31 August 2013 — Strategic Culture Foundation
US – Syria: «Great Plans» Going Awry
31.08.2013 | 00:00 | Andrei AKULOV
In a whirlpool of rapidly changing events around Syria one fact seems to be indisputable. The US has very little international support, the plans to lead a representative international coalition have gone awry. It’s an outright foreign policy failure. But the US seems to be unswerving ready to go alone against all the odds. The question is inevitable – does the US have method in its madness?.. All indications suggest that a strike could occur soon after United Nations investigators leave the country. They are scheduled to depart Damascus on Saturday, August 31…
Syria: Western Warmongers Can’t Launder their Lies Any More
31.08.2013 | 00:00 | Finian CUNNINGHAM
The British parliament’s rejection of military action in Syria this week may be just enough to halt the manic march to all-out war – a war that many fear would not only engulf the Middle East region, but could lead to a global conflagration… But could we have reached a positive turning point?.. After the British parliamentary setback, US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel issued a statement while visiting the Philippines. «Our approach is to continue to find an international coalition that will act together,» Hagel told a news conference in the capital, Manila… That sounds more like the US pushing to recruit a lynch mob than an international consensus over Syria… A coalition starring the US, Saudi Arabia and Israel along with Al Qaeda militants within Syria – a «coalition of the killing» – stretches credulity way beyond breaking point. The international backlash will be withering…
Syria: West Weighing Options
30.08.2013 | 08:48 | Nikolai MALISHEVSKI
To put it simply, a US intervention into Syria would be tantamount to declaring war not on Damascus and Tehran, but also all the countries of the East and the West which have vital interest in uninterrupted oil flows from the Persian Gulf… This time the war that may start any minute now, can spill over the Syria borders. Perhaps it will happen much faster that Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan warned addressing the nation in October 2012, especially if Americans intervene in Syria and make «rebels» come to power, the very same «rebels» who not once announced they support the «global jihad without boundaries»…
War as Way to Cover Evidence that West Used Chemical Weapons
30.08.2013 | 00:00 | Alexander MEZYAEV
…The fact that the United States and Great Britain are in such great haste to expedite the events after the August 21 incident reveals their intent to interfere with the activities of the United Nations inspectors who have successfully started to investigate what happened on spot. The Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs said, «We have a naturally arising question: why our Western partners, who are now so worried about the risk of disappearance of the clues, were not at all worried about the preservation of material evidence, when they blocked the sending of UN experts to investigate the cases of use of chemical weapons in Khan al-Asal on the 19 March.» I believe there is nothing to be surprised about. There was a certain method the West used to hamper the investigating of the March events, now it is resorting to other ways for the very same purpose. This extraordinary impulsivity to launch a military operation means only one thing: the West is trying to conceal the evidence of its own participation in the use of chemical weapons in Syria…
US Threatens Syria: Trigger Happy Foreign Policy (II)
29.08.2013 | 09:43 | Andrei AKULOV
The UN Security Council failed to take a decision on Syria on August 28 and it’s not known what was said behind the closed doors. Russia said the UN must finish its investigation into the claims before discussing any resolution. Taking into consideration how strong is the support for intervention on the part of the US, Great Britain and France, it serves the purpose to have a look at what the response could be like…
The Overt and Covert Mechanisms of the Chemical Provocation in Syria
29.08.2013 | 00:00 | Dmitry MININ
A powerful propaganda campaign has once again been launched against Syria, with accusations that its army is supposedly using chemical weapons. All the previous campaigns gradually died down, leaving behind only murky foam. However, what is happening now resembles a real «tenth wave»… Military actions on the part of Western powers against Syria, if they happen, will most likely take the form of a distance war, like in the attack on Yugoslavia… Apparently the thinking is this: if we bombed the Serbs into peace, we can bomb the Syrians into it, too. The world has changed over these years, however, and the Middle East is a much more fragile and complex construction than even the Balkans. An attempt to «teach Syria a lesson» could have catastrophic consequences for those who started it when the chaos spills over the boundaries of the Middle East into other regions. For example, into Europe…
US Threatens Syria: Trigger Happy Foreign Policy (I)
29.08.2013 | 00:00 | Andrei AKULOV
The information and statements made in Washington are multiple and often contradictory. The only thing that is clear – the US officials appear to prepare the ground for a military action against Syria… Will the U.S. launch a strike against Syria while the United Nations team is still in the country?.. NBC has reported the cruise missile strikes are to take place in August 29, Thursday. Other outlets say the strike will take place in the coming days… No doubt that in any scenario the 4th tank division and its 155 brigade – the main fighting component – will be on the target list. The second scenario envisions a rather long-lasting air operation more like the one conducted by NATO against Libya in 2011. This course of action will make the West embroiled into the war on the side of rebels and make it last till Assad is overthrown or the intervention fails. There is also an intermediate scenario presupposing intensive bombing and consecutive pulling out ceding the initiative to the regional actors like Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates…
Iran Can Finesse Obama’s Legacy
28.08.2013 | 16:29 | Melkulangara BHADRAKUMAR
Syria: On Brink of War
28.08.2013 | 07:52 | Boris DOLGOV
It’s clear the propaganda campaign about the alleged use of chemical weapons is a planned provocation aimed at undermining the emerging opportunities for political management of the Syrian crisis and creating a pretext for military intervention into the country… The threat of military intervention in Syria is the continuation of US global policy aimed at eliminating the statehood of power centers (Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya), which were not among US satellites and lacked the potential to counter the aggression… There is no doubt the military conflict sparked by Americans will spread throughout the entire Middle East region to encompass Iran, the Hezbollah movement and Palestinian groups. Israel may be attacked. The response will be asymmetric (small special operations teams, terrorist acts in cities)…
Russia – USA: Reset Undone, What Next?
