THE ROVING EYE - Lame-duck Obama's brave new world By Pepe Escobar

THE ROVING EYE Lame-duck Obama's brave new world By Pepe Escobar Fresh out of his latest Congressional election shellacking delivered by the minority who bothered to vote in the United States, the formerly most powerful leader in the world, US President Barack Obama, will star in a thriller this weekend, appearing in the same room with China's Xi Jinping, Japan's Shinzo Abe and - fasten your seat belts - Russia's Vladimir Putin. What a drag - the Bomber-In-Chief must be musing. The global economy is mostly a disaster. China, even growing at "only" 7% a year, keeps eroding his "indispensable nation" aura. Japan has decided to copy the Federal Reserve and embark on its own kamikaze version of quantitative easing. Numerous Southeast Asian nations keep freaking out about a few rocks in the South China Sea. And last but not least, Obama's nemesis, pesky Vlad "the Hammer" Putin, has just been crowned Most Powerful Leader in the world - even if for the most stupid reasons ("unpredictable" head of a "rogue state") [1] - while he, the Nobel Peace Prize leader of the exceptionalist, indispensable nation, is now nothing but a pitiful lame duck. The get-together, extended to Monday and Tuesday, will be the highlight of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Beijing - actually, outside of Beijing, so presumably unpolluted blue skies may also have a chance at the photo op. This is APEC's 25th birthday. And the 20th birthday of the Indonesian summit in Bogor - I happened to be there - which, under Bill Clinton's flowery charm, set the 21-member APEC nations a goal of "free" and open trade and investment by 2020. "Free" as in US corporations dictating the rules, of course. What the whole planet really wants to know about APEC is whether The Lame Duck with meet The Bear face to face, one on one. The White House remains mum. The Kremlin did not rule it out. Well, there's always Plan B: the Group of 20 summit on November 15-16 in Brisbane, Australia. What the whole planet already knows is that the new slimy show premiering on Capitol Hill on January 2015 has a top priority: the Republicans will do everything in their power to make the lame duck cry for mercy over and over again. So what will this mean in terms of Obama's self-styled "Don't Do Stupid Stuff" foreign policy doctrine, which that 2016 juggernaut known as "The Hillarator" has already derided as a "non-organizational principle"? Just extra layers of cosmic stupidity, or something more substantial? That old axis of evil Let's start with The Caliph, aka Islamic State (IS) leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Obama already said, after his shellacking, he is going to seek Congressional authorization for his coalition of the cowards bombing IS - aka Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or Daesh, the jiahdi outfit's Arabic acronym Now that's not a dumb move. If Republican-ruled Congress says "yes", they will be responsible for the fiasco (and it's already a fiasco). If they say "no", the fiasco can be attributed to their irresponsibility. Republicans are immersed in their own internal split - the boots-on-the-ground favored by the establishment against the non-interventionist Tea Party. So in the end, the lame duck may profit from it after all. Iran is a much dicier proposition. It all depends on a nuclear deal between Iran and the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany) being reached in a little over two weeks, on November 24. That's a taller-than-the-Himalayas order, although feasible. The Obama administration is desperate for a deal - as the leak of a "secret letter" from Obama to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei attests. But a deal under Washington's terms, which for Tehran is unacceptable. [2] The new US Senate only takes over in January. Obama has already stressed he won't ask the Senate to ratify the deal. Once again, the problem is what deal? Obama's idea of a grand design in the Middle East is to use a "responsible" - according to US standards - Tehran to balance the Sunni-Shi'ite divide and get rid of the current proxy wars, the whole thing arbitrated by Washington. This is a pipe dream. But it's what the lame duck wants. Needless to say, Republicans - for whom Tehran never left the "axis of evil" - will try to bomb the dream, pipelines and all, for instance by passing legislation preventing the lifting of key sanctions. Sparks will fly. Tehran won't accept a nuclear deal where Washington just says "take my word for it, we will lift sanctions"; this has to be in the letter of the agreement. After all they have vast experience of dealing with gun-crazy Republicans in power. Nothing will change on Russia - even as the Obama administration needs Moscow to get a deal with Tehran. The relentless demonization of Putin and the resurgence of the same old Cold War meme, "The Russians are Coming", are guaranteed to keep propelling stupidity 24/7 to intergalactic spheres. Capitol Hill will go on overdrive. After all, Russia demonization is a bipartisan sport in Washington. The only "solution" would be regime change. Not only is Putin not going anywhere, but he's ratcheting up his defiance of the Empire of Chaos. This implies increased problems with Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel keeps appeasing the Americans while German businesses want increased trade with Russia and Eurasia as a whole. Another China win-win?  On trade, here's where APEC collides with the two-pronged US version of an economic NATO: the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with Europe and the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) with Asia. What the Obama administration is fighting for is nothing less than a totally unregulated global marketplace. Imagine the "free" market - as Bill "Bubba" Clinton was already parading in Indonesia two decades ago - setting all sorts of standards on everything from working conditions to the environment. In theory, that's exactly what Republicans love. So here Obama would be right in their alley, which implies an easy Senate ratification. It's actually way more complicated. Republicans simply cannot stomach an Obama victory. That means this upcoming Senate won't give him the fast track he needs to clinch the TPP deal. That happens to be exactly what China wants. Beijing will use APEC to promote the road map for its own, anti-TPP trade deal, the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP). TPP involves 12 APEC members - but not China. And even inside TPP there's a monster revolt; Tokyo is battling the US because they Japan is sure its auto industry and agriculture may be devoured by US corporations. So we're right into a titanic Transformer-style Battle of the Deals. In fact any deal is problematic, as China, Japan and South Korea may want, in principle, broader economic cooperation. But on trade, in so many levels, they are fiercely competing against each other - as in the auto industry and agriculture, for instance - not to mention that heavy historical baggage between Japan and China and Japan and South Korea. The Chinese charm offensive at APEC in Beijing is all about "innovative development", "building infrastructure investment" and "comprehensive connectivity". It's all a mirror image of the extremely ambitious New Silk Roads proposed by President Xi to connect Eurasia. Beijing is proposing a new "connectivity framework" into three key areas - "physical connectivity, institutional connectivity, and people-to-people connectivity". But still no one knows how this will work out in practice towards Asia integration. Washington doesn't care; it just wants a "free" unregulated mega-market for US corporations. Beijing sees Asian economic integration as APEC facilitating an FTAAP by 2025. Needless to say, the US and a few vassals aboard the TPP have been adamant that no regional deal jeopardizes TPP. Washington was betting on TPP being signed before APEC. It didn't happen. So Plan B is to boycott FTAAP until TPP is signed. And that Beijing won't allow. The lame duck will have to duck a lot on his one-on-one with Xi in Beijing. Finally, what about the Obama-Capitol Hill battle on the climate-change field? For the absolute majority of Republicans, climate change and global warming are nothing but an evil conspiracy. End of story. The lame duck and Capitol Hill at least may agree on - what else - the Global War on Terror. Pentagon supremo Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel recently said the US should get ready for endless wars, as "tyranny", "terrorism", national security challenges and - surprise! - climate change pose a substantial "threat". Since 2002, the Pentagon has been saying to anyone who was bothered to listen that Endless War is the only deal in town - or the universe, for that matter. The lame duck might even fraternize about it with his Republican nemeses over the odd round of golf. What a wonderful (lame duck) world this would be. Notes: 1. Putin Vs. Obama: The World's Most Powerful People 2014, Forbes, November 5, 2014. 2. Obama Wrote Secret Letter to Iran's Khamenei About Fighting Islamic State, Wall Street Journal Online (subscription). 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.

