PEPE ESCOBAR -- Um dia, o acesso dos EUA ao Mar do Sul da China será negado

Um dia, o acesso dos EUA ao Mar do Sul da China será negado

Mar do Sul da China: o cerne da questão

30 de Julho de 2020

Texto de Pepe Escobar para o Blog do Saker, postado originalmente no site Asia Times

Tradução de btpsilveira

 

Quando os grupos de ataque dos porta aviões Ronald Reagan e Nimitz envolveram-se recentemente em operações no Mar do Sul da China, muitos cínicos notaram que a Frota do Pacífico dos Estados Unidos está fazendo o seu melhor para tornar a teoria infantil da Armadilha de Tucídides numa profecia autorrealizável.

A ideia oficial pro forma, expressada pelo contra almirante Jim Kirk, comandante do Nimitz, é que as operações foram lançadas para “reforçar nosso compromisso com a liberdade da região do Indo/Pacífico, com a ordem internacional baseada em normas e com nossos aliados e parceiros”. 

Esses clichês não chamam a atenção de ninguém, desde que a mensagem verdadeira foi dada por um agente da CIA que posa como diplomata, o Secretário de Estado  Mike “nós mentimos, nós enganamos, nós roubamos” Pompeo: “a República Popular da China não tem bases legais para impor unilateralmente sua vontade na região” referindo-se à Linha de Nove Traços. Para o Departamento de Estado, Pequim emprega nada menos que “táticas de gangsters” no Mar do Sul da China.

BR -- PEPE ESCOBAR -- Raízes da demonização do Islã xiita, pelos norte-americanos

Raízes da demonização do Islã xiita, pelos norte-americanos 

17/1/2020, Pepe Escobar, Unz Review

Tradução Amigos do Brasil

O assassinato premeditado pelos EUA, que se serviram de um drone como arma do crime, do major-general Qassem Soleimani, além de uma torrente de ramificações geopolíticas cruciais, mais uma vez empurra para o centro do palco uma verdade bastante inconveniente: a incapacidade congênita das chamadas elites norte-americanas para, pelo menos que fosse, tentar entender o xiismo – e a incansável demonização 24 horas por dia, 7 dias por semana, com o objetivo de degradar não apenas os xiitas mas também os governos liderados por xiitas.

Washington já fazia uma Guerra Longa antes mesmo de o conceito ser popularizado pelo Pentágono em 2001, imediatamente após do 11/9: uma Guerra Longa contra o Irã. Tudo começou mediante o golpe contra o governo democraticamente eleito de Mosaddegh em 1953, substituído pela ditadura do xá. Todo o processo vem sendo super turbinado há mais de 40 anos, desde quando a Revolução Islâmica esmagou aqueles bons velhos tempos da Guerra Fria, quando o xá reinava como o privilegiado “gendarme americano do Golfo (persa)”.

Mas é processo que vai muito além da geopolítica. Não há absolutamente nenhuma maneira de alguém conseguir compreender as complexidades e o apelo popular do xiismo, sem pesquisa acadêmica séria, complementada com visitas a locais sagrados selecionados no sudoeste da Ásia: Najaf, Karbala, Mashhad, Qom e o santuário Sayyida Zeinab perto de Damasco. Pessoalmente, tenho percorrido esse caminho do conhecimento desde o final dos anos 90 – e continuo estudante humilde.

Pepe Escobar: North Korea: fire, fury and fear

North Korea: fire, fury and fear

August 10, 2017

by Pepe Escobar for the Asia Times

Alarm bells ringing as rampant speculation breaks out over Pyongyang’s ‘possible’ miniaturized nuclear warheads.

Beware the dogs of war. The same intel “folks” who brought to you babies pulled from incubators by “evil” Iraqis as well as non-existent WMDs are now peddling the notion that North Korea has produced a miniaturized nuclear warhead able to fit its recently tested ICBM.

That’s the core of an analysis completed in July by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). Additionally, US intel believes that Pyongyang now has access to up to 60 nuclear weapons. On the ground US intel on North Korea is virtually non-existent – so these assessments amount to guesswork at best.

But when we couple the guesswork with an annual 500-page white paper released earlier this week by the Japanese Defense Ministry, alarm bells do start ringing.

The white paper stresses Pyongyang’s “significant headway” in the nuclear race and its “possible” (italics mine) ability to develop miniaturized nuclear warheads able to fit on the tips of its missiles.

This “possible” ability is drowned in outright speculation. As the report states, “It is conceivable that North Korea’s nuclear weapons program has already considerably advanced and it is possible that North Korea has already achieved the miniaturization of nuclear bombs into warheads and has acquired nuclear warheads.”

