Possibility of war between Asian superpowers looms as Jared Kushner puts Rex Tillerson in his place By Wayne Madsen Report

 Possibility of war between Asian superpowers looms as Jared Kushner puts Rex Tillerson in his place By Wayne Madsen Report
U.S. strongman Donald Trump in a nepotistic fashion has granted his son-in-law Jared Kushner special diplomatic envoy portfolios to deal with the Middle East, China, Canada, and Mexico. Kushner, who is 36 and has no international experience, except for acting as a virtual embedded agent for Israel and Binyamin Netanyahu in the United States, recently warned Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to understand his place after the normally soft-spoken Tillerson blew up at a White House meeting with chief of staff Reince Priebus, Kushner, and their aides. Tillerson complained that the White House was vetoing his selections to fill important State Department posts, including ambassadorships and secondary and tertiary positions in the department. Kushner has applied a political litmus test to State Department appointments, rejecting anyone who has ever criticized Trump or those who have contributed to Democratic candidates.

The arrogance and brashness of Kushner is about to explode in his face as the world's most populous nation, China, and the world's most populous democracy, India, face off in the Himalayas over a border dispute that threatens to become a wider regional conflict. If war breaks out between India and China, both nuclear powers, Kushner should be pushed aside by the adults in the Trump administration.

Borders in the Himalayan region have names like "lines of control," "lines of actual control," "un-demarcated boundaries," and "historical sovereign territory." The reason is because many of the borders have been contested since British colonial times. In the rugged and sparsely-populated mountainous range extending from Kashmir in the west to the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh in the east, it has been nearly impossible to establish recognizable borders and the countries of the region -- India, China, Pakistan, Bhutan, and Nepal -- have been contesting borders since the British withdrew from the subcontinent after World War II. Mapping has been all but impossible and even Google Maps cannot pinpoint some contested areas in the Himalayas.

In 1962, a border war broke out between China and India, a conflict that threatened to blossom into a wider war pitting the United States against China and a Soviet Union that supported India. It was one of the few occasions where the United States and USSR found themselves on the same side. But that was at a time when level-headed decisions by President John F. Kennedy, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, and Chinese Foreign Minister Chou En-lai prevailed. Today, with the likes of Trump, Kushner, and Steve Bannon at the helm of the American ship of state, small border conflicts could explode into wider regional warfare.

It is not known whether Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi brought up the border dispute with China during his recent White House visit, but the United States foreign policy apparatus is asleep at the wheel as Chinese and Indian troops face off on the border of Indian-occupied Sikkim and Chinese-controlled Tibet. Ominously, China reminded India that it had defeated the Indian army in the 1962 border war. China was also suspicious about Modi's trip to Israel, the first by an Indian prime minister to the Jewish state. China is keenly aware of the influence Israel maintains through the Kushner cell within the White House. China suspects that India may be using Kushner and Israel to its advantage in the border confrontation.

The latest border skirmish between the two Asian powers began when Indian troops blocked the construction by Chinese workers of a road in the tri-border Doka La region of Sikkim, where the borders of India, China, and Bhutan meet. The blocking of the road by the Indian Army resulted in a statement by Beijing that the area, which is claimed by India and Bhutan, was "indisputable sovereign" Chinese territory. China demanded that India withdraw its troops from the Doka La area. Bhutan charged that Beijing violated past agreements between the two countries by building a road that headed toward the Bhutan Army camp at Zompelri.

The Royal Bhutanese Army has been involved in a project demarcating the border between Bhutan and China. It was a Bhutanese Army patrol that first discovered the Chinese construction crew, whereupon the Bhutanese told the Chinese they were violating Bhutanese territory and instructed them to withdraw. When the Chinese refused, the Bhutanese government lodged a formal diplomatic protest with the Chinese embassy in New Delhi, citing Beijing for violating the 1998 "Agreement for the Maintenance of Peace and Tranquility in the Bhutan-China Border Area" to maintain the status quo regarding their common border. Bhutan and China do not maintain diplomatic relations. China rejected Bhutan's complaint.


Trump's foreign policy envoy to just about everywhere, the insolent and snotty Jared Kushner, is ill-prepared to deal with emerging trouble spots like Doka La. Recently, MSNBC host Chris Matthews likened Kushner to Benito Mussolini's foreign minister and son-in-law Count Galeazzo Ciano. Mussolini later had Ciano executed for treason. Matthews said he was not suggesting the same fate for Kushner. Why the hell not?

China is believed to be illegally occupying 154 square miles of Bhutanese territory in west Bhutan. In return for ceding its claim to western Bhutan, China has offered to exchange with the tiny kingdom, where the economy is based on "gross national happiness," 347 square miles of territory in northern Bhutan. However, the northern Bhutan territory is already Bhutanese, so the Chinese are trying to exchange illegally occupied territory for illegally claimed territory.


Military skirmishes along the Sikkim-Tibet border threaten cross-border commerce, as well as a wider war

Indian military personnel later joined Bhutanese army units at the Chinese highway oconstruction site and reiterated Bhutan's request to withdraw from the region. After the border incidents, Indian Army chief General Bipin Rawat visited Indian garrisons along the Sikkim-Tibet border and warned that India could fight a two-front war against China and Pakistan, while ensuring the stability of restive Indian states in the region. India created the 17 Mountain Strike Corps composed of two mountain divisions in Sikkim to specifically strike at Chinese military units in Tibet in the event of an all-out war. Aiding the Mountain Corps are two battalions of Sikkim Scouts, comprised of native Sikkimese troops, who would launch sabotage missions against Chinese targets in Sikkim and Tibet. Similar units, the Ladakh Scouts and Arunachal Scouts, also made up of local troops, would conduct similar missions against Chinese forces in Tibet.

China, in retaliation for the Indian Army's moves against its road construction crew, blocked access for pilgrims seeking to cross the strategic and heavily-militarized Nathu La pass between Sikkim into Tibet and visit Mount Kailash and Lake Mansarovar, which are sacred to Hindus and Buddhists, and even a few Christians who believe a young Jesus once walked in the shadow of Mount Kailash. The blocking of the religious pilgrims on the annual "yatra" excursion sent a message not only to New Delhi, but also to the exiled Tibetan Dalai Lama's government in Dharamsala, India, and the governments of Sikkim and Bhutan that China would exercise its power in the region. India responded to China's road project by stating it represents a "significant change of status quo with security implications for India." In 2006, Nathu La pass has gained even more importance. That year saw the pass being opened to not only commercial traffic but also tourists.

It is believed that the military standoff in Doka La resulted from the Dalai Lama's recent visit to Arunchal Pradesh, which China claims as South Tibet. The Chinese were also unhappy with the Dalai Lama's planned visit to Leh, the capital of Ladakh in Kashmir, where sovereignty over some of the territory is disputed by India, Pakistan, and China. Ladakh has also been the scene of military border incidents between Chinese and Indian troops.

China has indicated that the road construction in Doka La has nothing to do with the Dalai Lama and that it is part of China's "One Belt, One Road" infrastructure project of establishing modern highway and rail links throughout Asia and beyond.

There were special interests in both Tibet and India that never approved of the 2003 Sino-Indian agreement that saw India recognize Tibet as the "Tibet Autonomous Region" of China in return for Beijing recognizing Sikkim as a state of India. Before the 2003 agreement, Chinese maps showed Sikkim as an independent state. The state had been an independent kingdom until 1975, when Indian troops invaded the country and deposed its monarch and his government. In November 2008, Chinese troops demolished Indian bunkers built in the disputed Doka La region. Preceding the standoff over the Chinese road crew incident this month was the bulldozing of at least one fortified Indian bunker in the Doka La region by Chinese forces in early June.

Note: This editor was one of the few Western journalists who managed to gain entry to Sikkim in 2008. Posing as a "cook book" author, I was able to see the massive Indian military presence in the country and also establish personal contact with members of the deposed Sikkimese royal family.

WMR has reported on the situation in Sikkim from its capital of Gangtok. On October 27, 2008, WMR reported the following:

"Ever since the Indian invasion and annexation of Sikkim in 1975, the now-Indian state of Sikkim has restricted access to pre-screened tourists who must obtain an inland border permit from the Sikkim government and the approval of the Indian Home Office in New Delhi. Journalists, especially Western journalists, are not welcome in modern Sikkim, a state that is the most heavily subsidized of any Indian state and guarded by tens of thousands of Indian troops prepared to repel a Chinese invasion from Tibet through the Nathu La Pass, one of the world's most heavily-fortified borders. Westerners are not permitted to visit the Sikkim side of the Nathu La Pass.

