The following video by Storm Clouds Gathering provides an excellent summary of continuing Chinese efforts to chip away at the US dollar. These include a recent trade agreement between China and Australia to use the yuan and Australian dollar – rather than the US dollar – in bilateral trade. China entered into a similar trade agreement with Russia in 2010 and with Japan in 2011. Another major concern for the Obama administration is recent massive Chinese gold purchases, which suggest they may intend to create a gold-backed currency to rival the US dollar.

The film underlines the obvious build-up for war couched in US government’s increasing belligerence towards China, Syria, Iran and North Korea. The main intended target of this saber rattling is China, America’s main economic rival. However, for the most part, Obama’s true military intentions remain hidden from public view owing to proxy wars with China’s allies (Syria, Iran and North Korea). Historically the main purpose of such proxy wars has always been psychological – to overcome civilian resistance to military aggression.

The video also reminds us that the so-called war on terror is really a war about control of the international financial system. Up until the recent defection of China and its allies and now Russian, Japan and Australia, it was only possible to purchase oil in US dollars – which came to be known as petrodollars. For many years, all countries relying on imported oil were forced to keep reserves of US dollars. After the US abandoned first the gold and then the silver standard, the US dollar maintained its value by virtue of its relative monopoly on the buying and selling of oil. If the petrodollar dies, so does the US dollar does and with it the US economy.

Two of the most significant US military invasions of the last decade relate to threats against the petrodollar. The first occurred in 2003, after Saddam Hussein tried to set up an oil bourse that would trade oil in euros rather than dollars. The second occurred in 2010 when Gaddafi tried to introduce a new currency called the “gold dinar” to be used for Libyan oil purchases.

photo credit: Jonathan_W via photopin cc

Crossposted at Daily Censored

Below is a fascinating excerpt from Part 8 of Louis Farrakhan’s lecture series The Time and What Must Be Done. Farrahkan is the present leader of the Nation of Islam (NOI), best known for its most famous member Malcolm X.

It’s been more than ten years since I heard Farrakhan speak. He has made remarkable progress from his overt antisemitism and talk of white people as blue-eyed devils. I still have a slight problem with the “666” symbolism of the year 2013, which he links with the “beasts” (America, England, Germany and France).

Otherwise his analysis is remarkably similar to that of white economist, journalist and former Reagan official Paul Craig Roberts. The NOI leader is highly critical of Obama’s murderous policies in Libya and Syria and his use of drones for targeted assassinations, as well as his apparent willingness to support an Israeli-inspired war with Iran. He also condemns the President’s destruction of American democracy. He describes the US as an oligarchy leading the American people into fascism.

More information about the full 52 week series at Farrakhan promises god has execution planned for america

photo credit: A.Currell via photopin cc

Cross posted at Daily Censored

Sakine Cansiz

Somehow I find myself on the mailing list of the PKK (the Kurdish Workers Party), which is engaged in armed struggle against Turkey for an autonomous Kurdistan and cultural and political rights for all Turkish Kurds. According to Wikipedia, international human rights groups document decades of human rights abuses against the Kurds. In addition to criminalizing the Kurdish language, the Turkish government has deliberated destroyed 4,000 Kurdish villages and forcibly evacuated a million Kurdish civilians from their homes. This is in addition to the execution of 18,000 Kurds and the imprisonment of more than 119,000. Because Turkey is an ally, the US and the EU oppose the Kurds having an independent or semi-autonomous state and brand the PKK as a terrorist organization.

The newsletter is called Koma Civiken Kurdistan Info (in English Peoples’ Confederation of Kurdistan-Info). Founded in the early seventies, the PKK has backed away from its original Marxist-Leninist orientation (at least according to Wikipedia). However it’s the first newsletter I have read in more than two decades that still refers to it members as “comrade.” This makes me nostalgic for the old days. I suspect this is why I continue to subscribe.

I confess I don’t even open the newsletters most weeks. Following the assassination of three (female) PKK leaders in Paris last week, I read every single word of one I got on Sunday. For people who may have missed this story in the corporate media, this was a classic Mossad-style execution in which the killers got through an electronic lock system (requiring a code to get in) at the Kurdish Information Center. All three women died of three or four gunshot wounds to the head. The executions have occurred in the context of secret peace negotiations between the PKK leadership and the Turkish government. The day before the killing, rumors began to circulate that the PKK and the Erdogan government had agreed on a peace plan. The PKK has massive groups of followers in Europe, primarily in Germany, France, the Netherlands and Belgium. However according to the AL Monitor, this was the first PKK assassination carried out on French soil.