Western corporate media would hardly refrain from metastasizing pure speculation into a “North Korea has miniaturized nuclear weapons” frenzy consuming the cable news cycle/ newspaper headlines. Talk about hearts and minds comfortably numbed by the fear factor.

Pepe Escobar -- Here's How the Trump Presidency Will Play Out

Here's How the Trump Presidency Will Play Out

By Pepe Escobar

January 20, 2017 "Information Clearing House" - "Sputnik"- The Trump era starts now – with geopolitics and geoeconomics set for a series of imminent, unpredictable cliffhangers.

I have argued that Trump's foreign policy guru Henry Kissinger's strategy to deal with the formidable Eurasia integration trio – Russia, China and Iran — is a remixed Divide and Rule; seduce Russia away from its strategic partnership with China, while keep harassing the weakest link, Iran.

In fact that's how it's already playing out – as in the outbursts of selected members of Trump's cabinet during their US Senate hearings. Factions of US Think Tankland, referring to Nixon's China policy, which was designed by Kissinger, are also excited with the possibilities of containment regarding at least one of those powers "potentially arrayed against America".

Kissinger and Dr. Zbig "Grand Chessboard" Brzezinski are the two foremost, self-described Western dalangs – puppet masters – in the geopolitical arena. In opposition to Kissinger, Obama's foreign policy mentor Brzezinski, true to his Russophobia, proposes a Divide and Rule centered on seducing China.

Yet an influential New York business source, very close to the real, discreet Masters of the Universe, who correctly predicted Trump's victory weeks before the fact, after examining my argument offered not only a scathing appraisal of those cherished dalangs; he volunteered to detail how the new normal was laid out by the Masters directly to Trump. Let's call him "X".

The non-stop China watch

PEPE ESCOBAR -- Who Profits from Turkey’s ‘Sarajevo Moment’?

EDITOR'S CHOICE | 22.12.2016

Who Profits from Turkey’s ‘Sarajevo Moment’?

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 and Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).  His latest book is Empire of Chaos

Let’s cut to the chase: Ankara 2016 is not Sarajevo 1914. This is not a prelude to WWIII. Whoever plotted the assassination of the Russian Ambassador to Turkey Andrey Karlov – a cool, calm, collected old-school diplomat – risks a mighty blowback.

The assassin, Mevlut Mert Altintas, was a 22-year-old police academy graduate. He was suspended from the Turkish National Police (TNP) over suspected links to the Fethullahist Terrorist Organization (FETO) after the failed July 15 putsch against Erdogan but returned to duty in November.

PEPE ESCOBAR -- All Aboard the Post-TPP World

PEPE ESCOBAR | 24.11.2016 | OPINION

All Aboard the Post-TPP World

A half-hearted near handshake between US President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin before and after they spoke «for about four minutes», standing up, on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Lima, Peru, captured to perfection the melancholic dwindling of the Obama era.

A whirlwind flashback of the fractious relationship between Obama and «existential threats» Russia and China would include everything from the Washington-sponsored Maidan in Kiev to Obama’s «Assad must go» in Syria, with special mentions to the oil price war, sanctions, the raid on the ruble, extreme demonization of Putin and all things Russian, provocations in the South China Sea – all down to a finishing flourish; the death of the much vaunted Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) treaty, which was reconfirmed at APEC right after the election of Donald Trump.

It was almost too painful to watch Obama defending his not exactly spectacular legacy at his final international press conference – with, ironically, the backdrop of the South American Pacific coast - just as Chinese President Xi Jinping all but basked in his reiterated geopolitical glow, which he already shares with Putin. As for Trump, though invisible in Lima, he was everywhere.

It’s All a Russia/Al-Qaeda/WikiLeaks/«Rogue» FBI Plot

PEPE ESCOBAR | 08.11.2016 | OPINION

It’s All a Russia/Al-Qaeda/WikiLeaks/«Rogue» FBI Plot

Among the House of Cards-infested cliffhangers that defined the «circus is in town» US election (to quote Nobel Prize winner Bob Dylan’s Desolation Row), the key question in the lead up towards Election Day was why the FBI finally folded.

FBI Director James Comey, at the 11^th hour, ended up delivering another letter to Congress, marveling how his team «has been working around the clock» studying no less than 650,000 emails on the laptop belonging to Anthony Weiner, the sex pervert estranged husband of Hillary Clinton’s top aid Huma Abedin. 

Comey finally concluded the FBI had not found anything to change its previous verdict regarding Hillary’s Subterranean Email Server. «Extreme carelessness», yes; but no criminal wrongdoing.

All this while among the twitter.com/wikileaks.

