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vendredi, 13 février 2015

Ruim 12.000 Turkse extremisten aangesloten bij IS in Syrië

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Ruim 12.000 Turkse extremisten aangesloten bij IS in Syrië

FNA – TEHERAN – 11 januari 2015 – Volgens een Turkse onderzoeker hebben tot nu toe duizenden Turkse extremisten zich aangesloten bij de Islamitische Staat van Irak en de Levant (ISIS, kortweg IS).

 “Minstens 12.000 Turkse staatsburgers hebben zich bij de takfiri-terroristen gevoegd in de strijd tegen de Syrische regering”, aldus Umit Ozdaq (foto), directeur van het Turkse onderzoekscentrum 21 Century.

Sommigen zijn alleen naar Syrië gereisd; anderen hebben zich samen met familieleden aangesloten bij IS.

Ozdaq zei eveneens dat 400 extremisten uit het noorden van Kazakhstan aan de kant van IS in Syrië strijden.

In november 2014 meldden verschillende bronnen dat grote groepen takfiri-terroristen uit verschillende landen met Turkish Air naar Syrië en Irak vlogen.

“Op 2 juli waren er 91 takfiri-strijders aan boord van de Turkish Air-vlucht 254 van Dushanbe naar Istanbul”, aldus een bron die uit angst voor zijn leven anoniem wilde blijven.

In oktober 2014 meldde een Koerdische bron dat er meerdere ontmoetingen waren geweest tussen functionarissen van de Turkse inlichtingendienst (MIT) en IS-leiders in een Syrische grensstad om gezamenlijke oorlogsplannen tegen de Koerdische bevolking te bespreken.

“We hebben sterk en onweerlegbaar bewijs dat de MIT meerdere ontmoetingen heeft georganiseerd met IS-leiders in een stad in het noorden van Syrië en dat zij daar een overeenkomst hebben getekend om samen tegen de Koerden te strijden”, zo zei een lid van de Koerdische Arbeiderspartij (PKK), die zichzelf Howal Veria noemde.

Hij voegde hieraan toe dat “een deel van de overeenkomst gaat over de etnische zuivering van Syrisch Koerdistan en het verdrijven en uitmoorden van de Koerden”.

Veria zei dat Turkije moet stoppen met hun beleid tegen de Koerden en dat als de regering van minister-president Recep Tayyip Erdogan dit niet doet meer dan 45 miljoen Koerden, Alevieten en iedereen die tegen Ankara’s IS-beleid is de straat op zal gaan om hun macht te tonen.

In september 2014 zei een PKK-leider dat de Turkse regering onder één hoedje speelt met IS-rebellen in Syrië en Irak.

“Ankara werkt samen met de IS-terroristen en roept Koerdische strijders op naar Syrië te gaan om de Koerdische stad Kobani nabij de Turkse grens te verdedigen,” aldus Dursun Kalkan.

In september 2012, berichtte de website DEBKAfile dat Turkse legerofficieren directe bevelen gaven aan buitenlandse terroristen in het noorden van Syrië, onder andere in Idlib en Aleppo.

Volgens de website ontvingen strijders in Idlib en Aleppo bevelen vanuit hoofdkwartieren in de stad Gaziantep, in het zuidoosten van Turkije.

Bron: Fars.

Reagan, Iran and the Descent into Darkness

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Author: Gordon Duff

Reagan, Iran and the Descent into Darkness

The organization isn’t a new one, the basis for the Islamic State come from the Reagan presidency, the banking mechanisms used during Iran Contra when 123 Reagan appointees were convicted of crimes from Treason to Obstruction of Justice. ISIS is also a descendant of Gladio, the “stay behind” terror worldwide terror network controlled by Freemasons responsible for attacks across Europe and Latin America for over 3 decades.

Reagan’s real goal was taking down two enemies, the Soviets and Iran. His personal war on Iran, both economic and military nearly sent him to prison were he not able to prove he was mentally unfit for office while serving as president, as evidence in his testimony at the Iran Contra hearings.

Terror Funding Origins

The financial network used to back the terror organizations, Gladio, Al Qaeda and their current incarnations along with dozens of contrived “national fronts began with the moves against world banking.

In the US it began with the deregulation of “thrifts,” locally owned Savings and Loans quickly bankrupted through fraud, a move led by the Bush family and Senator John McCain but set up by the Reagan Treasury Department. 1.5 trillion US dollars were stolen from these financial organizations with only Charles Keating, close friend of Senator John McCain, and 40 low level operatives to go to prison.

McCain escaped prison and suffered only minor rebukes for his part in the Keating scandals.

Reagan’s domestic agenda rocked America, destroying unions, sent millions of skilled jobs overseas, ran up trillions in debt and destroyed America’s middle class. Reagan’s restructuring of the US economy eliminated over 5 million skilled labor and management jobs and millions of American families were set adrift, living in automobiles, sleeping under bridges and in makeshift “communities” much as during the Great Depression.

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The closing of mental hospitals send nearly 500,000 patients into communities unprepared to deal with the influx. When you combined this population with the burgeoning “crack cocaine” epidemic begun by the Reagan White House operatives and CIA, America had become a festering hell hole.

The response was to begin a massive campaign of building prisons and a restructuring of the legal system with longer sentences for drug offenses and life imprisonment for petty crimes making America the most imprisoned society in the world. Reagan did this.

With cutbacks in aid to education, the typical American home became multi-generational and home ownership was no longer considered the “norm” for an American family.

Many remember iconic issues, one in particular when school lunch programs needed to be cut to finance a tax cut for the wealthiest 1%. Rules were changed to change dietary requirements and condiments such as catsup and mustard were allowed to replace fresh vegetables and salads.

What wasn’t mentioned is that orange juice was replaced by colored water with corn sweetener and carcinogenic food coloring. Food safety became a thing of the past as a massive influx of undocumented workers from Mexico were allowed to enter the US, part of Reagan’s plan to kill labor unions. They took over food processing jobs first, particularly slaughterhouse and meat packing jobs. E.coli outbreaks began sweeping the nation.

More Progress

Dangerous untested pharmaceuticals were released, killing thousands, industrial pollution of water and air was legalized and workplace safety measures were overturned. Reagan was a champion of “big agriculture,” and GMO became a national cause.

Thousands of other examples of government cruelty and corruption were buried beneath the trials and hearings over drug running and fraud.

Defenders of the Reagan government have blinders on and very short memories. Lauding the destruction of the Soviet Union, it was really America that died under Reagan. Paul Craig Roberts, champion of America’s right, speaks glowingly of Reagan.

He cites “liberals” as criticizing Reagan’s divisive policies and “trickle down” economics. I worked for the Carter administration and stayed on when Reagan took office.

The CIA and Organized Crime

time850225_400.jpgA parallel version of the CIA was set up under Lt. Colonel Oliver North and members of the Bush family, and ratlines were created from the cocaine centers of Colombia, through Noriega’s Panama to the secret landing fields in Costa Rica and ending in America’s cities.

An epidemic of crack cocaine, aimed at America’s African-American population, as reported by Gary Webb and Mike Ruppert, financed Reagan initiatives, done in partnership with Israel, key Saudi figures and American organized crime.

Wanted members of the drug cartels bought up luxury condominiums in Miami and openly used CIA safehouses for meetings. CIA personnel were quietly “made aware” that things had changed, that a new administration had come to power and that drug cartels had become the close allies of the administration in Washington. Anyone that objected was threatened or worse.

Drug running was the “go to” solution for any black money shortfall during Reagan’s rule. Increasingly, financial institutions beginning with the breakaway Mormon communities of the South West, all “Red States” today. A “marriage” was consummated, tying these states, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Nevada and regions of Texas to the drug cartel run regions of Mexico. Over the next 3 decades, county by county, town by town, state by state, drug cartels took control of government operations and financial institutions, eventually controlling several US Senators, state governors, prosecutors, sheriffs and countless judges. Those who failed to play along were killed.

Middle East Policy

Reagan represented an end to efforts to seek justice for the Palestinian people and stability in the Middle East. Reagan’s real focus was on Iraq and their war against Iran, a keystone to his foreign policy.

The Reagan administration’s goal was control of not just narcotics but world oil markets. The aftermath of the 1973 war had shown the power oil pricing had on the world economy. Oil could be used as a tool of war as much as any army and Reagan’s economic advisors pushed for seizure of Iran’s oil field as a lynchpin to that policy. To do that, Iran had to be destroyed. From Wikipedia:

“Starting in 1982 with Iranian success on the battlefield, the United States made its backing of Iraq more pronounced, normalizing relations with the government, supplying it with economic aid, counter-insurgency training, operational intelligence on the battlefield, and weapons.

President Ronald Reagan initiated a strategic opening to Iraq, signing National Security Study Directive (NSSD) 4-82 and selecting Donald Rumsfeld as his emissary to Hussein, whom he visited in December 1983 and March 1984. According to U.S. ambassador Peter W. Galbraith, far from winning the conflict, “the Reagan administration was afraid Iraq might actually lose.”

To think America would go to war to eliminate weapons of mass destruction given to Iraq by the United States is no secret. From the 1970s onward, the partnership between Israel, South Africa and Libya, fostered by the Reagan CIA, would develop and test, in Angola and elsewhere, new biological and chemical weapons later to be used by Saddam against Iran.

The Reagan administration, in order to facilitate the destruction of Iran, made it possible to supply Iraq with anything imaginable.

In 1982, Iraq was removed from a list of State Sponsors of Terrorism to ease the transfer of dual-use technology to that country. According to investigative journalist Alan Friedman, Secretary of State Alexander Haig was “upset at the fact that the decision had been made at the White House, even though the State Department was responsible for the list. I was not consulted,” Haig is said to have complained.

The Intel Partnership

What Wikipedia fails to tell of the 1983 Teicher/Rumsfeld meeting with Aziz in Baghdad is that they were sent there by the Israeli government, not America. Teicher presented a letter from Shamir to Saddam which was refused by Tarik Aziz, Iraq’s Foreign Minister.

Howard Teicher served on the National Security Council as director of Political-Military Affairs. He accompanied Rumsfeld to Baghdad in 1983. According to his 1995 affidavit and separate interviews with former Reagan and Bush administration officials, the Central Intelligence Agency secretly directed armaments and hi-tech components to Iraq through false fronts and friendly third parties such as Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Kuwait, and they quietly encouraged rogue arms dealers and other private military companies to do the same:

Wikipedia also fails to mention the “ratline” for not just poison gas but biological agents as well, the German companies represented by Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush’s older brother, Prescott, nominally an “insurance executive,” in reality the largest arms trader in the world, and their role in arming Saddam against Iran.

Donald Rumsfeld meets Saddām on 19–20 December 1983. Rumsfeld visited again on 24 March 1984, the day the UN reported that Iraq had used mustard gas and tabun nerve agent against Iranian troops. The NY Times reported from Baghdad on 29 March 1984, that “American diplomats pronounce themselves satisfied with Iraq and the U.S., and suggest that normal diplomatic ties have been established in all but name.”

Conclusion

Torturing history is perhaps one of the greatest failings of our era. The abuses of wartime propaganda or the ideological struggles of the Cold War now permeate every aspect of our lives, creating a mythological unreality sustained only through considerable effort. It has gone far beyond repeating past mistakes but has become an organic movement of contrived entropy fueled through systematic denialism.

The Reagan era in the United States is cited for a reason. An actor was elected president, someone who played president and in some ways did so better than anyone in the past, with tremendous success, were reality a “play.”

Political theatricality had always been with us. However, it was once assumed that ideology and men of conscience would engage in meaningful conflicts, guns or ideas, but moving, once believed inexorably, toward human advancement. This is a failed hypothesis.

Gordon Duff is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War that has worked on veterans and POW issues for decades and consulted with governments challenged by security issues. He’s a senior editor and chairman of the board of Veterans Today, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook
First appeared: http://journal-neo.org/2015/02/09/reagan-iran-and-the-descent-into-darkness/

Unterwerfung als Option

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Unterwerfung als Option

von Felix Menzel

Ex: http://www.blauenarzisse.de

2001 sagte der Bestsellerautor Michel Houellebecq: „Die dümmste Religion ist doch der Islam.“ Ist sein Mitte Januar auf Deutsch erschienener Roman „Unterwerfung“ folglich ein Anti-​Islam-​Pamphlet?

Um es gleich vorwegzunehmen: Nein, das ist er nicht. Vielmehr überrascht der Franzose Houellebecq mit einem recht positiven Bild des Islam. Im Gegensatz zur atheistischen, toleranten und weltoffenen Gesellschaft bewundern viele Figuren in Unterwerfung diesen Glauben für seine religiöse Stärke. Er habe die Fähigkeit, der Gesellschaft eine klare, einfach zu verstehende Ordnung zu geben.

Warum „Unterwerfung“ Islam-​Hasser enttäuschen wird

Insofern hat Houellebecq seine Meinung zum Islam überhaupt nicht geändert: Gerade das „Dumme“, das Antiliberale und tendenziell Totalitäre machen diese Religion so attraktiv. Das ist auch der Grund, warum es vielen Muslimen schwer fällt, sich von religiösen Fanatikern zu distanzieren. Denn das Vereinfachende gehört zu den Grundprinzipien des Islam.

Houllebecqs Buch erschien auch in Frankreich genau zum richtigen Zeitpunkt: Anfang des Jahres griffen Islamisten die französische Satirezeitschrift Charlie Hebdo an und brachten 17 Menschen um. Damit trugen sie den Terror endgültig nach Europa. Und es war sofort klar, daß Unterwerfung zum ersten großen Buchereignis des Jahres 2015 werden mußte. Sowohl in Deutschland als auch Frankreich stand das Buch umgehend auf dem ersten Platz der Amazon-​Bestsellerliste. Es spielt dabei keine Rolle, daß dieser Roman definitiv nicht sein bester ist. Houellebecq hat nach Die Möglichkeit einer Inselseinen Zenit überschritten. Und er weiß das auch.

Relativ am Anfang des Romans läßt Houellebecq seine Hauptfigur, den Literaturwissenschaftler François, referieren, wie der Schriftsteller Joris-​Karl Huysmans mit dem Verfall seiner eigenen Leistungsfähigkeit umgegangen ist. Er habe einfach einen enttäuschenden Roman über eine Enttäuschung geschrieben und so doch noch einen „ästhetischen Sieg“ davon getragen. Da nun Houellebecq schon immer über Enttäuschungen geschrieben hat, entfiel für ihn diese Strategie.

Politische Literatur: Fast immer schlecht

Er hat aber eine andere Lösung für dieses Dilemma gefunden und einfach einen politischen Roman geschrieben. In dem wird ein Szenario beschrieben, das sich nah an der Realität bewegt. Mit Michael Klonovsky könnte man nun einwenden: „Wenn Literatur politisch wird, ist sie fast immer schlecht.“ Das stimmt auch. Betrachtet man einzig die literarische Qualität, ist Unterwerfung im Vergleich zu den früheren Romanen von Houellebecq wirklich schlecht.

Aber was hätte Houellebecq, der seinen eigenen Verfall als Person regelrecht inszeniert, denn tun sollen? Nichts mehr schreiben? Nein, natürlich nicht! Er hat – wieder einmal – alles richtig gemacht. Frankreich, Deutschland und Europa haben einen Roman wie Unterwerfung gebraucht, um über die eigene Dekadenz und das mögliche Ende des modern-​aufklärerischen Zeitalters debattieren zu können.

Islamisierung, die Houellebecq in seinem Roman skizziert, läuft dabei anders ab, als sich dies die üblichen Islam-​Hasser so denken. Nach einem Bürgerkrieg zwischen Islamisten auf der einen Seite sowie Rechtsradikalen und Identitärenauf der anderen gelangt der charismatische Muslimbruder Mohammed Ben Abbes an die Macht. Denn alle etablierten Parteien wollen verhindern, daß der Front National in Zukunft das Sagen hat. Abbes ist ein Visionär, der das Gravitationszentrum Europas nach Süden verschieben will. Er strebt eine eine Mittelmeer-​Union mit arabischen Staaten an. Sein Vorbild ist dabei das Römische Reich.

Ein Islamisch-​Römisches Reich: Alptraum oder Zukunftsvision?

Innenpolitisch gelingt es ihm, eine neue soziale Solidarität durch die Kraft des Religiösen zu stiften. Das fällt Abbes deshalb so leicht, weil vor seiner Herrschaft die offene Gesellschaft daran gearbeitet hatte, die Familie als Kernstruktur jeder Gemeinschaftsbildung zu zersetzen. Wenn man so will, macht Houellebecq also darauf aufmerksam, daß die Vorstellungen der Muslime und der Rechten zur Bewahrung traditioneller Werte und Gemeinschaftsstrukturen sehr ähnlich sind – mit dem feinen Unterschied freilich, daß der Islam die Polygamie erlaubt.

Die Rechten – so könnte man seinen Gedankengang weiterspinnen – haben jedoch das Problem, daß von den christlichen Institutionen kein Impuls zur bewahrenden Erneuerung ausgehen wird. Das europäische Christentum könnte von der aufklärerischen Moderne dermaßen vergiftet worden sein, daß es unfähig ist, der Unterwerfung durch den Islam überhaupt etwas entgegensetzen zu wollen.

Ohne Religion überleben wir nicht

Wie geht es also weiter? Der Roman gibt keine klare Prognose ab. Im Gespräch mit der ZEITsagt Houellebecq, ein Happy-​End habe es nicht geben können. Denn sein Verlag hätte ihm keine Recherchereise nach Israel ermöglicht. Und ansonsten? „Eine Gesellschaft ohne Religion ist nicht überlebensfähig. Der Laizismus, der Rationalismus und die Aufklärung, deren Grundprinzip die Abkehr vom Glauben ist, haben keine Zukunft“, betont Houellebecq. Er könne sich vorstellen, in einem moderaten islamischen Staat zu leben.

Ist das nur Provokation? Vielleicht. Vielleicht bereitet uns Houellebecq aber auch nur darauf vor, daß es mit dem Christentum sowieso nichts mehr wird. Auch das ist die zentrale, bittere Botschaft von Unterwerfung.

Michel Houellebecq: Unterwerfung. Roman. Köln: Dumont 2015. Hardcover. 280 Seiten. 22,99 Euro.

Anm. d. Red.: Hier geht es zu unserem nach Michel Houellebecq benannten Jugendkulturpreis. Es gab fast 300 Einsendungen junger Nachwuchskünstler.

