US-Saudi Blitz in Yemen: Naked Aggression, Absolute Desperation

Author: Tony Cartalucci

US-Saudi Blitz in Yemen: Naked Aggression, Absolute Desperation

Ex: http://journal-neo.org

The “proxy war” model the US has been employing throughout the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and even in parts of Asia appears to have failed yet again, this time in the Persian Gulf state of Yemen.

Overcoming the US-Saudi backed regime in Yemen, and a coalition of sectarian extremists including Al Qaeda and its rebrand, the “Islamic State,” pro-Iranian Yemeni Houthi militias have turned the tide against American “soft power” and has necessitated a more direct military intervention. While US military forces themselves are not involved allegedly, Saudi warplanes and a possible ground force are.

Though Saudi Arabia claims “10 countries” have joined its coalition to intervene in Yemen, like the US invasion and occupation of Iraq hid behind a “coalition,” it is overwhelmingly a Saudi operation with “coalition partners” added in a vain attempt to generate diplomatic legitimacy.

The New York Times, even in the title of its report, “Saudi Arabia Begins Air Assault in Yemen,” seems not to notice these “10” other countries. It reports:

Saudi Arabia announced on Wednesday night that it had launched a military campaign in Yemen, the beginning of what a Saudi official said was an offensive to restore a Yemeni government that had collapsed after rebel forces took control of large swaths of the country. 

The air campaign began as the internal conflict in Yemen showed signs of degenerating into a proxy war between regional powers. The Saudi announcement came during a rare news conference in Washington by Adel al-Jubeir, the kingdom’s ambassador to the United States.

Proxy War Against Iran 

Indeed, the conflict in Yemen is a proxy war. Not between Iran and Saudi Arabia per say, but between Iran and the United States, with the United States electing Saudi Arabia as its unfortunate stand-in.

Iran’s interest in Yemen serves as a direct result of the US-engineered “Arab Spring” and attempts to overturn the political order of North Africa and the Middle East to create a unified sectarian front against Iran for the purpose of a direct conflict with Tehran. The war raging in Syria is one part of this greater geopolitical conspiracy, aimed at overturning one of Iran’s most important regional allies, cutting the bridge between it and another important ally, Hezbollah in Lebanon.

And while Iran’s interest in Yemen is currently portrayed as yet another example of Iranian aggression, indicative of its inability to live in peace with its neighbors, US policymakers themselves have long ago already noted that Iran’s influence throughout the region, including backing armed groups, serves a solely defensive purpose, acknowledging the West and its regional allies’ attempts to encircle, subvert, and overturn Iran’s current political order.

The US-based RAND Corporation, which describes itself as “a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decision making through research and analysis,” produced a report in 2009 for the US Air Force titled, “Dangerous But Not Omnipotent : Exploring the Reach and Limitations of Iranian Power in the Middle East,” examining the structure and posture of Iran’s military, including its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and weapons both present, and possible future, it seeks to secure its borders and interests with against external aggression.

The report admits that:

Iran’s strategy is largely defensive, but with some offensive elements. Iran’s strategy of protecting the regime against internal threats, deterring aggression, safeguarding the homeland if aggression occurs, and extending influence is in large part a defensive one that also serves some aggressive tendencies when coupled with expressions of Iranian regional aspirations. It is in part a response to U.S. policy pronouncements and posture in the region, especially since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The Iranian leadership takes very seriously the threat of invasion given the open discussion in the United States of regime change, speeches defining Iran as part of the “axis of evil,” and efforts by U.S. forces to secure base access in states surrounding Iran.

Whatever imperative Saudi Arabia is attempting to cite in justifying its military aggression against Yemen, and whatever support the US is trying to give the Saudi regime rhetorically, diplomatically, or militarily, the legitimacy of this military operation crumbles before the words of the West’s own policymakers who admit Iran and its allies are simply reacting to a concerted campaign of encirclement, economic sanctions, covert military aggression, political subversion, and even terrorism aimed at establishing Western hegemony across the region at the expense of Iranian sovereignty.