ISIL seen as non-Islamic cult by Mideast intelligence services by Wayne Madsen

 ISIL seen as non-Islamic cult by Mideast intelligence services

Middle Eastern intelligence services have reported to WMR that they believe that the so-called "Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant," or ISIL, also known as "Islamic State" and "Islamic State of Iraq and Sham," is actually a quite non-Islamic cult developed by Israel and the Central Intelligence Agency and funded by Saudi Arabia and Qatar to destabilize the entire Middle East and beyond.

Currently, ISIL ranks include some 12,000 volunteers from 81 different countries. A large number of these volunteers, recruited from social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, have no family links to Islam. Examples are Abdullah Elmir, a red-haired convert to Islam from Bankstown in southwest Sydney, and Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, a convert to Islam who was adopted by a Libyan stepfather. Elmir, whose mother is Australian and father is Lebanese, threatened in a recent video that ISIL will soon fly its flag over every capital city in the world.

Zehaf-Bibeau, who has been linked to ISIL by the Stephen Harper government, was a petty criminal from Laval, north of Montreal. He was shot to death on October 22 by the Canadian Parliament's Sergeant-at-Arms after he allegedly shot and killed a Canadian army troop standing guard at Canada's Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and then stormed the Parliament building.

Of the some 100 French women and teens recruited by ISIL, only 20 percent are Muslims. The remainder are Catholics and Jews. Among the 60 Australians known to have joined ISIL, many are not Muslims.

Shannon Conley, 19, of Arvada, Colorado, who is not a Muslim, was arrested in April by the FBI as she boarded a plane at Denver International Airport to fly to Syria to fight for ISIL. Recently, the FBI apprehended three female teens from Denver who were trying to board a flight in Germany to fight for ISIL in Syria.

Iranian, Syrian, and Lebanese intelligence services now believe that ISIL is actually a nihilist mind control death cult, similar to those like the People's Temple, the Raelians, and the satanic Temple of Set, which were all incubated under the CIA's MK-ULTRA program. These intelligence services see a comparison between ISIL volunteers and young people who have carried out grisly attacks prompted by on-line urgings of a fictional stalking character named "Slender Man." Earlier this year, urgings from Slender Man were said to have prompted two 12-year old Wisconsin girls to repeatedly stab a 12-year old classmate and a 13-year old Ohio girl to stab her mother with a knife. Later, a 14-year old Port Richey, Florida girl, again reportedly at the urging of Slender Man, tried to burn her home down while her mother and 9-year old brother were inside.

Middle East intelligence analysts now believe that the same type of mind control activities are being used to recruit Muslims and non-Muslims, alike, to volunteer for ISIL, which is not much different from the fictional Slender Man in promoting murder and heinous acts on innocent people.

  
"Caliph" al-Baghdadi, aka Simon Elliot, [left]: Israeli Mossad agent and an Israeli Jewish version of Slenderman [right]?

Family members of ISIL's red-haired new video spokesman Elmir claim that the young man has been "brainwashed." Australia's Fairfax Media quoted Professor Greg Barton of Monash University in Australia as bolstering the on-line predatory nature of ISIL:

It's like sexual predation . . . Somebody might strike up a friendship in an online chat forum and present themselves in a different fashion - to try to get them into their web . . . He's [Elmir's] not in charge of his own destiny at all; he's being used."

The self-proclaimed "Caliph" of ISIL's "Islamic State," Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was photographed with Senator John McCain and his fake PhD traveling partner Elizabeth O'Bagy in Syria last year, is reported by some circles to actually be Simon Elliot, an Israeli Jewish Mossad agent.

