From Asia Times
...........''Thus, the first 100
US military "advisers" are being sent to Niger,
Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Senegal, Togo and Ghana -
the six member-nations of the Economic Community
of West African States (ECOWAS) that will compose
an African army tasked (by the United Nations) to
reconquer (invade?) the parts of Mali under the
Islamist sway of AQIM, its splinter group MUJAO
and the Ansar ed-Dine militia. This African
mini-army, of course, is paid for by the West.
Students of the Vietnam War will be the
first to note that sending "advisers" was the
first step of the subsequent quagmire. And on a
definitely un-Pentagonese ironic aside, the US
over these past few years did train Malian troops.
A lot of them duly deserted. As for the lavishly,
Fort Benning-trained Captain Amadou Haya Sanogo,
not only did he lead a military coup against an
elected Mali government but also created the
conditions for the rise of the Islamists.''
read more
Showing posts with label PEPE. Show all posts
Showing posts with label PEPE. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Friday, January 18, 2013
Pepe Escobar: ''Burn, burn - Africa's Afghanistan''
From Asia Times Online
...........''Mali is crucial to AFRICOM and to the Pentagon's overall MENA (Middle East-Northern Africa) outlook. Months before 9/11 I had the privilege to crisscross Mali on the road - and by the (Niger) river - and hang out, especially in Mopti and Timbuktu, with the awesome Tuaregs, who gave me a crash course in Northwest Africa. I saw Wahhabi and Pakistani preachers all over the place. I saw the Tuaregs progressively squeezed out. I saw an Afghanistan in the making. And it was not very hard to follow the money sipping tea in the Sahara. Mali borders Algeria, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Senegal, the Ivory Coast and Guinea. The spectacular Inner Niger delta is in central Mali - just south of the Sahara. Mali overflows with gold, uranium, bauxite, iron, manganese, tin and copper. And - Pipelineistan beckons! - there's plenty of unexplored oil in northern Mali.''
read more
...........''Mali is crucial to AFRICOM and to the Pentagon's overall MENA (Middle East-Northern Africa) outlook. Months before 9/11 I had the privilege to crisscross Mali on the road - and by the (Niger) river - and hang out, especially in Mopti and Timbuktu, with the awesome Tuaregs, who gave me a crash course in Northwest Africa. I saw Wahhabi and Pakistani preachers all over the place. I saw the Tuaregs progressively squeezed out. I saw an Afghanistan in the making. And it was not very hard to follow the money sipping tea in the Sahara. Mali borders Algeria, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Senegal, the Ivory Coast and Guinea. The spectacular Inner Niger delta is in central Mali - just south of the Sahara. Mali overflows with gold, uranium, bauxite, iron, manganese, tin and copper. And - Pipelineistan beckons! - there's plenty of unexplored oil in northern Mali.''
read more
Thursday, December 13, 2012
Pepe Escobar: ''Iran tests America's grasp of reality''
From Asia Times
''In Election 2012's theater-of-the-absurd "foreign policy" debate, Iran came up no less than 47 times. Despite all the fear, loathing, threats, and lies in that billionaire's circus of a campaign season, Americans were nonetheless offered virtually nothing substantial about Iran, although its (non-existent) WMDs were relentlessly hawked as the top US national security issue. (The world was, however, astonished to learn from candidate Romney that Syria, not the Persian Gulf, was that country's "route to the sea".) ''
read more
''In Election 2012's theater-of-the-absurd "foreign policy" debate, Iran came up no less than 47 times. Despite all the fear, loathing, threats, and lies in that billionaire's circus of a campaign season, Americans were nonetheless offered virtually nothing substantial about Iran, although its (non-existent) WMDs were relentlessly hawked as the top US national security issue. (The world was, however, astonished to learn from candidate Romney that Syria, not the Persian Gulf, was that country's "route to the sea".) ''
read more
Monday, December 10, 2012
Pepe Escobar: ''Mr. President, Tear Down This Wall''
From TomDispatch
By Pepe Escobar
''Let’s start with the obvious but important: on entering the Oval Office in January 2009, President Obama inherited a seemingly impregnable three-decade-long “Wall of Mistrust” in Iran-U.S. relations. To his credit, that March he directly addressed all Iranians in a message for Nowruz, the Iranian New Year, calling for an “engagement that is honed and grounded in mutual respect.” He even quoted the thirteenth century Persian poet Sa’adi: “The children of Adam are limbs of one body, which God created from one essence.''
read more
By Pepe Escobar
''Let’s start with the obvious but important: on entering the Oval Office in January 2009, President Obama inherited a seemingly impregnable three-decade-long “Wall of Mistrust” in Iran-U.S. relations. To his credit, that March he directly addressed all Iranians in a message for Nowruz, the Iranian New Year, calling for an “engagement that is honed and grounded in mutual respect.” He even quoted the thirteenth century Persian poet Sa’adi: “The children of Adam are limbs of one body, which God created from one essence.''
read more
Thursday, December 6, 2012
Pepe Escobar: ''I love the sound of a drone in the morning''
From AsiaTimes
''It may not have been a deadly Predator equipped with a Hellfire missile eager to incinerate a Pashtun wedding party, but in our Brave New UAV World - also known as Obama's Drone Wars - even a lowly ScanEagle, manufactured by a Boeing subsidiary, may be assured to steal the limelight.
