SPECIAL REPORT. U.S. fomenting "constitutional coups" in BRICS alliance by Wayne Madsen Report

SPECIAL REPORT. U.S. fomenting "constitutional coups" in BRICS alliance

by Wayne Madsen Report
When President Obama flies over Brazil on his way from Cuba to Argentina, he will be flying over the latest member of the Brazil-Russia-India-China-South African (BRICS) alliance to feel the effects of the Central Intelligence Agency's new brand of coup generation. After trying to mount an electoral defeat of Brazil's progressive leftist president, Dilma Rousseff, through a combination of presidential candidate assassination, "rent-a-mob" street demonstrations, and corporate media propaganda, the Langley spooks are now trying to run Rousseff from office through a "Made in America" impeachment process. Aware that Rousseff's progressive predecessor and mentor, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, has been targeted by Brazilian prosecutors on the CIA's payroll, for arrest and prosecution for bribery, she has appointed him to her government with ministerial rank. 

Bribery charges, involving Brazil's state-owned oil company Petrobras and, in the case of Lula, construction firms, have also been leveled against Rousseff. George Soros, whose operatives in Brazil have been involved in launching "themed revolution" street protests, has made no secret of his desire to see Petrobras totally privatized so he can sink his fangs into the company and drain it for all it is worth. Soros operatives have turned thousands of people out into the streets of Sao Paulo, Belo Horizonte, Brasilia, and Rio de Janeiro in the "green and yellow" revolution. Protesters carry green and yellow banners and signs and dressed in green and yellow clothes have been confronted by an equal number of government supporters dressed in the red color of the ruling Workers' Party.

The anti-Rousseff/Lula movement bears a signature Soros name, "Vem Pra Rua," Portuguese for "To the Street." As with the disastrous Soros-inspired and CIA-nurtured Arab Spring protests in Egypt, Libya, Syria, and Tunisia and Euromaidan protest in Ukraine, the Vem Pra Rua movement is basically nothing more than a politically-motivated capitalist campaign using Facebook, Twitter, and pro-insurrection television and radio networks, newspapers, and websites.

Vem Pra Rua's protests were marked by quickly-manufactured inflatable dolls of Lula in black and white prison garb and a placard cartoon drawing of Rousseff with a red diagonal "No" sign drawn through it.

Brazilian prosecutors on Langley's payroll recently arrested the popular Lula after staging a massive police raid of his house. Police also arrested the former First Lady of Brazil, Lula's wife Marisa Leticia. Lula said he felt that he was kidnapped by the police. In 2009, Honduran troops actually kidnapped President Manuel Zelaya in the middle of the night and detained him in a military cell prior to expelling him from the country. That operation, like the one against Lula and Rousseff, was backed not only by the CIA and NSA, but by the U.S. Southern Command in Miami. The Honduran coup was also backed by the Supreme Court of Honduras. To prevent a further political arrest of her predecessor, Rousseff has made Lula her chief of staff, a cabinet position that affords Lula protection from continuing prosecutorial harassment and legal proceedings by the federal court.


Soros's and the CIA's latest themed uprising, the Green and Yellow Revolution in Brazil. Soros's "revolutions" only serve the interests of Wall Street, the Pentagon, and Israel.

On March 16, Judge Sergio Moro, who is in charge of Operation "Lava-jato" ("Carwash"), the two-year investigation of Petrobras and the alleged bribery involving Rousseff and Lula, released two taped intercepts of phone calls between the president and former president. The bugged phone conversation involved Rousseff's plans to appoint Lula to her cabinet as a way to afford him some protection from the CIA's judicial-backed coup operation now in play. When the classified National Security Agency documents leaked by whistleblower Ed Snowden illustrated how NSA had spied on Rousseff's office and mobile phones, President Obama said he had ordered an end to such spying on world leaders friendly to the United States.

Rousseff, in a 2013 speech to the UN General Assembly in New York, said the following about the NSA spying on Brazilians: "Personal data of citizens was intercepted indiscriminately. Corporate information, often of high economic and even strategic value,  was at the centre of espionage activity . . Also, Brazilian diplomatic missions, among them the permanent mission to the UN and the office of the president of the republic itself, had their communications intercepted." President Obama followed Rousseff on the General Assembly's podium and, in answer to Rousseff's blistering attack on the U.S. and NSA, stated, "We have begun to review the way that we gather intelligence, so as to properly balance the legitimate security concerns of our citizens and allies, with the privacy concerns that all people share." Obama did not say that the U.S. would not use intercepted phone calls and email to bring down foreign leaders.

The NSA's wiretaps of Brazilian leaders and businessmen involved systems with such cover terms as SILVERZEPHYR, BLACKPEARL, FLYING PIG, and ROYALNET.

NSA spying on Rousseff and Lula continuing. Intercepted phone calls being turned over to Brazilian judge with CIA ties.

Judge Sergio Moro's name appears in one of the leaked State Department cables. On October 30, 2009, the U.S. embassy in Brasilia reported that Moro attended an embassy-sponsored conference in Rio de Janeiro held from October 4-9. Titled "Illicit Financial Crimes," the conference appears have been an avenue for the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies to train Brazilian federal and state law enforcement, as well as other Latin American police officials from Argentina, Paraguay, Panama, and Uruguay, in procedures to mount bogus criminal prosecutions of Latin American leaders considered unfriendly to the United States. Former Argentine president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and members of her leftist political party also faced investigations by prosecutors and judges on the CIA's payroll. The State cable from Brasilia states: "Moro . . . discussed the 15 most common issues he sees in money laundering cases in the Brazilian Courts." Moro is also taking inspiration for his prosecution of Lula and Rousseff from the prosecutors in the Watergate affair that brought down President Richard Nixon.

The recent intercepts of Rousseff's phone conversations with Lula, believed to have been gathered by NSA and turned over to Moro by the U.S. embassy in Brasilia, shows that Obama lied. The American president's forthcoming visit to Latin America has avoided Air Force One touching down in Latin America's biggest power, Brazil. Obama, who once prepared Latin America analytical reports for CIA front company Business International Corporation, is keenly aware that Brazil is now undergoing a "constitutional coup" aided and abetted by the CIA and Soros. Obama cannot be seen giving the imprimatur of legitimacy to a government being actively targeted by Langley and other U.S. intelligence agencies, including NSA.

The transcript of one phone call between Rousseff and Lula is hardly a reason to impeach Rousseff and throw her and Lula into prison, regardless of the aims of Soros, the CIA, and their Brazilian lackeys:
Phone call between Rousseff and Lula, 16 March

Rousseff: Hello.

Lula: Hello.

Rousseff: Lula, let me tell you something.

Lula: Tell me, my love.

Rousseff: It’s this, I am sending Messias [Jorge Rodrigo Araújo Messias, deputy head of legal affairs at the cabinet office] round with the papers, so that we have them, just in case of necessity, that is the terms of office, right?

Lula: Uh-huh. Ok, ok.

Rousseff: That’s all, wait there, he is heading there.

Lula: OK, I’m here. I’ll wait.

Rousseff: Right?

Lula: OK.

Rousseff: Bye.

