US led West ratchets up for World War III and the "End of History"!
In end August 2002 , for my first article for Asia Times on US and its poodle British propaganda and baseless allegations against Saddam Hussein of Iraq, which were quite clear to any reasonable diplomat, which I was after 35 years and few years as a fiercely independent journalist, commentator and analyst of international affairs, I had suggested the title ;"The Bush family's phony wars" In all, I wrote 50 articles on U.S.-led illegal war and brutal occupation till two years ago, http://tarafits.blogspot.com/2011/12/50-articles-on-us-led-illegal-war-on.html
When just reading about the mayhem and gates of hell being widened in Iraq (and West Asia and North Africa) make me feel sick.
The editor had used the article with its title. It highlighted some extremely foolish and childish plans like taking out Saddam Hussain or organise a military coup against him and control Iraq .These were being thrown around and discussed in corporate controlled US media, the bogus British corporation, BBC. I was still innocent of the criminal and barbaric nature of leadership in America and many of the West European countries. So I had hoped that Saddam and Iraq could be constrained as he was after he was used as a pawn to quench the fires of Iran's revolution, with full support of Sunni Arab countries including Kuwait.
One of the leading neo-cons (they are coming up again) deputy defence Minister Paul Wolfowitz even haughtily dismissed an estimate of hundred billion dollars for the war on Iraq and its control. (It is now estimated to vary between 1 to 3 Trillion US Dollars) .He also declared that the Iraqi oil would pay for the war .Later on he admitted in Singapore that the false claims were only bureaucratic excuses, for the control over Iraqi oil was the main consideration. This is also admitted by the former chairman of US Federal reserve, which is a private body.
But Army Chief of Staff, General Shinseki testified to the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee that "something in the order of several hundred thousand soldiers" would probably be required for postwar Iraq. This was an estimate far higher than the figure being proposed by Secretary Rumsfeld in his invasion plan, and it was rejected in strong language by both Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, who was another chief planner of the invasion and occupation. Shinseki was forced into early retirement as Army Chief of Staff because of his comments on troop levels. Later in 2008, Gen Shinseki brought back as the Secretary of Veterans Affair as compensation.
After my first article and later after exchanging views with the editors of Asia Times I began to understand the real nature of genocide and barbarism in the DNA of American leaders or rather dutiful servants of the bankers, financiers and corporate interests, which control their thinking. We all know what happened.
To any sane person ,it is quite clear that the Western leadership has gone insane, with US and Western economies downhill surviving on loot and plunder and dollar as reserve currency with crazy advisers like war criminal Henry Kissinger and a Russia hating Polish origin US intellectual whore Brzezinski. Some neo-cons and Zeo-cons are at it again, almost trying to recreate the biblical story of Samson .In this case their lust for power and wealth but having lost all morality and ethical conscience and standing .After having destroyed Afghanistan, partially Pakistan, then Iraq , Libya and most of Syria with help from mediaeval and obscurantist Gulf kingdoms, led by Saudi Arabia and Qatar .In the case of Syria helped by NATO ally Turkey, Uncle Tom Obama and John Kerry almost brought the world to the point of nuclear Armageddon last year on the basis of false allegations that the Syrian government had used Sarin gas on its own citizens, when in fact it was supplied to west supported insurgents, according to reports, by Saudi Arabia through the good offices of Turkey. From such elements and others has emerged Islamic caliphate and now Islamic State , which has knifed to death 3 innocent Westerners. What about nearly two millions of the Arabs dead in the greater Middle East as a result of US led aggressions!
Hubris laden Western leadership is again hell bent, now in Ukraine, traditionally part of Russia since many hundreds of years, like in the last days of Hitler ruled Nazi Germany, except that any mistake or a wrong move by anyone could ignite the Third World War. I have gone in some detail about the recent events especially in Middle East, where I spent most of my diplomatic carrier.
