CIA's fingerprints appear in Venezuelan election strife

CIA's fingerprints appear in Venezuelan election strife

Just as with the April 2002 coup strife in Venezuela, stirred up by CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency provocateurs in the oil workers' labor sector and in some parts of the military, the CIA is using a slightly different playbook prior to the April 14 election. The upcoming election pits Hugo Chavez's designated successor, Nicolas Maduro, against the Western- and corporate-backed candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski, the governor of Miranda state. 

There have already been clashes between "rent-a-mob" and "rent-a-parade" pro-Capriles student provocateurs and supporters of Maduro. The CIA and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), National Endowment for Democracy (NED), and George Soros's Open Society Institute-funded NGOs also have their fingerprints on an increase in robberies of foreigners and others in poor barrios in order to hand Capriles a crime issue to exploit.

Student leaders led by Roderick Navarro have called for the resignation of Defense Minister Diego Molero before the election and banning Chavista civilian militia members from acting as poll watchers. The anti-government activists are attempting to portray the upcoming election as unfair, even though last October's election in which Chavez handily trounced Capriles was deemed free and fair by international election monitors, including the Carter Center led by former President Jimmy Carter.

It is never difficult to spot the CIA's fingerprints on its interference in the domestic affairs of other nations. Due to its roots in Ivy League collegiate secret societies -- the "cloak and gown" mystique -- the CIA throws operational security to the wind and in its braggadocio manner, prefers the use of symbols for its foreign escapades.

During the Cold War, the CIA favored a symbol from the Order of the Illuminati, the torch of Prometheus, the god the ancient Greeks believed stole fire from the heavens for the use of mankind.


Anti-Chavez demonstrators in 2002 with a favorite CIA symbol, the torch of Prometheus.
Not surprisingly, the long-serving president of the CIA-linked National Endowment for Democracy, Carl Gershman, began his anti-Communist activities on behalf of Langley as the executive director for Social Democrats USA (SDUSA), an ostensibly left-of-center party but one that was a front for the CIA among moderate leftists to derail the influence of Marxists and Communists in the Democratic Party and among the labor unions. The tell-tale sign of the CIA is seen in SDUSA's torch symbol (below far left), which it shares with CIA and CIA-influenced contrivances of the right-wing, including Freedom House, the Conservative Party of the United Kingdom, Zaire's Popular Movement of the Revolution led by Zaire's CIA-installed dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, and a long-time nesting ground for far rightists and corporatist, the International Olympic Committee and the Olympic Games. (below, left to right)

       


----------------------------------------

The torch also appears on the logo of the 2nd Civil Affairs Company (above) that carried out Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support (CORDS) operations in South Vietnam. In reality, CORDS was the CIA's Operation Phoenix, which carried out systematic assassinations of South Vietnamese village and religious leaders.  


The Malta Labor Party also uses the torch symbol (above). In 1969, the party split with its internal communist sympathizers after the Roman Catholic Church prevailed on Labor to break from its more leftist principles. As a result of the split, the Malta Communist Party was formed but it never gained any political significance. Meanwhile, the Labor Party moderated its policies. The CIA was pleased at the success of its interlocutors in the Vatican. 

In 1972, Michael Oliver, a California Lithuanian Jewish real estate developer who ran an organization called the Ocean Life Research Foundation, and his friend Morris Bud Davis, a former project engineer for the defense contractor North American Rockwell, decided to establish a libertarian nation on some uninhabited South Pacific coral reefs that were claimed by the Kingdom of Tonga and always submerged at high tide. The King of Tonga, hearing of the scheme, laid claim to the Minerva Reefs and announced there would be no Republic of Minerva  -- a country with 60,000, built upon sea platforms, with no taxes, welfare, or subsidies -- in what were Tongan waters. A ship used by the American schemers, who attracted a lot of support from ex-CIA and Special Forces types, planted the Minervan flag and erected a stone edifice upon the reefs, One of Oliver's associates was former Office of Strategic Services (OSS) officerMitchell Livingston WerBell III, whose company, Military Armaments Corporation (MAC), developed the MAC-10 machine gun and silencers for machine guns. 

Soon after Minerva's flag was raised over the South Pacific, members of the Tongan Defense Force were sent to the reefs and tore down the Minervan flag and replaced it with the Tongan flag. 


The flag of the short-lived Republic of Minerva, complete with the sign of the right-wing, the torch.

Oliver and his group had tried a similar scheme before and after the Minerva operation. They tried to take over the British-governed Turks and Caicos Islands in the Caribbean to establish a libertarian homeland. Britain rejected the deal. There were also attempts to foster secessionist movements in the New Hebrides and, after it gained independence, Vanuatu, as well as Abaco island of the Bahamas, the Azores, and the Isle of Man. There was also an attempt to buy the uninhabited Palmyra Atoll from the Fullard-Leo family of Hawaii. 

After the Minerva Reef scheme failed, Oliver and his pals, who included international economic adviser Harry Schultz, the author and distributor the International Harry Schultz Letter on investing, established the Phoenix Foundation in search of a libertarian Shangri-la, Oliver and his colleagues attracted new fans, beyond the CIA agents and mercenary types. Among their new-found supporters were Sir Keith Joseph, the English Jewish Tory, cabinet minister, and follower of the policies of "Chicago School" economist Milton Friedman. Even the "Iron Lady," herself, was a fan of Schultz's libertarian and tax-avoidance schemes. Other fans included apartheid South African finance minister and adviser to the government of Lesotho Owen Horwood and Saudi Oil Minister Ahmed Zaki Yamani.

WerBell's and Oliver's plan to get Abaco to secede from the Bahamas in 1973 was as much a failure as Schultz's and Oliver's attempt to have the Na-Griamel Federation, based on Espiritu Santo and nearby islands, secede from the New Hebrides in 1975. The Americans minted coins for the Na-Griamel Federation and has passports printed up. They even lobbied the United Nations to consider the Na-Griamel cause. After Na-Griamel failed, the American hucksters tried again, in 1980, when they had the Republic of Vemarana declared on the island of Espiritu Santo. There was evidence that the Vemerana rebellion involved elements associated with Israeli intelligence, especially when plans were discovered that Vemerana consulates were to be established in Israel and a major center for the international diamond trade, Belgium. Independent Vanuatu crushed the rebellion with the assistance of troops from Papua New Guinea.

Eventually, in 2000, Israel gained a foothold on Vanuatu when former Israel Defense Force Major General Daniel Rothschild was appointed Vanuatu's honorary consul in Tel Aviv.


The torch appeared on the coinage of the short-lived Republic of Minerva.

If we follow the use of the Illuminati torch, it soon begins to appear in operations funded by both the CIA and the Soros operation, for example, various Falun Gong movements in China and around the world. One such operation was the "Global Human Rights Torch Relay" used by Falun Gong to highlight their repression in China a year before the Beijing Summer Olympics.