So here's the star of the show on Iranian TV after it was captured over the Persian Gulf. Geopolitical junkies fed up with the same old US generals regurgitating cliches on Fox or CNN will certainly feast on that ultra-retro "We will trample the US under our feet" banner, not to mention the quirky Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) production values in the PR front.''
read more
''It may not have been a deadly Predator equipped with a Hellfire missile eager to incinerate a Pashtun wedding party, but in our Brave New UAV World - also known as Obama's Drone Wars - even a lowly ScanEagle, manufactured by a Boeing subsidiary, may be assured to steal the limelight.
So here's the star of the show on Iranian TV after it was captured over the Persian Gulf. Geopolitical junkies fed up with the same old US generals regurgitating cliches on Fox or CNN will certainly feast on that ultra-retro "We will trample the US under our feet" banner, not to mention the quirky Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) production values in the PR front.''
read more
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
Saturday, November 24, 2012
Pepe Escobar: ''Obama the Pivot''
From Asia Times
''The fabulous reclining Buddha at Wat Pho in Bangkok does not exactly subscribe to drone wars and "targeted assassinations" - not to mention bombing of civilian infrastructure. So the Buddha may have been puzzled - to say the least - when US President Barack Obama, right at the start of his whirlwind "pivoting" tour of Southeast Asia, and referring to Israel and Gaza, came up with this: "There is no country on earth that would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders."
read more
''The fabulous reclining Buddha at Wat Pho in Bangkok does not exactly subscribe to drone wars and "targeted assassinations" - not to mention bombing of civilian infrastructure. So the Buddha may have been puzzled - to say the least - when US President Barack Obama, right at the start of his whirlwind "pivoting" tour of Southeast Asia, and referring to Israel and Gaza, came up with this: "There is no country on earth that would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders."
read more
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
Pepe Escobar: ''Skyfall, starring David Petraeus''
From Asia Times Online
''David Petraeus was more of a PR genius than a samurai to begin with. His cinematic model would be Captain Willard as played by Martin Sheen in Coppola's Apocalypse Now; the warrior intellectual. Petraeus, who for quite a while actively positioned himself as a possible presidential candidate in 2012, was clever enough to sell to US public opinion - and gullible mainstream media - the notion that he was a winner in both Iraq and Afghanistan. These are two monumental fallacies.''
read more
''David Petraeus was more of a PR genius than a samurai to begin with. His cinematic model would be Captain Willard as played by Martin Sheen in Coppola's Apocalypse Now; the warrior intellectual. Petraeus, who for quite a while actively positioned himself as a possible presidential candidate in 2012, was clever enough to sell to US public opinion - and gullible mainstream media - the notion that he was a winner in both Iraq and Afghanistan. These are two monumental fallacies.''
read more
Thursday, November 8, 2012
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Pepe Escobar: ''China takes over Bryce Canyon
From Asia Times
''ON THE ROAD IN NEVADA AND UTAH - In the search for the (remixed, imploded?) American dream the road goes on forever. I left San Francisco in an Otis Redding's Pain in my Heart mood - past the playground of Silicon Valley Google/Facebook whiz kids, lanky blondes talking into their McBook Pros on the sidewalk, desperate flotsam and jetsam of the 47% defying the shadows in downtown at night, Italy alive at Coppola's Caf้ Zoetrope, the resurgence of Occupy Oakland, the Hudson 49 that crisscrossed the West in Walter Salles' ode to Kerouac's On the Road now parked at the Beat Museum - and I went east, past an already snow-stormed Sierra Nevada and an eerily quiet Lake Tahoe that seemed to have emerged from a noir opus like Out of the Past, the ghost of Robert Mitchum included.''
read more
''ON THE ROAD IN NEVADA AND UTAH - In the search for the (remixed, imploded?) American dream the road goes on forever. I left San Francisco in an Otis Redding's Pain in my Heart mood - past the playground of Silicon Valley Google/Facebook whiz kids, lanky blondes talking into their McBook Pros on the sidewalk, desperate flotsam and jetsam of the 47% defying the shadows in downtown at night, Italy alive at Coppola's Caf้ Zoetrope, the resurgence of Occupy Oakland, the Hudson 49 that crisscrossed the West in Walter Salles' ode to Kerouac's On the Road now parked at the Beat Museum - and I went east, past an already snow-stormed Sierra Nevada and an eerily quiet Lake Tahoe that seemed to have emerged from a noir opus like Out of the Past, the ghost of Robert Mitchum included.''