Saudi Arabia’s Imperative Lacks Legitimacy 

The unelected hereditary regime ruling over Saudi Arabia, a nation notorious for egregious human rights abuses, and a land utterly devoid of even a semblance of what is referred to as “human rights,” is now posing as arbiter of which government in neighboring Yemen is “legitimate” and which is not, to the extent of which it is prepared to use military force to restore the former over the latter.

The United States providing support for the Saudi regime is designed to lend legitimacy to what would otherwise be a difficult narrative to sell. However, the United States itself has suffered from an increasing deficit in its own legitimacy and moral authority.

Most ironic of all, US and Saudi-backed sectarian extremists, including Al Qaeda in Yemen, had served as proxy forces meant to keep Houthi militias in check by proxy so the need for a direct military intervention such as the one now unfolding would not be necessary. This means that Saudi Arabia and the US are intervening in Yemen only after the terrorists they were supporting were overwhelmed and the regime they were propping up collapsed.

In reality, Saudi Arabia’s and the United States’ rhetoric aside, a brutal regional regime meddled in Yemen and lost, and now the aspiring global hemegon sponsoring it from abroad has ordered it to intervene directly and clean up its mess.

Saudi Arabia’s Dangerous Gamble 

The aerial assault on Yemen is meant to impress upon onlookers Saudi military might. A ground contingent might also attempt to quickly sweep in and panic Houthi fighters into folding. Barring a quick victory built on psychologically overwhelming Houthi fighters, Saudi Arabia risks enveloping itself in a conflict that could easily escape out from under the military machine the US has built for it.

It is too early to tell how the military operation will play out and how far the Saudis and their US sponsors will go to reassert themselves over Yemen. However, that the Houthis have outmatched combined US-Saudi proxy forces right on Riyadh’s doorstep indicates an operational capacity that may not only survive the current Saudi assault, but be strengthened by it.

Reports that Houthi fighters have employed captured Yemeni warplanes further bolsters this notion – revealing tactical, operational, and strategic sophistication that may well know how to weather whatever the Saudis have to throw at it, and come back stronger.

What may result is a conflict that spills over Yemen’s borders and into Saudi Arabia proper. Whatever dark secrets the Western media’s decades of self-censorship regarding the true sociopolitical nature of Saudi Arabia will become apparent when the people of the Arabian peninsula must choose to risk their lives fighting for a Western client regime, or take a piece of the peninsula for themselves.

Additionally, a transfer of resources and fighters arrayed under the flag of the so-called “Islamic State” and Al Qaeda from Syria to the Arabian Peninsula will further indicate that the US and its regional allies have been behind the chaos and atrocities carried out in the Levant for the past 4 years. Such revelations will only further undermine the moral imperative of the West and its regional allies, which in turn will further sabotage their efforts to rally support for an increasingly desperate battle they themselves conspired to start.

America’s Shrinking Legitimacy 

It was just earlier this month when the United States reminded the world of Russia’s “invasion” of Crimea. Despite having destabilized Ukraine with a violent, armed insurrection in Kiev, for the purpose of expanding NATO deeper into Eastern Europe and further encircling Russia, the West insisted that Russia had and  still has no mandate to intervene in any way in neighboring Ukraine. Ukraine’s affairs, the United States insists, are the Ukrainians’ to determine. Clearly, the US meant this only in as far as Ukrainians determined things in ways that suited US interests.

This is ever more evident now in Yemen, where the Yemeni people are not being allowed to determine their own affairs. Everything up to and including military invasion has been reserved specifically to ensure that the people of Yemen do not determine things for themselves, clearly, because it does not suit US interests.

Such naked hypocrisy will be duly noted by the global public and across diplomatic circles. The West’s inability to maintain a cohesive narrative is a growing sign of weakness. Shareholders in the global enterprise the West is engaged in may see such weakness as a cause to divest – or at the very least – a cause to diversify toward other enterprises. Such enterprises may include Russia and China’s mulipolar world. The vanishing of Western global hegemony will be done in destructive conflict waged in desperation and spite.

Today, that desperation and spite befalls Yemen.

Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine“New Eastern Outlook”.