The phone call is hardly an impeachable offense but a tactical move to protect Lula from a runaway prosecutor.
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The CIA previously used judicial cover in its coups against Honduras's Zelaya in 2009 and Paraguayan president Fernando Lugo in 2012. Both Zelaya and Lugo were ousted by a relatively new CIA methodology for deposing leaders its dislikes -- the "constitutional coup" -- using legislatures and high courts to justify ousters brought on by Soros-financed street demonstrations and manipulation of private media, including newspapers and television. Rousseff and Lula are using the legal powers afforded to the Brazilian presidency to bring charges against Moro.

Lula sees Moro as the CIA rat he is. He condemned Moro's witch hunt, saying that "with the press leading the investigative process they [the prosecutors] are going to re-found the republic. We have a totally cowardly Supreme Court, a totally cowardly High Court, a totally cowardly parliament  . . . a speaker of the house who is fucked, a president of the senate who is fucked, I don’t know how many legislators under threat, and everyone thinking that some kind of miracle is going to happen."

In South Africa, the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA), which receives its support from Soros and the Jewish-dominated South African diamond and gold industry, is targeting president Jacob Zuma. The CIA has traditionally maintained strong influence over the DA, especially when it was led by Tony Leon, a former visiting fellow at the right-wing libertarian Cato Institute in Washington, DC. The tactics in South Africa are similar to those in Brazil. There are calls for Zuma to resign because of alleged bribes received by the wealthy Gupta family and influence peddling by the family. The charges against Zuma also extend to the ruling African National Congress (ANC), which has, since the apartheid era, been the target of the CIA. Even the South African Communist Party, a member of the ANC government, has taken on the taint of a Soros-infiltrated party by demanding Zuma reveal the full nature of his connections with the Guptas or face the political "consequences."

As far as Brazil is concerned, it is apparent that the CIA and Soros want to see Rousseff and Lula gone and in prison by the time the Rio de Janeiro Summer Olympics opens in August. The goal of the anti-government agitators in Brazil is to see a head of state chosen by the usual globalist suspects opening the Olympiad before an international audience.

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.

Soros and Kochs team up in Latin American staged protests by Wayne Madsen

Soros and Kochs team up in Latin American staged protests
by Wayne Madsen
In what could have major ramifications around the world, paid Brazilian protest provocateurs for George Soros have been discovered teaming up with operatives on the payroll of American billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch. After the plan by the CIA and Soros to unseat President Dilma Rousseff, thus drive a knife into the emerging BRICS alliance of Brazil, Russia, China, India, and South Africa, through the aerial assassination last year of presidential candidate Eduardo Campos, Langley has opted for an eastern European-style themed revolution in Brazil. Campos died in a suspicious plane crash that resulted in Rousseff facing off against a Soros operative and Campos's vice presidential running mate, Green Party leader Marina Silva. Rousseff won re-election in a tight race against Aecio Neves, the right-wing candidate who surged past Silva to face Rousseff in the run-off.

Three major groups have joined forces to demand that Rousseff either resign or be impeached from office over charges that her Workers' Party government has engaged in corrupt practices, mostly with regard to Brazil's state-owned Petrobras oil company. The oil company has been eyed for some time by Soros and the Rothschild banking family for whom he fronts globally, as well as the anti-government, libertarian-bent Koch Brothers.

The March 15 national protests against Rousseff were coordinated across the country in a typical Soros-backed social media operation. In the past, anti-Rousseff activities in the country have also involved U.S. embassy and consular political officers, some using their diplomatic status to mask their Central Intelligence Agency affiliations. Some protest signs called for the Brazilian military to overthrow the Rousseff government. In the past, the CIA was responsible for a number of military takeovers in Brazil.

In a Gene Sharp-like operation, a common protest meme was created that appeared on protest signs and banner: "Fora Dilma!" or "Dilma out!" Other signs said Brazil would not become another Venezuela, a reference to that nation's progressive leftist government of Nicolas Maduro, who has been facing his own Soros- and CIA-backed uprising against his policies. The Obama administration recently called Venezuela and its socialist government a threat to U.S. national security.


Standard Soros-Gene Sharp staged protests being carried out in Brazil to undermine a progressive government. The Koch Brothers have joined Soros is financing these operations in Latin America.

The right-wing participants in Brazil's protests are linked directly with the Koch Brothers, particularly the group, “Free Brazil Movement” (Movimento Brasil Livre - MBL). The group is also financed by Warren Buffett's billionaire Brazilian partner, Jorge Paulo Lemann, Brazil's wealthiest man, whose investment group owns Heinz, Budweiser, and Burger King. Lemann has avoided answering questions about his religion, choosing to call himself a "Calvinist." However, his use of the term is in relation to his personal frugality.

Soros-backed groups have used social media to organize Brazilian celebrities to support the anti-Rousseff protests. They include the actors Caio Castro, Malvino Salvador, Marcelo Serrado, Alessandra Maestrini, singer Wanessa Camargo, and former soccer star Ronaldo (Ronaldo Luís Nazário de Lima). The Soros-backed protesters have organized under the banner of the "Come to the Street" movement. They have had a testy relationship with the Koch-backed MBL, especially over calls by the latter for the Brazilian military to overthrow Rousseff in a coup and re-introduce a military dictatorship. The Koch Brothers' activities in Brazil also bring up charges that the two are violating the U.S. Logan Act of 1799, which prohibits Americans from engaging in their own foreign policy.
MBL denies it is funded by Koch Industries but its two main principals, Fabio Ostermann, a member of the Institute of Business Studies and director of the Liberal Institute, and Rodrigo Constantino, who chairs the Liberal Institute and is a columnist for Veja magazine and a founding member of the liberal Institute Milenium (IMIL), are linked to Koch-funded think tanks in other countries, including the neocon Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute in the United States. "Liberal" in the context of these Brazilian groups means "libertarian" of the Ayn Rand variety, a cause supported by the Kochs.

The same "libertarian" fingerprints have been found on staged protests in Ecuador and Argentina. The linkage of Soros and Koch Brothers overseas activities in undermining democratically-elected governments has raised alarm throughout Latin America and around the world.
Mutiny On Line is the central social networking operation being used to coordinate opposition to Rousseff. The group's inspiration comes from Brazilian deputy Jair Bolsonaro, a supporter of a right-wing military coup and a fervent opponent of gay rights and proponent of lowering the legal age of consent. The group rails against "Bolivarianism" in Brazil, a reference to the Bolivarian socialism of Venezuela's government. The group sells anti-Rousseff protest kits on-line which carry the message"God, Family and Freedom."

At the same time staged protests have swept through Brazil and Venezuela, protesters in Ecuador have turned out on the street to protest against the trade policies of President Rafael Correa. Right-wing groups and Soros-backed NGOs have united in their protests against the economic situation brought on by the drop of oil prices but also, curiously, against new import tariffs announced by Correa that are seen as detrimental to the "free trade" aspirations of the wealthy bankers and investor community. 