28.08.2013 | 00:00 | Andrei AKULOV
…A senior State Department official said on August 26 the meeting between Undersecretary Wendy Sherman and U.S. Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford with their Russian counterparts was postponed because of the ongoing U.S. review about alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria… But there is also a silver lining here – the very same day (August 26) White House spokesman Jay Carney said US President Barack Obama will meet Russian President Vladimir Putin next week in some fashion during the G20 summit in St. Petersburg. Anyway, whatever it is it’s clear that a RF-US summit could have been of paramount importance now when there is an urgent need to address the issue of chemical weapons in Syria, but President Obama has decided otherwise… The cancellation of summit is rather a failure, not a feather in the President Obama’s hat.
Russia to Develop Nuclear Energy in BRICS Countries
28.08.2013 | 00:00 | Igor ALEXEEV
Recent news on Fukushima leaks once again sparks public concern about nuclear security. System failure of Fukushima’s reactor built by Westinghouse-Toshiba (US-Japan) did a lot of harm to the image of atomic industry as a safe and stable energy source. Russia on its part lays stress on disaster prevention and safety issues. Russia’s state company Rosatom is ready to offer innovative nuclear solutions to fellow BRICS countries…
Is Obama on the Way to Start War Against Syria?
27.08.2013 | 00:00 | Georgy VOSKRESENSKY
…It’s absolutely not important if it’s Obama who is moving the United States to war or some other forces related to shaping the US foreign policy. The only thing that matters is that these very days, if not hours, it is being decided if the world is ready to reconcile with the idea that a military intervention of the «sole global power» against another state becomes a sinister norm of everyday life after what has already happened in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.
War on the Threshold of Syria
27.08.2013 | 00:00 | Dmitriy SEDOV
…Damascus has already warned that U.S. military intervention in Syria will «inflame» the Middle East. That is true. There will not be a repeat of Libya. Unlike the easy victory of the Western coalition in the war against Gadhafi, in Syria it will be different, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Barack Obama will have to pay a steep price for his readiness to repeat the «feats» of George Bush in Iraq…
Déjà vu and Syrian Chemical Weapons
26.08.2013 | 10:05 | Wayne MADSEN
President George W. Bush’s chief political adviser Karl Rove once infamously said of the United States under Bush, «We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality». And the reality created by Rove, Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and other war hawks convinced the world, wrongly, that Iraq’s Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, that Saddam’s agents were seeking yellow cake uranium in Africa, and that Saddam’s army possessed mobile biological weapon laboratories capable of releasing anthrax… Now, over a decade later, the Obama administration is dusting off the Bush administration’s playbook and using it on the government of Bashar al Assad of Syria…
The South American Defence Council and the Subversive Activities of the Pentagon
26.08.2013 | 00:00 | Nil NIKANDROV
…Evidence exists that there are atomic warheads at the British military base on the Falkland Islands and the means to deliver them. So with the full knowledge of the Pentagon, the conditions of the Treaty of Tlatelolco on the creation of a nuclear-free zone in Latin America and the Caribbean are being ignored… This aspect of the issue had always worried Brazil, since 90 percent of their trade was carried out across the Atlantic. The situation is now even more complicated due to the discovery of rich oil and gas reserves in the territorial waters of Brazil and Venezuela, and US oil companies want to be involved in their development on a priority basis… According to experts, a complex scenario by the Pentagon to provoke a war between Columbia and Venezuela is ready and just waiting for its time to come… But will the Obama administration really embark upon the large-scale destabilisation of South America?
Latin America between China and the U.S.
26.08.2013 | 00:00 | Vladislav GULEVICH
The expansion of economic collaboration between China and Latin America is one of the most important international tendencies. The country most frequently named as a stable partner of the PRC on the continent is Venezuela… In 2010 Beijing signed contracts with Argentina regarding investments of 10 billion dollars in the transportation sector. In that same year the PRC concluded several agreements with Colombia on collaboration in the area of tourism. In 2011 an intergovernmental agreement was signed with Bolivia on collaboration in the space industry for a period of 5 years. In 2012 barriers were removed from the path of imports of food products from Chile to the PRC… Other countries which have spoken of the strategic importance of collaboration with Beijing include Cuba, Peru, Ecuador, Uruguay, Brazil, Costa Rica…
Yinon’s Revenge? A Panoramic of Chaos in the Arab World
25.08.2013 | 14:48 | Mahdi Darius NAZEMROAYA
The Middle East and North Africa have been turned into an arc of instability all the way from Iraq and the Persian Gulf to Libya and Tunisia. Chaos and violence seem to be in almost every corner of the Arab World and the Middle East. The bloodletting does not seem to stop… The current upheavals actually have a resounding resemblance to the objectives of the Yinon Plan of 1982, named after its author Oded Yinon from the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which calls for the fracturing of North Africa and the Middle East… It is a continuation of the colonial project of the British in the region and has been transmitted to American foreign policy, which explains the views of the neocons and Ralph Peters about the «New Middle East» that they seek…
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The New Dark Age 