 
First appeared: http://journal-neo.org/2015/03/27/us-saudi-blitz-in-yemen-naked-aggression-absolute-desperation/

The Middle Eastern Metternichs of Riyadh

The Middle Eastern Metternichs of Riyadh

Author: David P. Goldman 

Ex: http://www.atimes.com

Gaming the demise of the Saudi monarchy has been a flourishing industry on the think-tank circuit for the past dozen years. Not long ago I sat in private conclaves of US national security officials with a sprinkling of invited experts where the head-shaking, chin-pulling consensus held that the Saudi royal family would be gone in ten years. A premise of the “realist” view that American policy in the region should shift towards Iran was that the Saudi monarchy would collapse and Sunni power along with it. All of us misunderestimated the Saudis.

Now the Saudis have emerged at the top of a Sunni coalition against Iran–limited for the moment to the Houthi insurgency in Yemen, to be sure, but nonetheless the most impressive piece of diplomacy in the Sunni world since Nasser, and perhaps in modern times. That attributes a lot of importance to a coalition assembled for a minor matter in a small country, but it may be the start of something important: the self-assertion of the Sunni world in response to the collapse of American regional power, the threat of Sunni jihadist insurgencies, and the Shi’ite bid for regional hegemony.

The standard narrative held that the Saudi royal family would fracture after the death of King Abdullah, leaving a sclerotic and senile generation of princes to preside over the demise of a colonial relic. After the so-called Arab Spring of 2011, the smart money bet on the Islamists, with their fusion of religious fundamentalism and modern political techniques. “Given the awfulness of post-World War II Arab lands, where even the most benign regimes had sophisticated, torture-happy security services, Islamists who braved the wrath of rulers and trenchantly critiqued the moral breakdown of their societies were going to do well in a postsecular age. What is poorly understood in the West is how critical fundamentalists are to the moral and political rejuvenation of their countries. As counterintuitive as it seems, they are the key to more democratic, liberal politics in the region,” wrote Reuel Marc Gerecht in 2012.

Writing premature obituaries for the Saudi monarchy wasn’t a Western monopoly. Late last year a well-regarded Chinese analyst told me, “Isn’t it ironic–we modern Chinese and you modern Americans are trying to prop up this medieval monstrosity!”

Compared to the White House foreign-policy camarilla–McBama and his Weird Sisters–the Saudis turn out to be Middle Eastern Metternichs. The 10-nation coalition that Riyadh assembled to counter Iranian intervention in Yemen has a broad mandate to contain Iran throughout the region. As Zvi Har’el comments in Ha’aretz: “On the diplomatic side, Saudi Arabia was able to get Sudan to break its traditional ties with Iran; Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, who is wanted by the International Court for crimes against humanity, was received with great pomp and fanfare by King Salman, and at the end of his visit announced that his country was joining the coalition. He also ordered the expulsion of all the Iranian delegations from his country, handing Saudi Arabia another important asset in the balance of power against Iran. Qatar also joined the coalition despite being considered an Iranian ally. More importantly, Saudi Arabia and its allies gave themselves free license to operate in any other Arab country that chooses to join the Iranian sphere.”

More importantly, the Saudis have enlisted the help of two Sunni neighbors of Iran with armies far more powerful than the Tehran’s, Turkey and Pakistan. “Iran is trying to dominate the region,” Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan told a press conference March 26. “Could this be allowed? This has begun annoying us, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries. This is really not tolerable and Iran has to see this.” That is a drastic shift the position of Turkey, which in the past sought to balance relations with all of its neighbors. Turkish support for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt against the Saudi-backed government of Gen. Fatah al-Sisi also was a source of contention with Riyadh, not least because the Muslim Brothers want to overthrow and replace the Saudi monarchy. Pakistan, heavily dependent on Saudi aid, initially rejected Saudi requests for a troop presence on its border with Yemen but now has military assistance “under consideration.”

Turkey has over $320 billion in hard-currency debt, virtually all of it accumulated since 2008, and a currency that has lost 30% of its value against the dollar since mid-2014, leaving Turkish debtors with correspondingly higher debt service costs. A great deal of its foreign currency borrowing was conducted through banks, and most of the money came from the Saudis and other Gulf states. Turkey’s debt constraints have pushed its economy into near-recession, with manufacturing output down by more than 2% year-on-year. Erdogan’s political standing, which depended on easy credit and populist public spending, is in jeopardy. It seems likely that the Saudis have exercised the Erdogan option for which they paid a high premium over the past several years.