I reproduce two thoughtful and frank but disturbing assessments from, Dr PC Roberts ,a former senior US official and wise old intellectual Noam Chomsky, both from USA. Yes, there are still people of integrity, honesty and courage in USA, for warning and cautioning the world, including Americans about the policies being pursued by Washington and enforced over its allies, most unwilling but subservient dependents rulers in Europe. Two former German chancellors were removed by US machinations because they were trying to get out of the heels of US , with its troops still stationed in Germany since 1945 and undertook policies in the interest of German people and Germany, the only thriving and economic state in the European Union.
K.Gajendra Singh. 16 September , 2014.
Washington's War Against Russia
Paul Craig Roberts
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2014/09/14/washingtons-war-russia-paul-craig-roberts-2/
The new sanctions against Russia announced by Washington and Europe do not make sense as merely economic measures. I would be surprised if Russian oil and military industries were dependent on European capital markets in a meaningful way. Such a dependence would indicate a failure in Russian strategic thinking. The Russian companies should be able to secure adequate financing from Russian Banks or from the Russian government. If foreign loans are needed, Russia can borrow from China.
If critical Russian industries are dependent on European capital markets, the sanctions will help Russia by forcing an end to this debilitating dependence. Russia should not be dependent on the West in any way.
The real question is the purpose of the sanctions. My conclusion is that the purpose of the sanctions is to break up and undermine Europe's economic and political relations with Russia. When international relations are intentionally undermined, war can be the result. Washington will continue to push sanctions against Russia until Russia shows Europe that there is a heavy cost of serving as Washington's tool.
Russia needs to break up this process of ever more sanctions in order to derail the drive toward war. In my opinion this is easy for Russia to do. Russia can tell Europe that since you do not like our oil companies, you must not like our gas company, so we are turning off the gas. Or Russia can tell Europe, we don't sell natural gas to NATO members, or Russia can say we will continue to sell you gas, but you must pay in rubles, not in dollars. This would have the additional benefit of increasing the demand for rubles in exchange markets, thus making it harder for speculators and the US government to drive down the ruble.
The real danger to Russia is a continuation of its low-key, moderate response to the sanctions. This is a response that encourages more sanctions. To stop the sanctions, Russia needs to show Europe that the sanctions have serious costs for Europe.
A Russian response to Washington would be to stop selling to the US the Russian rocket engines on which the US satellite program is dependent. This could leave the US without rockets for its satellites for six years between the period 2016 and 2022.
Possibly the Russian government is worried about losing the earnings from gas and rocket engine sales. However, Europe cannot do without the gas and would quickly abandon its participation in the sanctions, so no gas revenues would be lost. The Americans are going to develop their own rocket engine anyhow, so the Russian sales of rocket engines to the US have at most about 6 more years. But the US with an impaired satellite program for six years would mean a great relief to the entire world from the American spy program. It would also make difficult US military aggression against Russia during the period.
Russian President Putin and his government have been very low-key and unprovocative in responding to the sanctions and to the trouble that Washington continues to cause for Russia in Ukraine. The low-key Russian behavior can be understood as a strategy for undermining Washington's use of Europe against Russia by presenting a non-threatening face to Europe. However, another explanation is the presence inside Russia of a fifth column that represents Washington's interest and constrains the power of the Russian government.
Strelkov describes the American fifth column here: http://slavyangrad.org/2014/09/12/we-will-not-allow-for-russia-to-be-ripped-asunder-and-ruined/
Saker describes the two power groups inside Russia as the Eurasian Sovereignists who stand behind Putin and an independent Russia and the Atlantic Integrationists, the fifth column that works to incorporate Russia in Europe under US hegemony or, failing that, to help Washington break up the Russian Federation into several weaker countries that are too weak to constrain Washington's use of power. http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.com.br/2014/09/strelkov-from-swimming-with-piranhas-to.html
Russia's Atlantic Integrationists share the Brzezinski and Wolfowitz doctrines with Washington. These doctrines are the basis for US foreign policy. The doctrines define the goal of US foreign policy in terms of preventing the rise of other countries, such as Russia and China, that could limit Washington's hegemony.