THE ROVING EYE - Do the Trans-Siberian shuffle By Pepe Escobar

THE ROVING EYE Do the Trans-Siberian shuffle By Pepe Escobar A specter haunts the elites of the Empire of Chaos; the new Russia-China strategic partnership. It's manifesting itself in myriad ways - energy deals, investment deals, a closer political alliance inside the G-20, the BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a concerted effort to progressively bypass the petrodollar. I have described this long process as essential to the birth of the Eurasian century. From a Washington/Wall Street point of view, it was so much easier in those long gone, unipolar, "end of history" days. China was still tiptoeing on the banks of the river of capital accumulation, and Russia was down if not out. So allow me a flashback to the early 1990s. I had been on the road in Asia for months, from all points Southeast Asia to India, Nepal, the Himalayas and the eastern Chinese seaboard. Then I finally hit Beijing - waiting in the bitter winter of early 1992 to take the Trans-Siberian to Moscow. I was barely aware of the collapse of the Soviet Union - not exactly a news item in the Himalayas. I was also fortunate enough to be in southern China just a few days after Deng Xiaoping made his famous tour - whose key consequence was to catapult the dragon to dizzying development heights. A look back to those heady times may have the merit of illuminating our present. All aboard the night train  It's 8:32 pm in Beijing Railway Station, and the Trans-Manchurian Train 19 to Moscow is about to depart. It's minus 9 degrees Celsius. A bunch of Romanian crazies are trying to load more than 20 huge, vaguely green bundles stuffed with Made-in-China gear into one of the carriages. The Russian comptroller spouts out a "Nyet". Romanian chicks immerse in Transylvanic hysteria. Then a stash of George Washingtons changes hands at the final whistle, just in time for PLA soldiers and lady sweepers sporting the ubiquitous red armband with the words "Serve The People" to impassibly observe the happy ending. A cacophony of Russians, Poles, Romanians, Czechs and Mongols has deployed dozens of bags, bundles and sacks to totally overload the train corridors. 300 kg of shoes. 500 kg of jackets. 200 kg of T-shirts. Thousands of beauty cream pots that will be all the rage from Bucharest to Cracow. A "bed" on the train is a concavity over one of the bundles. That will be story for six days, across over 9,000 snowy kilometers in the former USSR, now Russia, from East to West. At the comptroller's compartment, more bags - whose content will be sold in the streets of Moscow. With so many George Washingtons in sight, the success of her bazaar is guaranteed - what with multiple stops on the way and an unregulated "free" market in every platform. The whole of Eastern Europe is loaded with stuff and dying to make a quick buck. In the Chinese stretch of the journey, nothing happens, unlike the 1930s, when Japan occupied Manchuria, installed puppet Pu Yi on the throne and was ready to take over Asia. The Terminator action starts in Zabaikalsk, at the Russian-China border - after we cross a huge Arc of Triumph in cement, complete with Leninist motto and not-yet-destroyed hammer and sickle. Customs - on both sides - is absolutely deserted. The train changes configuration to adapt to the new tracks. Yet all sights are set on the new dining car; exit Chinese, which only offered a miserable pork with soya sauce; enter Russian, crammed with goulash, soup, salami, frozen fish, black caviar, champagne from Crimea, coffee, eggs, even cheese - everything on the black market paid with US dollars. With the border behind us, it's go-go bazaar time. Everyone freaks out, because we instantly move from Beijing time to Moscow time. Sunrise is at 1 in the morning. The black market is running at $1 = 110 roubles, the rouble in free fall as we cut through the sublime snowy infinite desert of the Siberian tundra, where each spectacular sunrise under a slight Arctic fog is an epiphany celebrated with more Crimea champagne. Occasionally we spot reindeers or even huskies. The taiga - coveted by Japan, Korea and the US - is enveloped in snow. Beyond lay the ghosts of the 20 million corpses in Stalin's gulags, the hunters of the rare Amu tiger (fewer than 200 left) and the sinister Norilsk complex; 2 million tons a year of sulphuric acid and other heavy metals dumped in the atmosphere - the reason for that Arctic fog. The train stops stretch for 15 and even 20 minutes, reaching a nadir in Novosibirsk and Perm, which previously housed a notorious gulag. At every stop, hordes of Russians in Genghis Khan mode attack the train with little plastic bags. The best deal in the Trans-Siberian is anoraks and leather jackets. Jao, from Beijing, sells 50 in three days, at up to US$50 each; she paid $20 each in the Beijing hutongs. The Russians buy everything in sight and sell roubles - now plunging to 160 to the US dollar - as well as vodka, beer, salami, champagne and local $1 Pepsi bottles. The whole of Eastern Europe has taken over Train 19. Post-Ceausescu Romanians are the most exuberant - from former boxers to hookers to a seedy gangster in a tracksuit boasting about his two hours with a Russian doll for $10 (the going rate is $20). There's an Albanian contingent, young Polish students, shirtless Mongol nomads feverishly counting their profits, babushkas bored to death and even a loquacious Chinese dandy. The Russian carriages, once elegant, are a mess: foul air, dense cigarette smoke, drenched in sweat, toilets crammed with sacks, and "Kapitan", the only waiter, trying to make a quick buck selling Soviet paraphernalia. I find it the ideal setting to devour almost 1,000 pages of Norman Mailer's Harlot's Ghost, a history of the CIA. Blame it on glasnost Train 19 is not only a bazaar but also a multinational Agora. Young Russians elaborate how the almost genius perversity of the Soviet system led it to boost to the limit all the problems of modern industrial societies - offering nearly none of its benefits. Eastern Europeans volunteer that it was not the Cold War that finished off "real socialism"; it was the invasion of the capitalist economy combined with the inefficiency and "stupidity" (copyright by a Polish undergraduate) of the socialist economy. Russians say that glasnost finished off authority and perestroikafinished off the economy - and there was nothing to replace either. End result: physics graduates selling caviar tins in a moving train for survival. Everyone praises Gorbachev but essentially condemn him to a short historical footnote. In the train, I heard arguments that would be reproduced years later in countless US academic studies. All the Trans-Siberian navigators exhibit a solidarity not to be found at the United Nations; they exchange currencies, swap addresses, lend money and the indispensable calculators, help to load and unload the loot, accept bundles in their compartment, offer their places for half an hour for those who only have the corridor to sleep, and crack jokes about the small Bank of China yuan bills. They are all ardent defenders of this unheard of form of direct democracy that is synonym with the end of the Cold War. Amid the casino lurks the most improbable character: Lulu, a diminutive Bangladeshi, always attached to a Samsonite, dabbling in Allah-only-knows mysterious activities, passport filled with dodgy visas, Saudi Arabian included. Chinese and Russians treat him like an allergic Pekingese. Train chow is predictably unbearable for this strict Muslim, who wakes us all up everyday at 5 am with his prayers - Rashid Muhammad spends six days literally on bread and water. Skolka? That's the Trans-Manchurian bazaar motto, a preview of Moscow. Pink Floyd launched the legendary Dark Side of the Moon at the height of the Brejnev era; Moscow suburbs look like the ghostly, dark side of the moon. Stalin's lunatic legacy is alleviated only by a solitary kiosk selling flowers, fruit or sweet Georgia brandy. We arrive as zombies - and only a few hours late - at Yaroslavlsky Vakzal, one of nine Moscow train stations, where a deluge of Volga taxis fight for the precious Chinese cargo. Those moving on to Eastern Europe without a reservation are doomed: seats for Warsaw and Berlin are only available in 40 days. In Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Shanghai and Beijing, I had witnessed the spectacular success of post-Tiananmen Chinese "market socialism", where the economy was the locomotive and politics was dispatched to the bottom end of the train. Nothing more astonishing than the contrast with Moscow, where politics was the locomotive. I'm housed by Dmitri, an odontology student, three metro stops from the Kremlin, paying $6 a day, a small fortune; he and his girlfriend precariously subdivide the two-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment with a whole family, dog included, besides the occasional Western visitors, who sleep in the master bedroom. This is considered an upper middle-class lifestyle. At the beautiful metro stations, it's the return of the Trans-Siberian bazaar; on sale are political or porno samizdats, second-hand clothes, bottles of every possible liquid. Only when I reach Red Square doI see the light; at the Himalayas and China, my time-zone was still on Gorbachev. What's now at the top of the Kremlin is a Russian flag - as well as in the center of Dzerzhinsky square, in front of the KGB. As a perfect idiot, I aim for the statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the former head of the Soviet secret police, only to be warned by a student that it had been torn down weeks ago. Gorbachev is now a vodka brand. And I can't get inside the KGB building. The whole city is converted into a giant Turkish bazaar. After Boris Yeltsin liberated the sidewalks, everyone wants to exercise thisprivatizatsiya thing. Until 1990, nobody knew what a checkbook or a credit card was, and $1 was equivalent to 1 rouble. There are absolutely astonishing street markets on Prospekt Marka and Gorki street, everyone silently in line exhibiting their wares; a broken doll, a solitary shoe, dusty champagne bottles, perfume, instant coffee, sardine tins, an empty beer bottle. The streets are filled with all the stuff brought by the Trans-Siberian navigators, but the supermarkets are empty. There's very little milk or meat, but lots of canned fish and interminable lines to buy nothing - with potential consumers resigned to play chess. The biggest hit in town is the new McDonald's on Pushkin square - one of the busiest in the world, selling full meals for 50 cents by cashiers sporting an Eva Herzigova smile. In front of the MacD, a paper Gorbie poses for tourists, and a crowd sells caviar tins for $5 and champagne for $3. At the GUM department store, there is not much except a few Sony and Honda showrooms and a new Dior window. The recent past does not let go; it's impossible to call Europe. It's impossible to send a fax from the Post Office. It's impossible to make a train reservation. It's impossible to make a plane reservation - at least on the Aeroflot shop in Lubyanka; only at the cavernous Intourist Hotel. At the lugubrious ground floor of the Mockba Hotel, deaf and dumb characters straight out of an Ionesco play crowd the corridors while a beer black-market does brisk business in front of the hotel bar. A glass of champagne goes for 50 cents. At the hall of the legendary Metropol - the 1899 Grand Dame favored by Trotsky - a dry martini is a steep $7,70. The Metropol is the new Wall Street; Danes, Italians, Americans and Chinese discuss all deals this side of a Brave New World downing Heinekens at $5 a pop. On Armed Forces Day, a Sunday, there's a communist demonstration, repressed with tact, boasting large numbers of old ladies carrying flowers and flags. For their part, Moscow punks with anarchist flags protest against the Armed Forces. A pre-historic Volga takes me to Sheremetyevo as if I was running from a 1950s Cold War B-movie set. The Volga gurgles, stops, cools off, runs, gurgles, stops again, cools off; a metaphor of the new Russia, and I almost miss Aeroflot SU 576 back to Paris. Nothing will ever be the (unipolar) same  Those were the days. That McDonald's - symbol of unipolar, "end of history", Pax Americana - has been recently shut down. It's harder and harder for the Empire of Chaos to rule the world alone while McDonald's serves burgers. Across Pushkin square, the fashionable Cafe Pouchkine now serves the best of Russian haute cuisine. And still, both Russia and China are seen as pariahs by the unipolar, imperial elite. It's as if we were still frozen in those early1990s days. Russia and China may have changed almost beyond recognition - but for the Empire of Chaos the priorities are to tear Russia apart, starting with Ukraine, and "pivot to Asia" via an anti-China military/economic axis in the Western Pacific. Meanwhile, the Trans-Siberian will soon be linked with the Chinese-driven New Silk Roads. And then one day in the early 2020s this will all be a high-speed rail network, linking Eurasia in a flash. And nothing will ever be the (unipolar) same. Except for the back-to-Russia Crimean champagne. 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.