It isn’t only that the Saudis acted without the help of the United States, but that they acted in direct contravention of a prime American objective, namely to bring Iran into the regional security architecture as an important and responsible player. The US was led along, but not informed of the particulars of the operation.

“At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Thursday, General Lloyd Austin, head of the U.S. Central Command, said he did not learn the Saudis were actually going attack Yemen until an hour before the operation was launched. Austin, whose theater includes Yemen, would normally expect to be given more than an hour’s heads-up before such a military operation. Another official with Centcom, who asked not to be named, told us Thursday evening that Austin had “indications” over the weekend that something might happen but got no final confirmation until Wednesday,” Eli Lake and Josh Rogin reported today in Bloomberg News.

This is the second time in a few months that the Saudis have taken the world by surprise. The first was last September, when they initiated a plunge in oil prices by declining to reduce production in the face of a surge in US oil output. That had killed two birds with one stone, namely competition from higher-cost US shale producers, and the Iranian government budget. No-one saw that coming. For those of us who enjoy surprises, Riyadh has been a welcome source of them in recent months. We look forward to more.

Il y a quarante ans, l’étrange assassinat du roi Fayçal d’Arabie

Il y a quarante ans, l’étrange assassinat du roi Fayçal d’Arabie

Auteur : Laurent Guyénot

Ex: http://zejournal.mobi

Le 25 mars 1975, le roi Fayçal d’Arabie, défenseur authentique de la cause palestinienne, était assassiné par son neveu Fayçal ibn Musad, un jeune homme fragile tout juste revenu de Berkeley (Californie) où, sous le charme d’une jeune actrice, il était devenu toxicomane. Retour sur la vie et la mort de ce grand souverain.

C’est en 1932, alors âgé de vingt ans, que Fayçal ben Abdelaziz al-Saoud a été nommé ministre des Affaires étrangères par son père Abdelaziz al-Saoud, le fondateur de la dynastie saoudienne. Foncièrement anticommuniste, il cherche une alliance avec les États-Unis. C’est sous son influence que son père accepte l’invitation du président américain Roosevelt (revenant de Yalta), sur le croiseur USS Quincy en février 1945. À l’issue de cette rencontre est scellé le Pacte du Quincy, par lequel les États-Unis s’engagent à protéger le royaume et la famille régnante en échange d’un approvisionnement énergétique privilégié. Une close tacite de ce pacte est la promesse de Roosevelt de ne pas autoriser la création d’un État juif indépendant en Palestine. Le 5 avril, Roosevelt réaffirme par écrit à Ibn Saoud son engagement à n’entreprendre « aucune action, en tant que chef de l’exécutif de ce gouvernement, qui pourrait se révéler hostile au peuple arabe ».

Roosevelt meurt sept jours plus tard, le 12 avril. En 1947, Fayçal se sent profondément trahi lorsque Truman, pour des raisons de financement électoral essentiellement, se prononce pour le plan de partage de la Palestine. À l’issue du vote, Fayçal dénonce publiquement les manœuvres de corruption et d’intimidation qui ont permis d’obtenir deux tiers des votes à l’Assemblée générale de l’ONU et déclare que, pour ces raisons, son gouvernement « ne se considère pas lié par la résolution adoptée aujourd’hui par l’Assemblée générale ». Néanmoins, Fayçal, qui avait tenté de rassurer les délégations arabes, est sévèrement critiqué pour son « inexplicable naïveté », et d’autant plus lorsque Truman reconnaît l’État d’Israël quinze minutes après sa proclamation.

En 1964, Fayçal est appelé sur le trône à la demande des princes, pour remplacer son frère, jugé incompétent. Il sauve le pays du naufrage économique et le guide vers la modernisation. En matière de politique étrangère, sa grande ambition, qu’il exprime dans son discours inaugural à la Conférence islamique mondiale en avril 1965, est de faire basculer le monde arabe dans le camp américain, que Nasser a quitté à contre-cœur en acceptant l’offre d’aide militaire de l’URSS (les Américains ayant posé des conditions inacceptables à leur aide militaire). En contrepartie de sa fidélité aux États-Unis, Fayçal s’engage à avoir une attitude intransigeante vis-à-vis d’Israël (dont il refuse toujours la légitimité), de soutenir le peuple palestinien dépossédé, et d’user de son influence sur les cercles dirigeants américains en faveur de la cause palestinienne.

