Fasten your seatbelts; 2015 will be a whirlwind pitting China, Russia and Iran against what I have described as theEmpire of Chaos.
So yes – it will be all about further moves towards the integration of Eurasia as the US is progressively squeezed out of Eurasia. We will see a complex geostrategic interplay progressively undermining the hegemony of the US dollar as a reserve currency and, most of all, the petrodollar.
Global oil prices are bound to remain low. All bets are off on whether a nuclear deal will be reached by this summer between Iran and the P5+1. If sanctions (actually economic war) against Iran remain and continue to seriously hurt its economy, Tehran’s reaction will be firm, and will include even more integration with Asia, not the West.
Washington is well-aware that a comprehensive deal with Iran cannot be reached without Russia’s help. That would be the Obama administration’s sole – and I repeat – sole foreign policy success. A return to the “Bomb Iran” hysteria would only suit the proverbial usual (neo-con) suspects. Still, by no accident, both Iran and Russia are now subject to Western sanctions. No matter how it was engineered, the fact that stands is that the current financial/strategic oil price collapse is a direct attack against (who else?) Iran and Russia.
The declaration of economic war by the US and EU on Russia – via the run on the ruble and the oil derivative attack – was essentially a derivatives racket. Derivatives – in theory – may be multiplied to infinity. Derivative operators attacked both the ruble and oil prices in order to destroy the Russian economy. The problem is, the Russian economy is more soundly financed than America's.
Considering that this swift move was conceived as a checkmate, Moscow’s defensive strategy was not that bad. On the key energy front, the problem remains the West’s – not Russia’s. If the EU does not buy what Gazprom has to offer, it will collapse.
The EU's declaration of economic war against Russia makes no sense whatsoever. Russia controls, directly or indirectly, most of the oil and natural gas between Russia and China: roughly 25% of the world's supply. The Middle East is bound to remain a mess. Africa is unstable. The EU is doing everything it can to cut itself off from its most stable supply of hydrocarbons, prompting Moscow to redirect energy to China and the rest of Asia. What a gift for Beijing – as it minimizes the alarm about the US Navy playing with "containment" across the high seas.
Now imagine Russia and China jointly investing in a new gold, oil and natural resource-backed monetary union as a crucial alternative to the failed debt "democracy" model pushed by the Masters of the Universe on Wall Street, the Western central bank cartel, and neoliberal politicians. They would be showing the Global South that financing prosperity and improved standards of living by saddling future generations with debt was never meant to work in the first place.
Until then, a storm will be threatening our very lives – today and tomorrow. The Masters of the Universe/Washington combo won’t give up their strategy to make Russia a pariah state cut off from trade, the transfer of funds, banking and Western credit markets and thus prone to regime change.
Further on down the road, if all goes according to plan, their target will be (who else) China. And Beijing knows it. Meanwhile, expect a few bombshells to shake the EU to its foundations. Time may be running out – but for the EU, not Russia. Still, the overall trend won’t be altered; the Empire of Chaos is slowly but surely being squeezed out of Eurasia.
Iran denied reports on Saturday that it had reached a tentative agreement with the US and other world powers on a formula that would rein in its nuclear program.
“Such media propaganda was made with political motivations and is basically aimed at damaging the atmosphere of the nuclear talks and further complicating the process to resolve the nuclear issues,”
said spokeswoman of the Iranian Foreign Ministry Marziyeh Afkham, according to IRNA news agency.
said spokeswoman of the Iranian Foreign Ministry Marziyeh Afkham, according to IRNA news agency.
The main conflict is over uranium enrichment, which can create both reactor fuel and the fissile core of nuclear arms. In seeking to reduce Iran’s bomb-making ability, the US has proposed that Tehran export much of its stockpile of enriched uranium — something the Islamic Republic has long said it would not do.
The diplomats said both sides in the talks are still arguing about how much of an enriched uranium stockpile to leave Iran. It now has enough for several bombs, and Washington wants substantial cuts below that level.
It seems like it was only yesterday when we reported that, in yet another sleight of hand for the US Treasury and Social Security Administration, US debt rose by $32 billion on the last day of November sending total US debt above $18 trillion for the first time ever. As we further noted, it also meant "that total US debt has increased by 70% under Obama, from $10.625 trillion on January 21, 2009 to $18.005 trillion most recently."