THE ROVING EYE - Do the Trans-Siberian shuffle By Pepe Escobar

THE ROVING EYE Do the Trans-Siberian shuffle By Pepe Escobar A specter haunts the elites of the Empire of Chaos; the new Russia-China strategic partnership. It's manifesting itself in myriad ways - energy deals, investment deals, a closer political alliance inside the G-20, the BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a concerted effort to progressively bypass the petrodollar. I have described this long process as essential to thebirth of the Eurasian century. From a Washington/Wall Street point of view, it was so much easier in those long gone, unipolar, "end of history" days. China was still tiptoeing on the banks of the river of capital accumulation, and Russia was down if not out. So allow me a flashback to the early 1990s. I had been on the road in Asia for months, from all points Southeast Asia to India, Nepal, the Himalayas and the eastern Chinese seaboard. Then I finally hit Beijing - waiting in the bitter winter of early 1992 to take the Trans-Siberian to Moscow. I was barely aware of the collapse of the Soviet Union - not exactly a news item in the Himalayas. I was also fortunate enough to be in southern China just a few days after Deng Xiaoping made his famous tour - whose key consequence was to catapult the dragon to dizzying development heights. A look back to those heady times may have the merit of illuminating our present. All aboard the night train  It's 8:32 pm in Beijing Railway Station, and the Trans-Manchurian Train 19 to Moscow is about to depart. It's minus 9 degrees Celsius. A bunch of Romanian crazies are trying to load more than 20 huge, vaguely green bundles stuffed with Made-in-China gear into one of the carriages. The Russian comptroller spouts out a "Nyet". Romanian chicks immerse in Transylvanic hysteria. Then a stash of George Washingtons changes hands at the final whistle, just in time for PLA soldiers and lady sweepers sporting the ubiquitous red armband with the words "Serve The People" to impassibly observe the happy ending. A cacophony of Russians, Poles, Romanians, Czechs and Mongols has deployed dozens of bags, bundles and sacks to totally overload the train corridors. 300 kg of shoes. 500 kg of jackets. 200 kg of T-shirts. Thousands of beauty cream pots that will be all the rage from Bucharest to Cracow. A "bed" on the train is a concavity over one of the bundles. That will be story for six days, across over 9,000 snowy kilometers in the former USSR, now Russia, from East to West. At the comptroller's compartment, more bags - whose content will be sold in the streets of Moscow. With so many George Washingtons in sight, the success of her bazaar is guaranteed - what with multiple stops on the way and an unregulated "free" market in every platform. The whole of Eastern Europe is loaded with stuff and dying to make a quick buck. In the Chinese stretch of the journey, nothing happens, unlike the 1930s, when Japan occupied Manchuria, installed puppet Pu Yi on the throne and was ready to take over Asia. The Terminator action starts in Zabaikalsk, at the Russian-China border - after we cross a huge Arc of Triumph in cement, complete with Leninist motto and not-yet-destroyed hammer and sickle. Customs - on both sides - is absolutely deserted. The train changes configuration to adapt to the new tracks. Yet all sights are set on the new dining car; exit Chinese, which only offered a miserable pork with soya sauce; enter Russian, crammed with goulash, soup, salami, frozen fish, black caviar, champagne from Crimea, coffee, eggs, even cheese - everything on the black market paid with US dollars. With the border behind us, it's go-go bazaar time. Everyone freaks out, because we instantly move from Beijing time to Moscow time. Sunrise is at 1 in the morning. The black market is running at $1 = 110 roubles, the rouble in free fall as we cut through the sublime snowy infinite desert of the Siberian tundra, where each spectacular sunrise under a slight Arctic fog is an epiphany celebrated with more Crimea champagne. Occasionally we spot reindeers or even huskies. The taiga - coveted by Japan, Korea and the US - is enveloped in snow. Beyond lay the ghosts of the 20 million corpses in Stalin's gulags, the hunters of the rare Amu tiger (fewer than 200 left) and the sinister Norilsk complex; 2 million tons a year of sulphuric acid and other heavy metals dumped in the atmosphere - the reason for that Arctic fog. The train stops stretch for 15 and even 20 minutes, reaching a nadir in Novosibirsk and Perm, which previously housed a notorious gulag. At every stop, hordes of Russians in Genghis Khan mode attack the train with little plastic bags. The best deal in the Trans-Siberian is anoraks and leather jackets. Jao, from Beijing, sells 50 in three days, at up to US$50 each; she paid $20 each in the Beijing hutongs. The Russians buy everything in sight and sell roubles - now plunging to 160 to the US dollar - as well as vodka, beer, salami, champagne and local $1 Pepsi bottles. The whole of Eastern Europe has taken over Train 19. Post-Ceausescu Romanians are the most exuberant - from former boxers to hookers to a seedy gangster in a tracksuit boasting about his two hours with a Russian doll for $10 (the going rate is $20). There's an Albanian contingent, young Polish students, shirtless Mongol nomads feverishly counting their profits, babushkas bored to death and even a loquacious Chinese dandy. The Russian carriages, once elegant, are a mess: foul air, dense cigarette smoke, drenched in sweat, toilets crammed with sacks, and "Kapitan", the only waiter, trying to make a quick buck selling Soviet paraphernalia. I find it the ideal setting to devour almost 1,000 pages of Norman Mailer's Harlot's Ghost, a history of the CIA. Blame it on glasnost Train 19 is not only a bazaar but also a multinational Agora. Young Russians elaborate how the almost genius perversity of the Soviet system led it to boost to the limit all the problems of modern industrial societies - offering nearly none of its benefits. Eastern Europeans volunteer that it was not the Cold War that finished off "real socialism"; it was the invasion of the capitalist economy combined with the inefficiency and "stupidity" (copyright by a Polish undergraduate) of the socialist economy. Russians say that glasnost finished off authority and perestroikafinished off the economy - and there was nothing to replace either. End result: physics graduates selling caviar tins in a moving train for survival. Everyone praises Gorbachev but essentially condemn him to a short historical footnote. In the train, I heard arguments