A Soros-funded operation and the "torch."

CIA and Soros-funded street action and other political movements today can be detected based on the symbols used. The torch is one sure sign of such influence, as is the clenched fist, a common sight in Soros-organized themed revolutions and protests around the world.

 
The OTPOR! clenched fist logo is fast replacing the torch as the favored psychological operation symbol used by the CIA to incite street rebellions. OTPOR and OTPOR-trained provocateurs have used the bible for insurrections that was written by Gene Sharp of the Albert Einstein Institution ever since the overthrow of the Serbian government. George Soros's OSI and NED fund many of the actions of OTPOR and its spin-offs, including the Center for Applied Non Violent Actions and Strategies (CANVAS), around the world. Soros operatives also co-opted parts of the anti-Wall Street Occupy movement. In effect, Soros, a billionaire hedge fund manager, simply appropriated a long-used symbol of the international socialist movement, for his own political goals, which just so happen to run
parallel with those of the CIA.

The clenched fist is still used by the Portuguese Socialist Party (above) even though it is now a pro-European Union advocate for the Soros- and corporate-supported Third Way movement of Tony Blair and Bill Clinton.

The UK Socialist Worker's Party, a Trotskyite group, used the clenched fist symbol and referred to the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies as "state capitalists," playing into the hands of those who wanted to divide the Communist bloc at the height of the Cold War, a long-term goal of Soros. The party's long-time leader was Yigael Gluckstein, aka Tony Cliff, born into a Zionist family in Palestine. He emigrated from Palestine to Britain in 1947.

A number of neo-conservative leaders and pundits of today came out of "New Left" groups like the Students for Democratic Society (SDS), which was active in the 1960s and early 70s. The SDS also used the fist symbol.
Soros influence in the labor movement that sought to recall Wisconsin Republican Governor Scott Walker is clearly seen in one of its symbols (above.)
The clenched fist symbol has been taken up by various fringe single-issue groups like the vegan activist group Food Not Bombs (left) and the environmental activist group Earth First (right).

Soros's influence was seen in the Egyptian revolution and the symbol for the April 6 Movement of mostly young people using social networking technology. The revolution resulted in a Muslim Brotherhood-led government in Egypt.


Soros-funded provocateurs aim to reverse the course of progressive nationalism in Latin America by cooperating with it in a deadly embrace. Venezuela's Capriles is trying to convince voters that he is a social democrat when, in reality, he intends to put Venezuelans through the same meat grinder of global banker-dictated austerity that is squeezing the life out of many European nations. The above fist logo "counter-coup," has a map of South America in its embrace.

Some observers point out that Soros's influence over the "clenched fist" movement worldwide is a mere masking of the actual influences behind these social activism operations. Above are the symbols of the radical right-wing Jewish Defense League (JDL) (left) and extremist Israeli party Kahane Chai (right), many sympathizers of which now dominate the new Israeli government.

In fact, the clenched fist is just as ubiquitous among the right-wing as it is among the nominal left. Below is the symbol of the European Defense League, a neo-Nazi group that is opposed to Muslims living in Europe. These Nazis work hand in glove with groups like the JDL.



Norwegian right-wing mass killer Anders Breivik also used the clenched fist salute in his trial in Oslo. His network was affiliated with the European Defense League and various right-wing Jewish groups opposed to Muslims in Europe.

You think there are no U.S. cancer weapons? Explain the massive paper trail.

No U.S. cancer weapons? Explain the massive paper trail.


WMR previously reported on the CIA's cancer weaponry program, scoffed at by White House and State Department officials when various Latin American leaders, including the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, suggested that the United States was using such weapons on progressive Latin American leaders.

WMR has uncovered additional evidence that the CIA and the Atomic Energy Commission engaged in research to cause cancer, sometimes using innocent and unwilling American citizens as test subjects. The State Department and White House denials over past U.S. cancer weaponry research falls flat in light of reams of documented programs that were designed to use radiation and cancer-causing viruses, known as oncoviruses, in covert operations against foreign government officials, armed forces, and even civilian populations.

On March 11, 2013, WMR pointed to the August 23, 1975 memo from CIA Deputy Director for Plans Thomas Karamessines to CIA director William Colby. The memo outlined how the CIA's Special Operation Division, a joint U.S. Army-CIA element at Fort Detrick, Maryland, was instructed to maintain a supply of toxins not included on the official Fort Detrick inventory list that was subject to President Richard Nixon's disposal order pursuant to the 1972 biological warfare convention. Concerned that Nixon's order might result in the destruction of the CIA's "germ supply," a contingency plan was developed to ship the CIA's toxins to Huntingdon Research Center at the Becton-Dickinson Company in Baltimore, a firm established in 1897 by Maxwell W. Becton and Fairleigh S. Dickinson. The company, now known as BD, specializes in injection and infusion products, including needles and syringes. Why was the CIA, anxious to hide its supply of dangerous toxins, select a firm that produces needles and syringes?

There was much more going on with the CIA in Baltimore than meets the eye. Under the MKNAOMI project, the CIA maintained what was known as a Biogen machine in Baltimore that was used to breed micro-organisms on a massive scale for use in bio-weapons. These included cancer-causing viruses and other deadly biological agents. The research was to have terminated in 1972, however, as we previously reported, the stockpile of CIA "germs" was moved to Baltimore, where the Biogen machine was also located. This, in itself, was a violation of the 1972 Biological Warfare Convention in place between the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union.

Ten years ago, the United States and Britain attacked Iraq over allegations that it possessed biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction. It did not. However, the United States likely continues to not only possess such WMDs but continues to refine them is more advanced weaponry, including clandestine means of delivery to human targets.

MKNAOMI research included the weaponization of hepatitis-B. Both hepatitis B and C are viruses that can cause hepatocellular cancer (liver cancer). The human T-lymphotropic virus can result in T-cell leukemia. Human papillomaviruses can generate cancer of the skin, throat, mouth, cervix, anus, penis, and lungs. It is noteworthy that Chavez's cancer began in his pelvic region. Also, Kaposi's sarcoma-associated herpes virus may result in Kaposi's sarcoma and lymphoma and the Epstein-Barr virus can develop into Burkitt's or Hodgkin's lymphoma, nasopharyngeal carcinoma, and B lymphoproliterative disease.