L’ère du travail est-elle révolue ?

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L’ère du travail est-elle révolue?
 
Voulons-nous d’un monde qui tangue entre Orwell et Asimov?
 
Journaliste
Ex: http://www.bvoltaire.fr

La lubie de la semaine de travail de quatre jours a refait son apparition dans la bouche du secrétaire général de la CGT, Philippe Martinez, et de la présidente du Mouvement des jeunes socialistes, Laura Slimani, qui préconise soit un passage aux 32 heures hebdomadaires, soit la prise d’une année sabbatique par les salariés. Quand on constate le foutoir qu’ont déjà semé les 35 heures dans certaines branches, tel que le secteur hospitalier, on en rigole à l’avance.

Le gouvernement Jospin espérait que les 35 heures créeraient 700.000 emplois. À peine la moitié ont vu le jour entre 1998 et 2002, en grande partie grâce à la croissance vigoureuse de l’époque. Mais combien ont été détruits par des licenciements ou des faillites de PME et TPE devenues moins compétitives et perdant des parts de marché face à leurs concurrentes étrangères ? Après la Finlande, la France est le deuxième pays d’Europe où l’on travaille le moins. Sa balance commerciale est déficitaire depuis 2003.

L’aménagement du temps de travail coûte en moyenne 12 milliards par an à l’État en exonération de charges aux entreprises. Il a, par ailleurs, entraîné une explosion du nombre de fonctionnaires : +45 % dans la fonction publique territoriale. Passer aux 32 heures ne ferait qu’empirer les choses sans garantie de résorber le chômage, au vu de la conjoncture actuelle.

Une problématique plus complexe se profile à l’horizon : la « troisième révolution industrielle » inhérente à la robotisation. Rien qu’en France, elle créerait trois millions de chômeurs supplémentaires en 2025. La Chine devrait compter un robot pour 3.000 habitants en 2017. Les emplois pénibles et peu qualifiés sont les premiers menacés, tandis que les ingénieurs, techniciens et programmeurs auront le vent en poupe. Plus que jamais, une formation professionnelle ad hoc devra être engagée, mais beaucoup d’actifs se retrouveront sur le carreau. Un robot humanoïde coûte en moyenne 53.000 euros, ne réclame ni salaire… ni RTT.

 

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Hypothèse Bisounours : de ces gains de productivité naîtra une société de surabondance, provoquant donc une baisse des prix. Plus besoin de trimer comme un damné ni d’avoir un salaire mirobolant. Les loisirs se développeront et inspireront de nouveaux métiers. Grâce à la redistribution, chacun aura un revenu de base assuré. Guy Ryder, directeur général de l’Organisation internationale du travail, affirme que chaque grande transformation de l’économie a généré « plus d’emplois que précédemment ».

Hypothèse Terminator : seuls les détenteurs de ces nouvelles machines et technologies s’enrichiront. Le pouvoir des grosses boîtes sera décuplé et celui des États affaibli. 80 à 90 % des emplois disparaîtront à terme. Les inégalités s’accentueront, la demande s’effondrera et la croissance avec. Les tensions sociales seront d’autant attisées. David Autor, économiste au MIT, observe que l’évolution technologique aux USA et en Europe a débouché sur un effritement de la classe moyenne et une hausse du nombre de précaires.

32 heures ou 35, nous serons vraisemblablement confrontés à une raréfaction de l’emploi et un changement de paradigme dans les décennies à venir. Voulons-nous d’un monde qui tangue entre Orwell et Asimov ? Pour Bill Gates, Elon Musk et Stephen Hawking, un déploiement irraisonné de l’intelligence artificielle pourrait même signer la fin de l’humanité.

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jeudi, 12 février 2015

Saudi Fingerprints on 9/11?

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Saudi Fingerprints on 9/11?

By

Ex: http://www.lewrockwell.com

Claims that Saudi Arabia was behind the 9/11 attacks on America have  been circulating  since 2001. The Saudis have denied all such claims even though 15 of the 19 aircraft hijackers were Saudi citizens.

This week, allegations of Saudi involvement reignited as one of the men convicted in the 9/11 plot, Zacarias Moussaoui, reasserted the allegations. Moussaoui, who is in US maximum security prison, charges senior Saudi princes and officials bankrolled the 9/11 attacks and other al-Qaida operations. He may have been tortured and has mental problems.

Among the Saudis Moussaoui named are Prince Turki Faisal, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, two of the kingdom’s most powerful and influential men. Turki was head of Saudi intelligence; Bandar ambassador to Washington during the Bush administration.

These accusation come at a time when there is a furious struggle in Washington over releasing secret pages of the Congressional Intelligence Committee report on the 9/11 attacks that reportedly implicated Saudi Arabia. The White House claims the report would be embarrassing and damage US-Saudi relations.  

I have been following this twisted tale since the 1980’s when I was in Pakistan and Afghanistan. In Peshawar, Pakistan’s wild border city, I met with Sheik Abdullah Azzam, founder of al-Qaida.

At the time, al-Qaida was a tiny, store-front information bureau supporting the “mujahidin” fighters being sent by Saudi Arabia and the US to fight the Soviets occupying Afghanistan.

Sheik Abdullah, a renowned exponent of “jihad,” told me something that shook me: “when we have liberated Afghanistan from Soviet colonialism, we will go on and liberate Saudi Arabia from American colonial rule.” This was the first time I had ever heard America called a colonial power.

Azzam was assassinated soon after. But his star pupil, one Osama bin Laden, carried on Azzam’s quest to drive western influence from the Muslim world.

At the time, “our” Muslims fighting Soviet occupation were hailed as “freedom fighters” by President Ronald Reagan. Today, in a re-writing of history, they are widely called “terrorists.”

What Moussaoui reportedly said is that the two aforementioned senior Saudi princes, Turki and Bandar, donated money to the Afghan mujahidin during the 1980’s, not to al-Qaida. Many Americans will fail to understand the distinction

Saudi Arabia funneled  large sums of money to militant groups in the Mideast, Balkans, Caucasus, Africa, and South Asia. The purpose was twofold: first, to keep young hotheads as far as possible from the kingdom; second, to combat Iran’s spreading influence. Washington gave tacit backing.

Iran, gripped by Islamic revolutionary zeal, was sending preachers and teachers all over Asia and Africa, notably so in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Saudis, deathly afraid of the Islamic revolution in Tehran that called for sharing oil wealth with the Muslim world’s poor, waged a long proxy war against Iran that pitted Wahabi Sunnis against Shia. Washington, gripped by anti-Iranian fever, backed the Saudi religious offensive.

In the midst of this religious-political conflict arose the Saudi exile bin Laden. Though his father was one of the kingdom’s wealthiest men, bin Laden opposed the Saudi ruling princes whom he charged were stealing the Muslim world’s wealth and helping enable continued American domination of the Muslim world – what I called in my second book, “The American Raj.

Having followed bin Laden’s career since the late 1980’s, I am convinced that he had no direct support from the ruling Saudi princes – nor from CIA. The Saudis were even more afraid  of him than Iran.  But I have no doubt, as I said on CNN back in 2001, that numerous wealthy Saudis and Kuwaitis were giving private donations to al-Qaida and other militant groups.

To the Americans, cutting off al-Qaida’s finances was a primary objective. They never understood – and still do not – that resistance to US influence may be facilitated by money but is not driven by it. The US’s enemies are motivated by ideology and revolutionary fervor, not cash. It’s hard for some westerners to understand that money is not behind everything.

What the media never talks about is that there has long been boiling dissent in Saudi Arabia, perhaps the world’s most rigid, reactionary nation. It comes from both the nation’s second-class Shia as well as the growing numbers of young Saudis who yearn to break out of the stultifying society in which they live. There are even rebels among the kingdom’s 22,000 princes.

A sizeable number of  Saudis believe their nation is occupied by the United States. This is no chimera. There are some 40,000 American “technicians” and “contractors” in Saudi serving the oil industry and military. US forces in Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Diego Garcia overwatch Saudi Arabia. There are secret US bases in Saudi. Israel is a secret ally of the Saudi royal family.

The Saudi royal family is protected by America’s CIA, FBI, NSA, and military intelligence. This, however, is not a guarantee of absolute security: the same arrangement was in place to guard Egypt’s military dictator, Husni Mubarak, yet failed. In the 1980’s, a full division of Pakistan’s crack army guarded the royal family. “The Saudis don’t trust their own military,” Pakistan’s late leader Zia ul-Haq told me after being  seconded to Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia maintains two parallel armed forces: a feeble army, which is denied ammunition, and the Bedouin or “White Army,” that protects the royal family. Most of the tens of billions of US and British arms bought by the kingdom sit rusting in warehouses, or are operated by western mercenaries. US mercenary firms direct the White Guard.

As far as I’m concerned, there is no reason for the Saudi royal elite to have funded Osma bin Laden or the 9/11 hijackers. But the attack was clearly an attempt by Saudi dissidents to strike back at US domination of their country.

In fact, the reasons for the 9/11 attacks have been all but obscured by a torrent of disinformation and hysteria. The attackers were quite clear in their reasons: to punish the US for supporting Israel and oppressing the Palestinians; and for its “occupation” of Saudi Arabia and keeping a tyrannical regime there in power.

The Bush administration claimed the attacks were caused by religious fanaticism and hatred of western values, a false dialogue that continues to this day as we just saw with the Charlie Hebdo shootings in Paris. Muslims are to have no legitimate political motivations; they are all mad dogs. Even if we attack their homelands, they have no right to attack us.

Saudi Arabia remains at a low boil, as western intelligence services hunt for opponents of its feudal government. The intense US preoccupation with remote Yemen reflects Washington’s deep concern that millions of Yemeni expatriates in Saudi could become a revolutionary vanguard. The bin Laden’s, of course, were of Yemeni origin.

Yes,  men and funds for the 9/11 attacks likely came from Saudi Arabia; yes, the royal family knew about this – after the fact – but remains mum to this day; yes, Washington knows the Saudi princes knew, but remains mute and keeps trying to censor Part 4 of the damning 9/11 report. Too many senior US officials and legislators have been on the Saudi payroll.

While in office, Britain’s former prime minister, Tony Blair quashed a major report by the Serious Fraud Office into tens of millions in illicit kickbacks by British arms makers to Saudi royals…for “national security reasons.”   Expect the same from Washington.

Few in official Washington want to know that America’s key ally, Saudi Arabia, was involved in 9/11. Even fewer want to reopen the 9/11 investigation, which was full of holes and omissions and perhaps likely to raise questions about some of America’s other allies.

The change of ruler in Saudi has so far made little difference. The song remains the same. But behind the scenes, pressure is growing.

Eric Margolis [send him mail] is the author of War at the Top of the World and the new book, American Raj: Liberation or Domination?: Resolving the Conflict Between the West and the Muslim World. See his website.

Copyright © 2015 Eric Margolis

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Pakistaanse IS-leider: “Amerika betaalt de recrutering van terroristen voor Syrië”

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Pakistaanse IS-leider: “Amerika betaalt de recrutering van terroristen voor Syrië”

FARS – 30 januari 2015 – Een vooraanstaande Pakistaanse krant meldde dat een man die beweert een Pakistaanse commandant van de terroristische groep Islamitische Staat (IS) te zijn, aan wetgevers  in Pakistan heeft bekend fondsen te ontvangen via de Verenigde Staten (VS).

“Tijdens het onderzoek maakte Yousaf al-Salafi bekend dat hij gefinancierd werd via de VS  om de organisatie in Pakistan aan te sturen en jongeren te werven om te vechten in Syrië,” aldus  de bron op voorwaarde van anonimiteit dicht bij het onderzoek aan het in het Urdu verschijnende medium Daily Express.

De krant beweerde ook dat al-Salafi vorig jaar in december werd gearresteerd.

Al-Salafi bekende naar verluidt ook het ronselen van terroristen om ze naar Syrië te sturen en ontving daarvoor ongeveer 600 Amerikaanse dollar per persoon. Hij gaf ook toe dat hij had gewerkt met een Pakistaanse medeplichtige.

“De VS veroordeelden de activiteiten van IS, maar slaagden er helaas niet in om de financiering van deze organisatie via de VS te stoppen. De VS gaf de indruk dat het de terreurgroep financiert uit eigen belang en organiseerde daarom het offensief tegen de organisatie in Irak, en niet in Syrië,” zei een bron.

Het is echter niet duidelijk waar in de Verenigde Staten het geld precies vandaan kwam.

“Ja, het is correct dat dit probleem verschillende keren aan bod kwam in de lokale media en zelfs in de diplomatieke contacten tussen de VS en Pakistan. Journalisten suggereerden dat honderden rekruten werden overgebracht naar Pakistan,” vertelde een veiligheidsbron in Pakistan aan het persbureau Sputnik.

De bronnen die spraken met Express Tribune openbaarden ook de onhandige aanpak door de Amerikaanse minister van Buitenlandse Zaken John Kerry op zijn recente reis naar Islamabad in Pakistan.

“De zaak werd ook doorgenomen met de leider van CENTCOM (US Central Command), generaal Lloyd Austin, tijdens zijn bezoek aan Islamabad eerder deze maand,” zei een bron.

Een andere bron vertelde het Britse persagentschap Reuters vorige week dat al-Salafi een Pakistaans-Syrische man is die vijf maanden geleden naar Pakistan kwam via Turkije en dat hij de terreurgroepering IS in Pakistan oprichtte.

Bron: Fars.

Emir Kusturica : « L’Ukraine, un remake de la Yougoslavie »

bih1.jpgEmir Kusturica : « L’Ukraine, un remake de la Yougoslavie »

 
Le Cinéaste, musicien, écrivain, acteur serbe, Emir Kusturica

Rencontrer le cinéaste franco-serbe, c’est l’assurance d’un entretien nourri par l’actualité, les questions de géopolitique internationale et les méfaits de la mondialisation capitaliste. Emir Kusturica, auteur d’un recueil de nouvelles paru le 7 janvier, « Étranger dans le mariage », n’est jamais avare de lumineuses digressions.

D’ordinaire, Emir Kusturica exploite sa fibre artistique dans la musique et le cinéma : le guitariste du No Smoking Orchestra est aussi le lauréat de deux palmes d’or pour « Papa est en voyage d’affaires » et « Underground ». Le cinéaste franco- serbe s’était déjà essayé à la littérature dans une autobiographie, « Où suis-je dans cette histoire ? ». Il tente aujourd’hui une incursion dans la fiction avec « Étranger dans le mariage », un recueil de six nouvelles autour de la famille, de la guerre et de l’absurdité du quotidien dans la Yougoslavie des années 1970. Certes, les récits apparaissent très inégaux et la truculence de Kusturica, pourtant très cinématographique, peine à provoquer les mêmes émotions qu’à l’écran. Reste que s’il ne réussit pas tout à fait son passage à l’écrit, il demeure une voix singulière incontournable face au formatage des choses de l’esprit.

HD. Pourquoi avez-vous choisi de vous exprimer par le biais de la littérature ?

EMIR KUSTURICA. J’ai compris que je pouvais être créatif en réalisant mon film « Guernica » pendant mes études à l’école de cinéma de Prague. Depuis, ma créativité n’a jamais cessé. J’ai eu la chance de me trouver. Je peux mettre en place ma vie en rapport avec mes différents projets. Depuis mes premiers films, j’ai une bonne relation avec le public. C’est probablement parce que je ne cherchais pas à communiquer mais à faire mes films. J’explore au plus profond mon histoire familiale. J’essaie d’aller vers l’obscurité. Mais cela tient d’abord à un désir. L’art est certes l’aboutissement d’une communication mais l’artiste ne communique pas avec le public mais avec son propre besoin de créer.

HD. Pour quelles raisons vos histoires sont-elles si personnelles ?

E. K. Je suis très lié au langage cinématographique du début des années 1970. Ce sont des années dorées pour le cinéma et l’art en général. Les États-Unis, qui façonnent le monde militairement et artistiquement, étaient dans les années 1970 beaucoup plus libres qu’aujourd’hui. Après le Vietnam, il y a eu beaucoup de films sur la guerre perdue des Américains. Depuis, l’expression libre est devenue une expression contrôlée. Aujourd’hui, la NSA (Agence nationale de sécurité – NDLR) écoute tous les citoyens américains. C’est effrayant. Dans les années 1970, l’Amérique parlait du fascisme, du nazisme. Souvenez-vous de « Cabaret », le film de Bob Fosse, de « Macadam Cowboy », de « Cinq pièces faciles ». Il y avait presque une philosophie existentialiste, parlant librement de la vie, de la défaite au Vietnam, écrivant des livres. Et puis patatras, au cinéma, George Lucas a commencé à recréer l’univers, Spielberg a fait ses « ET ». La conception de Ronald Reagan de divertir l’esprit, en particulier des Américains pour les éloigner d’une position critique, et de transformer les films en pur divertissement l’a emporté. Les gens qui ont continué à faire ce qu’ils voulaient ont été marginalisés, leurs films peu ou mal diffusés. Aujourd’hui, nous en subissons toujours les conséquences. En Europe, le cinéma est davantage tourné vers le cinéma d’auteur. Mais la pression économique rend les auteurs de plus en plus politiquement corrects.

« L’UKRAINE MARQUE UN TOURNANT. LA RUSSIE N’ACCEPTE PLUS SON ENCERCLEMENT AVEC L’ÉLARGISSEMENT CONTINU DE L’OTAN. »

HD. Que vous inspirent les événements en Ukraine ?

E. K. La guerre humanitaire est en fait une légalisation de la guerre. Wall Street dépend de la guerre. La valeur psychologique d’une action dépend de la manière dont vous êtes agressif dans certaines parties du monde. Plusieurs guerres, de tailles réduites, se déroulent un peu partout à travers la planète. Désormais, l’option des conflits de basse intensité apparaît épuisée. Et l’Ukraine marque un tournant. La Russie n’accepte plus son encerclement avec l’élargissement continu de l’OTAN. L’idéologue américain Zbigniew Brzezinski a largement écrit sur « l’enjeu eurasien », capital à ses yeux, à savoir la maîtrise et la colonisation de la Russie et de l’espace ex-soviétique. L’Ukraine est donc une première étape vers ce démantèlement imaginé par Brzezinski.

HD. Ne vous rappelle-t-il pas ce qui s’est produit en ex-Yougoslavie ?