read more
Monday, October 29, 2012
Pepe Escobar Podcast
From Boilings Frogs Post
''Our favorite globetrotting investigative reporter, Pepe Escobar, joins us in-studio for the first time, and shares his encyclopedic knowledge on many issues. We largely focus on Iran, which was mentioned 45 times by the candidates, and Romney’s “me-too” message as Obama dominated the exchange and reeled off many zingers.
We also touch on the new film, Argo, and Escobar peppers his comments with literary and pop culture references. Pepe Escobar provides powerful insight and his unique voice based on his world travels, and delivers important perspectives on America by an outsider.''
listen to podcast
''Our favorite globetrotting investigative reporter, Pepe Escobar, joins us in-studio for the first time, and shares his encyclopedic knowledge on many issues. We largely focus on Iran, which was mentioned 45 times by the candidates, and Romney’s “me-too” message as Obama dominated the exchange and reeled off many zingers.
We also touch on the new film, Argo, and Escobar peppers his comments with literary and pop culture references. Pepe Escobar provides powerful insight and his unique voice based on his world travels, and delivers important perspectives on America by an outsider.''
listen to podcast
Thursday, October 11, 2012
Pepe Escobar: ''Romney sings Da Doo War War''
From Asia Times
''It's time for the 3am question. A crisis erupts - or is manufactured - in some turbulent part of the world and putative US President Mitt Romney must rise to the occasion. What is a gallant server of the 47% to do to save the free world?
An inkling of 47% Mitt's foreign policy vision was offered by his speech in Virginia early this week. [1] Some have called it Mission Impossible. But no, this is not Lalo Schifrin territory. Too cool. [2]
With all due respect to grandmaster Phil Spector, this is more like the Wall of Sound.
So here's how Mitt is going to save the Empire from decline.''...................read more
''It's time for the 3am question. A crisis erupts - or is manufactured - in some turbulent part of the world and putative US President Mitt Romney must rise to the occasion. What is a gallant server of the 47% to do to save the free world?
An inkling of 47% Mitt's foreign policy vision was offered by his speech in Virginia early this week. [1] Some have called it Mission Impossible. But no, this is not Lalo Schifrin territory. Too cool. [2]
With all due respect to grandmaster Phil Spector, this is more like the Wall of Sound.
So here's how Mitt is going to save the Empire from decline.''...................read more
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Pepe Escobar: "Why Hugo rules''
From Aljazeera
''The facts are stark. Venezuela holds what is now recognised as the largest oil reserves on the planet - even larger than Saudi Arabia's. But until recently this was an energy Holy Grail run by the usual tiny, arrogant, rapacious elite, and where the masses had no possibility of decent education, decent housing or a decent salary.
The record of Chavismo is a story of how to progressively horizontalise a vertical society. Chavismo channels no less than 43 per cent of the state budget to an array of social policies.
Unemployment went down from over 20 per cent to less than 7 per cent. No less than 22 public universities were built in the past 10 years. The number of teachers went from 65,000 to 350,000. Illiteracy has been eradicated. There is an ongoing agrarian reform - still a dream in most South American latitudes.''
''The ruling class obviously was not amused''
read more
''The facts are stark. Venezuela holds what is now recognised as the largest oil reserves on the planet - even larger than Saudi Arabia's. But until recently this was an energy Holy Grail run by the usual tiny, arrogant, rapacious elite, and where the masses had no possibility of decent education, decent housing or a decent salary.
The record of Chavismo is a story of how to progressively horizontalise a vertical society. Chavismo channels no less than 43 per cent of the state budget to an array of social policies.
Unemployment went down from over 20 per cent to less than 7 per cent. No less than 22 public universities were built in the past 10 years. The number of teachers went from 65,000 to 350,000. Illiteracy has been eradicated. There is an ongoing agrarian reform - still a dream in most South American latitudes.''
''The ruling class obviously was not amused''
read more
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
Thursday, October 4, 2012
Pepe Escobar: ''The $5 trillion question''
From Asia Times
"In his eagerness to spew out all matter of memorized talking points in virtually any intervention, as if he had a date with destiny (he actually had), 47% Mitt seems to have forgotten that for months he's been running a campaign in which one of the central planks is to lower the taxes of everyone in the US by 20%. Every worthy independent analysis in the US has concluded that this will mean a revenue deficit of $5 trillion over 10 years.