This editor's Sikkim entry document states unequivocally that Sikkim is a "Foreigners Restricted Area" and that access to Sikkim is only permitted via Rangpo on the Sikkim-West Bengal border and that only certain places are authorized to visit for "purposes of tourism" including Gangtok, the capital; Rumtek, the Buddhist monastery where the 17th Karmapa normally resides (the Karmapa is the third highest Tibetan Buddhist leader after the Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama); Gyalshing in west Sikkim; Namchi in south Sikkim; and Mangan in north Sikkim. Foreigners are strictly prohibited from areas close to the Chinese border. The maximum period of stay for a tourist is 15 days.

Rather than being a Shangri La, Sikkim is now more like a "Singapore of the Himalayas," a highly-regimented state that is governed by an autocratic Chief Minister of Nepali descent, Pawan Chamling, whose party, the Sikkim Democratic Front (SDF), maintains an iron-clad control of 31 of 32 seats in the Legislative Assembly. The blue, yellow, and red SDF flag is seen everywhere -- draped across roads and flying from shops and homes.

In April of this year, Chamling tossed out a CNN-IBN reporter from Sikkim and threatened the broadcaster with a law suit after a CNN-IBN report that accused Chamling of corruption. Chamling demanded an apology from CNN and its Indian partner, IBN, or threatened a defamation suit.

However, WMR succeeded in peering into Sikkim where the multi-billion dollar CNN network failed. I successfully traveled without incident to Sikkim not brandishing journalist credentials but traveling as a simple tourist.

As in Singapore, Sikkimese are cautioned by ubiquitous signs that tell them not to pluck flowers from public gardens, to avoid over-confidence in driving, and alternately to honk or not to honk their horns on narrow mountain roads that resemble a roller coaster ride.

Sikkim's people, who still view themselves as living in a distinct entity from India, are kept satisfied through massive subsidies from New Delhi. That means that prices and services in Sikkim are much better than those found in neighboring West Bengal, one of India's poorest states. Sikkim's higher standard of living has also prompted an autonomy movement in the Gorkhaland area of north Bengal, where the Gorkhas, who are ethnic Nepalis, as are 75 percent of Sikkim's population, see their standard of living suppressed by what they view as a corrupt Communist-led government in Kolkata, West Bengal's capital.

There is much sympathy for Gorkhaland in Sikkim. Sikkimese and Gorkhas, especially those in the Gorkhaland capital of Darjeeling, which was once part of the old Kingdom of Sikkim, are linked through family and business ties.

One thing that is not tolerated in Sikkim is any public support for the old Kingdom which was abolished after India's annexation of the country in 1975. That act by Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was carried out with the approval of then-U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger who also cut off aid to Tibetan guerrillas who were operating from Nepal with the support of a Tibetan Buddhist network in Sikkim.

There still appears to be a U.S. intelligence interest in Sikkim. On September 5, 2008, WMR reported: "On July 15, the government of Sikkim announced it would sign a Memorandum of Understanding with Star Universal Resource Company of New York to build a highway and tunnel expressway from Sevoke through Gangtok to the Chinese border at Nathu La Pass. Although the firm claims to a 'leading international engineering, financing, construction and service company,' not much is actually known about the company, other than that it claims to operate in seventeen countries including Iraq, Afghanistan, and South Korea, all locations of U.S. military bases. In fact, a search of the Nexis database turns up Star Universal Resource Company's only project being the Sikkim highway/tunnel project. The American firm's involvement in the project has led a number of Sikkimese to wonder if the firm is not a front for something else. From Nathu La, a highway links Sikkim to Lhasa, the Tibetan capital."

When I spoke to some Sikkimese about the highway project and "Star Universal," no one seemed quite sure about the company or the highway project. However, the letters "CIA" were uttered by some well-positioned Sikkimese in relation to the project. Any such links would make Chamling more than a minor player in international politics in comparison to any other Indian state chief minister.

From Rumtek Monastery can be seen the snow-capped Nathu La Pass on the Sikkim border with Chinese-ruled Tibet. Gangtok, the Sikkim capital, lies below the pass.

The old Royal Palace of Sikkim, where Hope Cooke was married to Chogyal (King) Palden Thondup Namgyal in 1963, is now a mere shell of its past grandeur. The palace itself is closed to the public. However, I arranged to have a tour of the palace grounds. Gone is the old Sikkim flag from the pole in front of the palace. It has been replaced with Buddhist prayer flags. In fact, the only place a Sikkim flag can be found in Sikkim today is in the home of one of the sons of Chogyal Palden Thondup Namgyal, still referred to as "Prince" by official Indian documents. The public display of the flag could earn a Sikkimese a day in court and a fine or prison sentence.

The former Royal Palace of Sikkim. The Sikkim government has allowed the palace and grounds to go to seed. Some loyal former royal groundskeepers do their best to keep the palace and garden in shape but it is a tough task with no actual funding.

WMR did learn from a well-informed source that a Sikkim flag still exists in storage at the United Nations headquarters in New York since it was anticipated that the country would one day achieve full independence and UN membership.

Cooke, who lived in New York for a number of years, now lives in London.

While monarchies in many nations are irrelevant anachronisms, the relatively benevolent Sikkim monarchy was the only thing that kept the small nation from being absorbed by India for many years. Today, in Sikkim, not only do older Sikkimese cherish their old monarchy but younger people, who never knew what is was like to live under the Chogyal, also express a fondness for the old Kingdom. This nostalgia even extends to the ethnic Nepalis. It was the Nepali majority that agitated for political reforms and whose demonstrations in the early 1970s gave India the pretext it needed to invade and occupy the country. However, the few remaining references to the Namgyal monarchy may also end with proposals afoot to strip the Namgyal name from a hospital and a school. The Namgyal Institute of Tibetology in Gangtok is the only museum where one can view photos and the history of the old royal family.

The Namgyals are related by marriage to the royal families of Bhutan and the recently-disestablished Kingdom of Mustang in Nepal. Mustang was another nexus of CIA intrigue during the Cold War, a place where the CIA deployed Khampa guerrillas from Tibet who were trained in Colorado and Wyoming and fought the Chinese army in Tibet. Some Khampa veterans still wear the non-traditional cowboy hats they learned to wear while being trained at the CIA's camps in Colorado and Wyoming.

The Namyal Institute of Tibetology is one of the few places in Sikkim where the name of the old royal family can still be found.

Although Sikkim is a destination for only the heartiest of travelers, a new posh resort still under construction and a helicopter connection from Bagdogra in West Bengal may see more Western tourists opting for a Sikkim holiday. That, in addition to possible U.S. intelligence interest in a fast highway via Sikkim to Lhasa, Tibet, may, once again, place Sikkim back into the geopolitical lexicon.

 

One of the few royal portraits in Sikkim today. The center top portrait is Chogyal Tashi Namgyal, the father of the last Chogyal of Sikkim. Tashi died in 1963. According to an Office of Strategic Services (OSS) source, Tashi Namgyal provided the OSS with valuable support in the U.S. efforts against Japan in South Asia during World War II. His son was thanked when the "mother of all neocons" Henry Kissinger gave Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi a wink and a nod to invade and annex Sikkim.

While Trump tweeted and sniffled, grown-up leaders planned major global projects By The Wayne Madsen Report

While Trump tweeted and sniffled, grown-up leaders planned major global projects By The Wayne Madsen Report
While Donald Trump displayed his immaturity by tweeting threats and sniffling during televised interviews, the world's grown-up leaders were meeting in Beijing to plan major and ambitious global projects foreseen by China's "One Belt, One Road" (OBOR) recreation of the ancient Silk Road. Chinese President Xi Jinping told assembled world leaders, who included Russian President Vladimir Putin, Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, and United Nations Secretary General Antonio Gutteres, that China's vision of a new Silk Road would expand beyond its ancient predecessor to include global highways, railways, and maritime routes.

Xi spoke of the ancient road that linked  the "Nile, the Tigris and Euphrates, the Indus and Ganges, and the Yellow and Yangtze Rivers" via trade routes that extended through "Jiuquan, Dunhuang, Tulufan, Kashi, Samarkand, Baghdad and Constantinople, as well as ancient ports of Ningbo, Quanzhou, Guangzhou, Beihai, Colombo, Jeddah, and Alexandria." The discussions in Beijing were a far cry from the "he said, she said" antics occurring in Washington, DC, the capital of what has truly become, in Mao Zedong's famed words, a "paper tiger."