E. K. À Kiev, l’histoire des snipers qui ont ouvert le feu sur la place Maïdan ressemble de manière troublante aux événements de Sarajevo en 1992. Durant le siège de la ville, des tireurs isolés ont terrorisé les habitants et personne à Sarajevo ne savait d’où venaient ces snipers. Exactement comme à Kiev. On ne sait toujours pas qui a ouvert le feu sur les manifestants et les forces de l’ordre. Aujourd’hui, une autre vérité que celle imposée par les médias apparaît. C’est ce que tentait de décrire mon film « Underground » : une autre réalité. Il a été réalisé en 1995. La vérité sur ces deux événements, les dirigeants la connaissent. Ils en sont même parties prenantes et essaient de nous abuser en feignant d’être des imbéciles. Les grandes puissances jouent sur un échiquier où l’Ukraine et l’ex-Yougoslavie apparaissent comme des pions. Il s’agit d’une répétition d’un scénario qui s’est produit en Yougoslavie et a mené à son éclatement pour des enjeux similaires : l’extension de l’OTAN et de l’UE. La construction de l’UE est responsable des deux drames. Afin de s’agrandir et accroître son influence, elle divise les États pour imposer sa loi à de petits territoires. Pour moi, ce qui est inacceptable, c’est que les gens s’en accommodent. Heureusement, il y a des instants d’espoir.

« LES ÉTATS-UNIS ET LE CAMP ATLANTISTE IMPOSENT LEUR VÉRITÉ ET SE COMPORTENT EN VAINQUEURS DE LA GUERRE FROIDE. »

L’arrivée au pouvoir des communistes en Grèce en fait partie. Leur victoire est historique et peut, comme en Amérique latine, porter un véritable élan. Ce phénomène se répétera dans les années qui viennent. La montée de l’extrême droite et des partis fascistes, voire nazis comme en Ukraine où ils sont au pouvoir, créera en face une résistance. Le clash est inévitable.

HD. L’hystérie de la presse à l’égard de la Russie et de Poutine vous rappelle le traitement médiatique à l’égard des Serbes durant la guerre de Yougoslavie ?

milo60360.jpgE. K. Cela a été le point de départ. En 1992, les divers acteurs ont mis en avant certains aspects pour créer une atmosphère favorisant un conflit. Ils ont ensuite légalisé une intervention au nom de l’aide humanitaire. Toute possibilité de paix a été écartée et la Yougoslavie a été démembrée à leur guise, laissant Slobodan Milosevic pour seul responsable. Le Kosovo est un bel exemple de leur mensonge et de leur justice aléatoire. Ils ont soutenu la séparation de cette région au nom du droit des peuples mais la refusent à la Crimée ! Les États-Unis et le camp atlantiste imposent leur vérité car ils se comportent en vainqueurs de la guerre froide. Ils estiment avoir triomphé du marxisme et tué le communisme.

Tous les événements qui ont suivi la chute du mur de Berlin révèlent les fausses promesses faites à Mikhaïl Gorbatchev sur la non-extension de l’OTAN. Cela résume leur conception de la diplomatie pour assurer leur suprématie. L’extension de l’orbite euro-atlantique est impérative. Le siècle qui vient pour les États-Unis sera un tournant. L’accroissement de leur richesse et de leur influence dépend de leur domination du modèle libéral. Ce modèle qu’ils ont imposé au reste de la planète à travers la mondialisation est fondé sur la compétition, l’exploitation et les inégalités. Cette compétition, les États-Unis ne pourront plus la remporter indéfiniment avec la montée de puissances émergentes. Devant cette phase de déclin, ils trichent. Mais ils n’avaient pas prévu que l’Eurasie se dresserait contre la domination de l’euro-atlantisme. La proximité géographique compte et la Russie et la Chine finiront par coopérer.

HD. Vous critiquez beaucoup le capitalisme, pourquoi alors avoir participé à une fête à Davos ?

E. K. J’étais à Davos pour une banque russe. J’avais besoin d’argent pour payer les musiciens de mon festival de Kunstendorf. On m’a donné beaucoup d’argent, avec lequel j’ai pu financer ce festival.

Entretien réalisé par VADIM KAMENKA et MICHAËL MÉLINARD

L’Humanité Dimanche, 5 FÉVRIER, 2015

KUSTURICA EN CINQ FILMS
1985. « Papa est en voyage D’affaires ». Pour son deuxième long métrage, le réalisateur, alors yougoslave, décroche sa première palme d’or, à seulement 31 ans.
1989. « Le temps des gitans ». il reçoit le prix de la mise en scène à Cannes.
1993. « Arizona Dream ». Pour sa première expérience américaine, Emir Kusturica s’offre un casting de rêve (Johnny Depp, Jerry Lewis, faye Dunaway) et fait voler des poissons sur une chanson d’iggy Pop. il est récompensé par un ours d’argent à Berlin.
1995. « UnDergroUnD ». il obtient sa deuxième palme d’or avec cette fresque historico-familiale de la Yougoslavie sur 50 ans, des années
1940 jusqu’à son éclatement dans les années 1990. Le film déclenche une polémique autour du caractère supposé pro-serbe de l’oeuvre.
1998. « CHat noir, CHat BLanC ». après avoir un temps songé à arrêter de tourner, Kusturica revient à la réalisation avec un film apaisé et décroche le lion d’argent du meilleur réalisateur à Venise.
A Lire :
« ÉTRANGER DANS LE MARIAGE », D’EMIR KUSTURICA, TRADUIT DU SERBO-CROATE PAR ALAIN CAPPON. ÉDITIONS JC LATTÈS, 270 PAGES, 20 EUROS.
 

Mer du Nord. Découverte d’une forêt engloutie entre France et Angleterre

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Mer du Nord. Découverte d’une forêt engloutie entre France et Angleterre

Hervé HILLARD

Ex: http://www.ouest-france.fr

Une plongeuse scientifique vient de découvrir les vestiges de l'immense forêt engloutie voici 6 000 ans entre France et Angleterre. Une jolie promenade dans le temps.

Pas de ferry. Encore moins de tunnel sous la Manche. Pensez : pas de Manche du tout...

Voici 10 000 ans, le niveau de la mer était plus bas qu’aujourd’hui. Au moins 100 mètres plus bas.

Les hommes du Mésolithique pouvaient donc traverser à pied sec ce qui deviendra le Channel. Et installer des campements sur les sommets qui s’élevaient de la plaine entre Bretagne et Normandie, et qui deviendront Jersey, Guernesey, Sercq, Aurigny et Chausey.

Un cercle de pierres vieux de 5 000 ans

Chausey, où un cercle de pierres mégalithique a été découvert dans la vase voici quelques années, vieux d’environ 5 000 ans – et à l’époque évidemment réalisé sur ce qui était alors de la terre ferme.

Le cercle de pierres mésolithique découvert à Chausey, aujourd'hui posé sur la vase et recouvert à marée haute.

Voici 10 000 ans, en tout cas, une immense forêt couvrait la cuvette formée par la Manche, au fond de laquelle coulait un grand fleuve – la future Tamise.

Cette forêt, une plongeuse scientifique vient d’en découvrir des traces irréfutables.

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Troncs d'arbres et branches recouverts d'algues

A l'occasion d'une plongée, Dawn Watson, océanographe a fait une découverte surprenante, rapportée par le Washington Post : les vestiges de cette forêt, engloutie voici environ 6 000 ans.

« J'ai d'abord pensé que c'était des morceaux d'épaves », a expliqué Dawn Watson à la BBC. Avant qu'elle se rende compte qu'il s'agissait de troncs d'arbres et de branches recouverts d'algues.

Les géologues connaissent cette forêt qui, à une période de glaciation (donc de bas niveau des océans), se dressait entre la France et l'Angleterre sur une terre appelée Doggerland (voir l'illustration ci-dessous).

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Un vrai « paradis »

« Il y a 10 000 ans, cet espace était un des plus riches en matière de chasse, de capture d'oiseaux et de pêche en Europe », raconte Bernhard Weninger de l'université de Cologne. On y trouvait « un bassin important d'eau de source, alimenté par la Tamise à l'ouest et par le Rhin à l'est », explique le scientifique, qui n’hésite pas à comparer l’endroit à un « paradis ».

Cette forêt a été peu à peu engloutie lors de la dernière fonte des glaces, il y a environ 6 000 ans. Qui a aussi submergé ce qui deviendra la baie du Mont-Saint-Michel, isolant les îles Anglo-Normandes et Chausey.

Mais au fait, pourquoi ces traces n'ont-elles été trouvées qu'aujourd'hui ? L'océanographe Dawn Watson pense que si les vestiges de la forêt sont désormais visibles, c'est grâce à une tempête qui a touché la côte du comté de Norfolk en 2013. Et qui permet, aujourd'hui, de se promener dans les bois.

Hervé Hillard

Ancient underwater forest discovered off Norfolk coast

Nature experts have discovered a remarkable submerged forest thousands of years old under the sea close to the Norfolk coast.
The trees were part of an area known as 'Doggerland' which formed part of a much bigger area before it was flooded by the North Sea.
It was once so vast that hunter-gatherers who lived in the vicinity could have walked to Germany across its land mass.
The underwater forest was discovered by Dawn Watson and Rob Spray from Sea Search on a diving trip to study marine life.
The prehistoric forest lay undiscovered until it was exposed by the extreme storms along the east of England coast in December 2013.
BBC Inside Out's David Whiteley reveals exclusive underwater footage of the submerged forest which experts believe could date back more than 10,000 years.

Diver finds 10,000 year old FOREST stretched as far as Europe hidden under the North Sea

Diver finds 10,000-year-old FOREST which originally stretched as far as Europe hidden under the North Sea Diver Dawn Watson found incredible ancient forest under the North Sea The 45-year-old discovered oak trees with eight-metre branches off Norfolk 10,000-year-old trees appear to have been hidden underwater since Ice Age Experts believe pre-historic forest uncovered during recent stormy weather Ms Watson said she was 'absolutely thrilled' with find off Cley next the Sea

A shocked diver has found an incredible 10,000-year-old pre-historic forest under the North Sea and experts believe it could have once stretched as far as Europe.

Diver Dawn Watson, 45, discovered the remarkable 'lost forest' when she was diving just 300 metres off the coast of Cley next the Sea, Norfolk.

She found complete oak trees with branches measuring eight metres long under the sea and experts believe they have been hidden off the coast of Norfolk since the Ice Age.

The forest is believed to have become exposed following the stormy weather last winter.

Ms Watson, who runs the Marine Conservation Society's survey project, Seasearch in East Anglia with partner Rob Spray, said she was 'absolutely thrilled' with the find.

She said: 'I couldn't believe what I was seeing at first.

'The sea was quite rough by the shore so I decided to dive slightly further out and after swimming over 300 metres of sand I found a long blackened ridge.

'When I looked more closely I realised it was wood and when I swam further along I started finding whole tree trunks with branches on top, which looked like they had been felled.

'It was amazing to find and to think the trees had been lying there completely undiscovered for thousands of years. You certainly don't expect to go out for a quick dive and find a forest.'

Ms Watson, who has been diving in the North Sea for about 16 years, said the trees are thought to have formed part of a huge forest, measuring thousands of acres.

But it is believed the forest was drowned when the ice caps melted and the sea level rose 120 metres.

The fallen trees are now lying on the ground where they have formed a natural reef, which is teaming with colourful fish, plants and wildlife.

I created this video with the YouTube Slideshow Creator (http://www.youtube.com/upload)

Miyamoto Musashi: un esprit sans entraves

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Miyamoto Musashi

Un esprit sans entraves

Rémy Valat
Ex: http://metamag.fr
Si il existe une personnalité japonaise à la renommée mondiale, c'est bien Miyamoto Musashi (1584-1645), ce rônin, maître-escrimeur hors-pair, artiste et philosophe, auteur des Écrits sur les Cinq Éléments, couramment et improprement appelé Traité des Cinq Roues.  Sa postérité est telle que ce que nous connaissons réellement de sa vie fraye avec le romanesque et le légendaire, et bien sûr ce personnage atypique a ses adulateurs et détracteurs chez les amoureux de la culture japonaise et des arts martiaux. Ce qui est certain, à la lecture des Écrits sur les Cinq Éléments, c'est que Musashi était un esprit libre en phase avec la vie. Ces cinq rouleaux rédigés à l'extrême fin de sa vie étaient destinés à transmettre l'essence de son art à ses élèves.

Toutefois, cet enseignement dépasse le simple cadre des techniques du combat au sabre et de la stratégie, ceux-ci ne sont que des voies parmi tant d'autres menant à l'accomplissement de soi. Mais, les Écrits sur les Cinq Éléments, sont teintés d'amertume : Musashi règle ses comptes. Il aspirait  à devenir l'instructeur d'un puissant seigneur voire du shôgun, mais comme bon nombre de japonais du XVIIe siècle, ses perspectives réelles d'ascension sociales se sont éteintes sur le champ de bataille de Sekigahara (20-21 octobre 1600). Il était du mauvais côté, celui des perdants : les Toyotomi et leurs alliés seront tenus éloignés des postes honorifiques ou les plus importants. Musashi s’est battu sous la bannière du seigneur Ukita, suzerain du seigneur Shinmen Sôkan. Ce clivage pèsera lourd ; les haines se raviveront au moment des guerres civiles qui précèdent et succèdent l’instauration de l'ère Meiji en 1868. 
 
Il sera l’invité du clan Ogasawara (1616-1617), puis du Hosokawa, famille apparentée au Tokugawa, mais n’aura ni le titre ni les émoluments d’un maître-d’armes de son niveau. Le clan Hosakawa l’a recruté en 1611 pour régler un différend polititique : il tue Sasaki Kojiro en combat singulier sur l’île de Funajima (avril 1612). Il sera un satellite du clan jusqu’à sa mort. Musashi participe comme soldat ou comme conseiller militaire aux guerres conduites par le shôgun contre les derniers partisans des Toyotomi (sièges d’Osaka, 1614-1615) et les Chrétiens de l’île de Shimabara conduits par Shirō Amakusa (1637-1638). Surtout, il mène à partir de 1618 (ou 1620) une politique d’adoption, certainement mêlé à un sincère désir de paternité, lui servant à placer des soutiens politiques. 
 

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miyllivre.jpgMiyamoto Mikinosuke deviendra un vassal de la seigneurie de Himeji (1622), mais le jeune homme suivra son seigneur dans la mort en pratiquant le suicide rituel (1626). Miyamoto Iori, qui serait peut-être un sien neveu, entrera au service du seigneur Ogasawara (1626). Surtout, en 1624, il séjourne à Edo, la capitale, et noue d’étroites relations avec Hayashi Razan, un célèbre savant confucéen, ce dernier proche du Shôgun l’aurait proposé comme maître de sabre, mais le Shôgun disposant déjà de deux maîtres d’armes de renom, Yagyû Munenori (école shinkage ryû) et Ono Jiroemon (Ono-ha Ittō-ryū),  déclinera l’offre. 

Nous savons peu de choses authentiques sur les duels de Miyamoto Musashi, le premier se serait déroulé au village de Hirafuku-mura en 1596, contre un élève de l’école Shînto-ryû. Musashi n’avait que 12 ans. En 1604, il gagne une série de duels contre le clan Yoshioka dans la banlieue de Kyôtô. Il aurait ensuite formé Tada Hanzaburô, un moine du temple d’Enkôji, qu’il autorisa à enseigner à la fin de son apprentissage. En 1607, il gagne un duel contre Shishido Baiken, un expert en kusari-gama (une faucille liée à une chaîne se terminant par un poids en acier). De passage dans la capitale, il vainc deux adeptes de la shinkage-ryu, mais surtout échange avec Musô Gonnosuke, un expert du combat au bâton, celui-ci fera évoluer son art au contact de Musashi et créé une école (Shintô-Muso-ryû).

Que pouvons-nous avancer sur cet homme ? 

Son art est tout d’abord un héritage familial. Son père biologique (ou adoptif, selon d’autres hypothèses), Miyamoto Munisai, était un maître d’arme pratiquant le sabre et le jitte

Le jitte est une arme de neutralisation, sa lame est non-tranchante et effilée avec une griffe latérale au niveau de la garde. Le jitte était une arme d’appoint complétant le sabre. Toutefois, selon d’autres sources le jitte manipulé par Musashi aurait été un modèle à dix griffes. Le jitte et le sabre court (wakizashi) servaient à immobiliser ou à parer la lame de l’adversaire offrant une ouverture pour une frappe au sabre long (katana). Toutefois, pour Musashi, l’emploi des deux sabres est circonstancielle comme l’affirme les Écrits sur les Cinq Éléments, mais cette technique fait l’originalité de son école. C’était peut-être, outre les aspects techniques, un moyen de se différencier et de « séduire » un seigneur en quête d’instructeur. L’école de Musashi, la Hyōhō Niten Ichi ryū (“l’École de la stratégie des deux Ciels comme une Terre”) existe encore de nos jours, mais l’usage des deux sabres n’était guère prisé pendant l’époque d’Edo. La manipulation de deux armes nécessite un entraînement particulier et le dégainé n’est pas aisé, surtout en espace clos (De même, le retour des deux lames dans leurs fourreaux nécessite que l’on se dessaisisse de l’une d’entre-elle). Les samouraïs préféreront de loin, l’usage du katana ou du wakizashi et rarement les deux en même temps.
  
miy2020861069_1_75.jpgCe qui reste de Musashi : l’empreinte spirituelle d’un homme, qui n’était probablement pas le meilleur artiste martial du Japon (la vie se réduit-elle aux arts martiaux ? Musashi était par ailleurs artiste et philosophe), mais d’un homme libre (ou pour le moins qui a pu se construire une marge d’autonomie plus importante que la moyenne au regard de sa situation sociale) qui se contentait d’être pleinement, de transmettre et de construire. Ayant atteint la maturité spirituelle et technique, Miyamoto Musashi vainquait sans tuer.  Les Écrits sur les Cinq Éléments respirent la vie, c’est un modèle de pensée aux antipodes du caractère morbide et étriqué du hagakure de Yamamoto Tsunetomo. Le livre de Musashi est important car, il révèle les techniques gardées généralement secrètes par les autres écoles, à savoir les techniques corporelles (respiration, distance, postures, etc.). Pour une lecture approfondie, il est vivement recommandé de lire la traduction des Écrits sur les Cinq Éléments et la biographie de Miyamoto Musashi par Kenji Tokitsu (Miyamoto Musashi. Maître de sabre japonais du XVIIe siècle, Points Sagesse, 1998). Le texte est analysé en profondeur et les cinq formules techniques (utilisant les deux sabres) sont complétées par une présentation des katas tels qu’ils sont encore pratiqués de nos jours (Imai Masayuki, 10e successeur de la branche principale de l’école de Musashi). 