Lorsque Gamal Abdel Nasser meurt le 28 septembre 1970, le roi Fayçal devient le principal soutien de Yasser Arafat et de l’OLP. C’est grâce à lui qu’Arafat sera accueilli à l’Assemblée générale des Nations unies le 13 novembre 1974 et traité comme un chef d’État.

Nixon n’est pas un président pro-israélien, loin de là. Mais en 1973, Henry Kissinger, déjà conseiller à la Sécurité nationale de Nixon, devient aussi secrétaire d’État, à l’issue d’une lutte d’influence se soldant par la démission de William Rogers, partisan d’un soutien à la cause palestinienne. Sous l’influence de Kissinger, les États-Unis viennent en aide à Israël durant la guerre du Kippour, en octobre 1973, par laquelle l’Égypte et la Syrie ont tenté de récupérer les territoires illégalement occupés. Après la guerre de 1973, l’assistance militaire des États-Unis à Israël se renforce.

En avril 1974, le roi Fayçal envoie son ministre du pétrole Sheikh Yamani à Washington, pour déclarer à Kissinger qu’il n’augmenterait pas sa production si les Américains ne forçaient pas Israël à se retirer des territoires occupés. Nixon tente de reprendre la main et envoie le directeur adjoint de la CIA, le général Vernon Walters, pour une rencontre secrète avec les leaders de l’OLP, sans en informer Kissinger. Walters revient convaincu de la bonne foi d’Arafat. En juillet 1974, Nixon lui-même se rend en Égypte, Arabie Saoudite, Syrie, Israël et Jordanie et exprime une position très ferme, tançant Israël pour son intransigeance. Le 6 août 1974, Nixon annonce à Kissinger qu’il entend couper toute aide militaire et économique à Israël si l’État sioniste refuse de se plier aux résolutions de l’ONU.

Le 9 août 1974, Nixon démissionne, contraint par l’intensification du scandale du Watergate. Cette affaire, qui passe communément pour la preuve de l’indépendance des médias américains et de leur efficacité comme contre-pouvoir démocratique, est en réalité la démonstration de la puissance des grands médias (et du Washington Post en particulier) comme arme sioniste dans la politique des profondeurs.

Nixon est remplacé par le vice-président Gerald Ford. Connu pour ses positions pro-israéliennes, Ford prend comme première décision de reconnaître officiellement Jérusalem comme la capitale de l’État hébreu. Cette décision unilatérale, qui bafoue les résolutions de l’ONU, suscite la colère du roi Fayçal d’Arabie.

Le 16 août 1974, Fayçal décide d’utiliser l’arme pétrolière et provoque la première crise pétrolière en réduisant le volume d’extraction, dans l’espoir d’infléchir la politique pro-israélienne des États-Unis. Puis il procède au retrait des réserves d’or saoudiennes entreposées aux États-Unis. Kissinger menaçe d’utiliser la force pour desserrer ce qu’il qualifie d’ « étranglement du monde industrialisé ». Des manœuvres militaires sont menées par le commandement américain dans le Golfe et des simulations de débarquement ont lieu à Oman. Un accord est finalement négocié lorsque Fayçal envoie à Washington son ministre de la Défense, l’émir Sultan. En échange d’un recul du gouvernement américain sur la question de Jérusalem et de son engagement à exiger d’Israël le retour aux frontières de 1948, Fayçal recrute un millier de conseillers militaires américains pour former la Garde nationale saoudienne, chargée de protéger les puits de pétrole et la famille royale. Par ce geste, Fayçal place son sort et celui de sa famille entre les mains des États-Unis, comptant sur la bonne foi des Américains pour rééquilibrer leur politique au Moyen-Orient.