The one clear message the Beijing meeting sent out to the world is that America’s “unipolar” vision of the world lies dead and buried. Even among Washington’s longtime friends and allies, one will not hear Donald Trump referred to as the “leader of the Free World.” That phrase has been discarded into the waste bin of history, along with America’s insistence that it is the world’s only “superpower.” The United States is a power, a second-rate one that happens to possess a first-rate nuclear arsenal.
The United States almost ignored the Beijing meeting completely. Its pathetic representation was carried out by Matt Pottinger, a little-known special assistant to Trump and the senior director for East Asia for the National Security Council. The only reason Trump sent anyone to represent the United States in Beijing was because President Xi made a special request for American representation during his recent meeting with Trump at the president’s private Mar-a-Lago Club resort in Palm Beach, Florida.

Perhaps Trump was disinterested in OBOR because there were no projects for which his Trump Organization could profit. The gathered leaders were not discussing hotels and golf courses but trans-Eurasian transportation systems, South American regional infrastructure, the Eurasian Economic Union, the Western Balkans extension of Eurasian transport networks, and the very important environmental issues of "conserving and sustainably using oceans and seas, freshwater resources, as well as forests, mountains and drylands, protecting biodiversity, ecosystems and wildlife, combating desertification and land degradation." China announced two major environmental initiatives in Beijing: the Big Data Service Platform on Ecological and Environmental Protection and the Joint Initiative to Establish the International Coalition for Green Development on the Belt and Road with the United Nations Environment Program.

Why would Trump want to participate in a conference in which 1) he saw no profit motivation and 2) the assembled leaders were discussing issues that stand diametrically opposite from policies being enacted by Environmental Protection Agency director Scott Pruitt and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke?

It is reassuring that other world leaders are taking the environment into consideration when planning major projects like the Eurasian Land Bridge and the East-West Middle Corridor, the latter running from Xian in China to Rotterdam in Europe. Land bridges, comprising highway and rail routes, are planned throughout Eurasia, including China-Mongolia-Russia, China-Central and West Asia, China-Indochina Peninsula, China-Pakistan, and Bangladesh-China-India-Burma.

Xi announced that a China-Russia Regional Cooperation Development Investment Fund would have a initialization capital of $14 billion in capital to begin funding One Belt, One Road projects. Meanwhile, Trump's Congressional allies were talking of economic sanctions on China over North Korea and increased sanctions on Russia over everything from Syria to Ukraine. It is noteworthy that among the governments represented by influential political players in Beijing were both North and South Korea, as well as Syria -- the government, not the "regime," as it is referred to by Trump's chest-thumpers in the White House.



Further plans were enacted in Beijing to expand the Interbank Association of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), an alternative to the SWIFT interbank financial transfer network that is subject not only to surveillance by the Five Eyes (FVEY) signals intelligence allies of the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, but also Western-imposed sanctions. The chiefs of the Washington, DC-based World Bank and International Monetary Fund listened to Chinese officials explain how the new Silk Road would bypass the Western and European Union political strings attached to both their institutions. China has initiated a Belt and Road Multi-currency Special Lending Scheme and Belt and Road Multi-currency Special Lending Scheme for Infrastructure Development that will allow participant nations to kiss the World Bank and IMF, with all of their "austerity" measures, goodbye. There is little wonder why the prime ministers of Greece, Spain, and Italy were in Beijing to find out more about loosening the financial shackles placed on them by the IMF, World Bank, and their European Union surrogates.

It also rankled the feathers of Trump's key Zionists in his administration -- Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, special adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner, and National Economic Council chairman Gary Cohn -- to see the China Development Bank sign Silk Road memorandums of understanding with two banks that have been subjected to sanctions by the West: Tejarat Bank of Iran and Raiffeisen Bank International of Austria. The Chinese are beginning to supplant the Zionists in their own playground of international banking and finance, something that irritates the Goldman Sachs players who surround Trump in his White House and Cabinet.

Serving to further irritate the interests of the Zionists of Trump World, China signed an agreement with Palestine on establishing a Think Tank Cooperation Program on Enhancing People-to-People Connectivity. The initiative is part of the Silk Road Think Tank Network (SiLKS). And in a show of force to George Soros and his friends at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), China announced that the China NGO Network for International Exchanges and over 150 civil organizations are jointly establishing the Silk Road NGO Cooperation Network. China has a long memory and will not forget Soros and USAID/NED meddling in Tibet, Hong Kong, Inner Mongolia, and the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region.

The Western corporate media tried to spin the One Belt, One Road summit as a disappointment because Britain, France, and Germany were not represented. It was a specious argument from the likes of The Washington Post and Associated Press. British Prime Minister Theresa May would have been in Beijing except for the tiny little issue of her waging a general election campaign. In her place was Chancellor of the Exchequer Phil Hammond. At least May did not copy Trump and send some middle-grade civil service flunkie. Speaking of elections, France had just seen a presidential election and President Francois Hollande had an excuse not to be in Beijing as he was preparing to hand over the presidency to his successor. France was represented by former prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin. Politics kept the prime minister of Japan and Chancellor of Germany away from Beijing, but both nations were represented by important personal representatives of Shinzo Abe and Angela Merkel, respectively.

Only Donald Trump saw fit to send a virtual nobody to Beijing. Perhaps it is fitting because on the world stage, Trump, in every way, increasingly shows that he, too, is a nobody in charge of a bloviating, meandering, and listless former "superpower." Trump vowed to "Make America Great Again." America's "greatness" died decades ago and Trump neither has the power nor the inclination to change that sobering fact of life regardless of all the red ball cap and t-shirt slogans to the contrary.

Top ten Soros targets in 2016 by Wayne Madsen Report

Top ten Soros targets in 2016 by Wayne Madsen Report
George Soros has a list and he's checking it twice. The list is where he will concentrate the efforts of his Central Intelligence Agency-connected non-governmental organization (NGO) assets in 2016. While supporting the CIA's agenda, Soros always manages to maximize his profits from the chaotic situations he and his operations engineer around the world.

1. Soros will continue to facilitate the arrival of hundreds of thousands of additional, mainly Muslim migrants from the Middle East, Africa, and Asia to Europe. The political and border destabilization of Europe and the resulting introduction of draconian security measures by the European Union are high on Soros's agenda.

2. Soros is backing a themed revolution for the Srpska Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Republic of Serbia, itself. The Srpska Republic president, Milorad Dodik, is threatening to declare independence from the Bosnia-Herzegovina federation and join Serbia. Dodik has the backing of the Serbian government as well as Russian President Vladimir Putin. Soros has decided to pull out all the stops to overthrow the Serbian government in Belgrade and the Srpska Republic government in Banja Luka and thus ensure compliant and anti-Russian governments take over power in both republics.

3. Soros will martial his resources in Haiti to ensure that banana company mogul Jovenel Moise wins the presidential run-off in Haiti's postponed election. Moise is the hand-picked successor of current president Michel Martelly, a singer by profession. Soros's election engineers succeeded in knocking out of a first- or second-place finish the candidate representing former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who is despised by Bill and Hillary Clinton, as well as Soros, for his leftist populist policies.

4. Soros's Open Society Institute and other NGO contrivances will continue to back the failed state of Ukraine. Soros will especially shore up Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the American Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko, and Odessa regional governor Mikheil Saakashvili, the former Soros-installed president of Georgia who is now a wanted criminal by the government in Tbilisi. Soros will continue to see to it that Ukrainian regular and irregular military forces continue to cause border problems for the Russian autonomous republics of Lugansk and Donetsk in the east and that sanctions against officials of Lugansk, Donetsk, and Crimea are not only maintained but strengthened.

5. Soros will press the opposition-controlled National Assembly of Venezuela to rescind Venezuela's diplomatic recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, two republics that broke way from Georgia.

6. Soros's operatives in China will continue to stir up political problems for Beijing in the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macao with increased street demonstrations. Soros will also step up his financial and political support for secessionists in Tibet, East Turkestan (Xinjiang-Uighur Autonomous Republic), and Inner Mongolia.

7. With the Argentine presidency and the Venezuelan National Assembly falling under the control of right-wing fascist-oriented political parties, Soros will mobilize his Latin American assets to force Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff from the presidency. She has been battling an attempt by the Brazilian Congress to impeach her. Soros despises Rousseff for a number of reasons but chiefly they are her commitment to the BRICS alliance of Brazil, Russia, China, India, and South Africa; her family links to Bulgaria during its communist past; her rejection of Soros's "Third Way" politics; Rousseff's opposition to privatization of state-owned enterprises -- industries into which Soros wants to invest heavily; and Rousseff's opposition to Brazilian public schools being used to promote homosexual life styles. Soros's main goal is to have Rousseff replaced with a right-winger who will pull Brazil out of the BRICS bloc.