Ces techniques sont visibles sur le site de la branche française de l’école

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Selfie Culture at the Intersection of the Corporate and the Surveillance States

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Terrorizing the Self

Selfie Culture at the Intersection of the Corporate and the Surveillance States

by HENRY GIROUX
Ex: http://www.counterpunch.org

Surveillance has become a growing feature of daily life wielded by both the state and the larger corporate sphere. This merger registers both the transformation of the political state into the corporate state as well as the transformation of a market economy into a criminal economy. One growing attribute of the merging of state and corporate surveillance apparatuses is the increasing view of privacy on the part of the American public as something to escape from rather than preserve as a precious political right. The surveillance and security-corporate state is one that not only listens, watches, and gathers massive amounts of information through data mining necessary for monitoring the American public—now considered as both potential terrorists and a vast consumer market- but also acculturates the public into accepting the intrusion of surveillance technologies and privatized commodified values into all aspects of their lives. Personal information is willingly given over to social media and other corporate based websites such as Instagram, Facebook, MySpace, and other media platforms and harvested daily as people move from one targeted website to the next across multiple screens and digital apparatuses. As Ariel Dorfman points out, “social media users gladly give up their liberty and privacy, invariably for the most benevolent of platitudes and reasons,” all the while endlessly shopping online and texting.[1] While selfies may not lend themselves directly to giving up important private information online, they do speak to the necessity to make the self into an object of public concern, if not a manifestation of how an infatuation with selfie culture now replaces any notion of the social as the only form of agency available to many people. Under such circumstances, it becomes much easier to put privacy rights at risk as they are viewed less as something to protect than to escape from in order to put the self on public display.

When the issue of surveillance takes place outside of the illegal practices performed by government intelligence agencies, critics most often point to the growing culture of inspection and monitoring that occurs in a variety of public spheres through ever present digital technologies used in the collecting of a mass of diverse information, most evident in the use video cameras that inhabit every public space from the streets, commercial establishments, and workplaces to the schools our children attend as well as in the myriad scanners placed at the entry points of airports, stores, sporting events, and the like. Rarely do critics point to the emergence of the selfie as another index of the public’s need to escape from the domain of what was once considered to be the cherished and protected realm of the private and personal. Privacy rights in this instance that were once viewed as a crucial safeguard in preventing personal and important information from being inserted into the larger public domain. In the present oversaturated information age, the right to privacy has gone the way of an historical relic and for too many Americans privacy is no longer a freedom to be cherished and by necessity to be protected. In fact, young people, in particular, cannot escape from the realm of the private fast enough. The rise of the selfie offers one index of this retreat from privacy rights and thus another form of legitimation for devaluing these once guarded rights altogether. One place to begin is with the increasing presence of the selfie, that is, the ubiquity of self-portraits being endlessly posted on various social media. One recent commentary on the selfie reports that:

A search on photo sharing app Instagram retrieves over 23 million photos uploaded with the hashtag #selfie, and a whopping 51 million with the hashtag #me. Rihanna, Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga and Madonna are all serial uploaders of selfies. Model Kelly Brook took so many she ended up “banning” herself. The Obama children were spotted posing into their mobile phones at their father’s second inauguration. Even astronaut Steve Robinson took a photo of himself during his repair of the Space Shuttle Discovery. Selfie-ism is everywhere. The word “selfie” has been bandied about so much in the past six months it’s currently being monitored for inclusion in the Oxford Dictionary Online.[2]

What this new politics of digital self-representation suggests is that the most important transgression against privacy may not only be happening through the unwarranted watching, listening, and collecting of information by the state. What is also taking place through the interface of state and corporate modes of the mass collecting of personal information is the practice of normalizing surveillance by upping the pleasure quotient and enticements for young people and older consumers. These groups are now constantly urged to use the new digital technologies and social networks as a mode of entertainment and communication. Yet, they function largely to simulate false notions of community and to socialize young people into a regime of security and commodification in which their identities, values, and desires are inextricably tied to a culture of private addictions, self-help, and consuming.

Selfie-Per-Hour.jpgThe more general critique of selfies points to their affirmation as an out of control form of vanity and narcissism in a society in which an unchecked capitalism promotes forms of rampant self-interests that both legitimize selfishness and corrode individual and moral character.[3] In this view, a market driven moral economy of increased individualism and selfishness has supplanted any larger notion of caring, social responsibility, and the public good. For example, one indication that Foucault’s notion of self-care has now moved into the realm of self-obsession can be seen in the “growing number of people who are waiting in line to see plastic surgeons to enhance images they post of themselves on smartphones and other social media sites. Patricia Reaney points out that “Plastic surgeons in the United States have seen a surge in demand for procedures ranging from eye-lid lifts to rhinoplasty, popularly known as nose job, from patients seeking to improve their image in selfies and on social media.”[4] It appears that selfies are not only an indication of the public’s descent into the narrow orbits of self-obsession and individual posturing but also good for the economy, especially plastic surgeons who generally occupy the one percent of the upper class of rich elites. The unchecked rise of selfishness is now partly driven by the search for new forms of capital, which recognize no boundaries and appear to have no ethical limitations.

In a society in which the personal is the only politics there is, there is more at stake in selfie culture than rampant narcissism or the swindle of fulfillment offered to teenagers and others whose self-obsession and insecurity takes an extreme, if not sometimes dangerous, turn. What is being sacrificed is not just the right to privacy, the willingness to give up the self to commercial interests, but the very notion of individual and political freedom. The atomization that in part promotes the popularity of selfie culture is not only nourished by neoliberal fervor for unbridled individualism, but also by the weakening of public values and the emptying out of collective and engaged politics. The political and corporate surveillance state is not just concerned about promoting the flight from privacy rights but also attempts to use that power to canvass every aspect of one’s life in order to suppress dissent, instill fear in the populace, and repress the possibilities of mass resistance against unchecked power.[5] Selfie culture is also fed by a spiritually empty consumer culture driven by a never-ending “conditions of visibility…in which a state of permanent illumination (and performance) is inseparable from the non-stop operation of global exchange and circulation.”[6] Jonathan Crary’s insistence that entrepreneurial excess now drives a 24/7 culture points rightly to a society driven by a constant state of “producing, consuming, and discarding”—a central feature of selfie culture.[7]

Once again, too many young people today seem to run from privacy by making every aspect of their lives public. Or they limit their presence in the public sphere to posting endless images of themselves. In this instance, community becomes reduced to the sharing of a nonstop production of images in which the self becomes the only source of agency worth validating. At the same time, the popularity of selfies points beyond an over indulgent narcissism, or a desire to collapse the public spheres into endless and shameless representations of the self. Selfies and the culture they produce cannot be entirely collapsed into the logic of domination. Hence, I don’t want to suggest that selfie culture is only a medium for various forms of narcissistic performance. Some commentators have suggested that selfies enable people to reach out to each other, present themselves in positive ways, and use selfies to drive social change. And there are many instances of this type of behavior.

Many young people claim that selfies offer the opportunity to invite comments by friends, raise their self-esteem, and offer a chance for those who are powerless and voiceless to represent themselves in a more favorable and instructive light.[8] For instance, Rachel Simmons makes a valiant attempt to argue that selfies are especially good for girls.[9] While this is partly true, I think Erin Gloria Ryan is right in responding to Simmons claim about selfies as a “positive-self-esteem builder” when she states: “Stop this. Selfies aren’t empowering; they’re a high tech reflection of the fucked up way society teaches women that their most important quality is their physical attractiveness.”[10] It is difficult to believe that mainstream, corporate saturated selfie culture functions to mostly build self-esteem among young girls who are a target for being reduced to salacious sexual commodities and a never-ending market that defines them largely as tidbits of a sensationalized celebrity culture. What is often missing in the marginalized use of selfies is that for the most part the practice is driven by a powerful and pervasive set of poisonous market driven values that frame this practice in ways that are often not talked about. Selfie culture is now a part of a market driven economy that encourages selfies as an act of privatization and consumption not as a practice that might support the public good.

What is missing from this often romanticized and depoliticized view of the popularity of selfies is that the mass acceptance, proliferation, and commercial appropriation of selfies suggests that the growing practice of producing representations that once filled the public space that focussed on important social problems and a sense of social responsibility are in decline among the American public, especially many young people whose identities and sense of agency is now shaped largely through the lens of a highly commodified and celebrity culture. We now live in a market-driven age defined as heroic by the conservative Ayn Rand, who argued in her book, The Virtue of Selfishness, that self-interest was the highest virtue and that altruism deserved nothing more than contempt. This retreat from the public good, compassion, care for the other, and the legitimation of a culture of cruelty and moral indifference is often registered in strange signposts and popularized in the larger culture. For instance, one expression of this new celebrity fed stupidity can be seen less in the endless prattle about the importance of selfies than in the rampant posturing inherent in selfie culture most evident in the widely marketed fanfare over Kim Kardashian’s appropriately named book, Selfish, which contains, of course, hundreds of her selfies. As Mark Fisher points out, this suggests a growing testimony to a commodified society in which “in a world of individualism everyone is trapped within their own feelings, trapped within their own imaginations…and unable to escape the tortured conditions of solipsism.”[11]

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Under the surveillance state, the greatest threat one faces is not simply the violation of one’s right to privacy, but the fact that the public is subject to the dictates of arbitrary power it no longer seems interested in contesting. And it is precisely this existence of unchecked power and the wider culture of political indifference that puts at risk the broader principles of liberty and freedom, which are fundamental to democracy itself. According to Skinner:

The response of those who are worried about surveillance has so far been too much couched, it seems to me, in terms of the violation of the right to privacy. Of course it’s true that my privacy has been violated if someone is reading my emails without my knowledge. But my point is that my liberty is also being violated, and not merely by the fact that someone is reading my emails but also by the fact that someone has the power to do so should they choose. We have to insist that this in itself takes away liberty because it leaves us at the mercy of arbitrary power. It’s no use those who have possession of this power promising that they won’t necessarily use it, or will use it only for the common good. What is offensive to liberty is the very existence of such arbitrary power.[12]

The rise of selfies under the surveillance state is only one register of neoliberal inspired flight from privacy. As I have argued elsewhere, the dangers of the surveillance state far exceed the attack on privacy or warrant simply a discussion about balancing security against civil liberties.[13] The critique of the flight from privacy fails to address how the growth of the surveillance state and its appropriation of all spheres of private life are connected to the rise of the punishing state, the militarization of American society, secret prisons, state-sanctioned torture, a growing culture of violence, the criminalization of social problems, the depoliticization of public memory, and one of the largest prison systems in the world, all of which “are only the most concrete, condensed manifestations of a diffuse security regime in which we are all interned and enlisted.”[14] The authoritarian nature of the corporate-state surveillance apparatus and security system with its “urge to surveill, eavesdrop on, spy on, monitor, record, and save every communication of any sort on the planet” [15] can only be fully understood when its ubiquitous tentacles are connected to wider cultures of control and punishment, including security-patrolled corridors of public schools, the rise in super-max prisons, the hyper-militarization of local police forces, the rise of the military-industrial-academic complex, and the increasing labeling of dissent as an act of terrorism in the U.S.[16] Selfies may be more than an expression of narcissism gone wild, the promotion of privatization over preserving public and civic culture with their attendant practice of social responsibility. They may also represent the degree to which the ideological and affective spaces of neoliberalism have turned privacy into a mimicry of celebrity culture that both abets and is indifferent to the growing surveillance state and its totalitarian revolution, one that will definitely be televised in an endlessly repeating selfie that owes homage to George Orwell.

Henry A. Giroux currently holds the McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest in the English and Cultural Studies Department and a Distinguished Visiting Professorship at Ryerson University. His most recent books are America’s Education Deficit and the War on Youth (Monthly Review Press, 2013) and Neoliberalism’s War on Higher Education (Haymarket Press, 2014). His web site is www.henryagiroux.com.

Notes.

[1] Ariel Dorfman, “Repression by Any Other Name,” Guernica (February 3, 2014). Online: http://www.guernicamag.com/features/repression-by-any-other-name/

[2] “Self-portraits and social media: The rise of the ‘Selfie’,” BBC News Magazine(June 6, 2013)

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-22511650

[3] Anita Biressi and Heather Nunn, “Selfishness in austerity times,” Soundings , Issue 56, (Spring 2014), pp. 54-66

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/soundings_a_journal_of_politics_and_culture/v056/56.biressi.pdf

[4] Patricia Reaney, “Nip, tuck, Click: Demand for U.S. plastic surgery rises in selfie era,” Reuters (November 29, 2014). Online: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/29/life-selfies-surgery-idUSL1N0SW1FI20141129

[5] Brad Evans and Henry A. Giroux, Disposable Futures (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2015).

[6] Jonathan Crary, 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep, (Verso, 2013) (Brooklyn, NY: Verso Press, 2013), p. 5.

[7] Ibid., p. 17.

[8] The kind of babble defending selfies without any critical commentary can be found in Jenna Wortham, “Self-portraits and social media: The rise of the ‘selfie’,”BBC News Magazine (June 6, 2013). Online:

Http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/20/sunday-review/my-selfie-myself.html

[9] Rachel Simmons, “Selfies Are Good for Girls,” Slate (November 20, 2013). Online: http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2013/11/selfies_on_instagram_and_facebook_are_tiny_bursts_of_girl_pride.html

[10] Erin Gloria Ryan, “Selfies Aren’t Empowering. They’re a Cry for Help,” Jezebel (November 21, 2013). Online: http://jezebel.com/selfies-arent-empowering-theyre-a-cry-for-help-1468965365

[11] Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? (Winchester, UK: Zero Books, 2009), p. 74.

[12] Quentin Skinner and Richard Marshall “Liberty, Liberalism and Surveillance: a historic overview” Open Democracy (July 26, 2013). Online: http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/quentin-skinner-richard-marshall/liberty-liberalism-and-surveillance-historic-overview

[13] Henry A. Giroux, “Totalitarian Paranoia in the Post-Orwellian Surveillance State,” Truthout (February 10, 2015). Online: http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/21656-totalitarian-paranoia-in-the-post-orwellian-surveillance-state

[14] Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Declaration (Argo Navis Author Services, 2012), p. 23.

[15] Tom Engelhardt, “Tomgram: Engelhardt, A Surveillance State Scorecard,” Tom Dispath.com (November 12, 2013). Online: http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175771/

[16] I take up many of these issues in Henry A. Giroux, The Violence of Organized Forgetting (San Francisco: City Lights Publishing, 2014), Henry A. Giroux, The Twilight of the Social (Boulder: Paradigm Press, 2012), and Henry A. Giroux, Zombie Politics and Culture in the Age of Casino Capitalism (New York: Peter Lang, 2011).

mercredi, 11 février 2015

Faye à Strasbourg!

Vendredi 13 février à Strasbourg - Conférence de Guillaume Faye: “La colonisation de l’Europe. Situation et solutions”

 
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Chypre: bases militaires à la disposition de la Russie

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Chypre, ce pays de la zone euro qui vient de mettre des bases militaires situées sur son territoire à la disposition de la Russie

Auteur : Mylène Vandecasteele
Ex: http://zejournal.mobi

Le président chypriote Nicos Anastasiades a annoncé vendredi que son pays venait de proposer à la Russie d'utiliser des bases militaires aériennes et navales situées sur son territoire, rapporte le site chinois China Gate.

Anastasiades a indiqué qu’il se rendrait à Moscou le 25 février prochain pour signer un accord qui renforcera les relations des deux pays dans le domaine de la défense. « Il y a un ancien accord (de défense) qu’il faut renouveler tel quel. En même temps, des sites additionnels seront mis à disposition, exactement comme nous le faisons avec d’autres pays, la France et l’Allemagne, par exemple », a dit le président.

L’accord porte notamment sur une base aérienne située sur la côte Sud de l’ile, à 40 km de la base militaire d’Akriotiri, qui est utilisée par l’Air Force britannique, et où l'OTAN prépare ses opérations au Moyen et Proche-Orient.

Chypre et la Russie partagent des liens historiques étroits, basés sur des traditions culturelles et religieuses communes.

La Russie a toujours été l'un des plus fidèles alliés de Chypre dans le différend qui l’oppose à la Turquie. Les Russes ont offert un soutien politique et militaire qui s’est concrétisé par des ventes d’armes.

Au cours de l’interview qu’il a donnée, Anastasiades a rappelé qu’il s’opposait à ce que l’Europe inflige de nouvelles sanctions contre la Russie, et qu’il voulait éviter toute nouvelle dégradation des relations entre la Russie et l’Europe. Il a précisé que les sanctions avaient eu un impact négatif sur certains secteurs de l’économie chypriote, et cité le tourisme, l'immobilier et les investissements dans la propriété.

Chypre a dû demander un programme d'urgence de 10 milliards d'euros en 2013 à l'Eurogroupe et le FMI.

Selon Russia Today, au cours des 20 dernières années, la Russie a investi plus de 30 milliards de dollars à Chypre. Ces derniers mois, la Grèce et Chypre ont émis des signaux qui indiquent qu'elles veulent renforcer leurs liens avec la Russie.

Chypre n’est pas membre de l'OTAN.


- Source : Mylène Vandecasteele

Bassam Tahhan: "En Syrie, Bachar Al-Assad est légitime"

 

TVL : Bassam Tahhan:

"En Syrie, Bachar Al-Assad est légitime"

http://www.tvlibertes.com/

https://www.facebook.com/tvlibertes

https://twitter.com/tvlofficiel

Pour nous soutenir :

http://www.tvlibertes.com/don/

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Frankrijk en Duitsland breken met koers VS en kiezen voor Rusland

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Frankrijk en Duitsland breken met koers VS en kiezen voor Rusland

EU-lid Cyprus biedt Rusland militaire bases aan

De gewone Europeaan mag weer hoop hebben op een vreedzame afloop van de door de Amerikaanse regering gecreëerde crisis rond Oekraïne, nu zowel Duitsland als Frankrijk in scherpe bewoordingen afstand hebben genomen van het beleid van de regering Obama. De voormalige Franse president Nicolas Sarkozy, straks mogelijk opnieuw verkiesbaar, zei zelfs dat ‘wij een gemeenschappelijke beschaving met Rusland hebben. De belangen van de Amerikanen met de Russen zijn niet de belangen van Europa en Rusland.’