Some of the above viruses are associated with HIV/AIDS, which some African leaders, including former South African President Thabo Mbeki, former acting South African President Kgalema Petrus Motlanthe, and the late Kenyan environmental and political activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Wangari Maathai claimed was a laboratory-manufactured virus designed to depopulate Africa. Former Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi, while not going as far as Mbeki and the others, did claim that there was a "political" angle to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa. Political and labor leaders from across Africa, from Burundi and Burkina Faso to Comoros and Cote d'Ivoire, joined Mbeki, Motlanthe, and Maathai in subscribing to the belief that the deadly Ebola and HIV viruses were created in a laboratory

The first cases of HIV/AIDS were found in returning Cuban troops coming back to Cuba after fighting in the Angolan civil war against CIA-supported guerrillas with the UNITA faction of Jonas Savimbi. There is also some evidence that HIV/AIDS was developed earlier in experiments on the hepatitis-B virus conducted by scientists at Fort Detrick, Maryland and included creating a species-jumping virus that could spread from monkeys to humans.

African leaders suggested the CIA was using bio-weapons years before Chavez, Bolivia's Evo Morales, Cuba's Castro brothers, and acting Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro spoke of similar clandestine operations. The U.S. government and corporate media responded that Mbeki was a "conspiracy nut" in the same manner as they attacked the Latin American leaders.


Oncoviruses: they're not the typical James Bond type of weapon but they're as deadly.

Before the development of tasers, the CIA researched the development of controlled electronic shock weapons to cause incapacitation and heart attacks to victims. Other research dealt with weapons that would cause brain concussions, seizures, and other neurological disorders, resulting in strokes, cerebral hemorrhages, or death.

One of the first groups of guinea pigs used for the effects of radiation in causing cancer were the Marshall Islanders who were blasted with high dosages of radiation from atomic and hydrogen bomb tests in the Bikini Atoll. Downwind islanders on Rongelap, Rongerik, and Utirik atolls received heavy dosages of radiation and began to develop cancer. The CIA was anxious to exploit the research on the islanders for special weapons development. Much of this research was carried out under the unlikely aegis of the "Atoms for Peace" program, a cleverly-designed CIA and Atomic Energy Commission propaganda tool used to convince the public that radiation was a good thing.

The proposed Venezuelan commission that is slated to examine America's cancer weapons should find a wealth of information in documents maintained on cancer and the effects of ionized radiation found at Brookhaven, Argonne, and Oak Ridge National Laboratories and Atomic Energy Commission research files at Columbia, Princeton, Harvard, MIT, Tulane, Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, Yale, Cornell, University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Rochester. Farther afield, there were reports of CIA disease experimentation conducted on unsuspecting human subjects at the St. George's Medical School in Grenada and at the Jonestown commune in Guyana. In his book "Dr. Mary's Monkey," author Edward Haslam stated that the CIA had established 159 covert research centers, including the Ochsner Clinic in New Orleans, where the agency conducted secret medical research, including cancer virus development.

However, knowing that the Obama administration is the most secretive in the history of the United States, any incriminating documents now available in public reading rooms, libraries, and accessible through the Freedom of Information Act may not be around for very long. Therefore, for the government of Venezuela and others who want the United States to make a full accounting on its use of biological and cancer-causing weapons, time is of the essence.

Real liars go to Tehran By Pepe Escobar

THE ROVING EYE

Real liars go to Tehran

By Pepe Escobar 

Uncle Marx never thought about this one: history repeating itself as double tragedy after already being a farce in the first place. Let's examine the case in hand. First of all, take a close look at this Wall Street Journal op-ed from September 2002, in the hysterical run-up towards the invasion of Iraq. 

Title: The Case for Toppling Saddam. Author: Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu - then out of the Israeli government. 

It's all here: a "dictator who is rapidly expanding his arsenal of biological and chemical weapons" and "who is feverishly trying to acquire nuclear weapons"; the Saddam equals Hitler parallel; the portrayal of (de facto nuclear power) Israel as helpless victims of Palestinian "terror"; the claim that Saddam could produce nuclear fuel "in centrifuges the size of washing machines that can be hidden throughout the country - and Iraq is a very big country"; the cheerleading of a unilateral pre-emptive strike; and the inevitable conclusion that "nothing less than dismantling his regime will do''. 

Fast-forward over 10 years to this week in Israel. The scene: press conference of Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu and visiting US President Barack Obama. Anyone watching it live on al-Jazeera, from the Middle East to East Asia, must have thought they were watching a geopolitical Back to the Future - and frankly, Michael J Fox at least oozed charm. 

No charm here; this was more like an eerie, suit-and-tie Return of the Living Dead. Bibi and Obama were at pains to stress the US-Israel bond was "eternal". Actually Bibi preferred to stress that Iran's (non-existent) nuclear weapons posed an existential threat to Israel. He repeated, over and over again, that Obama was adamant; Israel was entitled to do anything to defend itself, and its security would not be anyone's responsibility, even Washington's. 

Obama, for his part, once again stressed that Washington's official policy towards Iran was not containment - but to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. He stressed the "window of opportunity" was getting narrower; and, of course, that all options were on the table. 

The thought that the president of the United States (POTUS) willfully ignores the verdict of his own alphabet soup of intel agencies on Iran might raise eyebrows in a rational world. But this is not reality; more like a trashy reality show. 

Dream, dream, wet settler dream
The powers that be in Israel - neocon-infested US corporate media avalanche of denials notwithstanding - were absolutely essential in the whole Iraq War cheerleading operation; Ariel Sharon, at the time, boasted that the strategic coordination between Israel and the US had reached "unprecedented dimensions''. 

Bibi was just a cog in the wheel then - as Jim Lobe details here - quoting Bibi's pearls of wisdom dispensed to a misinformed-to-oblivion US Congress in 2002. 

Every usual "Israeli official" suspect at the time was breathlessly spinning that Saddam was only months away from a nuclear weapon. The bulk of WMD "intelligence" presented to Congress and faithfully parroted by corporate media was filtered if not entirely fabricated by Israeli intelligence - something duly detailed, among others, by Shlomo Brom in his study An Intelligence Failure, published by the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies of Tel Aviv University in November 2003. 

Of course it didn't matter that UN inspectors found no nuclear weapon program evidence on site. Of course it didn't matter that Saddam son-in-law Hussein Kamel, who had defected to Jordan in 1995, had told UN inspectors in detail there had been no WMDs whatsoever since 1991. 

Now it's double tragedy, and double farce, all over again. Yet even Nepalis building glitzy towers in Dubai know that the ''Bomb Iran'' hysteria is Tel Aviv's tactic to change the subject from the relentless land confiscation/ethnic cleansing in slow motion in Palestine and consequently the de facto total impossibility of a two-state solution. 

Here, Jonathan Cook succinctly details the frankly scary political configuration in Israel after the recent elections. The Israeli website Ynet has reported that Israeli settlers can't stop hailing their brand new "wet dream" cabinet. Translation: the ultimate nail in the coffin of the already dead and buried "peace process". 