Middle Eastern intelligence services have also established a link between non-Muslim Japanese volunteers in ISIL and the Aum Shinrikyo cult that carried out the deadsly sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system in 1995. A small number of Japanese volunteers known to have links to Aum Shinrikyo have traveled to Turkey where they have joined up with ISIL.

ISIL has also attracted members of Mumbai's Goth cults who are known for their grotesque and non-traditional body piercings. Some of these Indian members of ISIL, both Muslim and Hindu, have already been discovered operating inside Iran.

What is frustrating for Syrian, Iranian, and Lebanese intelligence is the fact that these recruitment activities for ISIL on Turkish soil are not only known to the Turkish MIT intelligence service but facilitated by it.

THE ROVING EYE - A Caliph in a wilderness of mirrors By Pepe Escobar

THE ROVING EYE A Caliph in a wilderness of mirrors By Pepe Escobar I'm aiming at you, lover Cause killing you is killing myself  - Orson Welles (director), The Lady from Shanghai,1947 He's invincible. He beheads. He smuggles. He conquers. He's the ultimate jack-of-all-trades. No Tomahawk or Hellfire can touch him. He always gets what he wants; in Kobani; in Anbar province; with the House of Saud (which he wants to replace) trying to make Putin (who he wants to behead) suffer because of low oil prices. If this was a remake of Orson Welles's noir classic The Lady from Shanghai, in the mirror sequence the lawyer (American?) and the femme fatale (Shi'ite?) would also get killed; but The Caliph of Islamic State would survive as a larger than life Welles, free to roam, plunder and "give my love to the sunrise" - as in a Brave Caliphate World shining in "Syraq" over the ashes of the Sykes-Picot agreement. He's winning big in Iraq's Anbar province. The Caliph's goons are now closing in on - of all places - Abu Ghraib; Dubya, Dick and Rummy's former Torture Central. They are at a mere 12 kilometers away from Baghdad International. A shoulder-launched surface-to-air missile (or MANPAD) away from downing a passenger jet. Certainly not an Emirates flight - after all these are trusted sponsors. Hit, in Anbar province, is now Caliph territory. The police forces and the province's operational command have lost almost complete control of Ramadi. The Caliph now controls the crucial axis formed by Hit, Ramadi, Fallujah; Highway 1 between Baghdad and the Jordanian border; and Highway 12 between Baghdad and the Syrian border. The Caliph's goons are no less than taking over the whole, notorious Baghdad belt, the previous "triangle of death" in those hardcore days of American occupation circa 2004. Message to Donald Rumsfeld: remember your "remnants"? They're back. And they're in charge. Both Ramadi and Fallujah have been reduced to an accumulation of bombed-out schools, hospitals, homes, mosques and bridges. Residential streets are virtually deserted. According to the United Nations, there are a least 360,803 internally displaced persons in Anbar, as well as 115,000 others in areas under The Caliph's control. At least 63% of the 1.6 million people living in the province are classified as "in need" - with hair-raising minimal access to water, food and health care, and receiving little to absolutely zero humanitarian support from that fiction, the "international community." US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power is not screaming her lungs out for R2P ("responsibility to protect"). How could the Pentagon's spectacular Full Spectrum Dominance possibly not see any of this happening? Of course they see it. But they don't give a damn. The Pentagon occasionally uses AH-64 Apache helicopters to attack some of The Caliph's goons in Ramadi and Hit. But Apaches can be easily hit with MANPADS. They are stationed at Baghdad International and their only mission is to protect the airport. Who cares about local, civilian "collateral damage"? Married to the Mob In Kobani, the former third-biggest town in Syrian Kurdistan, in the far northeast, The Caliph also wins big. Another biblical exodus has reached 300,000 refugees - and counting, with over 180,000 headed to Turkey. The Caliph counts on indirect help from The Sultan (or alternate Caliph), aka Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan. Tehran is - rightfully - furious, as it sees the "West" - and Turkey - betraying the Kurds all over again. It's no secret Sultan Erdogan is doing nothing because he wants to screw the guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and the Syrian-Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD); let them die instead of repelling The Caliph and then be strong enough to threaten Turkish domination of those huge, essentially Kurdish patches of Anatolia. Thus the only thing Sultan Erdogan does support is aimless bombing by the Pentagon cum coalition of the clueless-cowards. Anybody who believes the US Central Command's spin that House of Saud and United Arab Emirates fighter jets conduct "bombing raids" on the outskirts of Kobani gets a one-way ticket to Oz. Imagine these clowns being able to deploy precision-guided bombs or trained laser spotters. To start with, the Pentagon has zero local intel - as in zero operatives able to paint lasers on targets. Thus the "coalition" can barely hit the odd tank (out of 25 around Kobani) or Humvee out of 2,000 crammed in a valley for almost two weeks now. But the "coalition" certainly is able - miraculously! - to hit Syrian state infrastructure, as in energy installations. In June, the official Pentagon excuse was, "We don't have any drone assets in Iraq." Now there's no excuse for drones which can read a "Smoking