De Duitse minister van Buitenlandse Zaken, Frank-Walter Steinmeier was eveneens fel en zei dat de strategie van Washington ‘niet alleen riskant, maar ook contraproductief is’. Zijn woorden deden de bewering van zijn Amerikaanse collega John Kerry dat er ‘geen sprake was van een breuk tussen de VS en Duitsland’ volledig teniet.

Op de Veiligheidsconferentie in München herhaalde Steinmeier de eerdere verzekering van bondskanselier Angela Merkel dat Duitsland, en specifiek zijn partij, de SPD, nooit akkoord zal gaan met de door het Witte Huis geëiste wapenleveranties aan het regime in Kiev, dat nog altijd hoopt de pro-Russische separatisten te verslaan.

Minister van Economische Zaken Sigmar Gabriel toonde zich voorzichtig hoopvol over de gesprekken met Rusland. Hij zei dat hij van Putin verwacht dat deze de ‘uitgestoken hand van de EU beetpakt’, omdat ‘de EU na de crisis streeft naar een hernieuwing van het partnerschap met Rusland.

De huidige Franse president Francois Hollande lijkt eveneens ‘om’, en roept inmiddels op tot grotere autonomie voor het voornamelijk Russische sprekende oosten van Oekraïne. Op een congres van de UMP, waar zijn voorganger Sarkozy de leider van is, voegde Sarkozy nog toe dat ‘wij geen herleving van de koude oorlog tussen Europa en Rusland willen. De Krim heeft Rusland gekozen, en dat kunnen wij hen niet verwijten. We moeten bekijken hoe we een vredesmacht kunnen creëren om de Russisch sprekende mensen in Oekraïne te beschermen.’

Ook de NAVO en Brussel krijgen een klap in het gezicht, en wel van EU-lid Cyprus, dat besloten heeft om een vliegveld van de luchtmacht open te stellen voor Russische militaire toestellen.

Kortom: eindelijk weer eens hoopvol nieuws, zo vroeg in de morgen van maandag 9 februari. En nu maar hopen dat de Duitsers en Fransen hun ruggen recht houden, want de regering Obama zal de politieke druk op Europa om anti-Rusland te blijven waarschijnlijk nog veel verder gaan opvoeren.

Xander

(1) Zero Hedge

Zie ook o.a.:

08-02: ‘Europa moet oorlogskoers VS en NAVO loslaten en samen met Rusland wereldvrede redden’

11 Septembre: ces 28 pages qui menacent l'axe Washington-Riyad

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11 Septembre: ces 28 pages qui menacent l'axe Washington-Riyad

Par Laure Mandeville
Ex: http://www.lefigaro.fr
 

Un document classifié prouve le rôle financier des Saoudiens dans les attentats du World Trade Center, assure l'ex-sénateur Bob Graham.

De la correspondante du Figaro à Washington

Dans les sous-sols du bâtiment du Capitole, tout près de l'entrée où des flots de touristes se présentent pour la visite du Congrès, il existe une pièce sécurisée où le Comité pour le renseignement de la Chambre des représentants conserve des documents secrets hautement classifiés. L'un d'eux, long de 28 pages, et intitulé «Éléments, discussion et récit concernant certains sujets sensibles de sécurité nationale», a fait couler beaucoup d'encre depuis treize ans.

Ce texte, qui pose la question du rôle de l'Arabie saoudite dans l'organisation des attentats du World Trade Center, faisait partie du fameux rapport sur le 11 septembre 2001, supervisé par le Comité du renseignement du Sénat, et son ancien président Bob Graham. Mais au moment de sa publication en 2002, ce sénateur démocrate de Floride, qui a depuis quitté le Congrès, a découvert avec stupéfaction que les 28 pages avaient été supprimées et classifiées à la demande de l'Administration Bush. «Raisons de sécurité nationale», avait expliqué à l'époque l'équipe de George W. Depuis toutes ces années, c'est ce même argument qui a empêché la déclassification du texte, malgré les efforts de Graham, l'un des rares à avoir lu le document, même s'il peut être accessible aux élus qui en font la demande.

«C'est notre refus de regarder en face la vérité qui a créé la nouvelle vague d'extrémisme qui a frappé Paris.»

L'ancien sénateur Bob Graham

«Ce rapport montre la participation directe du gouvernement saoudien dans le financement du 11 Septembre», déclare l'ancien sénateur au Figaro. «Nous savons au moins que plusieurs des 19 kamikazes ont reçu le soutien financier de plusieurs entités saoudiennes, y compris du gouvernement. Le fait de savoir si les autres ont été soutenus aussi par l'Arabie saoudite n'est pas clair, car cette information a été cachée au peuple américain», ajoute Graham. «On nous dit que cela ne peut être fait pour des raisons de sécurité nationale, mais c'est exactement le contraire», poursuit-il.

«Publier est important précisément pour notre sécurité nationale. Les Saoudiens savent ce qu'ils ont fait, ils savent que nous savons. La vraie question est la manière dont ils interprètent notre réponse. Pour moi, nous avons montré que quoi qu'ils fassent, il y aurait impunité. Ils ont donc continué à soutenir al-Qaida, puis plus récemment dans l'appui économique et idéologique à l'État islamique. C'est notre refus de regarder en face la vérité qui a créé la nouvelle vague d'extrémisme qui a frappé Paris», martèle l'ancien sénateur. Un autre élu qui a lu le document a confié au New Yorker que «les preuves du soutien du gouvernement saoudien pour les événements du 11 Septembre étaient très dérangeantes» et que la «vraie question est de savoir si cela a été approuvé au niveau de la famille royale ou en dessous».

En 2002, Graham était bien seul dans son combat pour «la vérité». Mais à la mi-janvier, il a tenu une conférence de presse au Sénat sur ce thème en compagnie de deux représentants, le républicain Walter Jones et le démocrate Stephen Lynch, qui ont présenté une résolution HR 428 appelant à la déclassification. «Le soutien grandit mais atteindra-t-il le seuil qui permettra au Congrès de faire pression sur l'Administration Obama? Ce n'est pas clair», note l'ancien élu. Jones et Lynch ont écrit au président pour lui demander d'agir. Selon l'un des membres de l'organisation des familles victimes du 11 Septembre, Terence Schiavo, Obama aurait promis de déclassifier un jour.

«Nous affirmons que des organismes de bienfaisance établis par le gouvernement du Royaume pour propager l'idéologie radicale wahhabite ont servi de sources majeures de financement et de soutien logistique à al-Qaida, pendant toute la décennie qui a mené au 11 Septembre.»

Sean Carter, un des avocats des victimes du 11 Septembre

Les familles de victimes sont en première ligne dans ce combat. Si leurs avocats pouvaient prouver la participation de l'État saoudien aux attentats, Riyad serait forcé de leur verser des compensations. «Nous affirmons que des organismes de bienfaisance établis par le gouvernement du Royaume pour propager l'idéologie radicale wahhabite ont servi de sources majeures de financement et de soutien logistique à al-Qaida, pendant toute la décennie qui a mené au 11 Septembre», a confié l'un des avocats des familles, Sean Carter, au New Yorker. Selon l'hebdomadaire, deux des kamikazes auraient notamment été financés et hébergés à San Diego par un personnage en contact permanent avec la section du ministère des Affaires islamiques basée à Los Angeles. L'Arabie saoudite nie toutefois toute responsabilité et a appelé à la déclassification des 28 pages afin de laver sa réputation.

Bob Graham pense que derrière ces appels, le Royaume fait pression sur Washington pour que le rapport reste confidentiel. Mais certaines des personnes qui ont travaillé sur le document apportent de l'eau au moulin des Saoudiens, en soulignant que le texte n'établit pas de manière irrévocable la participation des autorités saoudiennes. C'est notamment le cas de Philip Zelikow, directeur de la commission du 11 Septembre, qui qualifie les 28 pages «d'accumulation de rapports préliminaires non confirmés». «Je ne suis pas d'accord. Si ce rapport est superficiel et peu convaincant, pourquoi en avoir empêché la publication depuis treize ans?» réagit Graham.

Le fait que Barack Obama ait écourté sa visite en Inde la semaine dernière, pour aller saluer le nouveau roi d'Arabie en compagnie de 30 hautes responsables politiques - alors qu'aucun n'avait pris la peine de se rendre à la marche de Paris après les attaques terroristes - en dit long sur les priorités de Washington.

Pour lui, «la réponse est évidente concernant les Bush, qui sont très proches des Saoudiens» qui craignaient pour leur réputation. La raison pour laquelle Obama suit la même voie semble surtout venir des énormes implications géopolitiques que pourraient avoir de telles révélations sur une relation américano-saoudienne, toujours considérée comme vitale. Le fait que le président ait écourté sa visite en Inde la semaine dernière, pour aller saluer le nouveau roi d'Arabie en compagnie de 30 hautes responsables politiques - alors qu'aucun n'avait pris la peine de se rendre à la marche de Paris après les attaques terroristes - en dit long sur les priorités de Washington.

Avec les mouvements de plaques tectoniques qui secouent le Moyen Orient - l'opposition chiites-sunnites, la question du nucléaire iranien, la guerre d'Irak et de Syrie et la déstabilisation du Yémen -, «Obama ne veut pas introduire un nouveau facteur d'instabilité», dit Graham. Même si son jeu avec l'Iran semble indiquer une volonté de se distancer de l'Arabie, le choix est clairement de maintenir plusieurs fers au feu. Faute de mieux.

De la guerre du Golfe au gros souk planétaire

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De la guerre du Golfe au gros souk planétaire
 
On assiste bien à l’émergence d’un monde islamo-occidental.
 
Ecrivain
Ex: http://www.bvoltaire.com

Il y a quinze ans, tout le monde prophétisait un choc des civilisations. Nous avions d’un côté le gentil Occident moderne et démocrate, de l’autre la barbarie musulmane. Les camps étaient bien définis, nous étions tous contents.

Nous oubliions seulement qu’Obama serait élu juste après l’autre ; que le pouvoir saoudien ne cesserait d’affirmer sa loi sur un Occident post-chrétien et post-nucléaire – pourvu qu’il récupérât sa dîme en dollars ; que le clan des Ben Laden avait été le seul à pouvoir quitter le sol américain le soir de l’attentat ; que les composants de cette tribu bien américanisée et descendante de Ladinos d’Espagne construiraient les nouveaux centres de pèlerinage de La Mecque en massacrant le patrimoine traditionnel ; que toute base (Al-Qaïda en arabe) américaine accélère non pas le choc mais l’osmose tératologique dont nous allons parler.

Modèle à suivre ? Principautés pirates comme les îles Caïmans des Caraïbes, paradis fiscaux recyclés dans un monde endetté, ces états élitistes incarnent au contraire le nec plus ultra de la mondialisation. Ils sont la fine fleur de la racaille émiettée des poussières d’Empire britannique. Leur civilisation repose comme la nôtre sur le centre commercial. Ces entités post-musulmanes façonnées par les souks anglais ignorent la terre, consacrant l’oasis marchande cernée de désert. Elles encensent les caravanes, nous les lignes commerciales. Elles n’aiment pas les armées nationales, elles aiment les mercenaires humanitaires. Elles ouvrent des musées d’art islamique, et leurs mosquées sont vides : c’est la civilisation des voleurs de Bagdad.

La population « farcesque » des États du Golfe annonce aussi notre triste avenir. Celle des Émirats a été multipliée par cent en cinquante ans. Il y a moins de 20 % de Qataris au Qatar. On trouve les cadres expatriés des multinationales qui aiment vivre sur ces hideuses tours et les pauvres boys venus en fraude des Philippines, et les esclaves du sous-continent. Ils représentent 80 % de la population, ces misérables venus des Indes, du Pakistan, qui n’ont aucun droit, et ne savent pas à quelle sauce ils seront mangés par leur patron. Ce modèle social et racial de Slumdog Millionaire est à l’image du modèle victorien de retour : malheur au pauvre ! C’est du Dickens à la sauce kebab.

On assiste donc bien à l’émergence d’un monde islamo-occidental que renforce l’appétit de terreur des médias, de tous leurs financiers. Les terroristes ou EGM (êtres médiatiquement générés) renforcent à propos la cohérence de cette parodie de civilisation ; s’il y a choc des civilisations, c’est – comme au Moyen Âge – sur le dos du monde orthodoxe : voyez la Grèce et la Russie, voyez les coptes en Égypte. Le nomadisme islamo-occidental a détruit, en un siècle, le Moyen-Orient chrétien et ce Moyen-Orient musulman qui, justement, n’était pas islamique. Nous ne préserverons que le pire de chaque civilisation.

Le désert croît ; malheur à qui recèle des déserts !

Filmbespreking: Michiel de Ruyter

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Filmbespreking: Michiel de Ruyter

door
Ex: http://rechtsactueel.com

Het is bepaald geen sinecure om de Nederlandse volkheld Michiel Adriaanszoon de Ruyter waardig te verfilmen, die een groot deel van zijn leven ten dienste van het vaderland de zeeën heeft bevaren. Op allerlei functies binnen de Nederlandse vloot heeft hij zich uitermate verdienstelijk gemaakt. Internationaal bekend is de overwinning bij Kijkduin in 1673, de Engelse en Franse vloot was in aantallen veel te sterk voor de Nederlandse vloot, maar De Ruyter wist de overwinning te behalen en te voorkomen dat de vijandige troepen aan wal gingen en Nederland bezetten.

Een dergelijke man van de daad, doorheen de eeuwen zeer geliefd onder het Nederlandse volk, ja ga dat verhaal maar eens verfilmen…. Toch is het filmregisseur zeker geslaagd, het is een knappe verfilming geworden vol met actie en romantiek en het redelijk vast aanhouden van de historische werkelijkheid. De producent is Klaas de Jong, die eerder verdienstelijk de Scheepsjongens van Bontekoe verfilmde.

De hoofdrol wordt gespeeld door Frank Lammers, die Michiel de Ruyter goed weet te spelen, als gewone Zeeuwse volksjongen die vanwege zijn grote kwaliteiten opklimt binnen de marine, sterk en krachtig, aangevuld met wat Zeeuwse humor. Ook zijn er andere rollen die alleraardigst naar voren komen, zo schittert Barry Atsma als een daadkrachtige en intelligente Johan de Witt en Sanne Langelaar als de vrouw van de Ruyter, als een ijzersterke moeder en liefdevolle vrouw.

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Prins van Oranje Willem III komt er minder van af, die wordt geportretteerd als homofiele slappeling, die wordt gestuurd en gemanipuleerd door Oranjegezinde intriganten. Daarentegen wordt de Republiek opgehemeld en haar verdedigers grote kwaliteiten aangemeten. Wellicht is ook interessant daarbij te vernoemen dat de Republiek vooral ook talloze ontwortelde bureaucraten voortbracht, die zich op behoorlijke schaal gingen verrijken ten koste van de Nederlandse bevolking.

Echter dit doet nauwelijks af van de heerlijke kijk- en luisterbeleving die de film is. Vechtpartijen en romantische scènes wisselen elkaar af onder het genot van ophemelende muziekdeunen. Meerdere malen zien we ook de Ruyter knokken met de bemanning van de Engelse vloot en ook zien we de elite eenheid Korps Mariniers aan de slag op de Theems. Ja, het zijn natuurlijk ook mooie stukken Nederlandse geschiedenis.

Het zeker een film om in het filmhuis te gaan bezoeken, want met de extra effecten en dramatische muziek en de knappe beelden van op de schepen, krijgt men zo meer dan een extra kijkervaring.

Elementos nos 85, 86, 87 & 88

ELEMENTOS Nº 88. LA NUEVA DERECHA Y LA CUESTIÓN DEL FASCISMO

 


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SUMARIO.


Nueva Derecha, ¿extrema derecha o derecha extravagante?, por José Andrés Fernández Leost

La Nueva Derecha y la cuestión del Fascismo, por Diego Luis Sanromán

La Nueva Derecha. ¿«Software» neofascista?, por Rodrigo Agulló

Plus Ça Change!  El pedigrí fascista de la Nueva Derecha, por Roger Griffin

¿Discusión o inquisición? La Nueva Derecha y el "caso De Benoist", por Pierre-André Taguieff

El Eterno Retorno. ¿Son fascistas las ideas-fuerza de la Nueva Derecha Europea?, por Joan Antón-Mellón

¿Viejos prejuicios o nuevo paradigma político? La Nueva Derecha francesa vista por la Nueva Izquierda norteamericana, por Paul Piccone

La Nueva Derecha y la reformulación «metapolítica» de la extrema derecha, por Miguel Ángel Simón

El Frente Nacional y la Nueva Derecha, por Charles Champetier

La Nueva Derecha y el Fascismo, por Marcos Roitman Rosenmann

ELEMENTOS Nº 87. LEO STRAUSS: ¿PADRE DE LOS NEOCONS?