8. Another BRICS leader Soros sees as vulnerable is Jacob Zuma, the president of South Africa. Soros's goal is to destroy the BRICS by peeling away South Africa and Brazil from the alliance, leaving only China and Russia as members after India can be persuaded the alliance is dead. Zuma and his African National Congress are also Soros targets because of their opposition to Israeli policies in Palestine and same-sex marriage. Soros backs the Democratic Alliance party, which receives much of its financial support from South African Zionists and the Jewish-dominated diamond industry.

9. Whoever the Republican U.S. presidential candidate turns out to be, Soros will throw his money and the backing of his NGOs to Hillary Clinton, a personal friend. Soros can be expected to finance intense opposition research and a massive 527 political action committee ad campaign against the GOP presidential candidate.

10. In the various presidential elections scheduled for 2016, Soros forces will back the most anti-Christian and pro-Muslim presidential candidates in the Central African Republic; Antonio Vitorino, a noted "Eurocrat," for president of Portugal; the pro-West Benin Prime Minster Lionel Zinsou for president of Benin; hedge fund manager Pedro Kuczynski for president of Peru; Juan Cohen for president of the Dominican Republic; all the anti-Putin candidates in the Russian election for the State Duma; pro-Saakashvili candidates in the Georgian parliamentary election; pro-NATO/EU parties in the Montenegro parliamentary election; and pro-EU/NATO parties in the Romanian parliamentary election.

Soros will work to defeat the Bolivian constitutional amendment referendum that will permit President Evo Morales to run for another term. They will also work against the re-election of Robert Fico as Prime Minister of Slovakia and the election of Samia Nkrumah, the daughter of Ghana's founding president Kwame Nkrumah as president of Ghana. In the Tanzanian constitutional referendum, the Soros forces will seek to protect the present union status quo and defeat any attempt by Zanzibar to secede and go its own way.

CIA; Turks created caliphate to launch attacks on Russia and China by Wayne Madsen

CIA; Turks created caliphate to launch attacks on Russia and China
by Wayne Madsen


Under the directorship of its pro-Saudi director John Brennan, the Central Intelligence Agency envisaged the Islamic State, which controls large portions of Syria and Iraq, as a base of operations from which Chechens and other Russian Muslims would launch attacks on Russia and Muslim Uighurs from western China would launch terrorist attacks on China. WMR has learned of this massive destabilization plan directed against Russia and China from sources in central Asia close to the U.S. intelligence community.

There are entire communities of Chechens and Uighurs now living in cities and towns in Syria and Iraq occupied by the forces of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). These particular groups have been considered off-limits to U.S. and its "coalition's" attack planners because the CIA and its affiliated George Soros-financed non-governmental organizations, including the Open Society Institute, Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and Human Rights Watch all support the secessionist movements led by jihadist Chechen and Uighur groups who now have a safe haven inside the self-proclaimed ISIL "caliphate."

Russian and Chinese military forces now operating out of the Syrian port of Tartus and a Russian airbase in Latakia, Syria have enraged the CIA, Barack Obama, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia by hitting these Chechen and Uighur population centers. The Pentagon, which has provided military assistance to Uighurs and Chechens fighting under the banners of the Nusra Front and the Khorasan Group, both linked to Al Qaeda, complained that Russian war planes were striking Syrian "moderate" forces when, in fact, they were hitting Chechen and Uighur targets. Syrian and Iraqi Kurdish forces have insisted that there is no difference between ISIL and the Nusra Front, Al Qaeda, and forces claiming to be with the "Free Syrian Army." Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called the Free Syrian Army a "phantom group."

Under the direction of the Turkish MIT intelligence service, thousands of Uighur families now live under ISIL/Nusra Front control in the Syrian cities of Idlib and Jisr Al-Shughur, the latter outside of Aleppo; Abyad, outside of Raqqa; Deir ex-Zor, in the heart of Syria's oil fields; and the Abu Dhuhur Airbase. The Uighurs were infiltrated through Turkey to Syria by the Turkish government. Some of the Uighurs were encouraged to move to Syria with the help of an MIT-funded Uighur language website in Turkey. Four villages around Idlib, devoid of their Syrian inhabitants who fled to Turkey and Europe, are now almost exclusively populated by Uighur squatters. Uighur children have also been enlisted to fight for jihadist forces.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan sees himself as the leader of a future pan-Turkic Islamist state stretching from western China to Bosnia and Albania. His intelligence service and pro-Islamist political party plays host to a number of central Asian Turkic radicals from as far away as Tuva, a Buddhist autonomous republic of Russia in Siberia, to Tatarstan, a largely Muslim autonomous republic of Russia in the Volga basin.

Also living in Syria are large groups of Chechens who are loyal to the Chechen Caucasus Emirate. They have been recruited from inside Chechnya as well as from the Republic of Georgia's Pankisi Gorge.
As with the Uighurs, entire Chechen families have been settled by Turkey and the CIA in Syria under the ISIL/jihadist banner.

Radio Free Asia's Uighur service and Radio Free Europe's North Caucasus Service have been used by the CIA to stir up jihadist sentiments among not only Uighurs and Chechens, respectively, but in the case of the North Caucasus Service, among Dagestanis, Kabardins, Ingushetis, Cherkessians, Karachays, Balkars, and other Muslim groups. The following news release of October 5, 2015, is how Radio Free Europe is being used to rally jihadist supporters to the ranks of the Nusra Front in Syria by creating a "bandwagon" effect: "A group of around 1,500 Chechen, Uzbek, and Tajik fighters in Syria has pledged allegiance to Al-Qaeda's Syria wing Nusra Front, a group monitoring the war said September 23. Jaish al-Muhajireen wal-Ansar (Muhajireen Brigade) or JMA made the pledge in a statement distributed by supporters online, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said . . . Nusra Front's leader said in June his group had around 30 percent foreign fighters, including Europeans, Asians, Russians, and Chechens." The CIA propaganda issued forth by Radio Free Europe attempts to pain a difference between Nusra Front and ISIL, claiming the Nusra Front leaders are the loyal successors to Osama Bin Laden. Former CIA director General David Petraeus recently suggested that the United States ally itself with Al Qaeda in Syria and Iraq to fight ISIL.


Spurred on by Radio Free Europe's North Caucasus Service and Soros-funded NGOs, Kabardins, like those above, have been recruited to fight for ISIL and allied jihadist groups in Syria.

Radio Free Europe/Liberty's propaganda broadcasts in the Tajik language had their success when earlier this year it was announced that the U.S.-trained commander of Tajikistan's OMON Special Forces, Col. Gulmurod Khalimov, defected, along with several other Tajiks, to fight for ISIL in Syria. Khalimov had a stark message for the United States, which has been helping ISIL/Nusra Front/Khorasan in Syria: "Listen, you American pigs, I’ve been three times to America, and I saw how you train fighters to kill Muslims . . .God willing, I will come with this weapon to your cities, your homes, and we will kill you.”

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights is a CIA/Soros propaganda operation in support of the Syrian rebel/jihadist cause. Tatar supporters of Nusra Front in Syria have also been identified as traveling from the Syrian front to join Ukrainian fascist forces fighting against Russian-speaking separatists in eastern Ukraine with the support of the Petro Poroshenko regime in Kiev.
Uighur child soldiers fighting for ISIL in Syria. The CIA sees him as a future terrorist fighting against Chinese forces on the streets of Urumchi, the capital of the Xinjiang-Uighur Autonomous Republic.
The Uighurs and Chechens form a large bulk of the Nusra Front, which, in addition to the United States and France, has also received military, intelligence, and logistics help from Israel. The Uighurs and Chechens have been at the forefront of executing Syrian Christians and Alawites, the latter called "Nusayri" by the Uighurs, and carrying out the destruction of churches and ancient relics.

The Uighurs have also used the services of Salafist learning centers in Saudi Arabia, including the Universities of Medina and Jeddah, to spread Wahhabist propaganda to Uighur refugee population centers in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Turkey, and Thailand. One such video in the Uighur language contains the following exhortation to Uighur militants: "those Chinese Buddhists, their small eyes, flat noses. Judgment day will not come, until we attacked them. Judgment day will not come, until we slaughter them. Judgment day will not come, until our war with them and attacking them." WMR has learned up until the deployment of Chinese military forces to assist their Russian allies in Syria, China's policy has been to transfer the Uighur problem to distant shores and away from the Xinjiang-Uighur Autonomous Republic in western China. The threat of ISIL-controlled Uighur cities to train terrorists to attack China and its interests in the Middle East, particularly those in the energy sector, convinced China that it was time to act militarily in concert with Russia, Iran, and the Bashar al-Assad government in Damascus.