Kills!" warning in a packet of Marlboros not hitting The Caliph's assets in Kobani - or in Anbar province for that matter. So it's down to a mix of incompetence and neglect. It was so much easier to hit Pashtun wedding parties in the Waziristans. Especially because no one was paying attention. Erdogan's own goons, meanwhile, have instituted a curfew on all major towns and cities in southeast Anatolia, and are even gunning down peaceful Kurdish protesters. Fifteen million Kurds in Anatolia cannot be wrong; Erdogan wants Kobani to fall. Ankara remains for all practical purposes the top logistical hub for The Caliph's goons. The Sultan is using The Caliph as a proxy army to smash the Kurds. Terminal evidence has been offered by the leader of the Kurdish PYD, Salih Muslim, meeting Turkish military intel and asking for help. Conditions: abandon any hope of self-determination for Syrian Kurds; give up all your self-governing towns and regions; and watch as we install a Turkish "buffer"/no-fly zone inside Syrian territory. Don't expect the Obama "Don't Do Stupid Stuff/We Have No Strategy" administration to sentence, "Erdogan must go". Besides, the pathetic club of National Security Advisor Susan Rice and her deputy Ben Rhodes has no clue about what's goin' on. To the Green Zone! Tehran, for its part, has clearly identified Erdogan's nasty game. The Sultan knows monster B1-B bombers flying over Kobani are absolutely useless - while The Caliph's goons deploy massive car bombs and keep advancing. "Boots on the ground" will be needed. Enter NATO asset Turkey. But with one condition: regime change in Damascus, or at least a prelude, via that "buffer"/no-fly zone over Syria. The Big Picture remains the same. Sultan Erdogan and the House of Saud want regime change in Damascus (Erdogan dreams of a Sunni puppet as a vassal of Ankara; the Saudis want their own Wahhabi schemer). Israel merrily agrees. And if that comes with a bonus - attacking the new Iraqi government, still supported by Iran, in the American-made Green Zone - even better. The lowdown: "Don't Do Stupid Stuff" translates as the Gulf Cooperation Council, Turkey and Israel using Washington to advance their quite explicit agenda. Sultan Erdogan, as a Mob boss, does seem to heave learned a thing or two from watching Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas. He's extracting the maximum pound of flesh from the bewildered "Don't do Stupid Stuff" team. The Sultan is boldly aiming at Turkish boots on the ground gloriously invading Syria in NATO "humanitarian intervention" mode. And all this sold as NATO offering "protection" to a member-nation. NATO's new secretary-general, former Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, has just been to Ankara. Saudi Arabia has already "voted" out loud for the "buffer"/no-fly zone. Same for General Francois Hollande, that pitiful excuse for President of France. Once again, it's Tehran to the rescue. The Foreign Ministry has duly announced Iran is ready to liberate Kobani from The Caliph's goons (and they can do it) if Bashar Al-Assad says the word. Now that's how you work the chessboard; NATO is left with zero excuses to mount an invasion of Syria, whatever Mob Boss Erdogan comes up with. Operation Hands Off My Toyota The Caliph also wins big in the "bleeding the Pentagon" department. A single US "strike" against his goons - involving F-15s, F-16s or F-22s - costs up to US$500,000. The Pentagon has just revealed it has spent no less than $1.1 billion against The Caliph since June. What for? Virtually all the assets being destroyed by American bombing are made in the USA, deployed to the Iraqi army and then duly captured during The Caliph's offensive. So here we have the Empire of Chaos spending a fortune from the US Treasury to smash tanks, Humvees and other gear already paid for by American taxpayers. No wonder taxpayers are fuming. Thus Operation Hands off My Toyota. Additionally, the Pentagon does not have a clue on how to build its Obama-designed proxy "rebel" force to fight The Caliph (with no US soldiers or marines; only fanatic Wahhabis and assorted mercenaries). To start with, they have no clue who the hell qualifies as a "moderate rebel". The rabble must be "vetted" - and then sent to, of all places, Saudi Arabia for training. There the guy in charge will be - who else - a Special Ops honcho, Major General Michael Nagata. Even under the most optimistic scenario, the Pentagon won't have its proxy "moderate rebel" army on the ground in Syria before the summer of 2015. Hefty bottles of Chateau Margaux can be bet that all this prime US weaponized know how will ultimately end up captured by The Caliph's goons. Same applies to reliable "rebel" intel on the ground. But the real Dadaist masterpiece is that first these "rebels" will be politely asked by the Pentagon to forget about getting rid of Assad to fight The Caliph. At least for a while. Re-enter Stoltenberg, the new NATO head: "Next year, at the ministerial meeting, we will take decisions regarding the so-called spearhead but, even before it is established, NATO has a strong army after all. We can deploy it wherever we want to." OK, tough guy; why not "Syraq"? If this all sounds like a plot straight out of hit series Blacklist, that's because it is. Why not get Red (James Spader) to fight The Caliph? And then again, what if Red is The Caliph? He pretends to fight himself - and he wins, handsomely. Back to Welles' The Lady from Shanghai: "Killing you is killing myself". Yet nobody could possibly want The Caliph dead when he's such a smashing, undisputed box-office success. 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 Operation Tomahawk The Caliph By Pepe Escobar