that would be reproduced years later in countless US academic studies. All the Trans-Siberian navigators exhibit a solidarity not to be found at the United Nations; they exchange currencies, swap addresses, lend money and the indispensable calculators, help to load and unload the loot, accept bundles in their compartment, offer their places for half an hour for those who only have the corridor to sleep, and crack jokes about the small Bank of China yuan bills. They are all ardent defenders of this unheard of form of direct democracy that is synonym with the end of the Cold War. Amid the casino lurks the most improbable character: Lulu, a diminutive Bangladeshi, always attached to a Samsonite, dabbling in Allah-only-knows mysterious activities, passport filled with dodgy visas, Saudi Arabian included. Chinese and Russians treat him like an allergic Pekingese. Train chow is predictably unbearable for this strict Muslim, who wakes us all up everyday at 5 am with his prayers - Rashid Muhammad spends six days literally on bread and water. Skolka? That's the Trans-Manchurian bazaar motto, a preview of Moscow. Pink Floyd launched the legendary Dark Side of the Moon at the height of the Brejnev era; Moscow suburbs look like the ghostly, dark side of the moon. Stalin's lunatic legacy is alleviated only by a solitary kiosk selling flowers, fruit or sweet Georgia brandy. We arrive as zombies - and only a few hours late - at Yaroslavlsky Vakzal, one of nine Moscow train stations, where a deluge of Volga taxis fight for the precious Chinese cargo. Those moving on to Eastern Europe without a reservation are doomed: seats for Warsaw and Berlin are only available in 40 days. In Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Shanghai and Beijing, I had witnessed the spectacular success of post-Tiananmen Chinese "market socialism", where the economy was the locomotive and politics was dispatched to the bottom end of the train. Nothing more astonishing than the contrast with Moscow, where politics was the locomotive. I'm housed by Dmitri, an odontology student, three metro stops from the Kremlin, paying $6 a day, a small fortune; he and his girlfriend precariously subdivide the two-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment with a whole family, dog included, besides the occasional Western visitors, who sleep in the master bedroom. This is considered an upper middle-class lifestyle. At the beautiful metro stations, it's the return of the Trans-Siberian bazaar; on sale are political or porno samizdats, second-hand clothes, bottles of every possible liquid. Only when I reach Red Square doI see the light; at the Himalayas and China, my time-zone was still on Gorbachev. What's now at the top of the Kremlin is a Russian flag - as well as in the center of Dzerzhinsky square, in front of the KGB. As a perfect idiot, I aim for the statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the former head of the Soviet secret police, only to be warned by a student that it had been torn down weeks ago. Gorbachev is now a vodka brand. And I can't get inside the KGB building. The whole city is converted into a giant Turkish bazaar. After Boris Yeltsin liberated the sidewalks, everyone wants to exercise thisprivatizatsiya thing. Until 1990, nobody knew what a checkbook or a credit card was, and $1 was equivalent to 1 rouble. There are absolutely astonishing street markets on Prospekt Marka and Gorki street, everyone silently in line exhibiting their wares; a broken doll, a solitary shoe, dusty champagne bottles, perfume, instant coffee, sardine tins, an empty beer bottle. The streets are filled with all the stuff brought by the Trans-Siberian navigators, but the supermarkets are empty. There's very little milk or meat, but lots of canned fish and interminable lines to buy nothing - with potential consumers resigned to play chess. The biggest hit in town is the new McDonald's on Pushkin square - one of the busiest in the world, selling full meals for 50 cents by cashiers sporting an Eva Herzigova smile. In front of the MacD, a paper Gorbie poses for tourists, and a crowd sells caviar tins for $5 and champagne for $3. At the GUM department store, there is not much except a few Sony and Honda showrooms and a new Dior window. The recent past does not let go; it's impossible to call Europe. It's impossible to send a fax from the Post Office. It's impossible to make a train reservation. It's impossible to make a plane reservation - at least on the Aeroflot shop in Lubyanka; only at the cavernous Intourist Hotel. At the lugubrious ground floor of the Mockba Hotel, deaf and dumb characters straight out of an Ionesco play crowd the corridors while a beer black-market does brisk business in front of the hotel bar. A glass of champagne goes for 50 cents. At the hall of the legendary Metropol - the 1899 Grand Dame favored by Trotsky - a dry martini is a steep $7,70. The Metropol is the new Wall Street; Danes, Italians, Americans and Chinese discuss all deals this side of a Brave New World downing Heinekens at $5 a pop. On Armed Forces Day, a Sunday, there's a communist demonstration, repressed with tact, boasting large numbers of old ladies carrying flowers and flags. For their part, Moscow punks with anarchist flags protest against the Armed Forces. A pre-historic Volga takes me to Sheremetyevo as if I was running from a 1950s Cold War B-movie set. The Volga gurgles, stops, cools off, runs, gurgles, stops again, cools off; a metaphor of the new Russia, and I almost miss Aeroflot SU 576 back to Paris. Nothing will ever be the (unipolar) same  Those were the days. That McDonald's - symbol of unipolar, "end of history", Pax Americana - has been recently shut down. It's harder and harder for the Empire of Chaos to rule the world alone while McDonald's serves burgers. Across Pushkin square, the fashionable Cafe Pouchkine now serves the best of Russian haute cuisine. And still, both Russia and China are seen as pariahs by the unipolar, imperial elite. It's as if we were still frozen in those early1990s days. Russia and China may have changed almost beyond recognition - but for the Empire of Chaos the priorities are to tear Russia apart, starting with Ukraine, and "pivot to Asia" via an anti-China military/economic axis in the Western Pacific. Meanwhile, the Trans-Siberian will soon be linked with the Chinese-driven New Silk Roads. And then one day in the early 2020s this will all be a high-speed rail network, linking Eurasia in a flash. And nothing will ever be the (unipolar) same. Except for the back-to-Russia Crimean champagne. 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.