Ce rééquilibrage n’aura pas lieu. Le 25 mars 1975, le roi Fayçal est assassiné par son neveu Fayçal ibn Musad. Le régicide est condamné à mort et promptement décapité sans avoir expliqué son geste, et ses motivations restent inconnues à ce jour. On sait qu’il était d’un naturel calme, qu’il vivait aux États-Unis depuis dix ans, que durant ses études à l’Université du Colorado, il était tombé sous le charme de l’actrice Christine Surma, laquelle l’avait convaincu de s’installer à Berkeley, l’avait introduit dans un milieu gauchiste et l’avait rendu addict du LSD. Avant de rejoindre Riyad en mars 1975, il avait brièvement suivi un traitement psychiatrique à Beyrouth. Selon une enquête publiée par l’Executive Intelligence Review du 26 décembre 1978, Fayçal ibn Musad aurait été la cible d’un projet inspiré par Bernard Lewis (futur inventeur du « Choc des civilisations ») et orchestré par une cabale de sionistes liés à l’Aspen Institute du Colorado et au Council on Foreign Relations, visant à utiliser des étudiants saoudiens résidant aux États-Unis pour déstabiliser l’Arabie Saoudite.

Quelques heures seulement après la mort de Fayçal, son frère Khalid bin Abdulaziz Al Saud est proclamé roi par un conseil restreint ne comprenant que cinq membres de la famille royale. Le nouveau roi se montre beaucoup mieux disposé à l’égard d’Israël. Il n’exprimera durant son règne, jusqu’en 1982, aucun intérêt particulier pour la cause palestinienne, et se montrera incapable de la moindre action significative lors de la Guerre civile qui ravagera le Liban à partir de 1975. En 1979, il n’est certainement pas en position d’empêcher Sadate de signer une paix séparée avec Israël, ce dont Fayçal s’était efforcé de le dissuader, car cela rendrait à jamais impossible toute coalition militaire contre Israël.

L’assassinat de Fayçal présente une ressemblance avec celui de Robert Kennedy, le 6 juin 1968, juste après l’annonce des résultats des primaires de Californie qui faisaient de lui le favori pour l’investiture démocrate. Son assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, était un jeune homme de tempérament calme et, depuis bientôt cinquante ans, clame depuis sa prison qu’il ne se souvient ni d’avoir tué Robert Kennedy, ni d’avoir souhaité le faire – amnésie confirmée par plusieurs expertises psychiatriques. Il pense avoir été drogué et/ou hypnotisé. Le fait que Sirhan ait été palestinien et qu’on ait expliqué son geste par sa haine supposée d’Israël, faisant de lui l’un des premiers « terroristes palestiniens », suffit à orienter les soupçons vers le réseau sioniste, qui avait tout intérêt à empêcher Robert Kennedy d’accéder à la Maison Blanche et, de là, de rouvrir l’enquête sur l’assassinat de son frère.

- Source : Laurent Guyénot

Facebook Reveals its Master Plan – Control All News Flow

Facebook Reveals its Master Plan – Control All News Flow

Michael Krieger

Ex: http://www.libertyblitzkrieg.com

In recent months, Facebook has been quietly holding talks with at least half a dozen media companies about hosting their content inside Facebook rather than making users tap a link to go to an external site.

The new proposal by Facebook carries another risk for publishers: the loss of valuable consumer data. When readers click on an article, an array of tracking tools allow the host site to collect valuable information on who they are, how often they visit and what else they have done on the web.

And if Facebook pushes beyond the experimental stage and makes content hosted on the site commonplace, those who do not participate in the program could lose substantial traffic — a factor that has played into the thinking of some publishers. Their articles might load more slowly than their competitors’, and over time readers might avoid those sites.

- From the New York Times article: Facebook May Host News Sites’ Content

Last night, I came across an incredibly important article from the New York Times, which described Facebook’s plan to provide direct access to other websites’ content in exchange for some sort of advertising partnership. The implications of this are so huge that at this point I have far more questions than answers.

Let’s start with a few excerpts from the article:

 

With 1.4 billion users, the social media site has become a vital source of traffic for publishers looking to reach an increasingly fragmented audience glued to smartphones. In recent months, Facebook has been quietly holding talks with at least half a dozen media companies about hosting their content inside Facebook rather than making users tap a link to go to an external site.

Such a plan would represent a leap of faith for news organizations accustomed to keeping their readers within their own ecosystems, as well as accumulating valuable data on them. Facebook has been trying to allay their fears, according to several of the people briefed on the talks, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were bound by nondisclosure agreements.