Here's what Mitt had to say about it when confronted by POTUS:
read more
"In his eagerness to spew out all matter of memorized talking points in virtually any intervention, as if he had a date with destiny (he actually had), 47% Mitt seems to have forgotten that for months he's been running a campaign in which one of the central planks is to lower the taxes of everyone in the US by 20%. Every worthy independent analysis in the US has concluded that this will mean a revenue deficit of $5 trillion over 10 years.
Here's what Mitt had to say about it when confronted by POTUS:
I don't have a $5 trillion tax cut. I don't have a tax cut of the scale you're talking about. I think we ought to provide tax relief to people in the middle class. But I won't reduce the share of tax paid by high-income people. … I'm not looking to cut massive taxes and to reduce revenues going to the government. My number one principal is, there will be no tax cut that adds to the deficit. I want to underline that no tax cut will add to the deficit.''
read more
Saturday, September 29, 2012
Pepe Escobar: ''Why Qatar wants to invade Syria''
From Asia Times Online
''Make no mistake; the Emir of Qatar is on a roll.
What an entrance at the UN General Assembly in New York; Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani called for an Arab coalition of the willing-style invasion of Syria, no less. [1]
In the words of the Emir, "It is better for the Arab countries themselves to interfere out of their national, humanitarian, political and military duties, and to do what is necessary to stop the bloodshed in Syria." He stressed Arab countries had a "military duty" to invade.''
read more
''Make no mistake; the Emir of Qatar is on a roll.
What an entrance at the UN General Assembly in New York; Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani called for an Arab coalition of the willing-style invasion of Syria, no less. [1]
In the words of the Emir, "It is better for the Arab countries themselves to interfere out of their national, humanitarian, political and military duties, and to do what is necessary to stop the bloodshed in Syria." He stressed Arab countries had a "military duty" to invade.''
read more
Friday, September 14, 2012
Pepe Escobar: "Brother Obama, where art thou?''
From Asia Times
''Libya is now militia hell - from neighborhood-watch outfits to mini-armies. They won't disarm. They refuse to be part of government security forces because their logic is tribal. They're fighting one another. No weak central government in car-bomb-infested Tripoli will rein them in.
Another way to put it is that "liberated" Libya is now warlord country. Home of vendettas in the desert and tribal pogroms against other tribes - and even whole towns.''
read more
''Libya is now militia hell - from neighborhood-watch outfits to mini-armies. They won't disarm. They refuse to be part of government security forces because their logic is tribal. They're fighting one another. No weak central government in car-bomb-infested Tripoli will rein them in.
Another way to put it is that "liberated" Libya is now warlord country. Home of vendettas in the desert and tribal pogroms against other tribes - and even whole towns.''
read more
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Pepe Escobar: ''US wants Pentagon patrol in Asia via allies''
From RT.com...........''State Secretary Hillary Clinton's in the Chinese capital for talks, but her visit comes amid rising diplomatic tensions. Beijing has warned Washington to stay out of the country's territorial disputes with several other nations off the Chinese coast. The Communist state has threatened to use force to defend its claims to a chain of islands there. Clinton says America's position is neutral, but Beijing has accused Washington of meddling in the region's affairs.''
Friday, August 31, 2012
Pepe Escobar: "Morsi delivers his calling card''
From Asia Times Online
''Morsi may be walking like the proverbial Egyptian in popular imagination; sideways. In fact he's advancing all the time. By now it's clear that Egypt's new foreign policy if focused on restoring Cairo, historically the intellectual hub of the Arab world, to its leadership position - usurped by the oil-rich barbarians from the House of Saud during those decades when Egypt was a mere lowly servant of Washington's geopolitical designs.
Those were the (long gone) days - over three decades ago - when Tehran broke relations with Cairo over Egypt's signing of the Camp David accords. Morsi's attendance of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit in Tehran may not yet signal the return of full diplomatic relations, as Morsi spokesman Yasser Ali has been spinning. But it's an earth-shattering diplomatic coup.''
read more
''Morsi may be walking like the proverbial Egyptian in popular imagination; sideways. In fact he's advancing all the time. By now it's clear that Egypt's new foreign policy if focused on restoring Cairo, historically the intellectual hub of the Arab world, to its leadership position - usurped by the oil-rich barbarians from the House of Saud during those decades when Egypt was a mere lowly servant of Washington's geopolitical designs.
Those were the (long gone) days - over three decades ago - when Tehran broke relations with Cairo over Egypt's signing of the Camp David accords. Morsi's attendance of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit in Tehran may not yet signal the return of full diplomatic relations, as Morsi spokesman Yasser Ali has been spinning. But it's an earth-shattering diplomatic coup.''
read more
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