Will NATO liberate Jihadistan? By Pepe Escobar

THE ROVING EYE

Will NATO liberate Jihadistan?

By Pepe Escobar 

Drive your cart and your plow
Over the bones of the dead … 
- William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Caliph Ibrahim, aka Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, self-declared leader of Islamic State, formerly the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, really sports a mean PR vein. When the show seemed scheduled for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to save Ukraine and Western Civilization - at least rhetorically - from that Evil Empire remixed, Russia, The Caliph, accessing his expensive watch wisdom, intervened with - what else - yet another "off with their heads" special. 

Eyebrows were properly raised until the United States' intel alphabet soup solemnly concluded that Islamic State (IS) really beheaded yet another American journalist on video (US President Barack Obama: "An horrific act of violence"). 

And then, out of the blue, The Caliph doubled down, proclaiming to the whole world his next target is none other than Russian President Vladimir Putin. Was he channeling the recently ostracized Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan, aka Bandar Bush? 

In thesis, everything would be settled. The Caliph becomes a contractor to NATO (well, he’s been on to it, sort of). The Caliph beheads Putin. The Caliph liberates Chechnya - fast; not the usual, deeply embarrassing NATO quagmire in Afghanistan. The Caliph, on a roll, attacks the BRICS - Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The Caliph becomes NATO’s shadow secretary-general. And Obama finally stops complaining that his calls to Putin always end up on voicemail. 

Ah, if geopolitics was as simple as a Marvel Comics blockbuster.

Instead, The Caliph should know - even as he is largely a Made-in-the-West product, with substantial input from Gulf Cooperation Council petrodollar cash - that NATO never promised him a rose garden. 

So, predictably, those ungrateful Obama and David Cameron, the British Prime Minister - oh yes, because the "special relationship" is all that matters in NATO, the others are mere extras - have vowed to go after him with a broad (well, not that broad) "coalition of the willing" with the usual GCC suspects plus Turkey and Jordan, bombing Iraqi Kurdistan, parts of Sunni Iraq and even Syria. 

After all, Syrian President "Bashar al-Assad must go", rather "Assad brutality" in Cameron’s formulation, is the real culprit for The Caliph’s actions. 

And all in the name of the Enduring Freedom Forever-style Global War on Terror. 

Now get me that Slavic Caliph 
NATO’s outgoing secretary-general Anders "Fogh of War" Rasmussen was somehow rattled. After all, this was supposed to be the "crucial moment", at the NATO summit in Wales, when NATO would be at its Cold War 2.0 best, rescuing "the allies", all 28 of them, from the dark gloom of insecurity. 

One just had to look at the replica of a glorious Eurofighter Typhoon deployed in front of the NATO summit hotel in the southern Welsh town of Newport. 

To round it all off, that evil Slavic Caliph, Vlad Putin himself, designed a seven-point peace plan to solve the Ukrainian quagmire - just as Kiev’s appalling army has been reduced to strogonoff by the federalists and/or separatists in the Donbass. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko - who until virtually yesterday was screaming "Invasion!" at the top of his lungs - breathed long sighs of relief. And as an aside, he disclosed Kiev was receiving high-precision weapons from an unnamed country that could only be the US, the UK or Poland. 

The whole thing posed a problem, though. What is NATO to defend Western Civilization from when all that threat embodied by "Russian aggression" dissolves into a road map to peace? 

No wonder the 60 heads of state and government with their Ministers of Defense and Foreign Relations who performed a soft invasion/breaching of the "ring of steel" protecting Newport from protesting hordes were also somehow dazed an confused. 

Over 11 years after Shock and Awe, we are still living in a Rumsfeldian world. It was the former Pentagon head David Rumsfeld under George "Dubya" Bush who conceptualized "Old Europe" and "New Europe". "Old" were Venusian sissies; "New" were vigorous Martians. 

"New" totally supported Shock and Awe, and the subsequent invasion/occupation of Iraq. Now they support, in fact beg, for NATO to stare down Russia. 

"Old", for its part, was trying at least to save a negotiating space with Putin. And in the end dear prudence, especially by Berlin, was rewarded with the Putin peace plan. 

Just in case, not to rattle the Empire of Chaos too much, Paris announced it won’t deliver the first of two Mistral helicopter carrier battleships to Moscow according to schedule. And of course NATO strongly condemned Russia on Ukraine, and the European Union followed up with yet more sanctions. 

As for Fogh of War, predictably, he kept juggling his "Mars Attacks!" rhetoric (see Asia Times Online, September 3, 2014). It was all Moscow’s fault. NATO is nothing but an innocent force of appeasement - powerful and solid. At the same time, NATO would not be foolish to start depicting Russia as an enemy outright. 

So, as Asia Times Online reported, NATO at best will help train Kiev’s forces; the Donbass performance showed they badly need it. But there will be no Ukraine "integration" - for all the hysteria deployed by Kiev and well as Poland and the Baltic states calling for permanent bases. The new element will be the remixed NATO Response Force (NRF) which, by the way, was never used before. 

NRF even comes with a catchy slogan: "Travel light and strike hard". An 800-strong battalion will be able to strike in two days, and a 5,000-strong brigade between five and seven days. Well, by those "travel light" standards it would hardly be enough to prevent The Caliph from annexing larger parts of Jihadistan with his gleaming white Toyota combo. As for "strike hard", ask Pashtuns in the Hindu Kush for an informed opinion. 

So Wales yielded NRF; permanent "rotation" and permanent forward bases to "protect" Central and Eastern Europe; and everybody shelling out more cash (no less than 2% of their GDP each, for all 28 members, from here to 2025). All this in the middle of the third European recession in five years. 

Now compare the astonishing combined NATO military budget of US$900 billion (75% of all expenses monopolized by the US) with only $80 billion for Russia. Yet Moscow is the "threat". 

Needless to add, even under so much sound and fury, Wales did not yield NATO sitting on a Freudian divan - analyzing in an endless monologue its abject failure in both Afghanistan and Libya. 

In Afghanistan, the Taliban basically run rings around NATO’s bases and "strike hard" movements, demoralizing them to oblivion. That was NATO in GWOT mode. 

And in Libya, NATO created a failed state ravaged by militias and called it "peace". That was NATO in "Responsibility To Protect" mode. 