Facebook intends to begin testing the new format in the next several months, according to two people with knowledge of the discussions. The initial partners are expected to be The New York Times, BuzzFeed and National Geographic, although others may be added since discussions are continuing. The Times and Facebook are moving closer to a firm deal, one person said.

Facebook has said publicly that it wants to make the experience of consuming content online more seamless. News articles on Facebook are currently linked to the publisher’s own website, and open in a web browser, typically taking about eight seconds to load. Facebook thinks that this is too much time, especially on a mobile device, and that when it comes to catching the roving eyeballs of readers, milliseconds matter.

The Huffington Post and the business and economics website Quartz were also approached. Both also declined to discuss their involvement.

Facebook declined to comment on its specific discussions with publishers. But the company noted that it had provided features to help publishers get better traction on Facebook, including tools unveiled in December that let them target their articles to specific groups of Facebook users, such as young women living in New York who like to travel.

The new proposal by Facebook carries another risk for publishers: the loss of valuable consumer data. When readers click on an article, an array of tracking tools allow the host site to collect valuable information on who they are, how often they visit and what else they have done on the web.

And if Facebook pushes beyond the experimental stage and makes content hosted on the site commonplace, those who do not participate in the program could lose substantial traffic — a factor that has played into the thinking of some publishers. Their articles might load more slowly than their competitors’, and over time readers might avoid those sites.

And just as Facebook has changed its news feed to automatically play videos hosted directly on the site, giving them an advantage compared with videos hosted on YouTube, it could change the feed to give priority to articles hosted directly on its site.

Let me try to address this the best I can from several different angles. First off, what’s the big picture plan here? As the number two ranked website in the world with 1.4 billion users, Facebook itself is already something like an alternative internet where a disturbing number of individuals spend a disproportionate amount of their time. The only thing that seems to make many of its users click away is content hosted on other people’s websites linked to from Facebook users. Other than this outside content, many FB users might never leave the site.

While this is scary to someone like me, to Facebook it is an abomination. The company doesn’t want people to leave their site ever — for any reason. Hence the aggressive push to carry outside news content, and create a better positioned alternative web centrally controlled by it. This is a huge power play move. 

Second, the New York Times righty asks the question concerning what will publishers get from Facebook for allowing their content to appear on the site seamlessly. Some sort of revenue share from advertisers seems to be an obvious angle, but perhaps there’s more.

While Facebook isn’t a huge traffic driver for Liberty Blitzkrieg, it isn’t totally irrelevant either. For example, FB provided about 3% of the site’s traffic over the past 12 months. This is despite the fact that LBK doesn’t even have a Facebook page, and I’ve never shared a link through it. Even more impressive, Facebook drove more traffic to LBK over the same time period than Twitter, and I am very active on that platform. So I can only imagine how important FB is to website editors who actually use it.

This brings me to a key point about leverage. It seems to me that Facebook has all the leverage in negotiations with content providers. If you’re a news website that refuses to join in this program, over time you might see your traffic evaporate compared to your competitors whose content will load seamlessly and be promoted by the FB algorithm. If a large percentage of your traffic is being generated by Facebook, can you really afford to lose this?

One thing that FB might be willing to offer publishers in return other than advertising dollars, is increased access to their fan base. For example, when I try to figure out through Google analytics who specifically (or what page) on Facebook is sharing my work, I can’t easily do so. Clearly this information could prove very useful for networking purposes and could be quite valuable. *Note: If there is a way to know which specific Facebook page traffic is originating from please let me know. 

Given the enormity of what Facebook is trying to achieve, I have some obvious concerns. First, since all of the leverage seems to reside with Facebook, I fear they are likely to get the better part of any deal by wide margin. Second, if they succeed in this push, this single company’s ability to control access to news and what is trending and deemed important by a huge section of humanity will be extraordinary.

Looking for some additional insight and words of wisdom, I asked the smartest tech/internet person I know for his opinion. It was more optimistic than I thought:

This could be a huge shaper of news on the internet. or it could turn out to be nothing.

Other than saying that I don’t really know how to predict what might or might not happen, and I sort of don’t care much because it is in the realm (for now at least) of stuff that I don’t read (mainstream news), on a site that I never see (Facebook). However, the one thing I wonder in terms of the viability of this is whether in the end it may drive people away from FB.