The Kurdish Rosa Luxemburg

Sakine Cansiz, one of the co-founders of the PKK, was the most prominent of the three. She organized the prison resistance movement during the decade she spent in prison in the 1980s. The fact that half of the PKK armed resistance are women is credited to Cansiz, often referred to as the Kurdish Rosa Luxemburg.

Is the Mossad Responsible for the PKK Executions?

Here in New Zealand we know all about the Mossad’s ruthless international assassinations (they will go anywhere and kill anyone to further Israeli Zionism). The Mossad was front page new in 2010 after our government discovered Israeli spies had used forged New Zealand passports to assassinate a Hamas leader in Dubai. Six months later, another suspected Mossad agent was discovered to have five passports on his person when he was killed in the Christchurch earthquake.

C. Tuttle, writing in Firedoglake also puts the Mossad high on the list of likely culprits. He refers to a November AL Monitor article by Sedat Laciner revealing that Israeli intelligence monitors PKK training camps continuously via drones, satellites and other electronic. John Robles, writing in The Voice of Russia, believes that Israeli or US intelligence, both eager for a pretext to invade Syria and/or Iran, would have an equally strong incentive to derail a PKK-Turkish peace settlement. Like Iraq, Syria and Iran have large semi-autonomous Kurdish regions, which the PKK uses as a base for military operations against Turkey. Robles reminds us that Turkey recently authorized military incursions into Iran, supposedly to seek out and attack PKK militants. It’s easy to see the US or Israel using the threat posed by Kurdish “terrorism” as an excuse to put boots on the ground in either or both countries.

The PKK Blames Turkish Gladio

In their most recent newsletter, the PKK agrees that the assassinations were an effort to derail the peace negations. However they hold the Turkish Gladio responsible. This is a shorthand reference to Counter-Guerrilla, the Turkish branch of the CIA’s infamous Gladio program. This is a clandestine US-backed force formed in France, Italy, Greece, Turkey and other countries with strong communist sympathies after World War II.

photo credit: txengmeng via photopin cc

Cross posted at Daily Censored

It didn’t occur to me to question that Adam Lanzo was the sole “lone nut” gunman at Sandy Hook Elementary School until I learned about the blatant Facebook and Twitter censorship of members who challenged the official story. After doing a little research I discovered that Jim Fetzer, another former academic and respected assassination researcher, has written quite comprehensively regarding the blatant inconsistencies and anomalies in the narrative Newtown police have presented to the public. As Fetzer stresses in many of the articles, it’s clear the real enemy here is the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), not the National Rifle Association (NRA).

“Clare’s” blog at http://youcanknowsometimes.blogspot.ca/ provides the most comprehensive and well documented list of Sandy Hook inconsistencies and anomalies. After looking at the massive amount of information she has amassed, I agree with Fetzer: the evidence doesn’t add up.

Fetzer co-authored his most recent (December 28^th) article Sandy Hook: Huge Hoax and Anti-Gun “Psy-Op” with Dennis Cimino, a former US Navy electronic systems troubleshooter. The article briefly summarizes many of the inconsistencies in the official narrative. First we are told the mother was a former teacher and Adma Lanzo a former student at Sandy Hook – then we learn neither had any prior link with the school. We are told the principal called the local paper about the shooting – then it comes out she was one of the first victims killed. The police immediately determine there is only one shooter. Yet police radio reports refer to a second suspect being apprehended at the scene and a police helicopter video shows yet a third suspect being tracked in the woods. The article goes on to cite many other embarrassing mistakes that the police have been compelled to correct.