Washington is in a position to exploit the tensions between these two Russian power groups. Washington's fifth column is not best positioned to prevail. However, Washington can at least count on the struggle causing dissent within the Eurasian Sovereignists over Putin's low-key response to Western provocations. Some of this dissent can be seen in Strelkov's defense of Russia and more can be seen here:
http://slavyangrad.org/2014/09/13/the-new-round-of-sanctions-the-pre-war-period/#more-3665
Russia, thinking the Cold War ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union, opened herself to the West. Russian governments trusted the West, and as a result of Russia's gullibility, the West was able to purchase numerous allies among the Russian elites. Depending on the alignment of the media, these compromised elites are capable of assassinating Putin and attempting a coup.
One would think that by now Putin's government would recognize the danger and arrest the main elements of the fifth column, followed by trial and execution for treason, in order that Russia can stand united against the Western Threat. If Putin does not take this step, it means either than Putin does not recognize the extent of the threat or that his government lacks the power to protect Russia from the internal threat.
It is clear that Putin has not achieved any respite for his government from the West's propaganda and economic assault by refusing to defend the Donbass area from Ukrainian attack and by pressuring the Donetsk Republic into a ceasefire when its military forces were on the verge of a major defeat of the disintegrating Ukrainian army. All Putin has achieved is to open himself to criticism among his supporters for betraying the Russians in eastern and southern Ukraine.
The European politicians and elites are so deeply in Washington's pocket that Putin has little chance of courting Europe with a Russian show of good will. I have never believed that this strategy could work, although I would be pleased if it did. Only a direct threat todeprive Europe of energy has a chance of producing within Europe a foreign policy independent of Washington. I do not think Europe can survive a cutoff of the Russian natural gas. Europe would abandon sanctions in order to guarantee the flow of gas. If Washington's hold on Europe is so powerful that Europe is willing to endure a major disruption of its energy supply as the price of its vassalage, Russia will know to cease its futile attempts at diplomacy and to prepare for war.
If China sits on the sidelines, China will be the next isolated target and will receive the same treatment.
Washington intends to defeat both countries, either through internal dissent or through war.
Nothing said by Obama or any member of his government or any influential voice in Congress has signaled any pullback in Washington's drive for hegemony over the world.
The US economy is now dependent on looting and plunder, and Washington's hegemony is essential to this corrupted form of capitalism.
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts' latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West and How America Was Lost.
The End of History?
The short, strange era of human civilization would appear to be drawing to a close.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article39663.htm
By Noam Chomsky
September 13, 2014 "ICH" - It is not pleasant to contemplate the thoughts that must be passing through the mind of the Owl of Minerva as the dusk falls and she undertakes the task of interpreting the era of human civilization, which may now be approaching its inglorious end.
The era opened almost 10,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent, stretching from the lands of the Tigris and Euphrates, through Phoenicia on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean to the Nile Valley, and from there to Greece and beyond. What is happening in this region provides painful lessons on the depths to which the species can descend.
The land of the Tigris and Euphrates has been the scene of unspeakable horrors in recent years. The George W. Bush-Tony Blair aggression in 2003, which many Iraqis compared to the Mongol invasions of the 13th century, was yet another lethal blow. It destroyed much of what survived the Bill Clinton-driven U.N. sanctions on Iraq, condemned as "genocidal" by the distinguished diplomats Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck, who administered them before resigning in protest. Halliday and von Sponeck's devastating reports received the usual treatment accorded to unwanted facts.
One dreadful consequence of the U.S.-U.K. invasion is depicted in a New York Times "visual guide to the crisis in Iraq and Syria": the radical change of Baghdad from mixed neighborhoods in 2003 to today's sectarian enclaves trapped in bitter hatred. The conflicts ignited by the invasion have spread beyond and are now tearing the entire region to shreds.