The Chechens, who have made no secret of their desire to export ISIL fighters in Syria and Iraq to the Caucasus and the very heart of Moscow, have, with the help of Turkish intelligence, enlisted Bashkir, Tatar, Dagestani, and other Muslim jihadists to move to Syria. The majority of Chechen forces are based at Sheikh Suleiman Army base in Aleppo and the Menagh Air Base in northwestern Syria. One of the top Chechen commanders is the U.S. Special Forces-trained Georgian Tarkhan Batirashvili, whose nom de guerre is Abu Omar al-Shishani or "Abu Omar the Chechen."

When Obama and his mouth pieces claim that Russia is attacking "non-jihadist" targets in Syria they are being disingenuous. What they should say, if they wanted to be honest, is that Russia is hitting non-Syrian and non-Arab Islamists in Syria who were recruited for the anti-Assad jihad by America's Turkish and Saudi "allies" and armed and trained by the CIA and Mossad. THe CIA's Brennan studiously avoids the use of the term "jihadist" in order to not alienate the agency's radical Islamist friends and drive them away from Langley's control in the future U.S.-planned terrorist wars against Russia and China. 

CIA cold case becomes murkier by Wayne Madsen

CIA cold case becomes murkier

On December 16, 2014, WMR reported on the suspicious death of CIA stenographer Joanne (also reported as Jeanne) Fecteau in 1953. CIA archives include two Washington, DC newspaper articles that stated Fecteau's husband, described as an Army civilian, disappeared in December 1952 on a C-47 military flight from Japan to Korea. In fact, Joanne's husband, Richard G. Fecteau, was a CIA agent who was shot down over Manchuria in mainland China along with John T. Downey. The two CIA agents were dropping supplies to anti-Communist agents. Other reports suggest that the two agents were trying to pick up a CIA agent in Manchuria when their plane was downed.

Fecteau and Downey were later released by the Chinese, Fecteau in 1971 and Downey in 1973. Fecteau was released as a Chinese gesture to the United States after secret talks paved the way for President Richard Nixon's historic trip to China. Downey was only released after Nixon agreed to publicly admit that Downey worked for the CIA. Up until that time, the U.S. State Department maintained that Fecteau and Downey were "civilian Army employees lost on a 'routine flight' from Seoul, South Korea, to Japan." However, The Washington Post reported at the time of Joanne's death that Fecteau was on a flight from Japan to Korea, not the other way around. In November 2013, the CIA awarded Fecteau and Downey the Distinguished Intelligence Cross. The CIA admitted that the CIA asset that agents Downey and Fecteau were to rescue in China had already been compromised by Chinese intelligence. The Chinese were waiting for the CIA aircraft and they hit it with anti-aircraft fire. The plane made a controlled crash but the CIA said the two CIA Civil Air Transport (CAT) proprietary firm pilots, Robert C. Snoddy and Norman A. Schwartz, died. Snoddy's remains were later recovered and buried in Eugene, Oregon. Schwartz's remains were never recovered.

The CIA's agent exfiltration operation was doomed from the start. The CIA had decided to airdrop Chinese nationalist exiles into Manchuria in order to link up with anti-Mao Zedong renegade communist generals. The problem was that no such generals existed. Mao had ironclad support from the leadership of the People's Liberation Army.

CIA director John Brennan said at the ceremony honoring Downey and Fecteau that, “It has been 61 years since Dick and Jack took to the skies over North Korea and China during the Korean War, and their ordeal remains among the most compelling accounts of courage, resolve, and endurance in the history of our agency." Amid all the honorific press stories about Fecteau and Downey, there is no mention of Fecteau's wife Joanne and the suspicious fire that took the life of the CIA stenographer on one autumn day on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay. The Boston Globe attempted to interview Fecteau, a resident of Lynn, Massachusetts, after his award from Brennan but the paper reported that he could not be reached for comment. Downey, who became a Connecticut state judge in 1987, died on November 17, 2014.



Neither the Nashua Telegraph of January 6, 1972 nor any other periodical to this day mentions the suspicious death of Richard Fecteau's CIA wife Joanne nine months after he was captured by the Chinese.

The few stories written about Fecteau after his release by the Chinese fail to mention Joanne Fecteau and her suspicious death. One news article appearing in Yankee magazine in 1982 states Fecteau, who returned to work for the CIA until 1976 when he became assistant athletic coach at his Boston University alma mater, rekindled his relationship with his ex-wife Peg (Margaret), who he divorced before marrying Joanne. The article states that Fecteau's two daughters were 22 at the time of his release. They were two-years old at the time of his capture. Fecteau was 25 years old at the time of his capture and he was already divorced and remarried, relatively rare for 1952 American society. The Yankee article states: "He [Fecteau] rekindled his relationship with his ex-wife Peg, who had "waited and prayed for him for 19 years." Fecteau and his ex-wife remarried in 1976.  On the same day that President Bill Clinton arrived in Beijing in 1998, CIA director George Tenet presented Fecteau and Downey with the CIA Director's Award at a ceremony at the Langley headquarters. A documentary film released by the CIA in 2011 about the ordeal of Fecteau and Downey, titled "Extraordinary Fidelity," omits any mention of Joanne. The CIA simply erased its employee Joanne Fecteau from their history except for two newspaper articles on her death contained in the CIA archival files.

The CIA in 2011 released a film, "Extraordinary Fidelity, - See more at: http://www.legacy.com/ns/obituary.aspx?n=john-downey&pid=173197122#sthash.XuEv10pO.dpuf

Downey [left] and Fecteau [right] after being awarded the CIA's top honor in November 2013.

The following is what WMR reported last month:

"CIA archives contain two articles dated September 29, 1953, published in The Washington Post and Washington Star, regarding the horrible death by burning of a stunningly attractive red-headed stenographer for the CIA. CIA veterans confirm that as a stenographer, Joanne Fecteau, 27, would have had access to the senior executives of the agency, including director Allen Dulles. Fecteau's burned body was found on September 29 underneath a bed in a cabin in Avalon Shores, Maryland, between Annapolis and Chesapeake Beach. The story of the beautiful CIA stenographer becomes murkier. Her husband, Army civilian administrative assistant Richard G. Fecteau had disappeared in December 1952 while on a transport flight from Japan to Korea.

The cabin where Joanne Fecteau's body was discovered was owned by Major Carl Garver, 39, an Air Force ROTC instructor at George Washington University. When flames broke out inside the cabin at around 6 pm, Garver claimed he tried frantically to break into the house but was 'driven back' by the flames. The conclusion by fire inspectors was that the fire was caused by faulty wiring in a hot plate in the kitchen. The Anne Arundel coroner stated that Fecteau's death was caused by burns and carbon monoxide poisoning.


Another possible murder cold case from the files of the CIA: CIA stenographer Joanne Fecteau burned to death in Maryland cabin on the infamous Chesapeake Bay, the bay that also claimed the lives of CIA director William Colby and CIA operations officer John Paisley.

According to the Post article, Garver's residence was at the Army-Navy Club in downtown Washington while Fecteau's residence was listed as the Dupont Plaza Hotel, a luxury hotel on Dupont Circle in downtown DC. The Star reported Garver's residence as 3801 Connecticut Avenue in Washington, just north of the Cleveland Park neighborhood."

* Update 1x. Curiously, The Washington Post had Mrs. Fecteau's name as "Joanne" while The Washington Star reported her name as "Jeanne." A handwritten CIA notation on the Star article has the name "Joanne" written in cursive letters before "FECTEAU," which is written in block capital letters. The Post article has a CIA handwritten note of "Richard G. Fecteau" under a redacted notation. The Star reported that the Washington, DC homicide squad told Anne Arundel authorities that Fecteau had suffered a burn on her hand during an earlier August 13, 1953 blaze in an apartment on the 2600 block of Tunlaw Road in Northwest Washington. Police said the fire was caused by careless smoking. There is no explanation of why DC homicide was involved in two blazes allegedly caused by a faulty hot plate in Maryland and careless smoking in DC.

 
Joanne or Jeanne? DC's two major newspapers conflicted on name of dead CIA employee.