Fetzer also authored a much more controversial article, Did Mossad death squads slaughter American children at Sandy Hook?, in Veterans Today. It seems to have been written in response to an unfortunate headline the Iranian news outlet Press TV gave an earlier article Mossad death squads slaughtered American children at Sandy Hook. The Veterans Today article is much more detailed and carefully documented. It cites a substantial amount evidence suggesting the Obama administration is preparing for a massive civil unrest scenario in the US

Among other evidence Fetzer cites (aside from the stuff we already know about, like suspension of habeas corpus and most of the Bill of Rights and Obama’s executive order granting him the right to summarily execute American citizens without due process of law) are the 300+ FEMA camps that have been established, the 30,000 drones Congress has authorized for domestic surveillance and the recent acquisition by the Department of Homeland Security of more than 1.5 billion rounds of .40 caliber hollow-point ammunition (which is not even permissible in warfare under the Geneva Conventions – see Feds explanation of hollow point bullets raises more questions).

Since DHS doesn’t conduct operations abroad, Fetzer argues the hollow points must have been acquired for domestic consumption. More over with the recent determination by the US Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs (3 October 2012) that the US faces no current on ongoing domestic terrorist threat, he reasons they are intended for use against Americans.

His argument that the Mossad was involved in the Sandy Hook massacre, on the other hand, seems a little far-fetched based on the limited evidence. At the moment all he has to go on is evidence of Mossad involvement in similar false flag psy-ops operations. For example 911 (which Ryan Dawson summarizes quite eloquently in War of Deception)

And the attacks on the Benghazi embassy in Libya resulting in Ambassador Stevens’ murder. (See Counterpsyops.com]

That’s not to say conclusive evidence won’t be forthcoming over time. At the very least it’s troubling that Facebook (presumably at the behest of US intelligence) is trying to purge the accounts of bloggers challenging gun control initiatives or presenting an alternative version of the Sandy Hook massacre.

*Kurt Nimmo (account suspended)
Aaron Dykes (account inactive)
Brandon J. Raub (account inactive)
Michael F Rivero (account inactive)
Anthony J Hilder (account inactive)
William Lewis (account inactive)
Richard Gage (account inactive)
William Rodriguez (account inactive)
Infowar Artist (account inactive)
We are Change (account inactive)
Wacboston At Twitter (account inactive)
Michael Murphy Tmp (account inactive)
Robert M Bowman (account inactive)
Peter Dale Scott (account inactive)
Jason Infowars (account inactive)
Mike Skuthan (account inactive)
Packy Savvenas (account inactive)
Sean Wright (account inactive)
Katherine Albrect (account inactive)

html for attribution: photo credit: Raymond Yee via photopin cc

Cross posted at Daily Censored

Photo credit: http://warnewsupdates.blogspot.co.nz/2008_04_01_archive.html

A recent article in the Guardian reveals that Britain has denied a US request to use bases in the UK, Cyprus, Ascension Island or Diego Garcia for either military or air support of an attack on Iran. Government spokespersons cite secret legal advice, drafted by the attorney general’s office and circulated to Downing Street, the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence, indicating a preemptive strike on Iran potentially violates international law.

The secret memo takes the position that Iran, which has consistently denied it has plans to develop a nuclear weapon, fails to meet the standard of presenting “a clear and present threat”.

Quite a drastic and refreshing change from Tony Blair’s gung ho support for George W Bush’s (illegal) aggression against Iraq and Afghanistan. Perhaps the tide is turning.

Read more here

Palestine's Arab Spring

A September 15^th article (Revolution in the Air at Last) in the highly conservative Economist is predicting possible revolution in Palestine. It’s extremely good news for antiwar activists, economists, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey and all other halfway sane people seeking to thwart a threatened Israeli attack on Iran. A full blown Arab Spring uprising in Palestine (Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas has referred to growing unrest as the Palestinian Arab Spring) would hopefully keep Israeli war monger Binyamin Netanyahu too busy in his own back yard to start World War III.

Extreme Financial Hardship in the West Bank

In recent demonstrations across the West Bank, where the Palestinian Authority (PA) is supposedly in charge, protests over high food prices have escalated to calls for both Abbas and prime minister Salam Fayyad to step down. Tied into Israel’s economy under terms of the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords, residents of the West Bank pay Israeli prices for goods while earning a fifth of Israeli salaries. Meanwhile the PA, deeply in debt, limps along from month to month, as previously generous foreign aid slows to a dribble. Gulf donors, such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, have become reluctant as Palestinians to support an entity that seems incapable of ending Israel’s occupation. Thus most of their aid funds go to Gaza, where Israel ended the military occupation in 2005, and which has been fully run by Hamas Islamists since the 2007 elections.