So here's a modern geopolitical parable that would puzzle Aesop. Bibi publicly insults POTUS. He unabashedly supports Mitt Romney (who?) in the US presidential elections. He hits the "peace process" with a barrage of Hellfire "facts on the ground" (with loads of Palestine "collateral damage"). He sticks to his one and only message; Bomb Bomb Bomb, Bomb Bomb Iran. And then POTUS, in theory the mighty Double O Bama with a license to kill (list) but actually behaving like an accidental tourist, lands in Israel with his kill list between his legs, to bask in Bibi's glory. 

No wonder the rabid American neo-con/Israeli firster/Bomb Iran crowd is gloating. Over 10 years ago their mantra was "Real Men go to Tehran". The question now is whether POTUS will be able to grow a set of proper cojones and stare them down. 

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009). 

He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com. 

Cutting through the propaganda on Chavez's funeral

 Cutting through the propaganda on Chavez funeral

The Western corporate news media has been incessant in its propagandizing the coverage of the funeral of Venezuela's late President Hugo Chavez Frias.

Some U.S.-based reporters were dropped into Caracas for funeral coverage because most media organizations are too cheap to have full-time reporters and bureaus in the Venezuelan capital. Instead, they rely on local stringers, many of them anti-Chavez sons and daughters of Venezuela's wealthy elite, or on viper capitalist propaganda-issuing entities like the Associated Press. Reuters referred to funeral mourners such as actor Sean Penn as "idealists." The Hollywood-linked Huffington Post called the gathering an assemblage of "left-wing glitterati."

The AP, CNN, and others cherry-picked the attendees at the funeral, pointing to the attendance of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko without reporting that every major Western Hemisphere nation was represented by their head of state or government except for the United States and Canada. Of course, such a headline would point to the wide chasm between the "gringo" North America, including the United States, Canada, and the mafia-infested Bahamas, and the nations of Latin America and the Caribbean.

The capitalist news media could not bring themselves to report that with only minor exceptions, every Latin American and Caribbean nation was represented by their presidents or prime ministers. Belize's Prime Minister Dean Barrow would have been in Caracas but his wife is undergoing medical treatment abroad and he is with her. He was represented by Deputy Prime Minister Gaspar Vega. Barbados's recently re-elected Prime Minister Freundel Stuart's government was being sworn in at a formal ceremony in parliament so he could not attend the funeral. Instead, Stuart signed a condolence book at the Venezuelan embassy in Barbados. Paraguay's CIA- and Obama-administration-installed clique has been expelled from most Latin American organizations. Paraguay was represented by its ousted President and good friend of Chavez, Fernando Lugo.

The corporate media was untruthful in calling the funeral gathering a collection of anti-American leaders. Among those in attendance were such conservative Latin American presidents as Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia, Sebastian Pinera of Chile, and Ricardo Martinelli of Panama.

The AP, among others, issued incomplete lists on the leaders attending Chavez's funeral. One glaring omission was that of Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla, whose name does not appear on either the AP and Miami Herald lists of attendees. The Herald bends to the wishes of Miami's large right-wing Cuban exile (gusano) community, its largely transplanted Jewish community from New York City, and recent arrivals from Latin America claiming persecution in progressive Latin American countries. In fact, many of the latter are billionaires who have hidden their wealth from Latin American tax collectors and are now claiming "political persecution" in order to maintain their residency status in the United States.

Other than President Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, both bitter foes of Chavez, the only other Western Hemisphere government leader who failed to attend the funeral for Chavez for purely political reasons was Bahamian Prime Minister Perry Christie. Bahamian foreign policy is heavily-influenced by the Zionist circles in nearby Miami, as well as a growing number of Christian Zionists in the Bahamas. The Bahamas has also attracted a number of billionaire and millionaire tax cheats from progressive Latin American countries and right-wing political exiles, including some from Venezuela.


Belarus's Alexander Lukashenko paying respects. Front row, left to right: President Raul Castro of Cuba; Cilia Flores, wife of acting President Nicolas Maduro and Attorney General of Venezuela; Nicolas Maduro; Hugo Chavez's mother, Elena Frias; Chavez's daughters Maria Gabriela and Rosa Virginia Chavez. Second row, left to right: Prince Philip of Spain, President Rafel Correa of Ecuador; President Sebastian Pinera of Chile; and President Evo Morales of Bolivia. Third row, left to right: President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil; President Otto Perez Molina of Guatemala; ; President Mauricio Funes of El Salvador; President Laura Chinchilla of Costa Rica; and President Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia. Fourth row, left to right: President of Peru Ollanta Humala; President Enrique Pena Nieto of Mexico; President Ricardo Martinelli of Panama. Also in back, left side, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega with mustache; Uruguayan President Jose "Pepe" Mujica, in sun glasses without tie; and Surinamese President Desi Bouterse, in sun glasses with tie.

The Israel Lobby-influenced corporate media ran their stories on the funeral with the meme that it was a "strange collection" of anti-American leaders from around the world. Ahmadinejad was present and had the words of the Spanish-language Roman Catholic mass translated to him by his own personal interpreter. Ahmadinejad later said that Chavez would one day be "resurrected" alongside Jesus Christ  and a as-yet-unknown "imam" who would appear to usher in world peace. Ahmadinejad's reference to Jesus Christ appeared to only incite the Israel Lobby-dominated media in the United States, Canada, Israel, and Europe.

The corporate media also lambasted acting President Nicolas Maduro, calling him a bus driver who became foreign minister and vice president. In what represents more lousy journalism, entities like Reuters failed to mention that Maduro was the head of the Caracas Metro workers' union and a congressman before becoming foreign minister under Chavez. Imagine if Reuters, in describing Vice President Joseph Biden upon his succeeding to the presidency, stated that Biden was a small-time Wilmington lawyer and New Castle County councilman before becoming Vice President. One does not require Journalism 101 to note that is just shoddy journalism at its core.

The U.S. and European Union-backed candidate for president, Henrique Capriles Radonski, who is of Jewish descent, has called Maduro a "boy," in keeping with the privileged upbringing of Venezuela's Jewish community and those with strong bloodlines to it.

While President Obama could not bring himself to send condolences to the family of Chavez and the people of Venezuela on the death of the Chavez -- expressing a desire for a "new start" in relations doesn't count and Obama should have apologized for his predecessor's failed attempt to oust Chavez in a coup -- the Prime Minister of tiny Sint Maarten, Sarah Wescott-Williams, was able to express her condolences and that of the people of Sint Maarten during a Council of Ministers meeting. It's pretty bad when half of a Caribbean island can muster up more respect for the late Venezuelan champion of the poor than the pampered President of the United States.

http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/articles/20130309

El comandante has left the building By Pepe Escobar

THE ROVING EYE

El comandante has left the building

By Pepe Escobar 

Now that would be some movie; the story of a man of the people who rises against all odds to become the political Elvis of Latin America. Bigger than Elvis, actually; a president who won 13 out of 14 national democratic elections. No chance you will ever see such a movie winning an Oscar - much less produced in Hollywood. Unless, of course, Oliver Stone convinces HBO about a cable/DVD special. 