 
 

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Sumario.-


Leo Strauss: filosofía, política y valores, por Alain de Benoist


Leo Strauss, el padre secreto de los “neocon”, por Esteban Hernández


Leo Strauss y la esencia de la filosofía política, por Eduardo Hernando Nieto


Leo Strauss, los straussianos y los antistraussianos, por Demetrio Castro


Leo Strauss, ideas sin contexto, por Benigno Pendás


Leo Strauss: los abismos del pensamiento conservador, por Ernesto Milá


Leo Strauss y la política como (in)acción, por Jorge San Miguel


Leo Strauss y la recuperación de la racionalidad política clásica, por Iván Garzón-Vallejo


¿Qué es filosofía política? de Leo Strauss. Apuntes para una reflexión sobre el conocimiento político, por Jorge Orellano


Leo Strauss y su crítica al liberalismo, por Alberto Buela


Leo Strauss y la redención clásica del mundo moderno, por Sergio Danil Morresi


Leo Strauss: lenguaje, tradición e historia, por Jesús Blanco Echauri


Mentiras piadosas y guerra perpetua: Leo Strauss y el neoconservadurismo, por Danny Postel


La mano diestra del capitalismo: de Leo Strauss al movimiento neoconservador, por Francisco José Fernández-Cruz Sequera

 

ELEMENTOS Nº 86. UN DIÁLOGO CONSERVADOR: SCHMITT-STRAUSS

 





Sumario.-

¿Teología Política o Filosofía Política? La amistosa conversación entre Carl Schmitt y Leo Strauss, por Eduardo Hernando Nieto

Entre Carl Schmitt y Thomas Hobbes. Un estudio del liberalismo moderno a partir del pensamiento de Leo Strauss, por José Daniel Parra

Schmitt, Strauss y lo político. Sobre un diálogo entre ausentes, por Martín González

La afirmación de lo político. Carl Schmitt, Leo Strauss y la cuestión del fundamento, por Luciano Nosetto

Modernidad y liberalismo. Hobbes entre Schmitt y Strauss, por Andrés Di Leo Razuk

Leo Strauss y los autores modernos, por Matías Sirczuk

Leo Strauss y la redención clásica del mundo moderno, por Sergio Danil Morresi

Sobre el concepto de filosofía política en Leo Strauss, por Carlos Diego Martínez Cinca

Secularización y crítica del liberalismo moderno en Leo Strauss, por Antonio Rivera García

La obra de Leo Strauss y su crítica de la Modernidad, por María Paula Londoño Sánchez

Carl Schmitt: las “malas compañías” de Leo Strauss, por Francisco José Fernández-Cruz Sequera

Carl Schmitt, Leo Strauss y Hans Blumenberg. La legitimidad de la modernidad, por Antonio Lastra
 

ELEMENTOS Nº 85 EL DINERO: DEIFICACIÓN CAPITALISTA

revue,nouvelle droite,nouvelle droite espagnole,leo strauss,carl schmitt,théorie politique,sciences politiques,politologie,philosophie,philosophie politique,théologie politique,argent,ploutocratie,capitalisme

 

 

 

 

La religión del dinero, por Ernesto Milá
 
Dinero, dinerización y destino, por Germán Spano

 

El dinero como síntoma, por Alain de Benoist

 

El poder del ídolo-dinero, por Benjamín Forcano

 

El poder del dinero: la autodestrucción del ser humano, por Antonio Morales Berruecos y Edmundo Galindo González

 

El dinero como ideología, por Guillaume Faye

 

La ideología del dinero en la época actual, por Juan Castaingts Teillery
 
Georg Simmel: el dinero y la libertad moderna, por Andrés Bilbao
 
¿El dinero da la felicidad?, por Pedro A. Honrubia Hurtado

 

Los fundamentos onto-teológico-políticos de la mercancía y del dinero, por Fabián Ludueña Romandini
 
Mundo sin dinero: una visión más allá del capitalismo, por Juan E. Drault
 
La época de los iconoclastas, por Alain de Benoist
 
Las identidades del dinero, por Celso Sánchez Capdequí
 
La ganga y la fecundidad del dinero, por Emmanuel Mounier
 
El dinero-financiero y el poder de la globalización, por Iván Murras Mas y Maciá Blázquez Salom

Arctic Resources to Boost Russia’s Pivot to Asia

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Arctic Resources to Boost Russia’s Pivot to Asia

 
The West is not the only global player to have its eyes on Asia. Russia is looking to become a key energy supplier for the Chinese and Indian markets and will use its Arctic gas to do so.
 
Global energy markets in deep transition
 
Russia is looking at diversifying its oil and gas exports which have so far mostly targeted the European market. Additionally, the recent tensions with the West, followed by economic sanctions, and the slow-down of Europe’s economy have made it necessary for the Kremlin to find new recipients for its oil and gas exports.
 
According to recent estimates, by 2050, emerging markets will account for 70 percent of the world trade. The Pacific pivot of the world’s main economies is quietly taking shape, and the Kremlin is jumping on the bandwagon.
 
Russia and India together in the Arctic
 
Last month, Gazprom Marketing & Trading Singapore (GM&T) and Yamal Trade entered a long-term contract for liquefied natural gas (LNG) supply. And most of the gas will be delivered to India. According to Gazprom’s website, the contract will be effective for over 20 years and provide an annual supply of 2.9 million tons of LNG. Although the price of the contract has not been announced yet, it will be determined using the formula with oil indexation, the news report says.
 
What is interesting in this deal is that Russia will be using its Arctic resources to supply a client for over 20 years. Beyond being another solid evidence of the «Indo-Pacific» pivot, this move teaches us two important things. First, that discussions about dropping Arctic oil and gas projects are somewhat moot and second, that long-term economic development of the Arctic is underway.

Analysis

First, some context. Let’s look at the actors involved in Russia’s energetic pivot to Asia. GM&T is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Gazprom group. It has five offices around the world, including one in Singapore established in 2010, focusing mainly on trading LNG.
 
Yamal Trade, a subsidiary of Yamal LNG founded in 2006 and headquartered in Moscow, offers LNG exploration and production services, such as the engineering and designing of the Sabetta onshore LNG facility. The construction of the Sabetta port in the Yamal peninsula started in 2012, and it comes as no surprise that the port is designed to facilitate shipments of LNG to the Asia-Pacific region.
 
The contract signed last month did not happen overnight. The deal is the result of lengthy talks and it took years for the Russian-Indian partnership to develop and mature.
 
In October 2013, Indian state-owned oil company Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) expressed its interest in partnering with Russia to explore for oil and gas in Russia’s Arctic waters. Officials from the two countries met and discussed the possibilities for exporting Russian gas to India via pipeline.
 
A few months later, in January 2014, Russia’s Energy Ministry unveiled a draft plan to at least double its oil and gas flows to Asia over the next 20 years. In 2013, only 16% of the total Russian oil and gas exports was sent to Asia. But by 2035, the Kremlin’s goal is to raise gas exports to Asia from 6% to 31%.
 
Then, in May 2014, it became public that GM&T and Yamal Trade signed an agreement to supply up to 3 million tons of LNG, and already, India was to be the main recipient. The press release stressed that LNG would be delivered under «FOB» terms. FOB stands for «free on board», meaning that «the individual or organization buying the goods is responsible for freight costs/liability». The LNG would transit from Western Europe to Asia.
 
By the end of 2014, during the 20th Offshore South East Asia Conference and Exhibition (OSEA) in Singapore in December, Moscow’s top oil and gas officials announced that Russia would take Asia-Pacific countries as main partners in the oil and gas sector and highlighted the benefits of mutual cooperation. OSEA is «Asia’s leading business technology event for the oil and gas industry», explains the official website.
 
Russia’s economic policy statement represents a landmark in its energy policy history and will have consequences that stretch far beyond the simple business relationship established between the two countries.
 
A few days later the same month, during Putin’s visit to India, Putin declared he was ready to export LNG to India with the involvement of the ONGC in Arctic projects. According to the company’s website, ONGC is ranked as the top energy company in India, fifth in Asia and has a market value of 46.4 billion US dollars – against 99.9 billion US dollars for Gazprom in 2013.
 
Putin also specified that using a cross-country pipeline to export natural gas would be much more expensive than relying on shipping to sell it in its liquid form, LNG. In the end, it comes down to a “question of commercial feasibility”, Putin said.
 
With a booming economy and population, India was the fourth-largest energy consumer in the world in 2011, the EIA notes. And although coal is still its main source of energy, New Delhi is actively trying to reform its energy sector.
 
India is expected to start receiving LNG shipments as early as in 2017, Putin indicated during his state visit.
 
Years of negotiations between Moscow and New Delhi paved the way for the contract signed on January 23rd by GM&T and Yamal Trade. According to the terms of the contract, an annual supply of 2.9 million tons of LNG will be shipped to Asia, most of which will end up fuelling India’s fast-growing energy needs.
 
Implications for the future
 
Although some pushed for a halt in Arctic drilling, Russian Natural Resources Minister Sergey Donskoy’s statement this week is not shocking in any way. « No one has suggested that the oil production forecast [in the Arctic] should be reduced », the minister said.
 
The « Russindian » deal evidently illustrates the major ongoing transformations that are happening in the energy sector: the exploitation of resources in new areas, and the need for the world’s main energy suppliers to broaden their horizons in amending their export policies. To draw a parallel, one could argue that, to some extent, Russia is in a situation similar to the one of Canada. A situation where the traditional recipients for energy exports (the U.S and the E.U) no longer reflect stability and predictability, but rather waning economic partners.

SOURCE: The Arctic Monitor

Where’s the Anti-War Movement When You Really Need It?

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Missing-in-Action in the Expanding War on ISIS

Where’s the Anti-War Movement When You Really Need It?

by SARAH LAZARE
Ex: http://www.counterpunch.org

The expanding U.S.-led war on the so-called Islamic State, or ISIS, has largely fallen off the radar of U.S. social movements.

Many (but not all) who were active in anti-war organizing over the past decade have turned away from this conflict. The dearth of public debate is conspicuous, even as the U.S. government sinks the country deeper into yet another open-ended and ill-defined military operation. The refrain “it will take years” has become such a common utterance by the Obama administration that it slips by barely noticed.

There are many reasons for the relative silence in the face of this latest military escalation. I would venture that one of them is the sheer complexity of the situation on the ground in Iraq and Syria — as well as the real humanitarian crisis posed by the rise of ISIS, the many-layered power struggles across the wider Middle East, and the difficulty of building connections with grassroots movements in countries bearing the brunt of the violence.

But the answer to complexity is not to do nothing. In fact, great crimes and historic blunders — from Palestine to South Africa to Afghanistan — have been tacitly enabled by people who chose not to take action, perhaps because the situation seemed too complex to engage. When millions of lives are on the line, inaction is unacceptable.

The task is to figure out what to do.

The most important question to ask is this: Do we really think that the U.S. military operation against ISIS will bring about a good outcome for the people of Iraq and Syria, or for U.S. society? Is there any evidence from the more than 13 years of the so-called “War on Terror” that U.S. military intervention in the Middle East brings anything but death, displacement, destabilization, and poverty to the people whose homes have been transformed into battlefields?

The answer to these questions must be a resounding “No.”

But there are also many things to say “Yes” to. A better path forward can only be forged by peoples’ movements on the ground in Iraq and Syria — movements that still exist, still matter, and continue to organize for workers’ rights, gender justice, war reparations, and people power, even amid the death and displacement that has swallowed up all the headlines.

Now is a critical time to seek to understand and build solidarity with Iraqi and Syrian civil societies. Heeding their call, we should strengthen awareness here at home of the tremendous political and ethical debt the United States owes all people harmed by the now-discredited war on Iraq and the crises it set in motion.

“U.S. Military Action Leads to Chaos”

“A rational observer of United States intervention in the swath of land that runs from Libya to Afghanistan would come to a simple conclusion: U.S. military action leads to chaos,” wrote scholar and activist Vijay Prashad a month after the bombings began.

More than 13 years on, there is no evidence that the “War on Terror” has accomplished its stated, if amorphous, goal: to weed out terrorism (defined to exclude atrocities committed by the U.S. and allied states, of course). According to the Global Terrorism Index released by the Institute for Economics and Peace, global terrorist incidents have climbed dramatically since the onset of the War on Terror. In 2000, there were 1,500 terrorist incidents. By 2013, this number had climbed to 10,000. People in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Syria suffer the most, the index notes.

The so-called “good war” in Afghanistan, which is now entering its 14th year and has not ended, illustrates this failed policy (President Obama’s recent claim that the combat mission is “over” notwithstanding).

In contradiction of the Obama administration’s “mission accomplished” spin, Afghanistan is suffering a spike in civilian deaths, displacement, poverty, and starvation, with 2014 proving an especially deadly year for Afghan non-combatants. The Taliban, furthermore, appears to be growing in strength, as the U.S. forces Afghanistan into long-term political and military dependency with the Bilateral Security Agreement signed last September by Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.

The Revolutionary Association of Women in Afghanistan is one of numerous civil society groups in Afghanistan that have no illusions about the U.S. track record so far. “In the past thirteen years, the U.S. and its allies have wasted tens of billions of [dollars], and turned this country into the center of global surveillance and mafia gangs; and left it poor, corrupt, insecure, hungry, and crippled with tribal, linguistic, and sectarian divisions,” the organization declared in a statement released last October.

The current crisis in Iraq and Syria is another piece of this puzzle. It is now well-documented that the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 played a critical role in fueling al-Qaeda in Iraq, which would eventually become ISIS. Emerging as part of the insurgency against the United States — and now thriving off opposition to the sectarian Shiite government propped up by Washington — ISIS did not even exist before the United States invaded Iraq. Its ranks were initially filled with Sunnis who were spat out by the brutal, U.S.-imposed de-Baathification process, and later by those disaffected by a decade of negligence and repression from Shiite authorities in Baghdad.

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In neighboring Syria, the United States and Saudi Arabia backed anti-Assad fighters that were, as journalist Patrick Cockburn put it, “ideologically close to al-Qaeda” yet “relabeled as moderate.” It was in Syria that ISIS developed the power to push back into Iraq after being driven out in 2007.

Ordinary people across the region are paying a staggering price for these policies.

2014 was the deadliest year for civilians in Iraq since the height of the U.S. war in 2006 and 2007, according to Iraq Body Count. The watchdog found that 17,049 civilians were recorded killed in Iraq last year alone — approximately double the number recorded killed in 2013, which in turn was roughly double the tally from 2012. And more than 76,000 people — over 3,500 of them children — died last year in Syria, according to figures from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. António Guterres, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, recently warned, “The Syria and Iraq mega-crises, the multiplication of new crises, and the old crises that seem never to die have created the worst displacement situation in the world since World War II,” with at least 13.6 million people displaced from both countries.

But instead of reckoning with these legacies, the U.S. government has taken a giant leap backward — towards another open-ended, ill-defined military operation in Iraq and now Syria.

President Obama vowed in his recent State of the Union address to double down in the fight against ISIS, declaring yet again, “this effort will take time.” His remarks came just days after the United States and Britain announced a renewed joint military effort, and the Pentagon deployed 1,000 troops to Middle Eastern states to train “moderate” Syrian fighters. That comes in addition to the 3,000 soldiers ordered to deploy to Iraq, with more likely to follow. Meanwhile, the rise of Islamophobia in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks is feeding war fervor abroad and at home.

And so the Obama administration — which falls into the political realist camp and has, at times, pressed for a moderate retrenchment of U.S. war in the Middle East (in part to enable a disastrous pivot to Asia) — is now leading a military response to a crisis that the president himself has acknowledged cannot be solved by the U.S. military. To do so, Obama has repeatedly sidestepped congressional debate by claiming authority from the post-9/11 war authorization against the perpetrators of the attacks — the same legislation he once denounced for “keeping America on a perpetual wartime footing.” (He vowed in his State of the Union address to seek out explicit authorization from Congress for the war on ISIS, but has claimed in the past not to need it.)

“As If Further Militarization Ever Brought Peace to Iraq”

As the U.S. government makes unverified claims that U.S. lives are under threat from ISIS, it is Muslims, Arabs, Kurds, Yazidis, and Christians in the Middle East who are being killed, raped, and displaced. “The occupation of the city of Mosul started a new chapter of women’s suffering in Iraq,” wrote the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq in a statement published last December. “Daesh (ISIS) reawakened the ancient tribal habits of claiming women as spoils of war.”

Meanwhile, Kurds are fighting and dying to beat back ISIS in both Iraq and Syria but are not even offered a seat at the international table. This was highlighted in the recent exclusion of Kurdish groups from an anti-ISIS conference in London of representatives from 21 nations.

At this conference, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry claimed that the coalition had “halted the momentum” of ISIS fighters, while other U.S. officials insisted that half of the “top command” of ISIS had been killed. While global media outlets ran with this “news,” Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel publicly expressed serious doubt about such claims, describing the body count as “unverified.”

Furthermore, the ability of the U.S. military — the most powerful in the world — to blow up and kill is not in question. But in a complex geopolitical arena, that’s simply not a valid measure of “success.” The histories of the Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan wars are tragic examples of the vast difference between killing a lot of people and “winning” a war.

Over five months in, U.S. military operations in Iraq and Syria are neither alleviating the humanitarian crisis nor meeting any of the shifting goals of U.S. officials (containing ISIS, destroying them, etc.). The perception that ISIS is primarily at war with the United States is, in fact, critical to their growth. The CIA estimated in September — just a month after U.S.-led bombings began — that ISIS had tripled its ranks, from 10,000 to over 30,000. As Patrick Cockburn reported in early January, “The territories [ISIS] conquered in a series of lightning campaigns last summer remain almost entirely under its control, even though it has lost some towns to the Kurds and Shia militias in recent weeks.”

So while the expansion of ISIS’ frontiers may have slowed, the intervention has failed to prevent the group from consolidating its control in Iraq and Syria. “Extremism thrives during foreign interventions and military actions,” said Raed Jarrar of the American Friends Service Committee in an interview for this article. “Bombing different groups who live in the same areas as ISIS has helped unite ISIS with more moderate groups, more reasonable groups, who could have been persuaded to rejoin the political process. In Syria, bombing ISIS and other extremist groups, including al-Qaeda, has helped them unite, although they have been killing each other for the past two years.”

In addition to the crimes perpetrated by ISIS, U.S.-backed and armed Iraqi forces, sectarian Iraqi militias, and “moderate rebels” in Syria are also committing brutal war crimes.

In July, for example, Human Rights Watch condemned the Iraqi government for repeatedly bombing densely populated residential neighborhoods, including numerous strikes on Fallujah’s main hospital with mortars and other munitions. And in October, Amnesty International warned that Iraqi Shiite militias, many of them funded and armed by the Iraqi government, are committing war crimes that include abductions, executions, and disappearances of Sunni civilians. In Iraq, Patrick Cockburn writes, “The war has become a sectarian bloodbath. Where Iraqi army, Shia militia, or Kurdish peshmerga have driven ISIS fighters out of Sunni villages and towns from which civilians have not already fled, any remaining Sunni have been expelled, killed, or detained.”

In other words, U.S. military intervention is not advancing the side with a clear moral high-ground, but militarizing what Raed Jarrar calls a “bloody civil conflict with criminal forces on all sides.”

And now, of course, Iraqis must contend with the return of a far more powerful fighting force guilty of numerous atrocities and war crimes across the globe, including torturemassacres, use of chemical weapons, and cluster bombing of civilians in Iraq: the U.S. military.