Europeans, struggling with their own economic crisis, have also drastically cut assistance to the PA. Meanwhile the Obama administration, which has promised $200 million, is making it conditional on a Palestinian promise not to seek the UN recognition of statehood (at least not before the November elections). Thus, at present, the PA relies on Israel for two-thirds of its operating expenses (through a transfer of tax revenues collected in the West Bank).

The Power Struggle in the PA’s Unelected Leadership

The protests also relate, in part, to a long-standing power struggle between Abbas, the Fatah leader who succeeded Yasar Arafat, and Fayyad, an economist trained in America and favored by Washington. What the Economist doesn’t mention is that both Abbas and Fayyad are “appointed” puppets the US and Israel installed in the West Bank after Hamas won the 2007 PA elections (see The Effect of Public Opinion in Palestine). Technically Hamas was the legitimately elected authority in the West Bank, as well as Gaza. Refusing to recognize the elections, the US and Israel replaced the Hamas leadership with Abbas, Fayyad and Fatah party officials. Hamas only retained power in Gaza by undertaking military action to expel the CIA-backed Fatah operatives who had seized crucial security outposts.

At the beginning of September, trade unions and taxi-drivers, who get their licenses from the Fatah-dominated intelligence services, declared a general strike and closed roads, paralyzing the city centers. Fatah-linked Palestinian security officers in plain clothes manned the barricades and lit tires.

By September 10th, the PA was facing the most popular and widespread protests in the 18 years since it was formed in 1993 Oslo accords. In the southern city of Hebron, gangs of youths threw rocks at a police station. In Nablus, they charged a security base. Although the Palestinian police dispersed them with tear gas, the uproar only died down when Fayyad made concessions promised to rescind price rises and pay a first installment of delayed salaries.

The popular uprising is far from over, with Israel’s recent threat to cut off power to the West Bank unless the PA comes up with $200m for unpaid electricity bills.

Read more here

In my opinion, a brilliant analysis by Tony Cartalucci at Land Destroyer Report is a must-read: chiefly because it identifies the corporate interests behind creating, funding and arming the Free Syrian Army, the Syrian National Council and other rebel groups that have taken up arms against the Assad government. We already know their primary agenda in the Middle East – to isolate Iran, China and Russia with the goal of consolidating US dominance over dwindling oil resources.

In Cartalucci’s words: “[T]he West has become an expert at creating false paradigms, creating debates and conflicts that obfuscate the true nature of any given problem – obfuscating that they themselves are generally at he root of it.”

He makes his point by citing the example of the CIA-funded National Endowment for Democracy (one of several CIA-funded “non-profit” foundations), one which Ahmed Bensaada and others have identified as playing a pivotal role in training the activists who helped launch the “Arab Spring” revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa.

Cartalucci illustrates the role corporations play in the NED with a collage of the corporate logos represented on the NED board of directors:

NED corporate interests

His article includes a link to a fascinating timeline he created in an earlier blog Save Syria, which starts with a 1991 pronouncement by Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz about the need to “clean up” old Soviet client regimes (Syria, Iran and Iraq). It outlines plans for Syrian regime change dating back to 2002, as well as the training program the State Department began in 2008 to train 5,000 activists from Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon.

Cartlucci asserts that by identifying the true root of the Syrian conflict – namely multinational corporations – we can avoid falling for the phony solutions western governments offer us. He believes the only solution, ultimately, lies in disempowering corporations and replacing them with revitalized local institutions.

Read more here: Land Destroyer Report

Dr Guy McPherson

“The opera ain’t over till the fat lady sings” – Dan Cook, sports writer and broadcaster 1978

I have spent this past weekend at a lecture and workshop by Arizonan Guy McPherson, who is currently touring New Zealand. McPherson blogs at Nature Bats Last and has recently published a book called Walking Away from Empire: a Personal Journey. During his lecture he presented some very interesting oil production/price data that has made it possible for a number of mainstream and non-mainstream economists and financial advisers to project a date for the next economic crisis. Many, like McPherson, believe the next one will be so catastrophic it will bring down the global financial system and world trade and monetary system, and possibly our energy and telecommunications grid. In other words, TEOTWAWKI (The End of the World as We Know It).

