Pashtun wedding party, these Western sanctions will miserably fail. But not without collecting a lot of collateral damage -- in the West itself.

Sunday, December 25, 2011
Playing Chess in Eurasia
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.

Friday, December 23, 2011
The eagle, the bear and the dragon
(3 comments) And so we reach the end -- though not the endgame. Predictably there's no moral to this fable. What sensible minds may expect is that even as we'll keep suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, this New Cold War hopefully won't become hot.

Sunday, December 18, 2011
The War is Pronounced Dead
(2 comments) In the end, the Pentagon had to be dragged kicking and screaming to handing bases over to the Iraqi government. Across the country, the closing of precious outposts in the sprawling US Empire of Bases has been marked by a quiet closed-door meeting where American and Iraqi military officials signed documents that legally gave the Iraqis control of the bases, exchanged handshakes and barely disguised their mutual contempt.

Wednesday, December 14, 2011
NATO dreams of civil war in Syria
NATO in Syria is now actively diversifying into an Iraq-in-the-1990s strategy; to submit Syria to a prolonged state of siege before eventually going for the kill.

Friday, December 9, 2011
The Dead Drone sketch
Amusing "take" on imagined coverage of questioning the CIA on the recently downed spy drone in Iran.

Friday, December 2, 2011
The Shadow War in Syria
(1 comments) 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.

Monday, November 28, 2011
That Rocky Road to Damascus
The trillion-dollar question in the "Arab Winter" is who will blink first in the West's screenplay of slouching towards Tehran via Damascus.

Monday, November 21, 2011
Exposed: US Press "Freedom"
This is how the much-lauded "freedom of the press" myth in the US actually works. If you perform the job of an actual journalist, telling truth to power, forget about attending press conferences at the White House, Pentagon or State Department. You won't even be admitted in the building.

Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Politburo uber alles
(1 comments) What the Gang of Eight is truly after is essentially a rich man's EU. Get ready because from now on, the euro won't unify Europe; it will spearhead its balkanization.

Friday, November 11, 2011
Do the Bomb Iran Shuffle
(1 comments) The enticing possibility of a successful attack on Iran as the ultimate creative destruction move, reshuffling all the cards from the Middle East to Central Asia. The ''arc of instability'' terminally destabilized.

Friday, November 4, 2011
Fear And Loathing In The Cannes Debt Festival
The Chinese know well enough that two-bit European governments simply cannot appease the God of the Market. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao actually told Van Rompuy that Europe needs a structural reform. Two weeks ago, China's vice finance minister Zhu Guangyao was more lenient, saying that China shelling out cash was "under discussion," but Beijing wanted to know what the EU was really up to.

Wednesday, November 2, 2011
The Pentagon-Arab Spring Love Story
Anyone who hoped the Arab Spring might eventually take over the Persian Gulf and those lands once known as Arabia Felix has enough reason to drown in sadness. The Arab counter-revolution is stronger than ever -- led by the House of Saud and its monarchy minions at the Gulf Counter-revolution Club (GCC), officially known as Gulf Cooperation Council. And their most precious ally is the Pentagon.

Friday, October 28, 2011
Real Wimps Go To Tehran Via Baghdad
(1 comments) Those same nullities who in 2002, in the run-up to the attack on Iraq, were bragging that "real men go to Tehran," now want to use Americans as bait for an Israeli attack -- and this while US sanctions on Iran are about to become a de facto blockade, which international law still deems as an act of war.

Thursday, October 27, 2011
How The West Won Libya
(1 comments) Change the world can believe in will be the day NATO enforces a no-fly one over Saudi Arabia to protect the Shi'ites in the eastern province, with the Pentagon launching a Hellfire carpet over those thousands of medieval, corrupt House of Saud princes. It won't happen. Meanwhile, this is the way the West ends; with a NATO bang, and a thousand barbaric, lawless whimpers. Disgusted? Get a Guy Fawkes mask and raise hell.