How enlightening to watch world leaders' reactions to the death of Venezuela's El Comandante Hugo Chavez. Uruguay's President Jose Mujica - a man who actually shuns 90% of his salary because he insists he covers his basic necessities with much less - once again reminded everyone how he qualified Chavez as "the most generous leader I ever met", while praising the "fortress of democracy" of which Chavez was a great builder. 

Compare it with US President Barack Obama - in what sounds like a dormant cut and paste by some White House intern - reaffirming US support for "the Venezuelan people". Would that be "the people" who have been electing and re-electing Chavez non-stop since the late 1990s? Or would that be "the people" who trade Martinis in Miami demonizing him as an evil communist? 

El Comandante may have left the building - his body defeated by cancer - but the post-mortem demonization will go on forever. One key reason stands out. Venezuela holds the largest oil reserves in the world. Washington and that crumbling Kafkaesque citadel also known as the European Union sing All You Need is Love non-stop to those ghastly, feudal Persian Gulf petro-monarchs (but not to "the people") in return for their oil. By contrast, in Venezuela El Comandante came up with the subversive idea of using oil wealth to at least alleviate the problems of most of his people. Western turbo-capitalism, as is well known, does not do redistribution of wealth and empowerment of communitarian values. 

I hate you, cabron
According to the Foreign Ministry, Vice-President Nicolas Maduro - and not the leader of the National Assembly, Diosdado Cabello, very close to top military leaders - will be temporarily in power before new elections to be held within the next 30 days. Maduro is bound to win them handily; the Venezuelan political opposition is a fragmented joke. This spells out Chavismo without Chavez - much to the chagrin of the immense pan-American and pan-European Chavez-hating cottage industry 

It's not an accident that El Comandante became immensely popular among "the people" of not only vast swathes of Latin America but also all across the Global South. These "people" - not in the Barack Obama sense - clearly saw the direct correlation between neoliberalism and the expansion of poverty (now millions of Europeans are also tasting it). Especially in South America, it was popular reaction against neoliberalism that led - via democratic elections - to a wave of leftist governments in the past decade, from Venezuela to Bolivia, Ecuador and Uruguay. 

The Bush administration - to say the least - abhorred it. They could not do anything about Lula in Brazil - a clever operator who adopted neoliberal clothes (Wall Street loved him) but remained a progressive at heart. Washington - incapable of getting rid of the coup after coup reflexes of the 1960s and 1970s - thought that Chavez was a weak link. Thus came the April 2002 coup led by a military faction, with power given to a wealthy entrepreneur. The US-backed coup lasted less than 48 hours; Chavez was duly restored to power, supported by "the people" (the real thing) and most of the army. 

So there's nothing unexpected in the announcement by Maduro, a few hours before El Comandante's death, that two US embassy employees would be expelled in 24 hours; Air Attache David Delmonaco, and assistant Air Attache Devlin Costal. Delmonaco was accused of fomenting - what else - a coup with some factions of the Venezuelan military. Those gringos never learn. 

Immense suspicion among Chavistas that El Comandante may have been poisoned - a convoluted replay of what happened to Yasser Arafat in 2004 - is also predictable. It could have been highly radioactive polonium-210, as in Arafat's case. The Hollywood-friendly CIA may have some ideas about that. 

All shook up
The verdict is now open on what exact brand of revolutionary was Chavez. He always praised everyone from Mao to Che in the revolutionary pantheon. He certainly was a very skillful popular leader with a fine geopolitical eye to identify centuries-old patterns of subjugation of Latin America. Thus his constant reference to the Hispanic revolutionary tradition from Bolivar to Marti. 

Chavez's mantra was that the only way out for Latin America would be better integration; thus his impulsion of myriad mechanisms, from ALBA (the Bolivarian Alliance) to Petrocaribe, from the Banco del Sur (the Bank of the South) to UNASUR (the Union of South American countries). 

As for his "socialism of the 21st century", beyond all ideological straitjackets he did more to explore the true spirit of common values - as an antidote to the putrefaction of turbo-charged, financial capitalism - than tons of neo-Marxist academic analyses. 

No wonder the Goldman Sachs gang and cohorts saw him as worse than the Black Plague. Venezuela bought Sukhoi fighter jets; entered strategic relationships with BRICS members Russia and China - not to mention other Global South actors; maintains over 30,000 Cuban doctors practicing preventive medicine living in poor communities - what led to a boom of young Venezuelans studying medicine. 

Stark numbers tell most of the story that needs to be known. Venezuelan public deficit is a mere 7,4% of GDP. Public debt is 51,3% of GDP - much less than the European Union average. The public sector - defying apocalyptic "communist" accusations - accounts for only 18,4% of the economy; less than state-oriented France and even the whole of Scandinavia. In terms of geopolitics of oil, quotas are established by OPEC; so the fact that Venezuela is exporting less to the US means it's diversifying its customers (and exporting more and more to strategic partner China). 

And here's the clincher; poverty accounted for 71% of Venezuelan citizens in 1996. In 2010, the percentage had been reduced to 21%. For a serious analysis of the Venezuelan economy in the Chavez era, see here. 

Years ago, it took a superb novelist like Garcia Marquez to reveal El Comandante's secret as The Great Communicator; he was one of them (his "people", in the not-Barack Obama sense), from the physical appearance to the mannerisms, convivial attitude and language (the same applied to Lula in relation to most Brazilians).

So while Oliver Stone surveys the film market, one will be waiting for a Garcia Marquez to elevate Chavez to novelistic Walhalla. One thing is sure; in terms of a Global South narrative, history will record that El Comandante may have left the building; but then, after him the building was never the same again. 

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009). 

He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com. 