For nearly a decade various Peak Oil economists have been predicting the collapse of the global economic system, based on the growing cost of oil extraction (we’ve used up all the sweet stuff that’s easy to get at – sucking it out of tar sands and from deep water wells is far more difficult and costly). While the mainstream media rarely makes the connection, all industrial activity and economic activity has always depended on the ready availability of cheap fossil fuel. Yet a close examination of world oil reserves and production shows that the era of cheap fossil fuel has ended. Owing to the high cost of extraction, world oil production virtually plateaued in 2004. According to current data it will begin to decline sharply (by 4% per year) in 2014.

You know the coming crisis is real when the world’s most two most famous insurance companies, Lloyd’s of London and Chatham House, advise the businesses they insure to begin scenario-planning exercises for the oil price spike they expect in the “medium term” (Lloyd’s 2010).

Until recently the exact timing of the next oil spike (and economic collapse) has been difficult to predict. In large part, this relates to the failure of industrialized countries to operate as free markets. While no other country is as generous as the US in the corporate welfare government provides multinational corporations, all industrialized countries do it to some extent.

Numbers That Point to a November-December 2012 Oil Spike (and major economic crisis)

1. Oil production has plateaued

The following graph is from an exhaustive paper analyzing global oil production trends by Russian economist Dean Fantazzini. Fantazzini counts all liquid fuels (e.g. liquified natural gas), owing to their ability to be used interchangeably with oil. You can see that production virtually flat lined in 2004:

2. Demand from energy hungry countries like China and India continues to increase rapidly.

When demand exceeds supply, the law of supply and demand dictates that the price must increase – unless government intervenes to stabilize it.

3. All Modern Recessions Were Triggered by Spikes in the Price of Oil

Even more surprising is the following graph, published in the Wall Street Journal in February 2012. It shows that every recession since 1973 has been triggered by a steep increase in the price of oil. It’s perfectly logical when you think about it. Businesses have no choice but to cut their oil use when the price goes up. And because of the direct link between energy use and industrial production, economic activity decreases accordingly. This, by definition, is a recession.

WSJ Oil price recession chart

Other economists have extended the oil spike/recession link back to World War II. Since 1947, according to James Hamilton, every recession but one was linked to a spike in oil prices.

Recent Demand Collapse

The price of oil per barrel has decreased 25% in the last three months, mainly due to demand bottoming out in dying economies like Greece and Spain. The price of gasoline hasn’t reflected this decrease, in part because Eurozone oil sanctions against Iran are expected to push the per barrel cost up again. Bloomberg’s predicts the price to rise to $114 per barrel in the 3rd quarter of 2012.

What Obama Could But Won’t Do

Owing to the upcoming elections, we can expect Obama to release most of America’s strategic oil reserves. However this is a drop in the ocean, compared to the billions of barrels lost to Europe and the US due to the sanctions on Iran. Other options open to the President are to implement price controls (like Nixon) or to ration gasoline (like Roosevelt during World War II). Obama’s past behavior suggests he worries more about pissing off oil companies (by interfering with their price gouging) than voters angry about the price of gasoline. Thus I think bold action on his part is highly unlikely.

Preparing for Economic Collapse

McPherson’s presentation had a powerful effect on the hundred or so of us who listened to it. Perhaps the fat lady hasn’t quite started singing, but I can sure see her standing in the wings. About thirty of us met with McPherson and his wife the following morning to begin drawing up a detailed food security plan for New Plymouth. If there is a second, more severe economic crisis in December, New Zealand’s oil imports could cease overnight. Without petrol for our vehicles, we are a long way (by horse or donkey) from the agricultural centers that currently provide most of our food. While many of us already produce large amounts of fruit and fresh vegetables in our gardens, we are very short on staples (like potatoes and grains), sources of concentrated protein and seeds.

McPherson will be doing an interview with Radio New Zealand, and I will post a link to the MP3 file when it’s broadcast.