THE ROVING EYE Russia, China mock divide and rule By Pepe Escobar

THE ROVING EYE Russia, China mock divide and rule By Pepe Escobar ROME and BEIJING - The Roman Empire did it. The British Empire copied it in style. The Empire of Chaos has always done it. They all do it. Divide et impera. Divide and rule - or divide and conquer. It's nasty, brutish and effective. Not forever though, like diamonds, because empires do crumble. A room with a view to the Pantheon may be a celebration of Venus - but also a glimpse on the works of Mars. I had been in Rome essentially for a symposium - Global WARning - organized by a very committed, talented group led by a former member of European Parliament, Giulietto Chiesa. Three days later, as the run on the rouble was unleashed, Chiesa was arrested and expelled from Estonia as persona non grata, yet another graphic illustration of the anti-Russia hysteria gripping the Baltic nations and the Orwellian grip NATO has on Europe's weak links. [1] Dissent is simply not allowed. At the symposium, held in a divinely frescoed former 15th century Dominican refectory now part of the Italian parliament's library, Sergey Glazyev, on the phone from Moscow, gave a stark reading of Cold War 2.0. There's no real "government" in Kiev; the US ambassador is in charge. An anti-Russia doctrine has been hatched in Washington to foment war in Europe - and European politicians are its collaborators. Washington wants a war in Europe because it is losing the competition with China. Glazyev addressed the sanctions dementia: Russia is trying simultaneously to reorganize the politics of the International Monetary Fund, fight capital flight and minimize the effect of banks closing credit lines for many businessmen. Yet the end result of sanctions, he says, is that Europe will be the ultimate losers economically; bureaucracy in Europe has lost economic focus as American geopoliticians have taken over. Only three days before the run on the rouble, I asked Rosneft's Mikhail Leontyev (Press-Secretary - Director of the Information and Advertisement Department) about the growing rumors of the Russian government getting ready to apply currency controls. At the time, no one knew an attack on rouble would be so swift, and conceived as a checkmate to destroy the Russian economy. After sublime espressos at the Tazza d'Oro, right by the Pantheon, Leontyev told me that currency controls were indeed a possibility. But not yet. What he did emphasize was this was outright financial war, helped by a fifth column in the Russian establishment. The only equal component in this asymmetrical war was nuclear forces. And yet Russia would not surrender. Leontyev characterized Europe not as a historical subject but as an object: "The European project is an American project." And "democracy" had become fiction. The run on the rouble came and went like a devastating economic hurricane. Yet you don't threat a checkmate against a skilled chess player unless your firepower is stronger than Jupiter's lightning bolt. Moscow survived. Gazprom heeded the request of President Vladimir Putin and will sell its US dollar reserves on the domestic market. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier went on the record against the EU further "turning the screw" as in more counterproductive sanctions against Moscow. And at his annual press conference, Putin emphasized how Russia would weather the storm. Yet I was especially intrigued by what he did not say. [2] As Mars took over, in a frenetic acceleration of history, I retreated to my Pantheon room trying to channel Seneca; from euthymia - interior serenity - to that state of imperturbability the Stoics defined as aponia. Still, it's hard to cultivate euthymia when Cold War 2.0 rages. Show me your imperturbable missile Russia could always deploy an economic "nuclear" option, declaring a moratorium on its foreign debt. Then, if Western banks seized Russian assets, Moscow could seize every Western investment in Russia. In any event, the Pentagon and NATO's aim of a shooting war in the European theater would not happen; unless Washington was foolish enough to start it. Still, that remains a serious possibility, with the Empire of Chaos accusing Russia of violating the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) even as it prepares to force Europe in 2015 to accept the deployment of US nuclear cruise missiles. Russia could outmaneuver Western financial markets by cutting them off from its wealth of oil and natural gas. The markets would inevitably collapse - uncontrolled chaos for the Empire of Chaos (or "controlled chaos", in Putin's own words). Imagine the crumbling of the quadrillion-plus of derivatives. It would take years for the "West" to replace Russian oil and natural gas, but the EU's economy would be instantly devastated. Just this lightning-bolt Western attack on the rouble - and oil prices - using the crushing power of Wall Street firms had already shaken European banks exposed to Russia to the core; their credit default swaps soared. Imagine those banks collapsing in a Lehman Brothers-style house of cards if Russia decided to default - thus unleashing a chain reaction. Think about a non-nuclear MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) - in fact warless. Still, Russia is self-sufficient in all kinds of energy, mineral wealth and agriculture. Europe isn't. This could become the lethal result of war by sanctions. Essentially, the Empire of Chaos is bluffing, using Europe as pawns. The Empire of Chaos is as lousy at chess as it is at history. What it excels in is in upping the ante to force Russia to back down. Russia won't back down. Darkness dawns at the break of chaos  Paraphrasing Bob Dylan in When I Paint My Masterpiece, I left Rome and landed in Beijing. Today's Marco Polos travel Air China; in 10 years, they will be zooming up in reverse, taking high-speed rail from Shanghai to Berlin. [3] From a room in imperial Rome to a room in a peaceful hutong - a lateral reminiscence of imperial China. In Rome, the barbarians swarm inside the gates, softly pillaging the crumbs of such a rich heritage, and that includes the local Mafia. In Beijing, the barbarians are kept under strict surveillance; of course there's a Panopticon element to it, essential to assure internal social peace. The leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) - ever since the earth-shattering reforms by the Little Helmsman Deng Xiaoping - is perfectly conscious that its Mandate of Heaven is directly conditioned by the perfect fine-tuning of nationalism and what we could term "neoliberalism with Chinese characteristics". In a different vein of the "soft beds of the East" seducing Marcus Aurelius, the silky splendors of chic Beijing offer a glimpse of an extremely self-assured emerging power. After all, Europe is nothing but a catalogue of multiple sclerosis and Japan is under its sixth recession in 20 years. To top it off, in 2014 President Xi Jinping has deployed unprecedented diplomatic/geostrategic frenzy - ultimately tied to the long-term project of slowly but surely keeping on erasing US supremacy in Asia and rearranging the global chessboard. What Xi said in Shanghai in May encapsulates the project; "It's time for Asians to manage the affairs of Asia." At the APEC meeting in November, he doubled down, promoting an "Asia-Pacific dream". Meanwhile, frenzy is the norm. Apart from the two monster, US$725 billion gas deals - Power of Siberia and Altai pipeline - and a recent New Silk Road-related offensive in Eastern Europe, [4] virtually no one in the West remembers that in September Chinese Prime Minister Li Keiqiang signed no fewer than 38 trade deals with the Russians, including a swap deal and a fiscal deal, which imply total economic interplay. A case can be made that the geopolitical shift towards Russia-China integration is arguably the greatest strategic maneuver of the last 100 years. Xi's ultimate master plan is unambiguous: a Russia-China-Germany trade/commerce alliance. German business/industry wants it badly, although German politicians still haven't got the message. Xi - and Putin - are building a new economic reality on the Eurasian ground, crammed with crucial political, economic and strategic ramifications. Of course, this will be an extremely rocky road. It has not leaked to Western corporate media yet, but independent-minded academics in Europe (yes, they do exist, almost like a secret society) are increasingly alarmed there is no alternative model to the chaotic, entropic hardcore neoliberalism/casino capitalism racket promoted by the Masters of the Universe. Even if Eurasian integration prevails in the long run, and Wall Street becomes a sort of local stock exchange, the Chinese and the emerging multipolar world still seem to be locked into the existing neoliberal model. And yet, as much as Lao Tzu, already an octogenarian, gave the young Confucius an intellectual slap on the face, the "West" could do with a wake-up call. Divide et impera? It's not working. And it's bound to fail miserably. As it stands, what we do know is that 2015 will be a hair-raising year in myriad aspects. Because from Europe to Asia, from the ruins of the Roman empire to the re-emerging Middle Kingdom, we all still remain under the sign of a fearful, dangerous, rampantly irrational Empire of Chaos. Notes: 1. See here. 2. What Putin is not telling us, Russia Today, December 18, 2014. 3. Eurasian Integration vs. the Empire of Chaos, TomDispatch, December 16, 2014. 4. China set to make tracks for Europe, China Daily, December 18, 2014. China's Li cements new export corridor into Europe, Channel News Asia, December 16, 2014. Pepe Escobar's latest book, just out, is Empire of Chaos. Follow him on Facebook. Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007), Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge (Nimble Books, 2007), and Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009). He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.

Putin: Trade in Rubles & Yuan Will Weaken Dollar’s Influence

Putin: Trade in Rubles & Yuan Will Weaken Dollar’s Influence
By Vladimir PutinNovember 12, 2014 "ICH" - Vladimir Putin took part in a meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Forum’s CEO Summit on the Asia-Pacific region’s significance for Russia.

Mr Putin said, in particular, that Russia views cooperation with the Asia-Pacific region as a strategic priority. The President also told summit participants about Russia’s plans to expand its cooperation with Asia-Pacific region countries, including through increased trade and investment incentives.

Transcript of APEC CEO Summit meeting

PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA VLADIMIR PUTIN: Ladies and gentlemen,

The APEC CEO Summit is traditionally considered one of the most representative forums for broad discussions on economic issues. I am pleased to have this opportunity to speak on a subject of great importance for us – developing Russia’s cooperation with the Asia-Pacific region.

The twenty-first century has already been called ‘the Pacific century’. As part of the Asia-Pacific region, Russia must make use of the competitive advantages offered by this fast-growing economic, technology and innovation centre.