NATO liberating Jihadistan? The Pentagon couldn’t care less. The Pentagon wants eternal GWOT. US Think Tankland is ecstatic at NATO finding a "renewed purpose" and its long-term survival now assured by a "unifying threat". Translation: Russia. 

So The Caliph is not exactly quaking in his Made-in-USA desert boots. He’s even dreaming of taking on the Slavic Caliph himself. How come Marvel Comics never thought about that? 

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. 

U.S. intelligence link to Brazilian plane crash that killed presidential candidate by Wayne Madsen

 U.S. intelligence link to Brazilian plane crash that killed presidential candidate

The plane carrying Brazilian centrist, pro-business presidential candidate Eduardo Campos and his closest advisers, which crashed on August 13 into a residential area of Santos, Brazil, did not have a flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder, manufactured by a major U.S. National Security Agency contractor, was tampered with.

Campos was the candidate of the formerly leftist but now "pro-business" Brazilian Socialist Party. As with the British, Australian, and New Zealand Labor Parties, the Canadian Liberal and New Democratic Parties, and the U.S. Democratic Party, corporate and Zionist interests infiltrated the Brazilian Socialist Party and transformed it into a "Third Way" pro-business party.

It is clear that since disclosures of NSA spying on the e-mail and phones of incumbent Brazilian Workers' Party President Dilma Rousseff and her ministers, Rousseff's resultant cancellation of a state visit to Washington, and Brazil's hosting of Russian President Vladimir Putin and other BRICS economic bloc leaders, the United States has been trying to destabilize Brazil. The State Department and the CIA have been looking for weak links in Rousseff's Brazil to create the same conditions of instability they have fomented in other countries in Latin America, including Venezuela, Ecuador, Argentina, and Bolivia. However, Rousseff, who antagonized Washington by announcing in Brazil the establishment of a Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa (BRICS) development bank to compete with the U.S.- and European Union-controlled World Bank, looked unbeatable for re-election with Campos at the head of the Socialist Party ticket. That was the case until August 13 when Campos and his advisers were killed in the crash of their Cessna 560XL, killing all on board.

The crash advanced to the head of the Socialist Party presidential ticket Campos's vice presidential running mate, Marina Silva. In 2010, Silva received a surprising 20 percent of the vote for president as the Green Party candidate. Rather than run as the Green candidate this year, Silva opted to join Campos's pro-business ticket. Silva is now seen as the Socialist Party's best chance to defeat Rousseff for president in the October election. Silva, an evangelical Christian in a largely Roman Catholic country, is also seen as close to the global "civil society" infrastructure of "controlled opposition" groups financed by hedge fund master manipulator George Soros. As a leader of Brazil's Amazon rain forest protection efforts, Silva has been lauded by environmental groups funded by Soros's Open Society Institute. Silva's campaign rhetoric is rife with such Soros code phrases as "sustainable society," "knowledge society," and "diversity."

NSA/Soros handiwork may be involved with this plane crash scene from Sao Paulo state, Brazil.

Silva marched with the Brazilian team at the opening ceremonies of the 2012 Olympics in London. Brazilian Sports Minister Aldo Rebelo said that Silva's participation in the Olympics was approved by the British royal family and that she "always had good relations with the European aristocracy."

Silva is also more moderate than Rousseff on Israel's policies toward Palestine. As an Assemblies of God Pentecostal Christian, Silva is a member of a denomination that provides core membership for the worldwide movement of "Christian Zionists," who are as avidly as pro-Israel as the more strident Zionistic Jewish organizations, such as B'nai B'rith and the World Jewish Congress.

The Assemblies of God believe the following about Israel:
"According to Scripture, Israel has an important role to play in the end-times. For centuries Bible scholars pondered over the prophecy of a restored Israel. 'This is what the Sovereign Lord says: I will take the Israelites out of the nations where they have gone. I will gather them from all around and bring them back into their own land.' When the modern nation of Israel was founded in 1948, and Jews began returning from all around the world, Bible scholars knew that God was at work and that we were very likely living in the last days."

In 1996, Silva was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize, which was established by Goldman Insurance Company founder Richard Goldman and his wife Rhoda Goldman, an heir to the Levi Strauss clothing company fortune. In 2010, Silva was named by Foreign Policy magazine, edited by David Rothkopf, a former managing director of Kissinger Associates, to its list of "top global thinkers."

The full details of the cause of Campos's plane crash may never be known. Assisting in the investigation of the crash is the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and the Federal Aviation Administration. NTSB and FAA investigators will assuredly be in-briefed and out-briefed by CIA officials stationed in Brasilia who will be eager to have a conclusion of "tragic accident" stamped on the final crash report.

The CIA has managed to cover up its involvement in other Latin American aircraft crashes that have eliminated opponents of U.S. imperialism in Latin America. On July 31, 1981, Panamanian President Omar Torrijos was killed when his Panamanian Air Force plane crashed near Penonomé, Panama. After George H  W Bush's invasion of Panama in 1989, the Panamanian plane crash investigation documents held by the Panamanian government of General Manuel Noriega were reportedly seized by American military personnel and they disappeared.

Two months before Torrijos was killed, Ecuadorian President Jaime Roldos, a populist leader who stood up to the United States, was killed when his Super King Air plane, operated as a VIP aircraft by the Ecuadorian Air Force, crashed intoHuairapungo Mountain in Loja Province. The plane also carried the First Lady of Ecuador and the Defense Minister and his wife. They were all killed in the crash. The plane lacked a Flight Data Recorder, also known as a "black box." The Zurich, Switzerland police conducted their own investigation that discovered the official Ecuadorian government investigation was seriously flawed. For example, the Ecuadorian government report on the crash failed to mention that the
plane's engines were disabled before the aircraft plowed into the side of the mountain. 

As with Roldos’s plane, Campos’s Cessna did not have a "black box" flight data recorder. Moreover, the Brazilian Air Force announced that two hours of audio from the cockpit voice recorder on board Campos’s Cessna do not reflect the conversations between the pilot, co-pilot, and ground control on August 13. The cockpit voice recorder on board the ill-fated Cessna 560XL was manufactured by L-3 Communications, Inc. of New York City. L-3 is a major U.S. intelligence contractor that provides the National Security Agency with much of its undersea cable tapping capabilities through an NSA agreement with L-3’s Global Crossing subsidiary.

Although Brazilian presidential hopeful Campos was no enemy of the United States, his suspicious death a few months before the presidential election and replacement with a darling of the George Soros infrastructure, now poses an electoral threat to Rousseff, who is most definitely considered by Washington as an enemy. The U.S. and Soros have been looking for various ways to penetrate and disrupt the BRICS nations. The Soros/CIA attempt to advance Chinese Politburo member Bo Xilai into the Chinese presidency collapsed when he and his wife were arrested and jailed for corruption. With Russia and South Africa off-limits for any similar intrigue, India and Brazil are the focus for CIA and Soros disruption of BRICS. Although Narendra Modi's right-wing government in India is new, the early signs for BRICS disruption are encouraging. For example, India's Foreign Minister, Sushma Swaraj, as an outspoken and committed ally of Israel. Brazil under Rousseff is seen by the CIA and Soros as the best opportunity to insert one of their own, in this case, Marina Silva, into the leadership of a BRICS nation in order to exact a "Trojan horse" attack on the increasingly important economic bloc.

The plane crash that killed Eduardo Campos advanced a George Soros-funded operative closer to the Alvorada presidential palace in Brasilia. 