US troops land in Israel for Austere Challenge 12

What do Austere Challenge 12, Theater Iran Near Term, Global Strike 2003, Vigilant Shield 07, and Concept Plan 8022 all have in common? They are all names of Pentagon war games simulating an attack on Iran. Most military war games are conducted in secret. Those listed above have been made public, presumably to help build consensus among the military brass and the Washington elite about the inevitability of war with Iran. Canadian researcher and globalization researcher Michel Chossudovksy writes about them in a January 8, 2012 Global Research article entitled When War Games Go Live

It’s Official: Iran Not Building Nuclear Weapons

Just to be clear here. The current US threats against Iran have nothing to do with Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program. In the first place, they aren’t building nuclear weapons. On the January 8 Face the Nation,  Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta acknowledged that Iran is not trying to building nuclear weapons. You can read his exact words here: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-3460_162-57354647/face-the-nation-transcript-january-8-2012/

In the second place, the US has been preparing to attack Iran for more than a decade. As I mention in my previous blogs about the covert war against Syria, war against both Iran and Syria have been part of the Pentagon’s Middle East strategy since the mid-nineties. As retried General Wesley Clark writes in “Winning Modern Wars,” US foreign policy over the last 20 years has focused on regime change in seven countries: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia and Sudan. All seven, except Syria, are oil rich countries targeted owing to their refusal to privatize their oil resources for the benefit of Anglo American oil companies. Oil-poor Syria is a target because of its strategic alliance with oil-rich Iran. Please note that this policy has remained consistent whether Republicans or Democrats control Congress and the White House.

Why Israel Won’t Be Attacking Iran

Chossudovsky disputes the line promoted in the media (and by Panetta himself – http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/03/us-nuclear-iran-usa-israel-idUSTRE81202Z20120203), that Israel and the pro-Israel lobby is behind the current threats against Iran. Chossudovsky asserts that massive retaliation against Israel, the inevitable outcome of a US attack on Iran, has always been the chief disincentive preventing against launching one. Iran, which has a massive military industrial complex, is a top military power, only slightly behind Germany and Israel. Iran has the ability to mobilize one million troops practically overnight, as well as an extensive air force and Advance missiles capable of bombing Israel back to the Stone Age.

He stresses that Israel is incapable of launching a sneak attack in an effort to draw the US into a full blown war. Not only is Israel the Middle East country with the most to lose from war with Iran, but since 2008 Israel’s air defense forces have been fully integrated with those of the US and NATO. This makes it impossible for them to act unilaterally. One of the major goals of Austere Challenge 12, the January 2012 war games – the largest in world history – was to test these air defense. As Chossudovsky makes clear in a recent Guns and Butter interview, even NATO can’t protect Israel from massive civilian casualties and infrastructure damage from an Iranian counterattack. In his view, the recent escalation of US threats against Iran more likely reflect a shift in Washington’s views on Israel’s strategic importance to US interests. It now appears Washington is prepared to sacrifice Israel in pursuit of its ultimate goal: regime change in Tehran and privatization of Iran’s oil resources for the benefit of Anglo-American oil companies.

Setting the State for World War III

During the interview, Chossudovksy describes each of the five Pentagon war games listed above, making it clear that the US has been actively rehearsing a military attack on Iran since 2003. Theater Iran Near Term was a simulated attack on Iraq’s neighbor that occurred in May 2003, within days after US troops “liberated” Baghdad. According to the Canadian researcher, Pentagon are well of the treaties Russia and China (both nuclear powers) have committing them to come to Iran’s defense. Both rely heavily on Iran for their oil imports, a major reason why they refuse to go along with the sanctions. Chossudovksy believes Russia, which has a naval base in southern Syria, will likely come to their defense if they are attacked by NATO. This is why the 2006 war games called Vigilant Shield 07 included retaliatory strikes, not only against Iran (code named Irmingham), North Korea (code named Nemzee), Russia (code named Ruebeck) and China (code named Churya).

In other words, the US is setting the stage to launch World War III and a possible nuclear war between Russia, China and the US. The mainstream media has widely publicized the movement of US war ships to the Strait of Hormuz, an essential transit route for oil shipments from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states that traverses Iranian territorial waters. They have not reported on the massive shipment in 2010 of weapons (and weapons advisors) to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States, or the US troop build up in Israel (9,000 troops in January 2012) or Kuwait (15,000 troops in December 2011).