And the Oscar goes to... the CIA By Pepe Escobar

THE ROVING EYE And the Oscar goes to... the CIA By Pepe Escobar  Even in his wild, stoned to death, easy rider cuckoo times, Jack Nicholson would never have imagined he would one day tag team with the First Lady of the United States to present an Oscar for Best Picture.  This is more Hunter S Thompson than Academy territory - and hardly presidential. But it did - beautifully - make the point about the marriage between Washington and Hollywood. If George Clooney marries Sudan (but not Palestine), why not Jack schmoozing with Michelle? What next? Obama sharing intel with Jessica Chastain?  The marriage that really counts - for the future - may be at the heart of the military-industrial-security-Hollywood complex, as in Zero Dark Thirty and endless variations of the Marvel ethos (see Zero Dark Oscar, Asia Times Online, February 22, 2013). But for now, in terms of poetic justice, nothing makes more sense than Best Picture going to the Ben Affleck-directed (and Clooney co-produced) Argo.  Those 6,000-plus Academy voters simply could not resist a plot loosely based in facts in which a patriotic and resourceful Hollywood saves the CIA. And with a certified Hollywood ending as a bonus. Thus, predictably, this was Hollywood awarding an Oscar to itself, to hyper-nationalism, to American heroes and of course to good (Americans) over evil (Iranians).  And how poetically towering this justice becomes when a movie about a fake movie that fooled revolutionary Iranians during the 444-day hostage crisis is crowned Best Picture just two days before the US and other members of the UN Security Council, plus Germany, go back to the table to discuss whether Iran is now fooling them - and going for a nuclear weapon.  Argo strives to prove the point that Iran hates the American Satan but Iranians love Hollywood. Over three decades later, Iranians are not so gullible; they are even going to shoot their counter-Argo. And the absolute majority of the population - even under harsh US and European Union sanctions - supports a civilian nuclear program. In parallel, it will be fun to watch how Argo plays from Karachi to Caracas.  Back in Hollywood, as Orson Welles taught us all, it's all fake. Even former president Jimmy Carter admitted on CNN that the Argo plot itself was Canadian - mostly concocted by then ambassador to Iran Ken Taylor. Everybody knows this in Canada. But obviously not in the US.  Ask Christoph Shultz What really matters at the Oscars is the red carpet - with its immortal inbuilt phrase "What are you wearing". In a festival of wardrobe malfunctions worthy of an FBI investigation at least there was Charlize Theron in Dior, Naomi Watts in Armani Prive and Anne Hathaway in Prada to soothe weary eyes. This is what will be doing the rounds digitally all over the planet - as most of the winners are already forgotten by now.  There were no surprises. If Daniel Day-Lewis playing the American God, aka Lincoln, didn't get his (third) Oscar, that would be blamed on a Chinese cyber attack. Actually, there was a surprise; Hollywood's Zeus, Steven Spielberg, was spurned to the benefit of Life of Pi director Ang Lee. Cynics immediately volunteered this has a lot to do with Hollywood's pivoting towards the lucrative Asian market.  Quentin Tarantino said this was the year of the writers at the Oscars. It was certainly his year. It makes total sense that his revenge classic Django Unchained won for Best Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor (the Viennese master, Christoph Waltz).  For Tarantino, only a humongous body count can lead us to Justice. One may occasionally be fed up with his perennial over-the-top antics. But the fact is that his prescription for America - when evil stares into your face you go out all guns blazing - is believable because his characters are so splendidly written. No wonder the gun lobby and assorted National Rifle Association fanatics are using Django as prime PR among African Americans. Were they to follow Django ("the D is silent") to the letter, post-apocalyptic US would probably look like this Django Uncrossed spoof.  The Academy may in fact have redeemed itself a bit for its love story with the CIA when Best Screenplay went to Tarantino instead of Tony Kushner for the totemic Lincoln. Arguably Kushner - and Spielberg - built their anti-slavery epic without so much as a glance towards Frederick Douglass or W E B DuBois's Black Reconstruction in America - where it's clear that "it was the fugitive slaves who forced the slaveholders to face the alternative of surrendering to the North or surrendering to the Negro."  Without at least 200,000 black people in the Army and another 200,000 working in supporting roles, the North would have lost the war. Or, at best, the white supremacist South would have remained as it was - slavery and all. None of this is addressed in Lincoln.  What Django's two Oscars prove once again is that Hollywood is a sucker for revenge. Even when it comes in the form of a warped, cripto-psychedelic spaghetti-western that would make John Ford puke. Well, it's still a Wild West. Wilder than Jack Nicholson's wildest dreams.  Tarantino may now be the best-qualified screenwriter to decode Barack Obama, the new Lincoln. What about a gourmet western showing the passage from GWOT (global war on terror) to invisible, shadow war, while internally the new Lincoln goes for gun control mixed with drone surveillance.  What about Christoph Waltz playing the devious John Brennan - a confidante to then CIA director George Tenet fully updated on "the intelligence and facts being fixed around the policy" to justify the war on Iraq, and later setting the parameters on torture and seeking Justice Department approval for it.  Picture a scene with Waltz, with his trademark delivery, testifying to the Senate Intelligence Committee - as Brennan did early this month - that "the regimes in Tehran and Pyongyang remain bent on pursuing nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missile delivery systems."  Argo is for pussies. The time has come for Obomber Unchained.  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.