RUSSIAN STRATEGY IN THE FACE OF ANGLO-AMERICAN IMPERIALISM The Beginning of World Shift by Thierry Meyssan

RUSSIAN STRATEGY IN THE FACE OF ANGLO-AMERICAN IMPERIALISM

The Beginning of World Shift

by Thierry Meyssan

Anglo-Saxon agression against Russia is taking the form of financial and economic warfare. However, Moscow is preparing for armed hostilities by developing its agricultural self-sufficency and multiplying its alliances. For Thierry Meyssan, after the creation of the caliphate in the Levant, Washington would lay down a new card in September in St. Petersburg. The ability of Russia to maintain its internal stability will determine the course of events.

VOLTAIRE NETWORK | DAMASCUS (SYRIA) | 13 AUGUST 2014 

ESPAÑOL  عربي  PORTUGUÊS  فارسى  ITALIANO  TÜRKÇE  DEUTSCH  РУССКИЙ  FRANÇAIS  ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΆ  POLSKI 

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization will represent, from its probable extension in September 2014, 40% of world population.

The offensive led by Anglos-Saxons (USA, UK and Israel) for world domination continues on two lines simultaneously: both the creation of the "Greater Middle East" (Greater Middle East) by attacking simultaneously Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine, and separating Russia from the European Union through the crisis they organised in Ukraine.

In this sprint, it seems that Washington wants to impose the dollar as the single currency in the gas market, the energy source of the twenty-first century, the way it imposed it on the oil [1] market. The Western media hardly cover the war in Donbass and their population is ignorant of the scale of the fighting, the US military presence, the number of civilian casualties, the wave of refugees. On the other hand, Western media have a delayed reaction to events in North Africa and the Levant, presenting them either as the result of a so-called "Arab Spring" (that is to say, in practice, a takeover by the Muslim Brotherhood), or as the destructive effect of a civilization which is inherently violent. More than ever, it is necessary to help the Arabs who are incapable of living peacefully in the absence of Western settlers.

Russia is now the leading power capable of leading the resistance to Anglo-Saxon imperialism. It has three tools: BRICS, an alliance of economic rivals who know they can not grow up without one another, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a strategic alliance with China to stabilize Central Asia and finally, the Organization for Collective Security Treaty, a military alliance of former Soviet states.

At the Fortaleza Summit (Brazil), which was held from July 14 to 16, BRICS took the plunge and announced the creation of a monetary reserve fund (mainly Chinese) and a BRICS Bank as alternatives to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, the dollar system [2].

Even before this announcement, the Anglo-Saxons had established their answer: the transformation of the Al-Qaeda terrorist network in order to prepare unrest among all Muslim peoples of Russia and China. [3] They continued their offensive in Syria and spilled over the borders both in Iraq and in Lebanon. They failed however to expel part of the Palestinians to Egypt and to destabilize the region even more deeply. Finally, they keep away from Iran to give President Hassan Rohani a chance to weaken the power of the anti-imperialist Khomeinists.

Two days after the announcement of the BRICS, the United States accused Russia of destroying Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over the Donbass, killing 298 people. On this basis, purely arbitrary, they forced the Europeans to enter into economic war against Russia. Situating itself as a court, the Council of the European Union tried and convicted Russia without any evidence and without giving it an opportunity to defend itself. The CEU issued "sanctions" against its financial system.

Recognizing that European leaders are not working for the interests of their people, but for those of the Anglo-Saxons, Russia has gnawed at the bit and refrained from going to war in Ukraine. It supports the insurgents with arms and intelligence, and hosts more than 500,000 refugees, but declines to send troops into the fray. It probably will not happen until the vast majority of Ukrainians revolt against President Poroshenko, even if it does not enter the country until after the fall of the People’s Republic of Donetsk.

Faced with economic warfare, Moscow has chosen to respond with similar measures, but in agriculture, not finance. Two considerations guided this choice: first, short-term, other BRICS can mitigate the consequences of so-called "sanctions"; on the other hand, medium and long term, Russia is preparing for war and intends to completely rebuild its agriculture to go it alone.

Moreover, the Anglo-Saxons have planned to paralyze Russia from within. First by activating, via the Islamic Emirate (EIS), terrorist groups within its Muslim population, and organizing a media challenge in the municipal elections of September 14. Large sums of money have been distributed to all opposition candidates in the thirty largest cities involved, while at least 50,000 Ukrainian agitators, mixed with refugees, are regrouping in St. Petersburg. Most of them have dual Russian citizenship. This is clearly to reproduce at the provincial level protests that followed the elections in Moscow in December 2011 – with the addtition of violence; and engage the country in a color revolution process to which certain officials in the ruling class are favorable.

To do so, Washington has appointed a new ambassador to Russia, John Tefft, who had prepared the "Rose Revolution" in Georgia and the coup in Ukraine.

It will be important for President Vladimir Putin to be able to trust his prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, whom Washington hoped to recruit to overthrow him.

Narendra Modi

Considering the imminent danger, Moscow would have been able to convince Beijing to accept the accession of India in exchange for that of Iran (but also those of Pakistan and Mongolia) to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO ). The decision should be published at the summit in Dushanbe (Tajikistan) on September 12 and 13. It should put an end to the conflict which has opposed India and China for centuries and engage them in military cooperation. This reversal, if confirmed, also would end the honeymoon between New Delhi and Washington who was hoping to distance India from Russia in particular by giving access to nuclear technologies. The membership of New Delhi is also a bet on the sincerity of the new Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, despite the suspicion that he encouraged anti-Muslim violence in 2002 in Gujarat when he was the leading Minister.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

In addition, the accession of Iran, which is a provocation in the face of Washington, should give the SCO precise knowledge of jihadist movements and ways to counter them. Again, if confirmed, it would reduce Iran’s willingness to negotiate a lull with the "Great Satan" that led it to elect Sheik Hassan Rohani to the presidency. It would be a gamble on the authority of the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Indeed, these memberships would mark the beginning of the shift in the world from the West to the East. [4] Still, this trend must be protected militarily. This is the role of the Organization for Collective Security Treaty (CSTO), formed around Russia, but to which China does not belong. Unlike NATO, this organization is a classic alliance, consistent with the Charter of the United Nations since each member retains the option to leave if it wants. So it is based on this freedom that Washington has tried in recent months to buy some members, including Armenia. However, the chaotic situation in Ukraine appears to have cooled those who dreamed of US "protection".

Tension is likely to increase in the coming weeks.

Thierry Meyssan

Translation
Roger Lagassé

       

[1] “What do wars in Ukraine, Gaza, Syria and Libya have in common ?”, by Alfredo Jalife-Rahme, La Jornada (Mexico), Voltaire Network, 8 August 2014.

[2] “6th BRICS Summit: the seeds of a new financial architecture”, by Ariel Noyola Rodríguez, Voltaire Network, 3 July 2014. “Sixth BRICS Summit : Fortaleza Declaration and Action Plan”, Voltaire Network, 16 July 2014.

[3] « Un djihad mondial contre les BRICS ? », par Alfredo Jalife-Rahme, Traduction Arnaud Bréart, La Jornada (México), Réseau Voltaire, 18 juillet 2014.

[4] “Russia and China in the Balance of the Middle East : Syria and other countries”, by Imad Fawzi Shueibi, Voltaire Network, 27 January 2012.