THE ROVING EYE Operation Tomahawk The Caliph By Pepe Escobar The Tomahawks are finally flying again - propelled by newspeak. 42 Tomahawks fired from a Sixth Fleet destroyer parked in Mare Nostrum, plus F-22s raising hell and Hellfires spouted by drones, that's a neat mini-Shock and Awe to honor Caliph Ibrahim, aka Abu Bakr al -Baghdadi, self-declared leader of Islamic State. It's all so surgical. All targets - from "suspected" weapons depots to the mayor's mansion in Raqqah (the HQ of The Caliph's goons) and assorted checkpoints - were duly obliterated, along with "dozens of", perhaps 120, jihadis. And praise those "over 40" (Samantha Power) or "over 50" (John Kerry) international allies in the coalition of the unwilling; America is never alone, although in this case mightily escorted, de facto, only by the usual Gulf petrodollar dictatorships and the realm of King Playstation, Jordan, all none too keen to engage in "kinetic activities". Aseptic newspeak aside, no one has seen or heard a mighty Gulf Cooperation Council air force deployed to bomb Syria. After all the vassals are scared as hell to tell their own populations they are - once again - bombing a fellow Arab nation. As for Damascus, it meekly said it was "notified" by the Pentagon its own territory would be bombed. Nobody really knows what the Pentagon is exactly telling Damascus. The Pentagon calls it just the beginning of a "sustained campaign" - code for Long War, which is one of the original denominations of the Global War on Terror (GWOT) anyway. And yes, for all practical purposes this is a coalition of one. Let's call it Operation Tomahawk The Caliph. I am Khorasan Hold your F-22s. Not really. The tomahawking had barely begun when an Israeli, made in USA Patriot missile shot a Syrian Su-24 which had allegedly "violated" Israeli air space over the Golan Heights. How about that in terms of sending a graphic message in close coordination with the Pentagon? So this is not only about bombing The Caliph. It is a back-door preamble to bombing Bashar al-Assad and his forces. And also about bombing - with eight strikes west of Aleppo - a ghost; an al-Qaeda cell of the mysterious Khorasan group. No wonder global fans of the Marvel Comics school of geopolitics are puzzled. Two simultaneous villains? Yep. And the other bad guy is even more evil than The Caliph. Astonishing mediocrity Ben Rhodes, Obama's deputy national security adviser, has defined Khorasan as "a group of extremists that is comprised of a number of individuals who we've been tracking for a long time." The Obama administration's unison newspeak is that Khorasan includes former al-Qaeda assets not only from across the Middle East - including al-Qaeda in Iraq and Jabhat al-Nusra - but also Pakistan, as in an ultra-hardcore extension of the Pakistani Taliban. What a mess. Al-Qaeda in Iraq is the embryo of ISIS, which turned into IS. Jabhat al-Nusra is the al-Qaeda franchise in Syria, approved by CEO Ayman al-Zawahiri. Both despise each other, and yet Khorasan holds the merit of bundling Caliph's goons and al-Qaeda goons together. Additionally, for Washington Jabhat al-Nusra tend to qualify as "moderate" jihadis - almost like "our bastards". Too messy? No problem; when in doubt, bomb everybody. The Caliph, then, is old news. Those ghostly Khorasan goons are the real deal - so evil that the Pentagon is convinced their "plotting was imminent" leading to a new 9/11. The ghost in the GWOT machine Khorasan is the perfect ghost in the GWOT machine; the target of a war within a war. Because Obama in fact launched two wars - as he sent two different notifications to Congress under the War Powers Resolution to cover both The Caliph and Khorasan. And what's in a name? Well, a thinly disguised extra demonization of Iran, why not - as historic Khorasan, the previous Parthia, stretched from mainly Iran towards Afghanistan. Khorasan is theoretically led by The Joker, sorry, al-Qaeda honcho Muhsin al-Fadhli, born in Kuwait in 1981, a "senior facilitator and financier" to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq, in the priceless assessment of the State Department. Although Ayman al-Zawahiri, ever PR-conscious, has not claimed the credit, the Pentagon is convinced he sent al-Fadhli to the Syrian part of the Caliphate to attract Western jihadis with EU passports capable of evading airport security and plant bombs on commercial jets. The Treasury Department is convinced al-Fadhli even led an al-Qaeda cell in Iran - demonization habits die hard -, "facilitating" jihadi travel to Afghanistan or Iraq. And what a neat contrast to the Society of the Spectacle-addicted Caliph. Khorasan is pure darkness. Nobody knows how many; how long they've existed; what do they really want. By contrast, there are about 190,000 live human beings left in bombed out Raqqa. Nobody is talking about collateral damage - although the body count is already on, and The Caliph's slick PR operation will be certainly advertising them on YouTube. As for The Caliph's goons, they will predictably use Mao tactics and dissolve like fish in the sea. The Pentagon will soon be bombing vast tracts of desert for nothing - if that's not the case already. There is no "Free Syrian Army" - that Qatari myth - anymore. There are no "moderate" jihadis left in Syria. They are all fighting for The Caliph or for al-Zawahiri. And still the Obama administration extracted a Congressional OK to train and weaponize "moderate rebels". US ambassador to the UN Samantha Power - Undisputed Queen of Batshit Craziness - at least got one thing right. Their "training" will "service these troops in the same struggle that they've been in since the beginning of this conflict against the Assad regime." So yes - this "sustained campaign" is the back door to "Assad must go" remixed. People who are really capable of defeating The Caliph's goons don't tomahawk. They are the Syrian Arab Army (roughly 35,000 dead so far killed in action against ISIS/ISIL/IS and/or al-Qaeda); Hezbollah; Iranian Revolutionary Guards advisers/operatives; and Kurdish militias. It won't happen. This season's blockbuster is the Empire of Chaos bombing The Caliph and the ghost in the GWOT machine. Two tickets for the price of one. Because we protect you even from "unknown unknown" evil. 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.