Zero Dark Oscar By Pepe Escobar

THE ROVING EYE Zero Dark Oscar By Pepe Escobar  The buzz in Los Angeles is that Argo will win this year’s Oscar for Best Picture.  The Ben Affleck-directed CIA thriller has already won Best Picture at the Golden Globes, the Directors Guild of America, the Screen Actors Guild and the Producers Guild. Only in Hollywood you can win Best Picture without the guy who put it all together being nominated for Best Director (that will most certainly be Hollywood’s Zeus, Steven Spielberg, for his Civil War epic Lincoln).  Are we talking politics and movies? You betcha. It’s impossible to understand Washington without spending time in Hollywood. I had a ball doing it – from the late 1980s to the early 1990s. Never bothered to join the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) though; just a bunch of twats in awe of the star system whose only purpose in life is to be wined and dined before voting for the Golden Globes.  And still I went to all the junkets, all the screenings in the studios, all the parties, met a galaxy of stars and lesser "stars", saw how deals were cut, enrolled in the annual pilgrimage Hollywood-Cannes (for the film festival). I even held an Oscar in my hands once; in 1993, from Emma Thompson, in the press room, while she was composing herself to call then-husband "Kenneth" [Branagh]. Oscar is not heavy, and not particularly handsome. But yes, it's the Holy Grail, like being a tenant in the White House. If you nail how the industry works in Hollywood, you nail Washington politics virtually from A to Z.  So let's talk about this year's key political contenders; Spielberg's Lincoln, Affleck's Argo and Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty (ZD30).  ET come home In the Hollywood ethos, nothing is political; everything must be subordinated to an intoxicating haze of bipartisan hyper-nationalist myth. For Hollywood, wars and history must always be subordinated to ideology (and that explains why Coppola's Apocalypse Now - an ideology strip-tease - "is" the real Vietnam war).  No wonder Argo is being defined in Hollywood by the innocent cliche of a "liberally Hollywood-ized chronicle", when it's in fact a hard-hitting CIA promo about an agent coming up with a scheme to extract a few diplomats caught inside the American embassy during the 1979 Iran hostage crisis; the plan is to disguise them as a - what else - Hollywood film crew.  Affleck is embraced in Hollywood as a "liberal", much as George "Free Sudan" Clooney. Long gone is his Nespresso poster-boy gig; Clooney - quintessential Hollywood royalty - is an Argo co-producer, alongside Affleck and Grant Heslov.  In a neat juxtaposition, Argo is the story of a rescue while ZD30 is the chronicle of a hit foretold (as is Lincoln, incidentally). Where Argo meets ZD30 is that both are CIA eulogies. Thus, inevitably the Iranians depicted by "liberal" Affleck are nothing but a hysterical, fanatical mob, as much as the Arabs and Pakistanis depicted by Bigelow are either to be tortured, or merely qualify as nuisance in the backdrop.  Argo displays its claims of historical credibility with a cartoonish five-minute initial presentation supplying minimal background for audiences to understand the complex forces at play in the Iranian revolution. From then on, it's the CIA in the saddle. Forget about context - not to mention an attempt at dramatization of at least a single Iranian character; just wave after wave of that screaming, irrational mob.  Not a word that Iran's democracy was assassinated by - who else - the CIA in 1953. Not a word that the Shah's secret police, the Savak, had "disappeared", tortured and assassinated at will, trained by - who else - the CIA.  It's enlightening to remember that immediately after the Iranian revolution, throughout the 1980s Afghan jihad, the CIA channeled loads of money and weapons to Salafi-jihadis, including one Osama bin Laden, and alongside Saudi funds, propped up a Frankenstein - the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence. Nowadays, the CIA supports Salafi-jihadis from Libya to Syria - a remix of 1980s Afghanistan.  These CIA exploits cannot but be contrasted with the (not exactly subliminal) message peddled by "liberal" - as in "progressive" - Affleck; all over Argo, Iranians are depicted as terrorists who hate "our values".  Lincoln is just as "liberal" as Argo. But Spielberg is a cinematic master, way more effective in manipulating emotions. If Baudrillard was alive he would have deconstructed Lincoln as a sterling example of history as simulacrum.  Spielberg's Lincoln is a larger than life icon, an ahistorical totem in front of which audiences should ritually prostrate themselves, part of a perpetual sacrifice in the altar of politics as the supreme affirmation of the US political system. He is the perfect representation of the American dream and American values. Lincoln is on screen to be adored. Lincoln is, not surprisingly, ET. Suspension of disbelief? Oh yes, we shall all remain in awe.  Hit me with your rhythm stick Kathryn Bigelow is a very good filmmaker. Her Strange Days (1995) is arguably one of the best cult movies of the swingin' 90s supervised by William "Bubba" Clinton. It's a matter of no debate in Los Angeles that Bigelow is the female version of the late Tony Scott.  With ZD30, the point is not whether Bigelow has turned into the American Leni Riefenstahl (sorry, Leni). The point is - and you don't have to ask Godard at his apex in the 1960s - it's all in the editing (even when it was not in the screenplay to begin with).  ZD30 opens with a black screen and an audio mix of terrified phone calls on 9/11. Cut to the torture of "Ammar" in a CIA black site, the prelude for upcoming soft waterboarding. That sets the tone; ZD30, as it is edited, is an awesome commercial for the Bush-Cheney GWOT (global war on terror).  In this filthy Oz, the CIA only tortures certified evil terra-rists; the US government never kills innocent civilians; and all torturers, analysts and high-tech killers are unimpeachable selfless heroes.  Gotta love this CIA who relentlessly lied to get a war on Iraq; who engaged on a torture fest in endless black sites after endless extraordinary renditions; and who now has switched to a Drone War - HUMINT takes too long and is too costly - to improve its killing performance, frequently adorned with collateral damage.  A digital tsunami has been devoted to torture as depicted in ZD30. Bigelow has essentially defended the torture scenes as "depiction", not "endorsement". Well, once again it starts with the screenplay - written by Mark Boal, a former hack who was briefly embedded in Iraq. He based the screenplay on exclusive, privileged, "firsthand" access to CIA torturers and assorted CIA sources. Boal and Bigelow have stressed for months that ZD30 is a documentary-style "factual" narrative of the Osama bin Laden hunt and then the hit. They say it's factual. But they also say it's just a movie.  Here's the most articulate Bigelow has been in defending ZD30. She insists she was not "interested in portraying this military action as free of moral consequences". She insists ZD30 is "rigorous" - as in stressing its "documentary" side. She also insists she is a "lifelong pacifist".  Bigelow did shoot ZD30 - aesthetically - almost as a documentary. She depicts torture not graphically, but in a carefully sanitized way. Torture, in ZD30's terms, feels entirely justified. Thus entirely normalized. Thus entirely endorsable; after all the torturers themselves are so human - just like the hostages in Argo. Sartre to the rescue: hell is indeed other people, especially if they are Muslims.  Boal and Bigelow have also insisted they worked in a "journalistic" way. That's - literally - the killer; it proves ZD30 is the ultimate product of GWOT, embedded journalism. Once upon a time, the blues had a baby, and they named it rock'n roll. In post-modern America, the Pentagon created embedded journalism; and the CIA had its baby, embedded moviemaking.  ZD30 should be seen as the ultimate cinematic product of the Obama era. The record shows how the ""Yes we can" icon with silky rhetorical skills (wake up Spielberg, here's your new Lincoln) has trampled everything from ethics to the rule of law - not closing Guantanamo yet effortlessly pivoting from GWOT to shadow war and an exclusive kill list (no, "we don't torture", as he says in a TV interview in the background of a scene in ZD30). In the meantime, major sponsors - as in the CIA - merrily bask in the glow of cinematic myth.  The beauty of it is that Hollywood, the way it works, does not even need the CIA - or the Pentagon - as sponsors. Hollywood does His Master's Voice by default. And it already starts with a winning hand, technically - because nobody, save the odd European or Asian epic, can fight its unrivalled production values and period recreation know-how.  Still, Hollywood prides itself as "liberal". Argo may get Best Picture and Spielberg may get Best Director. But make no mistake; as the supreme representative of the post-modern military-industrial-security-Hollywood complex, nothing beats ZD30.  Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).  He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.