Podesta emails published by WikiLeaks, an explicit admission can be found in a November 10, 2008 internal review that the Clinton Foundation was breaking the law.

Pepe Escobar -- What does it take to bring Hillary Clinton to justice?

What does it take to bring Hillary Clinton to justice?

by Pepe Escobar for RT

Virtually the whole planet holds its collective breath at the prospect of Hillary Clinton possibly becoming the next President of the United States (POTUS).

How’s that humanly possible, as the (daily) Bonfire of The Scandals – relentlessly fed by WikiLeaks revelations and now converging FBI investigations – can now be seen from interstellar space?

It’s possible because Hillary Clinton, slouching through a paroxysm of manufactured hysteria, is supported by virtually the whole US establishment, a consensual neocon/neoliberalcon War Party/Wall Street/corporate media axis.

But History has a tendency to show us there’s always a straw that breaks the camel’s back.

This could be it – as revealed by WikiLeaks; March 2, 2015, the day when https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/41841

John Podesta wrote, “we are going to have to dump all those emails.”

That happened to be the exact same day it was revealed Hillary Clinton had used a personal http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/03/us/politics/hillary-clintons-use-of-private-email-at-state-department-raises-flags.html?_r=0 email server as Secretary of State.

Pepe Escobar -- Hillary Clinton, FBI and the Real November Surprise

Hillary Clinton, FBI and the Real November Surprise By Pepe Escobar

"As bad as it is the folks above the President make the decisions. They may have decided on Trump. These things do not happen by accident."

November 01, 2016 "Information Clearing House" - "Sputnik" - Thus spoke a high-level US business mover and shaker with secure transit in rarified Masters of the Universe-related circles, amidst the utter political chaos provoked by head of the FBI James Comey’s latest bombshell.

It’s virtually established by now that US Attorney General Loretta Lynch told Comey not to release his letter to Congress. But Comey did it anyway. If he had not, and a scandal would – inevitably – spring up after the US presidential election, Lynch would be perfectly positioned to deny she knew anything, and Comey would be on the firing line.

Lynch is a certified Clinton machine asset. In 1999 then-President Bill Clinton appointed her to run the Brooklyn US Attorney’s office. She left in 2002, taking the private practice revolving door. She was back to the Brooklyn office in 2010, urged by Obama. Five years later she became the 83rd US Attorney General, replacing the dodgy Eric Holder.

A plausible case has been made that Comey took his fateful decision based on a serious internal revolt at the FBI – led by key people he trust — as well as being egged-on by his wife.

Yet one of the key questions that refuse to go away is why the FBI waited until 11 days before the US presidential election to supposedly "find" an email trove on certified sexting pervert Anthony Weiner’s laptop.

A Deal With Donald?

Pepe Escobar -- Hit the ATM: The Ankara-Tehran-Moscow coalition

Hit the ATM: The Ankara-Tehran-Moscow coalition

Pepe Escobar is an independent geopolitical analyst. He writes for RT, Sputnik and TomDispatch, and is a frequent contributor to websites and radio and TV shows ranging from the US to East Asia. He is the former roving correspondent for Asia Times Online. Born in Brazil, he's been a foreign correspondent since 1985, and has lived in London, Paris, Milan, Los Angeles, Washington, Bangkok and Hong Kong. Even before 9/11 he specialized in covering the arc from the Middle East to Central and East Asia, with an emphasis on Big Power geopolitics and energy wars. He is the author of "Globalistan" (2007), "Red Zone Blues" (2007), "Obama does Globalistan" (2009) and "Empire of Chaos" (2014), all published by Nimble Books. His latest book is "2030", also by Nimble Books, out in December 2015.

Published time: 25 Aug, 2016 16:44Edited time: 25 Aug, 2016 17:01

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Turkish soldiers on an armoured vehicle are seen in Karkamis on the Turkish-Syrian border in the southeastern Gaziantep province, Turkey, August 25, 2016. © Umit Bektas / Reuters

So Turkish President, a.k.a. Sultan Recep Tayyip Erdogan is about to make a high-profile visit to Tehran – the date has not yet been set - to essentially kick start the ATM (Ankara-Tehran-Moscow) coalition in Syria.

Anyone as much as hinting at such a massive geopolitical tectonic shift a few weeks ago would be branded a madman. So how did the impossible happen?

A major strategic game-changer – Russia using an airfield in Iran to send bombers against jihadis in Syria – had already taken place, with its aftermath spectacularly misreported by the usual, clueless US corporate media suspects.

Then, there’s what Turkey’s Prime Minister, Binali Yildirim, said last Saturday in Istanbul: “The most important priority for us is to stop the bloodshed [in Syria] as soon as possible.” The rest are irrelevant “details.”