Obama's 'stupid stuff' turned upside down By Pepe Escobar

THE ROVING EYE Obama's 'stupid stuff' turned upside down By Pepe Escobar  PARIS - I've been rovin' around Europe for a while and the star of the show is definitely The Caliph. Former Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has totally outstripped Vladimir Putin as Doctor Evil of the hour. Where's a good ol' Cold War 2.0 when you need it? Well, upstaged by the Pentagon's "long war" - our familiar GWOT (Global War on Terror). First Obama promised there would be no ground troops to fight The Caliph - as in a re-invasion of Iraq. Then General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that if the current gambit of Obama's self-defined "Don't So Stupid Stuff" foreign policy doctrine does not work - and it won't - he'll go for ground troops, embedded or otherwise. Right on cue, The Caliph went Hollywood, releasing the trailer of The Caliphate's upcoming mega-production, Flames of War. Directed by Michael Bay (Fall, 2014). Will that go straight to Netflix? You just can't beat the Marvel Comics school of geopolitics. Confide in me, baby  Meanwhile, in Paris, President General Francois Hollande is itching to deploy his Rafales and get into a new war - considering that's about the only thing that could lift the mood of a wretched president, whose administration has barely survived a "confidence" vote; compare that "confidence" with the nasty epithets with which his team is showered by largely unemployed, taxed to death or swamped by red tape Parisians. Obama has already sent 475 extra military "advisers" to Baghdad and Iraqi Kurdistan. There are at least 1,600 US military already on the ground in Iraq. That's how Vietnam started. The CIA, supported by unmatched ground intel, swears there are exactly 31.785 jihadis fighting for The Caliph. Well, roughly. Two-thirds of these are supposed to be in Syria. So the new war, in fact, is all across "Syraq". Or what The Caliph calls IS, Islamic State, his own private emirate. The no less meticulous Dempsey, for his part, is sure it will take up to five months to train and weaponize a new bunch of "moderate" rebels to fight the Caliph. Wait a minute; foolish global public opinion was supposed to believe the previous "moderate" rebels - supported by Qatar - would one day fulfill the "Assad must go" Obama mandate. Well, they didn't. "Our" bastards at the petrodollar racket known as GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) have duly promised to help Obama's new war, alongside Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq. Turkey will only get involved in the "humanitarian" front - while allowing smuggled oil sold by The Caliph's goons into its territory. The members of the wretched Arab League have solemnly promised to be "determined" in cutting off the flux of weapons and cash to The Caliph show. Yet they would never have the balls of the Kurdish peshmerga, who have just killed the Mosul chief of IS. This kind of ground intel, plus following the money, as in the oil smuggling routes, would finish off the Caliphate in no time. But that's not what endless GWOT is all about. Caliph, give us a hand  With such an array of Hollywood thrills on show, who cares about Ukraine? Well, it may have been snuffed out of the news cycle after the latest nasty package of US/EU sanctions, but it's back in the spotlight this Thursday, as Ukrainian oligarch turned president Petro Poroshenko visits The Caliph's nemesis in Washington. So expect a frantic rerun of Evil Empire rhetoric - plus ample indignation caused by the Russian "invasion" of Ukraine. That will last barely a day. "Don't Do Stupid Stuff" changes its tune like surfing on iTunes. And the tune now is the "Syraq" offensive; yet another Obama "kinetic" operation, Billy Idol's Rebel Yell remixed. That leaves plenty of space for US Think Tankland to carp that Russia "aggression" will profit from the new tune to "advance" in Central and Eastern Europe, and the China "threat" will profit to "dominate" the Western Pacific. So what's more crucial for the Empire of Chaos; Russia, China or "Syraq"? They don't have a clue. They are just trying not to do "stupid stuff". \ For all that volcanic Beltway paranoia, the Big Picture in the long run spells out Moscow expanding its Pipelineistan nodes throughout Eastern Europe all the way to Western Europe, thus enlarging, commercially, its "soft" zone of influence. No "invasion" required. On Ukraine, the Big Picture spells out the European Union mired in a horrendous crisis, under a third recession in five years, obviously without the cash, not to mention the will, to pay Ukraine's humongous bills. Sooner - with negotiations starting this Saturday in Berlin - or later the EU will have to find an accommodation with Moscow to guarantee its precious gas supplies. That leaves warmongering NATO - as in the EU under the Pentagon's thumb. All rhetoric about that puny "rapid reaction force" aside, the fact is that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization won't have the balls to confront Russia, via troops deployed in Ukraine. And there will be no Obama "Stupid Stuff" aerial bombing of federalists in Donbass - as if Russophones in Ukraine defending their land and their language against a form of slow motion ethnic cleansing could be compared to The Caliph's multinational goons in "Syraq". US public opinion very well knows - well, maybe not - that people in Donbass are not threatening to cross into El Paso tomorrow. So much hard work to pivot from GWOT to the Big Boys in Eurasia. So little time - and competence. The Caliph's goons have announced on the record they would go for beheading Putin. If only the Pentagon would subcontract the job. 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. 

ROVING EYE - The killer on the (Saudi) king's highway By Pepe Escobar

ROVING EYE
The killer on the (Saudi) king's highway
By Pepe Escobar

There's danger on the edge of town
Ride the king's highway, baby
Weird scenes inside the gold mine
Ride the highway west, babyThe Doors, The End

The killer awoke before dawn. He put his American desert boots on. He took a knife from the ancient gallery. And he walked on down the hall - bathed in desert sunlight. 

The killer spoke with a British accent (London's East End?) Father (Saud), I want to kill you. Mother (Langley?) I want to... 

yeeeaaahh, c'mon! 

Then the sartorially composed Man in Black beheaded American photojournalist James Foley. 

This is not the end, beautiful friend. It's just a new beginning in the never-ending Global War on Terror. Now starring Papa Saud's brand new bag - The Caliph and his goons. This is the way Shock and Awe morphs into "Assad must go" morphs into Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, morphs into The Caliph's Black Britannia goon responding to "humanitarian" bombing. I'm my own baby now. Watch me work. Bring it on.