In a recent statement, the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq slammed the U.S.-led military campaign for, in the midst of this humanitarian crisis, “providing further military arms and bombing only, as if further militarization ever brought peace to Iraq.” Neither the international coalition nor the Iraqi government, the statement continues, is concerned “with the enslavement of more than five thousand women who are being bought and sold in broad day-light in Mosul, Raqqa, and other ‘Islamic State’ cities.”

None of this is to overstate the coherence of the U.S. strategy in Iraq and Syria, nor to even confirm the existence of one.

Since the bombings began in August, the U.S. has waffled and balked, going from support for “moderate rebels” in Syria to the announcement that it would create its own proxy force. The United States initially hesitated to militarily back Kurdish forces holding out against ISIS in the Syrian town of Kobani, and many people bearing the brunt of ISIS’ repression on the ground seem to doubt that the U.S. is seriously trying to stem the group’s advance. The U.S. government has trumpeted its broad military coalition, yet seemingly turns a blind eye as its allies go on directly and indirectly supporting ISIS.

In truth, the U.S. and global publics are kept in the dark about what the U.S.-led military coalition is doing, how long this war will last, where its boundaries lie, and what “victory” means. Obama and Kerry have both indicated that the war on ISIS will take years, but Pentagon officials repeatedly refuse to reveal basic information, like what specific duties troops on the ground in Iraq are tasked with and who is dying under U.S. bombs in Iraq and Syria. Just last December, a U.S. coalition bomb struck an ISIS-operated jail in the town of al-Bab, Syria, killing at least 50 civilians detained inside, according to multiple witnesses. Yet while the Pentagon has demurred that civilians “may have died” during its operations, it’s refused to actually acknowledge a single civilian death under its bombs.

Alternatives to U.S.-Led War

Some people in the United States have thrown their support behind the military operations, or at least not opposed them, out of a genuine concern for the well being of people in Iraq and Syria. However good these intentions, though, all evidence available suggests that military intervention won’t make anyone safer.

“The first level is stopping the U.S. from causing more harm,” Jarrar told me. “That is really essential.” According to Jarrar, a U.S. push to stop the bombings is solidaristic in itself. In fact, he said, we can’t talk about solidarity, reparations, or redress for all the harm the U.S. has done in the now-discredited 2003 war “while we are bombing Iraq and Syria. It doesn’t make any sense to reach out to people, ask them to attend conferences for reconciliation, while we are bombing their neighborhood.”

However, stopping the U.S. from further harming Iraq and Syria requires far more than simply halting the bombings and ground deployments. The U.S. government must withdraw and demilitarize its failed war on terror, not only by pulling its own forces from the Middle East, but by putting out the fires it started with proxy battles and hypocritical foreign policies — including its alliances with governments that directly and indirectly support ISIS, from Saudi Arabia to Turkey.

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In a recent article in Jacobin about the courageous struggle of the people of Kobani against ISIS, Errol Babacan and Murat Çakır argue that the United States, and the West more broadly, should start with Turkey. “Western governments must be pressured to force their NATO partner Turkey to end both its proxy war in Syria as well as its repression of political protest,” they write. “Western leftists could also work for goals such as the removal of foreign soldiers (as well as Patriot missiles) stationed in Turkey and demand sanctions against Turkey if it continues to support” the Islamic State.

Phyllis Bennis, senior fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, argues that U.S. power to pressure allies to stop supporting ISIS extends beyond Turkey. “A real coalition is needed not for military strikes but for powerful diplomacy,” she writes. “That means pressuring U.S. ally Saudi Arabia to stop arming and financing ISIS and other extremist fighters; pressuring U.S. ally Turkey to stop allowing ISIS and other fighters to cross into Syria over the Turkish border; pressuring U.S. allies Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and others to stop financing and arming everyone and anyone in Syria who says they’re against Assad.”

Meanwhile, it’s critical for the U.S. left to step up its opposition to further escalation of the military intervention, including the upcoming White House bid to win bipartisan authorization. It will also be important to fight back against congressional efforts to sabotage diplomatic talks between the United States and Iran, which could embolden hard-line forces in both countries and open the door to further escalation in Iraq, Syria, and beyond.

Towards a Politics of Solidarity

A long-term alternative to war, ultimately, can only be built by popular movements in Iraq and Syria. While we in the United States are inundated with images of death and victimization, surviving grassroots efforts on the ground in both countries tell a different story. These countries are not mere geopolitical battlefields — they’re hotbeds of human agency and resistance.

Iraq saw a blossoming of nonviolent, Sunni-led movements against repression and discrimination by the U.S.-backed government of Iraq in 2013. But the Iraqi military brutally crushed their protest encampments. This included the Hawija massacre in April 2013, discussed by scholar Zaineb Saleh in an interview last summer, in which at least 50 protesters were killed and over 100 were wounded. In a climate of repression and escalating violence, civil society organizations from across Iraq held the country’s first social forum in September 2013, under the banner “Another Iraq is Possible with Peace, Human Rights, and Social Justice.”

Amid siege from ISIS, repression from the Iraqi government, and bombing from the United States and its allies, popular movements survive on the ground in Iraq. Groups like the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq are organizing emergency aid for women and families fleeing ISIS — while at the same time demanding U.S. withdrawal, and end to Iraqi government oppression, and reparations for the U.S.-led war.

The Federation of Workers Councils and Trade Unions in Iraq, meanwhile, continues to organize workers against Saddam Hussein-era anti-labor laws that were carried over into the new government and backed by the United States. Right now, the Federation — alongside OWFI — is mobilizing within the country’s state-owned industries, which are undergoing rapid privatization and imposing lay-offs, firings, and forced retirement on hundreds of thousands of workers.

Falah Alwan, president of the Federation, explained in a recent statement that the gutting of the public sector is the result of austerity measures driven, in part, by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. “We are in daily confrontations with the government, by demonstrations, sit-ins, seminars, [and] agitating the other sectors to take part,” Alwan told me over email. “At the same time we are preparing for a wide conference next March, for all the companies across Iraq, that will need support from our comrades in the U.S. and worldwide.”

Both of these organizations are collaborating with U.S. groups — including the War Resisters League, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Iraq Veterans Against the War, and Madre — under the banner of the Right to Heal Initiative to press for reparations for the harm from U.S. policies in Iraq dating back to 1991. Along with damages from the last war and the sanctions regime that preceded it, their grievances include environmental poisoning in Iraq from the U.S. military’s use of depleted uranium, white phosphorous, burn pits, and more.

Likewise, “There are still people and groups in [Syria] who are working through nonviolent means,” said Mohja Kahf, a Damascus-born author and poet, in a recent interview. “And they matter. They are quietly working for the kind of Syria they want to see, whether the regime falls now or in years.” As Kahf argued in a piece penned in 2013, it is critical for the U.S. peace movement to connect with movements on the ground in Syria, not only when they are threatened by bombings, and not only when they are used to win arguments against U.S.-led military intervention.

We in the U.S. left must take a critical — if painful — look at the harm U.S. policies have done to the Middle East, press for a long-term shift in course, and seek to understand and build links with progressive forces in Iraq and Syria. The United States has a moral obligation to provide reparations to Iraq for its invasion and occupation. But these things must be demanded now, before the U.S. spends one day more waging a new armed conflict based on the same failed policies.

Grassroots movements did offer an alternative to endless war following the 2003 invasion, and that needs to happen again. This dark time is all the proof we need that the U.S. must get out of the Middle East once and for all, and the pressure to do so is only going to come from the grassroots.

Next Steps

Building international solidarity takes time, but you can get started today. Here are a few suggestions for productive next steps anyone can take.

Direct Support. Donate to relief efforts on the ground in Iraq and Syria that are orchestrated by grassroots organizations seeking to help their communities survive in the face of ISIS. The Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq has been working to provide food and winter survival gear to people fleeing ISIS and maintains shelters in Baghdad and Karbala. Furthermore, they have created a “Women’s Peace Farm” outside of Karbala, which provides “a safe and peaceful community” for refugees, according to a recent OWFI statement. Direct donations to this work can be made at OWFI’s PayPal account.

Learn. Now is a critical time for U.S.-based movements to educate ourselves about both the histories and current realities of struggle and resistance in Iraq and Syria, as well as Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan, and beyond. A forthcoming book by Ali Issa, field organizer for the War Resisters League, will be important reading for anyone interested in learning more about Iraqi social movements. Entitled Against All Odds: Voices of Popular Struggle in Iraq, the book is based on interviews and reports highlighting environmental, feminist, labor, and protest movement organizers in Iraq.

In the process of learning about civil societies in Iraq and Syria, it is important to avoid simplistic equations that reduce all opponents of Assad to agents of the U.S. government, and likewise regarding opponents of ISIS. As Kahf emphasized in her interview, “It is racist to think that Syrians do not have agency to resist an oppressive regime unless a clever white man whispers in their ear. … Syrians can hold two critiques in their minds at the same time: a critique of U.S. imperialism and a critique of their brutal regime.”

There is also a great deal to learn from U.S. civil society, including the powerful movement for black liberation that continues to grow nationwide. From Oakland to Ferguson to New York, people are showing by example that justice and accountability for racism and police killings will not be handed from above, but rather must be forced from the grassroots. This moment is full of potential to build strong and intersectional movements with racial justice at their core — a principle that is vital for challenging U.S. militarism.

Make this live. Talk to your families, friends, and loved ones about the war on ISIS. Encourage conversations in your organizations, union halls, and community centers. Raise questions like, “How does U.S. policy in the Middle East relate to our struggles for social, racial, and economic justice here at home?”

The Stop Urban Shield coalition — comprised of groups including Critical Resistance, the Arab Organizing and Resource Center, the War Resisters League, and the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement — powerfully demonstrated the connection between domestic and international militarization when they kicked a global SWAT team, police force, and mercenary expo out of Oakland last September.

Ultimately, solidarity with Iraqi and Syrian people will require more than a push to end the U.S. bombings, but long-term pressure to steer away from U.S. policies of endless war and militarism, in the Middle East and beyond. Building consciousness across U.S. movements is critical to this goal.

Pressure the U.S. government. Grassroots mobilization in the United States can play a vital role in preventing lawmakers from charging into war. This was recently demonstrated when people power — including overwhelming calls to congressional representatives and local protests — had a hand in stopping U.S. strikes on the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in 2013. Mass call-ins, as well as scattered street protests, also had a hand in preventing war hawks from passing new sanctions in the midst of talks with Iran last year. It will be important to closely track any Obama administration attempt to pass explicit authorization for the war on ISIS, as well as congressional efforts to sabotage diplomacy with Iran.

OWFI wrote in a December 11 post, “With the help of the freedom-lovers around the world, we continue to survive the ongoing attacks on our society, and we will strive to be the model of a humane and egalitarian future.”

We must strive alongside them.

Sarah Lazare is a staff writer for Common Dreams and an independent journalist whose work has been featured in The Nation, Al Jazeera, TomDispatch, Yes! Magazine, and more. She is also an anti-militarist organizer interested in building people-powered global movements for justice and dignity. You can follow her on Twitter at @sarahlazare.

This article originally appeared on Foreign Policy in Focus.

mardi, 10 février 2015

Esquilino in maschera!

The Fallujah Option for East Ukraine

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The Real Reason Washington Feels Threatened by Moscow

The Fallujah Option for East Ukraine

by MIKE WHITNEY
Ex: http://www.counterpunch.org

“I want to appeal to the Ukrainian people, to the mothers, the fathers, the sisters and the grandparents. Stop sending your sons and brothers to this pointless, merciless slaughter. The interests of the Ukrainian government are not your interests. I beg of you: Come to your senses. You do not have to water Donbass fields with Ukrainian blood. It’s not worth it.”

— Alexander Zakharchenko,  Prime Minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic

Washington needs a war in Ukraine to achieve its strategic objectives. This point cannot be overstated.

The US wants to push NATO to Russia’s western border. It wants a land-bridge to Asia to spread US military bases across the continent.  It wants to control the pipeline corridors from Russia to Europe to monitor Moscow’s revenues and to  ensure that gas continues to be denominated in dollars. And it wants a weaker, unstable Russia that is more prone to regime change, fragmentation and, ultimately, foreign control. These objectives cannot be achieved peacefully, indeed, if the fighting stopped tomorrow,  the sanctions would be lifted shortly after, and the Russian economy would begin to recover. How would that benefit Washington?

It wouldn’t. It would undermine Washington’s broader plan to integrate China and Russia into the prevailing economic system, the dollar system. Powerbrokers in the US realize that the present system must either expand or collapse. Either China and Russia are brought to heel and persuaded to accept a subordinate role in the US-led global order or Washington’s tenure as global hegemon will come to an end.

This is why hostilities in East Ukraine have escalated and will continue to escalate. This is why the U.S. Congress  approved a bill for tougher sanctions on Russia’s energy sector and lethal aid for Ukraine’s military. This is why Washington has sent military trainers to Ukraine and is preparing to provide  $3 billion in  “anti-armor missiles, reconnaissance drones, armored Humvees, and radars that can determine the location of enemy rocket and artillery fire.” All of Washington’s actions are designed with one purpose in mind, to intensify the fighting and escalate the conflict. The heavy losses sustained by Ukraine’s inexperienced army and the terrible suffering of the civilians in Lugansk and Donetsk  are of no interest to US war-planners. Their job is to make sure that peace is avoided at all cost because peace would derail US plans to pivot to Asia and remain the world’s only superpower. Here’s an except from an article in the WSWS:

“The ultimate aim of the US and its allies is to reduce Russia to an impoverished and semi-colonial status. Such a strategy, historically associated with Carter administration National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, is again being openly promoted.

In a speech last year at the Wilson Center, Brzezinski called on Washington to provide Kiev with “weapons designed particularly to permit the Ukrainians to engage in effective urban warfare of resistance.” In line with the policies now recommended in the report by the Brookings Institution and other think tanks calling for US arms to the Kiev regime, Brzezinski called for providing “anti-tank weapons…weapons capable for use in urban short-range fighting.”

While the strategy outlined by Brzezinski is politically criminal—trapping Russia in an ethnic urban war in Ukraine that would threaten the deaths of millions, if not billions of people—it is fully aligned with the policies he has promoted against Russia for decades.” (“The US arming of Ukraine and the danger of World War III“, World Socialist Web Site)

Non-lethal military aid will inevitably lead to lethal military aid, sophisticated weaponry, no-fly zones, covert assistance, foreign contractors, Special ops, and boots on the ground. We’ve seen it all before. There is no popular opposition to the war in the US, no thriving antiwar movement that can shut down cities, order a general strike or disrupt the status quo. So there’s no way to stop the persistent drive to war. The media and the political class have given Obama carte blanche, the authority to prosecute the conflict as he sees fit. That increases the probability of a broader war by this summer following the spring thaw.

While the possibility of a nuclear conflagration cannot be excluded, it won’t effect US plans for the near future. No one thinks that Putin will launch a nuclear war to protect the Donbass, so the deterrent value of the weapons is lost.

And Washington isn’t worried about the costs either.   Despite botched military interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and half a dozen other countries around the world; US stocks are still soaring, foreign investment in US Treasuries is at record levels,, the US economy is growing at a faster pace than any of its global competitors, and the dollar has risen an eye-watering 13 percent against a basket of foreign currencies since last June. America has paid nothing for decimating vast swathes of the planet and killing more than a million people. Why would they stop now?

They won’t, which is why the fighting in Ukraine is going to escalate. Check this out from the WSWS:

“On Monday, the New York Times announced that the Obama administration is moving to directly arm the Ukrainian army and the fascistic militias supporting the NATO-backed regime in Kiev, after its recent setbacks in the offensive against pro-Russian separatist forces in east Ukraine.

The article cites a joint report issued Monday by the Brookings Institution, the Atlantic Council, and the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and delivered to President Obama, advising the White House and NATO on the best way to escalate the war in Ukraine….

According to the Times, US officials are rapidly shifting to support the report’s proposals. NATO military commander in Europe General Philip M. Breedlove, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, US Secretary of State John Kerry, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey all supported discussions on directly arming Kiev. National Security Advisor Susan Rice is reconsidering her opposition to arming Kiev, paving the way for Obama’s approval.” (“Washington moves toward arming Ukrainian regime“, World Socialist Web Site)

 

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See what’s going on? The die is already cast. There will be a war with Russia because that’s what the political establishment wants. It’s that simple. And while previous provocations failed to lure Putin into the Ukrainian cauldron, this new surge of violence–a spring offensive– is bound to do the trick. Putin is not going to sit on his hands while proxies armed with US weapons and US logistical support pound the Donbass to Fallujah-type rubble.  He’ll do what any responsible leader would do. He’ll protect his people. That means war. (See the vast damage that Obama’s proxy war has done to E. Ukraine here: “An overview of the socio – humanitarian situation on the territory of Donetsk People’s Republic as a consequence of military action from 17 to 23 January 2015“)

Asymmetrical Warfare: Falling Oil Prices

Keep in mind, that the Russian economy has already been battered by economic sanctions, oil price manipulation, and a vicious attack of the ruble. Until this week, the mainstream media dismissed the idea that the Saudis were deliberately pushing down oil prices to hurt Russia. They said the Saudis were merely trying to retain “market share” by maintaining current production levels and letting prices fall naturally. But it was all bunkum as the New York Times finally admitted on Tuesday in an article titled: “Saudi Oil Is Seen as Lever to Pry Russian Support From Syria’s Assad”. Here’s a clip from the article:

“Saudi Arabia has been trying to pressure President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to abandon his support for President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, using its dominance of the global oil markets at a time when the Russian government is reeling from the effects of plummeting oil prices…

Saudi officials say — and they have told the United States — that they think they have some leverage over Mr. Putin because of their ability to reduce the supply of oil and possibly drive up prices….Any weakening of Russian support for Mr. Assad could be one of the first signs that the recent tumult in the oil market is having an impact on global statecraft…..

Saudi Arabia’s leverage depends on how seriously Moscow views its declining oil revenue. “If they are hurting so bad that they need the oil deal right away, the Saudis are in a good position to make them pay a geopolitical price as well,” said F. Gregory Gause III, a Middle East specialist at Texas A&M’s Bush School of Government and Public Service (“Saudi Oil Is Seen as Lever to Pry Russian Support From Syria’s Assad“, New York Times)

The Saudis “think they have some leverage over Mr. Putin because of their ability” to manipulate prices?