In turn, Russian regions such as Siberia and the Far East offer a unique chance for this vast region’s countries to effectively develop and make use of the opportunities there and further strengthen their potential.  

Cooperation with the Asia-Pacific region is one of Russia’s strategic priorities. The overall constructive spirit that characterises our relations with the vast majority of countries in the region is very important. We value this spirit greatly and will do everything possible to develop bilateral and multilateral cooperation in a wide range of areas. 

Many Asia-Pacific region countries offer successful examples of roads to follow in developing their competitive abilities. They have taken the lead in innovation sectors and have considerable financial and investment resources at their disposal. Even faced with the negative global trends of recent years, they have kept up a good pace and had only a slight slowdown in growth.

At the same time, in order not to end up caught in a more protracted slowdown, countries in the region will need to carry out significant structural reforms. It is not by chance that our Chinese friends, for example, have made this issue one of the priorities for the APEC presidency.

Russia is no exception here. Structural economic transformation is one of our top priorities. Trade with the Asia-Pacific region countries represents more than a quarter of Russia’s total trade today.

We want to increase this share to 40 percent and we are taking concrete steps to expand the geography of our exports and increase the share of non-raw materials and high-tech goods.

In the Far East, we plan to establish a network of fast-growth zones offering tax incentives and simplified administrative procedures. The plan is that the companies located here will focus on narrow exports of non-raw materials, above all to the Asia-Pacific region.  

Ladies and gentlemen, let me take this occasion to invite you to make use of the opportunity opening up to organise production operations in Russia’s Far East. Let me say again that we are ready to offer you the best and most competitive conditions for your work. Direct foreign investment from Asia-Pacific region countries in the Russian economy has doubled since 2009 and now comes to nearly $10 billion.

Russian investment in the Asia-Pacific region countries is more modest and came to slightly more than $1 billion as of the end of last year. We will work actively to correct this imbalance. We hope in particular that the establishment of the National Coordination Centre for Developing Economic Relations with the Asia-Pacific Region Countries will make it possible to launch new projects with Russia’s involvement.

The People’s Republic of China is one of our key partners in the region. We will make greater use of settlements in our national currencies in our trade with China. We are already carrying out our first deals in rubles and yuan. Let me say that we are ready to extend such possibilities to trade in the energy sector too.

Our experts are currently studying these options. An intergovernmental Russian-Chinese commission on investment cooperation is also at work. Its main task is to promote investment projects in sectors other than energy on the basis of mutually advantageous cooperation.

We plan to use similar formats for developing our dialogue and practical cooperation in the investment sector with other partners too. Economic integration is clearly taking the fore on the APEC agenda today.

We believe that a major achievement of the Chinese presidency has been securing agreement on concrete steps towards establishing a future Asia-Pacific free trade zone. This plan should take into account the interests of all future participants, the unique features of our economies and the considerable differences in our development. Naturally, the future Asia-Pacific free trade zone should work together with other big regional economic associations. 

Let me remind you in this respect that the Eurasian Economic Union will begin operation on January 1, 2015, and will bring together Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Armenia, which is in the process of joining. This creates a large new regional market built on WTO principles. It offers free movement of capital, goods, services and labour and broad opportunities for coordination and exchange of technology and investment.

One of the Eurasian Economic Union’s strategic goals is to take part in the integration processes underway in the Asia-Pacific region. I am sure that this opens up prospects of interest to many of our colleagues in the region. The Union is already holding talks on a free trade zone with Vietnam and is open to substantive dialogue with other countries in the region.  

Ladies and gentlemen, the region’s biggest companies are represented at today’s summit. Some of you already have a presence in Russia and some of you are studying the possibility. Let me therefore address in more detail some of the issues that are usually uppermost on investors’ minds.

Let me stress that our long-term development goals remain unchanged. Russia has retained its macroeconomic stability and we consider this one of our greatest achievements. We will continue to value this and will follow a carefully balanced budget policy.

We are not going to increase our sovereign debt. We plan to keep this debt at the safe and controllable level of less than 15 percent of GDP. 

We are aware that our national currency, the ruble, is undergoing considerable fluctuation at the moment and we are working with our financial authorities to take the necessary measures. Our Central Bank is continuing its inflation target policy and will not change this.

Let me add that our Central Bank is also working actively on cleaning up banks’ balances. This was something that long needed doing. I think that investors would have no trouble understanding the need to take such of measures to clean up the credit and financial system in general.

What is important is that our basic indicators such as gold and currency reserves and our balance of payments are still at a good level. This makes it possible for us to control the situation without needing to resort to extraordinary measures. Let me say again too that we have no intention of introducing capital controls.

We place great importance on developing a favourable business environment and spreading best practice in working with investors at the regional and municipal level. The main thing is that businesspeople and investors, including our foreign friends, are noticing the positive changes themselves. The international experts have also recognised our efforts. Russia has had a two-fold rise in its ranking on the well-known Doing Business rating since 2010. 

To attract investors, reduce risks, and co-finance projects, we will use development institutes and also some of the reserves we have built up in our sovereign funds – money from the federal National Welfare Fund and other resources. We will improve access to credit resources. We are completing work on a mechanism for project financing and we plan to support major long-term projects.

Starting next year, a new organisation, the Industrial Development Fund, will be responsible for pre-bank financing of companies. We plan to invest significant resources in modernising the Baikal-Amur and Trans-Siberian railways and see them as the base for a transcontinental bridge between Asia and Europe.

These railways’ reconstruction is linked in with development of port facilities in the Far East, introduction of a railway traffic management system based on the latest technology used by GLONASS, Russia’s global navigation system, and the creation of the so-called land ports – transport and logistics centres. All of this will make it possible to considerably speed up transit of goods.

Let me add too that we are actively at work on developing the Northern Sea Route’s infrastructure. It will become a modern, safe and economically competitive transport corridor with a particular focus on goods from the Asia-Pacific region countries.

We also offer our partners cooperation in developing energy and telecommunications infrastructure. These are priority areas for the entire Asia-Pacific region today. Friends and colleagues, by combining our efforts and capabilities we could achieve benefit all round. 

Russia is showing an example of investment openness in the sensitive energy sector. Let me remind you in this respect of the big Sakhalin oil and gas projects (Japan has a 30-percent stake in the Sakhalin-1 project and a stake of more than 22 percent in the Sakhalin-2 project, for example) and our agreements with China on building infrastructure for natural gas supplies. We are also examining possibilities for our Chinese partners to acquire stakes in some of our biggest production assets.

Ladies and gentlemen, Russia’s location in Eurasia determines its role as a major factor for bringing Western and Eastern civilisation closer together, and we therefore want to strengthen our relations with all Asia-Pacific region countries and play an active part in building a free trade system and in economic and investment cooperation.

We are open for dialogue and discussion and for practical work too. We are ready to carry out joint programmes in the Asia-Pacific region and are sincerely interested in seeing businesspeople from this region come to Russia and achieve success there. We have huge, truly inexhaustible opportunities for work together.

In conclusion, let me invite you, ladies and gentlemen, to the next St Petersburg International Economic Forum, which will take place next year on June 18-20. I hope that we will continue the substantial dialogue on all issues of mutual interest and will open the way for new and interesting big projects.

Thank you for your attention.

QUESTION: Mr President, you mentioned the establishment of the Eurasian Economic Union, which will come into force on January 1, 2015. Could you talk in more detail about the concrete opportunities that will open in this regard to APEC businesspeople and APR nations?

VLADIMIR PUTIN: We have talked about this a great deal. It is one of our biggest integration projects in the post-Soviet space. I have already said that its participants are the Russian Federation, Belarus and Kazakhstan. Now, Armenia is in the final phase of joining this Union. This has essentially happened already: Armenia’s Accession Agreement has been signed.

For a nation like China, the numbers I provide may not seem impressive, but nevertheless, for example, for the European region, this is a market of 170 million people. What’s most important is that all these nations (at least, Russia and Kazakhstan) have large, not to say enormous, mineral resources and transport opportunities. Belarus brings us closer to the European market. The scientific potential is very high. But what’s most important is that the principles laid into the foundation of the Union’s work are built around the framework requirements of the World Trade Organisation, fully meeting them.

As I said in my address, we have transitioned to a higher phase of interaction and integration. We are removing customs regulation almost entirely between member states in this integration process. We are transitioning to the free movement of capital, services and labour. We are synchronising our tax and financial legislation and progressing to joint regulation of the financial markets.

In my view, all this creates excellent conditions for businesses to feel confident and secure working on this fairly large market. It gives them the opportunity to forecast their activities and receive good returns, to feel protected. I am referring (again, I repeat, this is a very important aspect) to the fact that the principles fully correspond with the requirements of the World Trade Organisation. We believe our partners from all regions of the world, including the Asia-Pacific region, will appreciate this very soon.