Choice scenery. Good sound and vision production values. Careful editing. No unnecessary gore. No blood splattering. No Allahu Akbar shrieks. "A Message to America", indeed - but most of all a message to the Ummah. As in we're the Men in Black badasses. We run The Caliphate. We're no mere death cult; we're winners. And we take no prisoners. 

And why did Islamic State, formerly ISIS, become winners? Because the "West" regimented, schooled, trained, logistically helped and weaponized most of IS's Takfiri goons with a mission at hand: to destroy Syria. The "West" lauded them as "Syrian rebels". Freedom fighters. 

Washington even promoted Jabhat al-Nusra (the official al-Qaeda franchise in Syria, and a "terrorist organization", according to the State Department) as "good" jihadis, as well as the preferred Saudi combo, the Islamic Front. 

No wonder after photojournalist James Foley was kidnapped in November 2012 the Washington-sanctioned version was that he was being kept by "Assad must go" forces in a prison near Damascus. 

Slouching towards Mecca 
The House of Saud, directly and indirectly, and the proverbial wealthy Gulf Cooperation Council donors are the Mom and Dad of ISIS. All duly vetted/approved by the industrial-military-Orwellian-Panopticon complex. 

And yet "Assad must go" had other ideas for Syria. He didn't go. He and his army resisted and counter-attacked. So the original mission in Syria morphed across the (non-existent) desert border towards Iraq. ISIS kept expanding - via extortion, kidnapping, captured oil fields, tribal smuggling networks.

The killer spoke with a British accent. Yet he may not be just a well-paid mercenary (500 from Britain, 700 from France, 500 from Belgium ). He's most certainly a true believer in the wider IS medievalist ideology as well as its no-holds-barred sectarian methods. 

How convenient that IS strategy is totally divide and rule. Totally balkanization of Iraq. Totally mum on Israel's slow-motion ethnic cleansing of Gaza. Totally useful in wagging the (beheading) dog to make the world forget about Gaza. 

Moroever, IS/ISIS strategy, stripped to the bone, is Pentagon manual; clear, hold and build - then expand (to an area larger than Great Britain). It's even Pentagon manual redux - as in building "coalitions of the willing" (see the alliance with "remnants" - Rummy talk - of the Saddam regime propelling their northern Iraq summer offensive.) 

How convenient that the mighty Orwellian/Panopticon complex satellite maze could not identify a long convoy of gleaming white Toyotas crossing the desert towards their summer conquests. And how convenient that a Briton beheading an American - what a "special relationship" plot twist! - fully sanctions the Return of Iraq Bombing ("for months", in Obama's words); more strikes; more drones; perhaps more boots on the ground; perhaps, in the near future, a Syria extension. 

IS also took over Tikrit, the birthplace of Saddam, in their summer adventure. Now Baghdad's military are trying to take it back. IS welcomed them with minefields, booby-trapped buildings, an array of snipers and hardcore mortar fire. How convenient that Obama's "humanitarian" bombs are not involved in R2P ("responsibility to protect") Saddam's birthplace. What really matters is the US consulate in Erbil, scores of CIA operatives and vast Big Oil interests in Iraqi Kurdistan. 

And then there's this ultimate plot twist; a pearl by a dissident Saudi researcher (in Arabic). He argues, in detail, that IS is essentially a revival of "pure" Wahhabism; not only that IS comes from outside the House of Saud's dominions - in Iraq and the Levant - but tries hard to shatter the monarchy's legitimacy. 

The House of Saud's counterpunch to the Arab Spring was (and remains) all about destroying or at least isolating the Muslim Brotherhood as an alternative Islamic rule/role model. Yet now comes IS - brimming with religious justification (however warped); military know-how; and an army of true - and well paid - believers.

Ride the king's highway, baby. No staged/not staged beheading could possibly top the ultimate blowback: the "West" nurturing the Beast who would slouch towards Mecca to finally behead the House of Saud. And those killers shall also speak with a British accent. 

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 Watch this caliph rip By Pepe Escobar