Back in the day, probably when you weren’t so aware of the nascent net, there were two giant “services” on the Internet called Compuserve and America Online. They were each what you are thinking that Facebook is heading toward; exclusive, centralized portals to the whole net. They were also giant and successful at the time. Then people outside of them started doing things that were so much more creative and interesting. At the same time, in order to make everything fit inside their proprietary boxes and categories, they were making everything ever more standardized and boring. Then they just abruptly died.

Renaud Camus: "Je me bats comme un beau diable pour défendre cette civilisation européenne menacée"

Renaud Camus: "Je me bats comme un beau diable pour défendre cette civilisation européenne menacée"

The New Order Emerges

The New Order Emerges

By Alasdair Macleod

GoldMoney

China and Russia have taken the lead in establishing the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), seen as a rival organisation to the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, which are dominated by the United States with Europe and Japan.

These banks do business at the behest of the old Bretton Woods* order. The AIIB will dance to China and Russia’s tune instead.

The geopolitical importance was immediately evident from the US’s negative reaction to the UK’s announcement this week that it would join the AIIB. And very shortly afterwards France, Germany and Italy also defied the US and announced they might join. In the Pacific region, one of America’s closest allies, Australia, says she is considering joining too along with New Zealand. The list of US allies seeking to join is growing. From a geopolitical point of view China and Russia have completely outmanoeuvred the US, splitting both NATO and America’s Pacific alliances right down the middle.

This is much more important than political commentators generally realise. We must appreciate that anything China does is planned well in advance. Here is the relevant sequence of events:

• In 2002 China and Russia formally adopted the founding charter for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, an economic bloc that today contains about 35% of the world’s population, which will become more than 50% when India, Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan and Mongolia join, which is their stated intention. Russia has the resources and China the manufacturing power to develop the largest internal market ever seen.

• In October 2013 George Osborne was effectively summoned to Beijing because China wanted London to be the base to develop renminbi-denominated financial instruments. London has served China well, with the UK Government even issuing the first renminbi-denominated foreign (to China) government bond. The renminbi is now on the way to being a fully-fledged international currency.

• The establishment of an infrastructure bank, the AIIB, will ensure the lead funding is available for the rapid development of road, rail, electric and electronic communications throughout the SCO, ensuring equally rapid economic development of the whole of the Asian continent. It could amount to the equivalent of several trillion dollars over time.

The countries that are applying to join the AIIB realise that they have to be members to access what will eventually become the largest single market in the world. America is being frozen out, the consequence of her belligerence over Ukraine and the exercise of her hegemonic power through the dollar. America’s allies in South East Asia are going with or will go with the new AIIB, and in Europe commercial interests are driving America’s NATO partners away from her, turning the Ukraine from a common cause into a festering liability.

The more one thinks about it, the creation of the AIIB is a masterstroke of tactical genius. The outstanding issue now is China and Russia will need to come up with a credible plan to make their currencies a slam-dunk replacement for the dollar. We know that gold may be involved because the SCO members have been accumulating bullion; but before we get there China must manage a deliberate deflation of her credit bubble, which will be a delicate and dangerous task.

Unlike the welfare-driven economies in the west, China has sufficient political authority and internal control to survive a rapid deflation of bank credit. When this inevitably happens the economic consequences for the west will be very serious. Japan and the Eurozone are already facing economic dislocation, and despite over-optimistic employment numbers, the US economy is faltering as well. The last thing America and the dollar needs is a deflationary shock from China.

The silver lining for us all is a peace dividend: it is becoming less likely that America will persist with a call to arms, because support from her allies is melting away leaving her on her own.

*The Bretton Woods system of monetary management established the rules for commercial and financial relations among the world’s major industrial states in the mid-20th century.

-Disclaimer- The views and opinions in this article are those of the author, do not reflect the views and opinions of GoldMoney, and are not advice.

Reprinted with permission from GoldMoney.

The Best of Alasdair Macleod

Alasdair Macleod runs FinanceAndEconomics.org, a website dedicated to sound money and demystifying finance and economics. Alasdair has a background as a stockbroker, banker and economist. He is a Senior Fellow at the GoldMoney Foundation.

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