That says it all, doesn’t it?

What’s interesting about this article is the way it conflicts with previous pieces in the Times. For example, just two weeks ago, in an article titled “Who Will Rule the Oil Market?”  the author failed to see any political motive behind the Saudi’s action.  According to the narrative, the Saudis were just afraid that “they would lose market share permanently” if they cut production and kept prices high. Now the Times has done a 180 and joined the so called conspiracy nuts who said that prices were manipulated for political reasons.  In fact, the  sudden price plunge had nothing to do with deflationary pressures, supply-demand dynamics, or any other mumbo-jumbo market forces. It was 100 percent politics.

The attack on the ruble was also politically motivated, although the details are much more sketchy. There’s an interesting interview with Alistair Crooke that’s worth a read for those who are curious about how the Pentagon’s “full spectrum dominance” applies to financial warfare. According to Crooke:

“…with Ukraine, we have entered a new era: We have a substantial, geostrategic conflict taking place, but it’s effectively a geo-financial war between the US and Russia. We have the collapse in the oil prices; we have the currency wars; we have the contrived “shorting” — selling short — of the ruble. We have a geo-financial war, and what we are seeing as a consequence of this geo-financial war is that first of all, it has brought about a close alliance between Russia and China.

China understands that Russia constitutes the first domino; if Russia is to fall, China will be next. These two states are together moving to create a parallel financial system, disentangled from the Western financial system. ……

For some time, the international order was structured around the United Nations and the corpus of international law, but more and more the West has tended to bypass the UN as an institution designed to maintain the international order, and instead relies on economic sanctions to pressure some countries. We have a dollar-based financial system, and through instrumentalizing America’s position as controller of all dollar transactions, the US has been able to bypass the old tools of diplomacy and the UN — in order to further its aims.

But increasingly, this monopoly over the reserve currency has become the unilateral tool of the United States — displacing multilateral action at the UN. The US claims jurisdiction over any dollar-denominated transaction that takes place anywhere in the world. And most business and trading transactions in the world are denominated in dollars. This essentially constitutes the financialization of the global order: The International Order depends more on control by the US Treasury and Federal Reserve than on the UN as before.” (“Turkey might become hostage to ISIL just like Pakistan did“,  Today’s Zaman)

Financial warfare, asymmetrical warfare, Forth Generation warfare, space warfare, information warfare, nuclear warfare, laser, chemical, and biological warfare. The US has expanded its arsenal well beyond the  traditional range of conventional weaponry. The goal, of course, is to preserve the post-1991 world order (The dissolution up of the Soviet Union) and maintain full spectrum dominance. The emergence of a multi-polar world order spearheaded by Moscow poses the greatest single threat to Washington’s plans for continued domination.  The first significant clash between these two competing world views will likely take place sometime this summer in East Ukraine. God help us.

NOTE:  The Novorussia Armed Forces (NAF) currently have 8,000 Ukrainian regulars surrounded in Debaltsevo, East Ukraine.  This is a very big deal although the media has been (predictably) keeping the story out of the headlines.

Evacuation corridors have been opened to allow civilians to leave the area.  Fighting could break out at anytime.  At present, it looks like a good part of the Kiev’s Nazi army could be destroyed in one fell swoop.  This is why Merkel and Hollande have taken an emergency flight to Moscow to talk with Putin.  They are not interested in peace. They merely want to save their proxy army from annihilation.

I expect Putin may intervene on behalf of the Ukrainian soldiers, but I think commander Zakharchenko will resist.   If he lets these troops go now, what assurance does he have that they won’t be back in a month or so with high-powered weaponry provided by our war-mongering congress and White House?

Tell me; what choice does Zakharchenko really have? If his comrades are killed in future combat because he let Kiev’s army escape, who can he blame but himself?

There are no good choices.

Check here for updates:  Ukraine SITREP: *Extremely* dangerous situation in Debaltsevo

MIKE WHITNEY lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com.

Jordanie contre État islamique… le « grand jeu » des États-Unis

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Jordanie contre État islamique… le « grand jeu » des États-Unis
 
Il ne fait que peu de doutes que Washington instrumentalise le terrorisme islamique.
 
Docteur en droit, journaliste et essayiste
Ex: http://www.bvoltaire.fr
 

En réplique à l’assassinat d’un pilote jordanien brûlé vif, Amman avait aussitôt ordonné l’exécution de deux terroristes croupissant dans les geôles du régime. Les récents propos du roi Abdallah II de Jordanie de vouloir prendre, lui-même, la tête des attaques aériennes menées par son armée contre l’organisation de l’État Islamique, avec l’onction de Barack Obama, ne doivent, cependant, pas être surestimés.

Monarchie constitutionnelle, la Jordanie, État d’Asie occidentale du Moyen-Orient, est encerclée par l’Égypte, la Cisjordanie, Israël, la Syrie, l’Irak et l’Arabie saoudite. Autant dire, eu égard aux conflictualités de très haute intensité qui secouent la région, que ce pays majoritairement sunnite (92 %) est, en permanence, à la merci de toute entreprise de déstabilisation. Le royaume est objectivement menacé par le wahhabisme saoudien, l’arc irano-syrien chiite, sans oublier les tensions au sein d’Israël (la bande de Gaza et l’irrédentisme du Hamas et le Sud-Liban avec un Hezbollah intransigeant).

Activement soutenu par les États-Unis et par l’Union européenne, le royaume hachémite n’échappe pas aux forces centrifuges de ce que le démographe Gérard-François Dumont dénomme le « paradigme religieux », lequel s’est progressivement substitué au « paradigme panarabe » dont l’acmé fut la création, en 1945, de la Ligue des pays arabes (comprenant originellement l’Arabie saoudite, l’Égypte, l’Irak, la Syrie, le Liban, la Jordanie et le Yémen du Nord). Cette dernière coalition, ayant en commun une certaine conception de l’arabité, a rapidement fait long feu. Le développement économique, grâce à l’exploitation de la manne pétrolière, comme un règlement durable de la question palestinienne ont été les pierres d’achoppement d’une organisation politique incapable de surmonter les tropismes nationalistes et autoritaires de ses membres.

Aujourd’hui, la promesse de frappe aérienne de la Jordanie ne doit pas être l’arbre arabo-occidental devant servir à cacher la forêt islamo-terroriste. Il ne fait que peu de doutes que Washington instrumentalise le terrorisme islamique. Pourquoi, aux dires des milieux islamistes « autorisés », l’un des doctrinaires les plus virulents de l’État islamique, l’ex-lieutenant de Ben Laden, Abou Moussab al-Souri (auteur, en 2004, du monumental Appel à la résistance islamique mondiale, dans lequel il exhorte à la domination mondiale de l’islam), a été libéré, en 2011, par la Syrie, après que les services secrets pakistanais l’eurent livré à la CIA qui le remit ensuite aux autorités syriennes ?

La Jordanie demeure le jouet docile du Pentagone, au service de ses intérêts géostratégiques. Dans ce nouveau « Grand Jeu », la duplicité diplomatique des États-Unis ne vise rien moins qu’à accompagner les desseins de dislocation/balkanisation du monde arabo-musulman suivi de sa réorganisation selon des critères religieux (sunnites, chiites, druzes, alaouites) et ethno-fédéralistes.

Or, la redistribution des cartes prévoit tout simplement l’effacement de la Jordanie.

Le «Light footprint», la nouvelle stratégie de domination américaine

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Le «Light footprint», la nouvelle stratégie de domination américaine

Samer Zougheib

Ex: http://www.voxnr.com

 
 
Les Etats-Unis ont mis au point une nouvelle stratégie de domination du monde, appelée «Light footprint». Mais de nombreux pays continuent de résister aux visées hégémoniques américaines.

foot9781472900067.jpgLe président de la Fédération de Russie, Vladimir Poutine, a dénoncé, lors de sa conférence de presse annuelle, jeudi, les visées impérialistes de l'Occident et ses pratiques hégémoniques. «Nos partenaires ont décidé qu'ils étaient les vainqueurs, qu'ils étaient désormais un empire et que les autres étaient des vassaux qu'il faut faire marcher au pas», a-t-il fustigé. Il a accusé les Occidentaux, Etats-Unis en tête, de vouloir «arracher les crocs et les griffes de l'ours russe». 25 ans après la chute du mur de Berlin, ils dressent, selon lui, un nouveau mur entre la Russie et l'Europe. «Il s'agit d'un mur virtuel, mais il commence déjà à être construit», a déclaré le chef de l'État, rappelant l'élargissement de l'Otan jusqu'aux portes de la Russie (pays baltes) et le bouclier antimissile en Europe orientale.

La volonté des Etats-Unis de vouloir dominer le monde n'est pas un secret, mais la nouvelle méthode de Washington pour arriver à ses desseins est moins connue. Il s'agit de la stratégie du «Light footprint» -ou l'empreinte légère-, qui s'articlue autour d'une panoplie d'outils militaires, politiques et économiques, qui ont commencé à être mis en œuvre ces derniers mois à l'échelle planétaire. Cette stratégie se base sur le concept de l'intervention dans l'ombre, moins coûteuse en ressources humaines et financières mais non moins pernicieuse.

Le «commandement par l'arrière»

Cette nouvelle stratégie est le résultat de l'échec du concept du président George W. Bush de la «guerre globale contre la terreur» (global war on terror ou GWOT), qui s'est terminée par des échecs militaires en Irak et en Afghanistan, qui ont fait des dizaines de milliers de morts et de blessés dans les rangs de l'armée américaine, un désastre économique avec la crise financière de 2008, et un déclin moral, illustré par la violation des valeurs prétendument défendues par l'Amérique. La décennie de l'an 2000 a en effet été marquée par les mensonges américains, la torture dans les prisons, les détentions extra-judiciaires de milliers de personnes à Guantanamo ou dans des prisons secrètes de la CIA (pratiques toujours en cours aujourd'hui) etc...

Fini donc les «boots on the ground» (forces au sol), les interventions massives et classiques, et place au «Light footprint». Caroline Galactéros, docteur en sciences politiques, explique à merveille les tenants et les aboutissants de cette nouvelle stratégie, orientée vers l'Asie (the shift towards Asia), et dont l'objectif prioritaire est l'endiguement de la Chine, perçue comme le principal rival des Etats-Unis à moyen terme.

Le «Light footprint» repose sur «le commandement depuis l'arrière» (the leadership from behind), c'est-à-dire confier à des auxiliaires les tâches les plus visibles -et souvent les plus ingrates-, en les dirigeant de derrière la scène. Et Washington réussit à trouver des Etats supplétifs qui acceptent de faire à sa place le sale boulot. «Le commandement par l'arrière» est apparu lors de l'intervention de l'Otan en Libye et s'illustre parfaitement dans la crise ukrainienne, où l'Union européenne est aux premières lignes dans la bataille engagée contre la Russie pour l'affaiblir et l'empêcher de constituer, avec la Chine et ses autres alliés, une nouvelle force montante sur la scène internationale.

Ce principe s'illustre également, quoiqu'avec moins de succès, dans la prétendue guerre contre les terroristes du soi-disant «Etat islamique». Bien qu'ayant rassemblé une coalition d'une quarantaine de pays, c'est l'aviation américaine qui fait le gros du travail en Irak et en Syrie.

Forces spéciales, drones, cyberguerre

La «Light footprint» repose sur une mutation de la stratgégie militaire américaine, qui s'articule désormais sur l'emploi de forces spéciales, l'usage massif de drones et la cyberguerre. On l'a constaté lors de la cyberattaque contre le programme nucléaire iranien, des opérations spéciales menées en Somalie et au Yémen contre Al-Qaïda, et le déploiement de drones au Yémen et au Pakistan. Il s'agit surtout, comme l'a résumé David Sanger, correspondant en chef du Washington Post à la Maison-Blanche, d'instaurer en silence un «hard power secret», de substituer aux guerres conventionnelles militairement aléatoires, médiatiquement envahissantes et politiquement coûteuses, des guerres de l'ombre, dont seuls quelques faits d'armes spectaculaires seront rendus publics, bon gré, mal gré, explique Caralonie Galactéros.

Selon le sénateur républicain de Caroline du Sud, Lindsay Graham, qui a malencontreusement brisé en 2013 la loi du silence, ce mode d'action aurait fait près de 5000 victimes depuis 2004, souligne-t-elle.

Le «Leadership from behind» fonctionne assez bien en Afrique, où Washington a laissé la France et la Grande-Bretagne diriger les opérations en Libye et soutient aujourd'hui Paris dans son intervention militaire directe au Mali et en République centrafricaine, via sa base du Niger. Mais cela ne signifie aucunement que les Etats-Unis ont laissé le continent noir à leurs allies européens. Africom, le nouveau commandement régional américain mis en place en 2008, compte déjà 5000 soldats américains. Essentiellement dédié à la «lute contre le terrorisme» dans la Corne de l'Afrique et au Sahel, «il sert aussi de tête de pont aux intérêts économiques américains dans la région notamment face à la présence commerciale massive de la Chine», écrit Caroline Galactéros.

Le rôle subalterne de l'Europe

Le fait marquant est que l'Europe a abandonné ses rêves de grandeur et a accepté le rôle subalterne de sous-traitant pour le compte des Etats-Unis. Mais le plus frappant et que ce rôle se fait parfois au dépens de ses intérêts stratégiques, comme on l'a bien vu dans la crise ukrainienne. La France, l'Allemagne et d'autres pays européens ont cédé aux exigences américaines d'isoler la Russie et de l'affaiblir économiquement, tout en sachant que cela aurait de graves répercussions sur leurs propres économies.

Pire encore, les Etats-Unis ont décidé de faire partager le fardeau financier -«burden sharing»-, en faisant payer à ses «alliés» le prix des interventions militaries ici et là dans le monde.

C'est contre cette nouvelle forme d'impérialisme moins visible mais tout aussi nuisible que la Russie, l'Iran et la Syrie luttent depuis des années pour préserver leur droit d'exister en tant que nations libres et indépendantes.
 

source

Alahednews.com :: lien

Whose Job Is It to Kill ISIS?

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Whose Job Is It to Kill ISIS?

By

Ex: http://www.lewrockwell.com

Seeing clips of that 22-minute video of the immolation of the Jordanian pilot, one wonders: Who would be drawn to the cause of these barbarians who perpetrated such an atrocity?

While the video might firm up the faith of fanatics, would it not evoke rage and revulsion across the Islamic world? After all, this was a Sunni Muslim, in a cage, being burned alive.

As of now, this cruel killing seems to have backfired. Jordan is uniting behind King Abdullah’s determination to exact “earth-shattering” retribution.

Which raises again the questions: Why did ISIS do it? What did they hope to gain? Evil though they may be, they are not stupid.

Surely, they knew the reaction they would get?

Several explanations come to mind.

First, ISIS is hurting. It lost the battle for Kobane on the Turkish border to the Kurds; it is bleeding under U.S. air attacks; and it is stymied in Iraq. It wanted to lash out in the most dramatic and horrific way.

Second, ISIS wants to retain the title of the most resolute and ruthless of the Islamist radicals, a title temporarily lost to al-Qaida, which carried out the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris. This horror has put ISIS back in the headlines and on global television.

Third, ISIS wants to pay back King Abdullah, a Sunni and descendant of the Prophet, for joining America in bombing them.

Fourth, this may have been a provocation to cause the king to put his monarchy on the line and plunge Jordan into all out war against the Islamic State.

For history teaches that wars often prove fatal to monarchies. In the Great War of 1914-1918, the Hapsburgs and Hohenzollerns, the Romanovs and Ottomans, all went down.

The terrorists of ISIS may believe that stampeding Abdullah into fighting on the side of the “Crusaders” may prove destabilizing to his country and imperil the Hashemite throne.

For, though Jordanians may be united today, will they support sending their sons into battle as allies of the Americans and de facto allies of Bashar Assad, Hezbollah, and Iran?

There are reasons why Sunni nations like Turkey and Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states have not committed more openly and decisively to the war on ISIS, and instead prod the Americans to send their troops to eradicate the Islamic State.

To many Sunni nations, Assad and the Shia Crescent of Tehran, Baghdad, Damascus and Beirut are the greater threat.

Indeed, until recently, as Joe Biden pointed out last October, the Turks, Saudis and United Arab Emirates were providing clandestine aid to ISIS.

Biden was forced to apologize, but he had told the truth.

Which bring us back to the crucial issue here. While King Abdullah is a trusted friend, Jordan has been best able to serve its own and America’s interests by staying out of wars.

Lest we forget, Abdullah’s father, King Hussein, refused to join the coalition of Desert Storm that drove the Iraqi army out of Kuwait.

In February 1991, President Bush charged that King Hussein seems “to have moved over, way over, into the Saddam Hussein camp.” In March of 1991, the Senate voted to end all military and economic aid to Jordan. But the king was looking out for his own survival, and rightly so.

Hence, is it wise for Jordan to become a front-line fighting state in a war, which, if it prevails, will mean a new lease on life for the Assad regime and a victory for Iran, the Shia militias in Iraq, and Hezbollah?

Critics argue that after making his commitment to “degrade and defeat” the Islamic State, President Obama has provided neither a war strategy nor the military resources to carry it out. And they are right.

But this is just another case of the president drawing a red line he should never have drawn. While U.S. air power can hold back the advance of ISIS and “degrade,” i.e., contain, ISIS, the destruction of ISIS is going to require scores of thousands of troops.

Though the Iraqi army, Shia militias and Kurds may be able to provide those troops to retake Mosul, neither the Turks nor any other Arab nation has volunteered the troops to defeat ISIS in Syria.

And if the Turks and Sunni Arabs are unwilling to put boots on the ground in Syria, why should we? Why should America, half a world away, have to provide those troops rather than nations that are more immediately threatened and have armies near at hand?

Why is defeating 30,000 ISIS jihadists our job, and not theirs?

With this outrage, ISIS has thrown down the gauntlet to the Sunni Arabs. The new Saudi king calls the burning of Lt. Muath al-Kasasbeh an “odious crime” that is “inhuman and contrary to Islam.” The UAE foreign minister calls it a “brutal escalation by the terrorist group.”

Let us see if action follows outrage.

Patrick J. Buchanan [send him mail] is co-founder and editor of The American Conservative. He is also the author of seven books, including Where the Right Went Wrong, and Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War. His latest book is Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025? See his website.

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