THE ROVING EYE Watch this caliph rip By Pepe Escobar So The Caliph is now a global superstar. Ever since Dr Ibrahim al-Badri of Samarra, a minor Sunni cleric who impersonates neo-medieval Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, showed up in the stone pulpit of a Mosul mosque at the start of Ramadan, he's been on a roll. He fully advertised his piece of transnational real estate - from the suburbs of Aleppo to Mosul (and promised more takeovers). He cut his own video - essentially his own, a monotone rap, dressed in trademark Men in Black regalia. He eliminated the competition, essentially by killing them all. He exalted the mujahid, inviting them to follow jihad in the name of Allah. He condemned miscreants and hypocrites, exalting the "victory of Muslims" from "the West to the East". Modestly sporting a US$7,000 watch (or Chinese replica) and asking for "corrections" in his behavior, The Caliph announced that his Islamic State (IS) business, former ISIS, is not only about the Levant. Want an IS passport? Just ask The Caliph. He firmly set his sights on conquering Rome (Saracens sacked St Peter's in 846); "You will conquer Rome and will be masters of the world." It won't happen before Sunday though, so Pope Francis can watch Argentina against Germany in peace without fear of decapitation. But first, The Caliph seems to be ready to ride his holy camel shouting "Allahu Akbar!" all the way to Baghdad and then Mecca. After all, he also proclaimed that the 1916 Sykes-Picot colonial racket, sorry, agreement between Britain and France is now null and void. No wonder the House of Saud, that pristine fountain of courage, has already massed 30,000 mercenaries, sorry, troops, on their border with Iraq (until six months ago the Saudis were facilitating an Air and Bus Jihad all the way to both Syria and Iraq; now they dread the boomerang effect.) Notorious French orientalist Olivier Roy is not impressed with all this thunder. He brands The Caliph as "delirious" without dismissing his cunning; "... as cautious and invisible as Mullah Omar, as ambitious and megalomaniac as Osama bin Laden". Which prompts the inevitable question; how come he's not on Double O Bama's license-to-kill list and has not been droned into Mesopotamian sand? The Caliph has remained mum on Operation Protect the Zionists, sorry, Protective Edge, the latest Israeli slow motion ethnic cleansing/collective punishment super-production currently starring in Gaza in over 400 targets and featuring substantial "collateral damage". That's a bum PR move by The Caliph, inviting double ridicule by the Arab Street for his dubious religious credentials coupled with his utter disregard for the Palestinian plight. No more nice jihadis Still, The Caliph is all over the place. His Salafi-jihadi Declaration of Independence - not only from historic al-Qaeda but mostly from those jaded/corrupt Arab monarchies and the Western intel apparatus which has nurtured International Jihad for decades - is indeed groundbreaking. Which explains the perplexity of the Empire of Chaos. That good ol' "strategy" of projecting imperial/NATO power by proxy - via jihadis for rent - now lies in shambles. The Caliph is the ultimate jihadi Frankenstein. No wonder the Obama lame-duck dinner, sorry, administration, is contemplating, at least in Syria, the usual plan A, which is to weaponize both sides (let Arabs kill Arabs). In Iraq, the plan still being discussed in the Beltway might be to drone IS convoys. It won't be a walk in the park because the IS military leadership is composed of battlefield-experienced former Iraqi guerrillas. And they are not foolish to start parading those gleaming white Toyotas in open desert all over again now they have become instant celebrities. On the political front, there are insistent rumors of an imminent military coup in Baghdad, planned by the city's military commander, Abdulamir al-Shumanni. The coup-in-the-wings' leaders claim they are supported by both Washington and Tehran (fabulous job; they should be summoned to help in the P5+1 nuclear negotiations). As for the Return of the Living (Neo-con) Dead brigade in the US, they bet on the only tainted horse they know: Ahmed Chalabi. No matter his raw ambition, The Caliph will have to get his act together. A lot of Syrian jihadi outfits have turned against IS. The same thing is happening in Iraq; Sunni militias are turning against them in Nineveh province. Enter tribal Sunni sheikhs - the ghosts in this infernal machine. The Caliph must have enough trusted moles to tell him that once the sheikhs have finished using IS as a tool to "destabilize" the al-Maliki administration in Baghdad, they will definitely advance to smash the caliphate. This is an extremely temporary alliance of interests - a sort of remix of the previous Islamic State in Iraq having its emirate smashed because of the American cash-propelled Anbar Awakening. The Caliph will also have to face Athel al-Nujaifi, the governor of Nineveh province; he wants a different Sunnistan with a high degree of autonomy (and lots of still unexplored oil) but still inside Iraq. Al-Nujaifi is the most influential Sunni politician in Iraq and head of the largest Sunni political party. For the moment, The Caliph seems to be taking no chances. IS operatives have arrested scores of former Iraqi army officers and Ba'athists around Mosul. So, once again, what is the Obama administration to do? Probably a remix of Bush II; shower the sheikhs with cash so they turn against The Caliph a.s.a.p. Tehran, meanwhile, is also active, via small Special Ops contingents - such as the one that saved the beautiful Shi'ite shrine in Samarra from being captured by IS. They are aiming for a repeat of their Syrian strategy: creating a parallel Iraqi army out of militias. The notion that The Caliph will soon attack "the West" or the US is bogus. IS terror incursions have happened so far in Irbil (in Iraq Kurdistan), Basra and Damascus. All of these cities are relatively close to IS's operational command. IS's reach does not extend to the West. Even attacking Baghdad is a major challenge. They are not competent enough to attack the Vatican-sized US embassy. Not to mention that Sadrists militias in Sadr City, for instance, would reduce them to dust. The most they can aspire to is to keep destroying Sunni, Sufi and Shi'ite shrines. In parallel, the really juicy story to be followed is that IS can develop as the ideal, proxy weapon of choice for the Empire of Chaos - and the House of Saud - to fight what could be described as the Iran-Hezbollah-Syria-Iraq alliance. Exactly the opposite peddled by this prodigy of wishful thinking. Realistically, in geopolitical terms, The Caliph's hypothetical journey to Rome is also a joke. IS is surrounded by hostile powers, from Iran and Turkey to Egypt. If the Men in Black decided to cross 300 kilometers of desert to attack King Playstation's realm, also known as Jordan, they would be all droned to death. So now that he's announced himself as the new Osama, The Caliph had better watch his back. Most probably he's a one-trick camel. He might realize he's got a better shot at stardom by branding himself as the second coming of Michael Jackson and start doing the Moonwalk (the jihadi remix). What he will certain realize is that Bashar al-Assad's Syrian Arab Army is the only game in town on the Syrian side in terms of attacking and inflicting serious pain on IS. And on the Iraq side there are even more options. All coup rumors notwithstanding, al-Maliki will most likely remain in power in Baghdad. And he will be fully weaponized not only by Tehran but also Moscow. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is already involved in helping to build what could be described as National Guard brigades. They will go after IS big time. In a pincer movement, attacks from Syria and from Iraq could destroy most of IS six months from now. The Caliph, apart from his mighty watch, may now hold a lot of weapons and make money by selling oil, but his Caliphate is a mirage. Only one thing is certain. Before it vanishes into the sands of time, there will be blood. A lot of blood. 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.