Removing Israel from “The Pages of Time”

Chossudovksy believes Iran would ultimately lose a war with the US, despite inflicting massive damage on civilians and US military installations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, as well as destroying Israel as a major Middle East power.

He’s struck by the irony of Israel’s new designation as “collateral damage” in a US conflict with Iran, in view of the infamous statement attributed to Iran President Ahmadinejad about wanting to wipe Israel off the map. The often repeated quote happens to be a fabrication. It’s actually a mistranslation of a prediction, rather than a threat, and was first uttered by the late Ayatollah Khomeini, not President Ahmadinejad. Before his death Khomeini made the prediction that the “regime occupying Jeruselum,” like the Soviet Union and the Shah of Iran would eventually “disappear from the pages of time.”

How ironic that the US, Israel’s oldest friend and ally, is about to fulfill this prophecy by preparing to launch a unilateral military assault on Iran.

(This is the second of two blogs about the covert US war against Syria. The case Obama is making for sanctions and “humanitarian” intervention in Syria is a total fabrication. The US goal in Syria is regime change. The people Assad is attacking aren’t unarmed protestors. They are Islamic militants that the US and NATO have been funding and training for at least ten months.)

The People of Syria Support Assad

According to John R Bradley, author of After the Arab Revolution and the only analyst to predict the Egyptian revolution, Saudi Arabia and Qatar are also providing arms and funding to the Free Syrian Army. In an interview with Russia Today, Bradley supports the prevailing view of Assad as a ruthless despot. However he also points out that Syria’s president is one of the last secular Arab leaders in the most ethnically diverse nation in the Middle East. At the moment, he enjoys wide popular support because many Syrians view him as the last bastion between them and a fundamentalist Islamic government, like the one just installed in Libya.

Recent callers from Homs (the Syrian city under siege) to the February 10, 2012 BBC Have Your Say seem to support this perspective. While none are big Assad fans, the growing strength of the Islamic resistance worries them. Moreover they see Assad’s secular administration as far preferable to Sharia Law.

The US Military Agenda in the Middle East

Michel Chossudovksy, who has also been writing for months on the covert US war in Syria, is more alarmed about its significance in the context of broader American objectives in the Middle East. He explains that the US has targeted Syria, both because of its strategic alliance with Iran and because of Pentagon’s underlying strategy of isolating and encircling Iran as a prelude to toppling its current government. In a recent interview on Guns and Butter, he describes how the US has systematically occupied and/or militarized nearly all the countries that border Iran. First you have US-occupied Afghanistan and Pakistan (the target of a second undeclared US war) on Iran’s eastern border. Then you have Iraq, which is still partially occupied, Kuwait (where the US deployed 15,000 troops in December), and Turkey, with its US airbases, on Iran’s western border. Finally you have Saudi Arabia (also host to major US military bases) and Qatar to the south. According to Chossudovksy, US military intervention in Syria will spill over and involve the Hezbollah in Lebanon, effectively neutralizing Iran’s last remaining allies.

In a disturbing article entitled When War Games Go Live , Chossoduvsky quotes from retired General Wesley Clark’s 2003 book Winning Modern Wars regarding the role of military intervention against Syria and Iran in the Pentagon’s grand Middle East strategy. According to Clark, the Pentagon has been making preparation to attack both countries since the mid-nineties. On page 130 of Winning Modern Wars, Clark states

“As I went back through the Pentagon in November 2001, one of the senior military staff officers had time for a chat. Yes, we were still on track for going against Iraq, he said. But there was more. This was being discussed as part of a five-year campaign plan, he said, and there were a total of seven countries, beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia and Sudan.”

The reliability of these predictions, despite a 2008 regime change from George Bush, the so-called neocon hawk, to Barack Obama, a supposed soft power advocate, is uncanny. The US persists in its occupation of Iraq, in addition to major military engagements in Somalia and Sudan. Presumably the military intervention in Libya is complete, now that the new US-friendly regime has agreed to privatize Libyan oil for the benefit of US oil companies.

According to Chossudovsky, countries such as Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Iran and Sudan became US military targets because they refused to play ball by allowing Anglo-American oil company unlimited access to their oil resources. In contrast, oil-poor countries like Syria and Lebanon are current targets because of strategic alliances with oil-rich Iran.