The illusory state of the Empire By Pepe Escobar

THE ROVING EYE The illusory state of the Empire By Pepe Escobar  Barack Obama would never be so crass as to use a State of the Union (SOTU) address to announce an "axis of evil". No. Double O Bama, equipped with his exclusive license to kill (list), is way slicker. As much as he self-confidently pitched a blueprint for a "smart" - not bigger - US government, he kept his foreign policy cards very close to his chest. Few eyebrows were raised on the promise that "by the end of next year our war in Afghanistan will be over"; it won't be, of course, because Washington will fight to the finish to keep sizeable counterinsurgency boots on the ground - ostensibly to fight, in Obama's words, those evil "remnants of al-Qaeda". Obama promised to "help" Libya, Yemen and Somalia, not to mention Mali. He promised to "engage" Russia. He promised to seduce Asia with the Trans-Pacific Partnership - essentially a collection of corporate-friendly free-trade agreements. On the Middle East, he promised to "stand" with those who want freedom; that presumably does not include people from Bahrain. As this was Capitol Hill, he could not help but include the token "preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons"; putting more "pressure" on Syria - whose "regime kills its own people"; and to remain "steadfast" with Israel. North Korea was mentioned. Always knowing what to expect from the horse's mouth, the foreign ministry in Pyongyang even issued a preemptive attack, stressing that this week's nuclear test was just a "first response" to US threats; "second and third measures of greater intensity" would be unleashed if Washington continued to be hostile. Obama didn't even bother to answer criticism of his shadow wars, the Drone Empire and the legal justification for unleashing target practice on US citizens; he mentioned, in passing, that all these operations would be conducted in a "transparent" way. Is that all there is? Oh no, there's way more. Double O's game Since 9/11, Washington's strategy during the George W Bush years - penned by the neo-cons - read like a modified return to land war. But then, after the Iraq quagmire, came a late strategic adjustment, which could be defined as the Petraeus vs Rumsfeld match. The Petraeus "victory" myth, based on his Mesopotamian surge, in fact provided Obama with an opening for leaving Iraq with the illusion of a relative success (a myth comprehensively bought and sold by US corporate media). Then came the Lisbon summit in late 2010, which was set up to turn the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) into a clone of the UN Security Council in a purely Western format, capable of deploying autonomous military interventions - preemption included - all over the world. This was nothing less than classic Bush-Obama continuum. NATO's Lisbon summit seemed to have enthroned a Neoliberal Paradise vision of the complex relations between war and the economy; between the military and police operations; and between perennial military hardware upgrading and the political design of preemptive global intervention. Everything, once again, under Obama's supervision. The war in Afghanistan, for its part, was quite useful to promote NATO as much as NATO was useful to promote the war in Afghanistan - even if NATO did not succeed in becoming the Security Council of the global American Empire, always bent on dominating, or circumventing, the UN. Whatever mission NATO is involved in, command and control is always Washington's. Only the Pentagon is able to come up with the logistics for a transcontinental, global military operation. Libya 2011 is another prime example. At the start, the French and the Brits were coordinating with the Americans. But then Stuttgart-based AFRICOM took over the command and control of Libyan skies. Everything NATO did afterwards in Libya, the virtual commander in chief was Barack Obama. So Obama owns Libya. As much as Obama owns the Benghazi blowback in Libya. Libya seemed to announce the arrival of NATO as a coalition assembly line on a global scale, capable of organizing wars all across the world by creating the appearance of a political and military consensus, unified by an all-American doctrine of global order pompously titled "NATO's strategic concept". Libya may have been "won" by the NATO-AFRICOM combo. But then came the Syria red line, duly imposed by Russia and China. And in Mali - which is blowback from Libya - NATO is not even part of the picture; the French may believe they will secure all the gold and uranium they need in the Sahel - but it's AFRICOM who stands to benefit in the long term, boosting its military surge against Chinese interests in Africa. What is certain is that throughout this convoluted process Obama has been totally embedded in the logic of what sterling French geopolitical analyst Alain Joxe described as "war neoliberalism", inherited from the Bush years; one may see it as a champagne definition of the Pentagon's long, or infinite, war. Double O's legacy  Obama's legacy may be in the process of being forged. We might call it Shadow War Forever - coupled with the noxious permanence of Guantanamo. The Pentagon for its part will never abandon its "full spectrum" dream of military hegemony, ideally controlling the future of the world in all those shades of grey zones between Russia and China, the lands of Islam and India, and Africa and Asia. Were lessons learned? Of course not. Double O Bama may have hardly read Nick Turse's exceptional book Kill Anything that Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam, where he painstakingly documents how the Pentagon produced "a veritable system of suffering". Similar analysis of the long war on Iraq might only be published by 2040. Obama can afford to be self-confident because the Drone Empire is safe. [1] Most Americans seem to absent-mindedly endorse it - as long as "the terrorists" are alien, not US citizens. And in the minor netherworlds of the global war on terror (GWOT), myriad profiteers gleefully dwell. A former Navy SEAL and a former Green Beret have published a book this week, Benghazi: the Definitive Report, where they actually admit Benghazi was blowback for the shadow war conducted by John Brennan, later rewarded by Obama as the new head of the CIA. The book claims that Petraeus was done in by an internal CIA coup, with senior officers forcing the FBI to launch an investigation of his affair with foxy biographer Paula Broadwell. The motive: these CIA insiders were furious because Petraeus turned the agency into a paramilitary force. Yet that's exactly what Brennan will keep on doing: Drone Empire, shadow wars, kill list, it's all there. Petraeus-Brennan is also classic continuum. Then there's Esquire milking for all it's worth the story of an anonymous former SEAL Team 6 member, the man who shot Geronimo, aka Osama bin Laden. [2] This is familiar territory, the hagiography of a Great American Killer, whose "three shots changed history", now abandoned by a couldn't-care-less government machinery but certainly not by those who can get profitable kicks from his saga way beyond the technically proficient torture-enabling flick - and Oscar contender - Zero Dark Thirty. Meanwhile, this is what's happening in the real world. China has surpassed the US and is now the biggest trading nation in the world - and counting. [3] This is just the first step towards the establishment of the yuan as a globally traded currency; then will come the yuan as the new global reserve currency, connected to the end of the primacy of the petrodollar... Well, we all know the drill. So that would lead us to reflect on the real political role of the US in the Obama era. Defeated (by Iraqi nationalism) - and in retreat - in Iraq. Defeated (by Pashtun nationalism) - and in retreat - in Afghanistan. Forever cozy with the medieval House of Saud - "secret" drone bases included (something that was widely known as early as July 2011). [4] "Pivoting" to the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea, and pivoting to a whole bunch of African latitudes; all that to try to "contain" China. Thus the question Obama would never dare to ask in a SOTU address (much less in a SOTE - State of the Empire - address). Does the US remain a global imperial power? Or are the Pentagon's - and the shadow CIA's - armies nothing more than mercenaries of a global neoliberal system the US still entertains the illusion of controlling? Notes: 1. Poll: 45% approve of Obama's handling of the economy, CBS News, February 12, 2013. 2. The Man Who Killed Osama bin Laden... Is Screwed, Esquire, February 11, 2013.  3. China Eclipses U.S. as Biggest Trading Nation, Bloomberg News, February 10, 2013.  4. Secret drone bases mark latest shift in US attacks on al-Qaeda, The Times, July 26, 2011.  Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).  He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.  (Copyright 2013 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)