Much of the Tigris-Euphrates area is in the hands of ISIS and its self-proclaimed Islamic State, a grim caricature of the extremist form of radical Islam that has its home in Saudi Arabia. Patrick Cockburn, a Middle East correspondent for The Independent and one of the best-informed analysts of ISIS, describes it as "a very horrible, in many ways fascist organization, very sectarian, kills anybody who doesn't believe in their particular rigorous brand of Islam."
Cockburn also points out the contradiction in the Western reaction to the emergence of ISIS: efforts to stem its advance in Iraq along with others to undermine the group's major opponent in Syria, the brutal Bashar Assad regime. Meanwhile a major barrier to the spread of the ISIS plague to Lebanon is Hezbollah, a hated enemy of the U.S. and its Israeli ally. And to complicate the situation further, the U.S. and Iran now share a justified concern about the rise of the Islamic State, as do others in this highly conflicted region.
Egypt has plunged into some of its darkest days under a military dictatorship that continues to receive U.S. support. Egypt's fate was not written in the stars. For centuries, alternative paths have been quite feasible, and not infrequently, a heavy imperial hand has barred the way.
After the renewed horrors of the past few weeks it should be unnecessary to comment on what emanates from Jerusalem, in remote history considered a moral center.
Eighty years ago, Martin Heidegger extolled Nazi Germany as providing the best hope for rescuing the glorious civilization of the Greeks from the barbarians of the East and West. Today, German bankers are crushing Greece under an economic regime designed to maintain their wealth and power.
The likely end of the era of civilization is foreshadowed in a new draft report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the generally conservative monitor of what is happening to the physical world.
The report concludes that increasing greenhouse gas emissions risk "severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems" over the coming decades. The world is nearing the temperature when loss of the vast ice sheet over Greenland will be unstoppable. Along with melting Antarctic ice, that could raise sea levels to inundate major cities as well as coastal plains.
The era of civilization coincides closely with the geological epoch of the Holocene, beginning over 11,000 years ago. The previous Pleistocene epoch lasted 2.5 million years. Scientists now suggest that a new epoch began about 250 years ago, the Anthropocene, the period when human activity has had a dramatic impact on the physical world. The rate of change of geological epochs is hard to ignore.
One index of human impact is the extinction of species, now estimated to be at about the same rate as it was 65 million years ago when an asteroid hit the Earth. That is the presumed cause for the ending of the age of the dinosaurs, which opened the way for small mammals to proliferate, and ultimately modern humans. Today, it is humans who are the asteroid, condemning much of life to extinction.
The IPCC report reaffirms that the "vast majority" of known fuel reserves must be left in the ground to avert intolerable risks to future generations. Meanwhile the major energy corporations make no secret of their goal of exploiting these reserves and discovering new ones.
A day before its summary of the IPCC conclusions, The New York Times reported that huge Midwestern grain stocks are rotting so that the products of the North Dakota oil boom can be shipped by rail to Asia and Europe.
One of the most feared consequences of anthropogenic global warming is the thawing of permafrost regions. A study in Science magazine warns that "even slightly warmer temperatures [less than anticipated in coming years] could start melting permafrost, which in turn threatens to trigger the release of huge amounts of greenhouse gases trapped in ice," with possible "fatal consequences" for the global climate.
Arundhati Roy suggests that the "most appropriate metaphor for the insanity of our times" is the Siachen Glacier, where Indian and Pakistani soldiers have killed each other on the highest battlefield in the world. The glacier is now melting and revealing "thousands of empty artillery shells, empty fuel drums, ice axes, old boots, tents and every other kind of waste that thousands of warring human beings generate" in meaningless conflict. And as the glaciers melt, India and Pakistan face indescribable disaster.
Sad species. Poor Owl.
Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor & Professor of Linguistics (Emeritus) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the author of dozens of books on U.S. foreign policy. He writes a monthly column for The New York Times News Service/Syndicate.
This post first appeared at In These Times.