QUESTION: I would like to ask Mr President a question about improving Russian legislation.

We have business in Russia, and we would very much like to organise joint enterprises with Russia, but we have studied the Russian laws about foreign investments – in other words, investments by foreign states into Russia. It seems not everything is entirely clear, especially with regard to the fact that state authorities have very extensive powers with regard to foreign investors. Will there be any improvements in this area in Russia?

VLADIMIR PUTIN: I already said it in my address and I would like to stress this again: we feel, first, that this is one of our main objectives – namely, to create favourable conditions for investing and generally doing business in Russia. We have a whole programme of action that was developed not just by state officials, but in constant dialogue with our business community.

We have a roadmap for eliminating administrative barriers. And as I said earlier, overall, the situation is changing for the better. We have advanced significantly in the Doing Business ranking. But it’s not just about rankings. It is, of course, a matter of the practical reality.

We are talking about making it easier to register companies. We are talking about making it easier to get connected to infrastructure, first and foremost, energy infrastructure. We are talking about decreasing pressure from, to put it bluntly, the law enforcement system. All of this is constantly in our field of vision. An analysis of what is happening in the market, the feedback from the business community gives us the foundation to believe that the process is moving in the right direction.

There is not doubt that much remains to be done still, but we are fully aware of what to do, and how. I am talking about fundamental issues, which I already mentioned, first and foremost, the budget policy, maintaining macroeconomic indicators and the overall principles of macroeconomic policy. I am talking about our support for exports. Here, unfortunately, we are at the start of this path, but we understand what needs to be done in this direction as well.

I repeat, we are talking about supporting export. So if you come to Russia, the opportunities there extend beyond working in the Russian market. There are also options to work in third country markets through Russia. I want to stress, each of the segments of this plan is under our constant attention, jointly with Russia’s business community. We will continue to improve all these mechanisms.

QUESTION: Mr President, I am from the Beijing Chamber of Commerce. Our members include over 200 companies, particularly businesses engaged in the so-called upstream, in other words, oil exploration and extraction. We also accompanied the Chinese Prime Minister’s on his visit to Russia. We also plan to build production facilities and a research centre in Russia.

I have a question. You talked about direct transactions in rubles and yuan, the possibility of exchange. But the question is about liquidity – in other words, will it be possible to conduct such calculations more freely?

VLADIMIR PUTIN: You touched on a very important issue that concerns global finances and global energy. I believe that payments in national currencies, in any case, between such partners as China and Russia, are a very promising direction for our cooperation, which will help broaden our options for mutual trade and significantly influence global financial and energy markets.

We are currently examining a project for Chinese partners to join one of our major extraction companies with payments made in yuan. Of course, we must understand how we will use the extensive resources that the Russian partner will have when receiving Chinese national currency, but given that the Chinese economy is generating a great deal of goods that are in demand in the Russian goods market, we feel that such settlements are entirely possible.

Moreover, the Russian ruble has a number of advantages in that it is essentially a freely convertible currency, and as I said earlier, we are not going to restrict the movement of capital. Today, we are observing speculative jumps in the exchange rate, but I believe that this will end soon – I am referring to the actions that the Central Bank is taking in response to the actions of profiteers.

I must say that the events on the currency market that we are currently observing in Russia are absolutely unrelated to fundamental economic reasons and factors. All this will come into balance, but it is currently opportunistic in nature, and in the long-term, of course, calculations in rubles and yuan are very promising. This will mean that if we transition to such large-scale cooperation, the effect of the US dollar, say, on global energy, will decrease markedly.

In truth, this is not bad for the global economy, nor for global finances or global energy markets, nor for the dollar itself, because the more versatile payment options are available in this area, the more stable the situation will be in global finances and global energy. Ultimately, I think this can have a favourable effect on the dollar as a global reserve currency. Naturally, the dollar will later participate in exchange operations – this is true of the ruble and the yuan. So I think that this is a very good, entirely realistic perspective, and not a distant one; we will be able to see and hear this in the near future.

QUESTION: Mr President, my name is Yana, I represent a major Chinese investment project, the Greenwood Business Park in Moscow. We have already been working in Moscow, in Russia, for over 15 years. My question: how do you feel the successful experience of Chinese projects in Russia can be used to attract new Chinese investors?

VLADIMIR PUTIN: If you talk at forums like this one about your success in Russia, this will encourage others your partners and our friends to enter the Russian market and set up businesses there. What you just said is already an excellent advertisement for working in the Russian market. I would happily give you a hug. Thank you very much.

REMARK: Thank you. And in addition, I would like to say that currently, there are over 370 companies from 13 countries around the world working at the Greenwood Business Park. It would be our pleasure to invite you on an official visit to the Greenwood Business Park, a Chinese project.

VLADIMIR PUTIN: Thank you. I will certainly come visit.

QUESTION: Good afternoon, Mr President. I represent a Chinese company. I have two questions for you.

First, investment in Russia. All Chinese companies are still somewhat concerned, mainly over issues of law and order and safety in the streets. This is my first question.

The second question. Russia is a major producer of timber. There are still significant barriers in this area. How can Chinese companies gain access to the Russian timber market?

VLADIMIR PUTIN: First, regarding security, especially safety in the streets. I assure you that Russia is no more dangerous than any other country, including China, the United States or a number of European states.

Incidentally, today is November 10, and we are marking the professional holiday of employees of the Russian Interior Ministry. Therefore, this is a very timely question. Let us all congratulate them on their professional holiday, so they know that even here at the APEC Summit we are talking about the quality of their work. And let’s hope that their work continues to improve.

Thank you.

As for timber, the issue you are so interested in. I understand the subtext of your question. However, I am sure that you will also understand me when I say that any country (and Russia is no exception here) wants to have the raw materials produced on its territory to be processed there as well, so that the nation’s economy generates greater added value, new jobs are created and taxes are collected in Russia.

Therefore, our legislation has been making slow progress lately, considering our partners’ desire to buy round timber. However, the overall tendency is that we need to process timber on the territory of the Russian Federation, and we will continue working in this direction.

In response to your question regarding how to ensure the interests of foreign companies, including the interests of our friends in China, I would like to say that the answer is very simple: you can come to Russia and invest in timber processing facilities.

QUESTION (retranslated): Mr President, I head a company in China. We are involved in electronic trade, helping small and medium sized companies do business online. Therefore, regional cooperation is not an empty phrase for us, and my question has to do with it. We all know that regional cooperation is the focus of APEC’s efforts. How would you assess its current state and prospects?

Thank you.

VLADIMIR PUTIN: Are you referring to the state of online trade or our cooperation with China? I did not really understand your question.

REMARK: Since we help small and medium-size businesses, we would of course like to see regional cooperation within APEC develop. This would make our work easier, because electronic trade helps small and medium-size companies access world markets and receive funding.

VLADIMIR PUTIN: I see.

First, regarding regional cooperation. I believe this is a key area of our cooperation; moreover, cooperation between regions of the Russian Federation and regions of the People’s Republic of China is developing successfully. I won’t quote any numbers now regarding the growth of regional trade, but it is increasing day by day and year by year. We have established very good direct relations between the heads of Russian and the Chinese regions. This is a very good factor in favour of closer relations between companies.

Your professional question concerning online trade is also very important. We believe this is a significant segment of world trade, specifically for the development of small and medium-sized businesses. However, we proceed from the notion that in Russia taxation of this type of activity should not noticeably differ from the practices that exist in other countries.

True (I understand what you are hinting at), there is a discussion underway regarding the taxation that should be applied to electronic trade in the Russian Federation. The scope of electronic trade in Russia is large and keeps growing. The state should definitely maintain its interests and our fiscal policy should correspond to both the development of this segment of trade and its demands.

There is an issue we will have to resolve within the Customs Union and the Eurasian Union, which is to be launched on January 1, 2015. Your colleagues have already asked about it. We need to synchronise our tax rates, bearing in mind that if the tax rates in Kazakhstan, the Russian Federation and Belarus are different, all the businesses will move to the country with the lowest taxes.

We are working on this with our colleagues, but we must maintain a balanced approach to avoid any serious blows to business; moreover, we must retain favourable operating conditions for them, while protecting the state’s financial interests. We will make sure we make this known in advance. This will be a free, open discussion conducted, among other places, in the Parliaments of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan.

I know I should give my colleagues a chance to come to this stand. I would like to have a longer discussion with you on these and other issues; I know you have quite a few questions. I would like to thank you for your interest in this conversation with me as a representative of the Russian Federation. 

I invite you all to Russia and wish you all the best.

Thank you very much.