Fast forward to today when we are happy to report that according to the US Treasury, America's debt-funded spending spree, while supposedly slowing down if looking at the declining monthly budget deficit report, never actually has.
As of the last day of 2014, total US debt soared by $98 billion in one day (driven again by Social Security debt surging on the last day of the month to a record $5.117 trillion), and closing off 2014 with a new all time high total of $18.141 trillion in Federal debt - an increase of $136 billion in the month of December and$790 billion for all of 2014.
According to various publications in the American and foreign media, the United States has created a global system of cyber espionage that allows the interception and processing of personal data around the globe in violation of fundamental human rights. Tapped phones, intercepted short messages, supervised discussions in social networks and stolen emails – this is the ugly reality we are living in. The NSA and other units of the United States Intelligence Community are more than capable of breaching any mobile operating system, be it iOS, Android or BlackBerry OS.
In 2011 US intelligence agencies successfully finished the development of geo-location tracking software that allows the NSA to collect and save more than five billion location records of mobile users around the world on a daily basis, and then through a special program labeled CO-TRAVELER analyze and monitor the movement of certain individuals that could be of interest for Washington. In addition, since 2010 information on social contacts of US citizens, their personal data, including telephone calls, Internet logs, bank codes, insurance data is being processed by intelligence agencies on a regular basis.
The NSA’s secret project codenamed Boundless Informant seeks to establish control over “information space.” According to The Guardian it has been able to collect the data on 97 billion phone calls worldwide since March 2013
Yet another secret project codenamed Prism established by the NSA and Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), allowed intelligence agencies to establish close partnerships with major IT companies back in 2007, including Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube and Apple. Such cooperation allows the secret services to read private e-mails and monitor the transfer of files throughout global information space. This allows the NSA to control sovereign leaders, business representatives and foreign diplomats as has been repeatedly reported on by various international media outlets
However, Washington doesn’t seem to be satisfied with its “progress” since it continues funding and developing new secret projects that would not simply allow the United States to retain an effective control over global information space, but to influence web users worldwide to its own advantage as well
Thus, the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity Agency (IARPA) in recent years has started a number of research programs to manipulate social networks.
In just two months, from August to October, nearly 200 Christian churches were destroyed by the Islamic organization Boko Haram and its Muslim allies after their capture of towns and villages in the north-eastern states of Borno and Adamawa. In the words of Reverend Gideon Obasogie, the director of Catholic Social Communication of Maiduguri Diocese in Borno State: “The group’s seizure of territory in both states has seen 185 churches torched and over 190,000 people displaced by their insurgency.”
Obasogie added that Boko Haram’s “ransacking and torching” of churches was “sad, heart-aching and potentially dangerous to the territorial integrity and common good of Nigeria…. Our priests are displaced, while citizens… are counting their losses and regrets as they have been reduced to the status of Internally Displaced Persons [IDP]. Where is the freedom?… Life is really terribly difficult.”
In 2011, hundreds of Christians were killed and 430 churches destroyed or damaged in Nigeria by Boko Haram. In 2012, 900 Christians were slaughtered and an unknown number of churches destroyed. In 2013, 612 Christians were slaughtered and approximately 300 churches destroyed.
This suggests that in the last four years alone, approximately 1,000 Christian churches have been destroyed by Boko Haram and its Muslim sympathizers in a nation that is approximately half Christian half Muslim.
Moreover, according to an October Human Rights Watch report, Boko Haram has so far been responsible for killing 2,053 people in 2014—a number that likely exceeds the previous four years put together.
This suggests that in the last four years alone, approximately 1,000 Christian churches have been destroyed by Boko Haram and its Muslim sympathizers in a nation that is approximately half Christian half Muslim.
Moreover, according to an October Human Rights Watch report, Boko Haram has so far been responsible for killing 2,053 people in 2014—a number that likely exceeds the previous four years put together.
A typical church attack in Nigeria that occurred in October was reported as follows: “Armed Muslim extremists stormed two churches in Taraba state on Sunday (Oct. 19) and killed 31 people as they worshipped… Two pastors, one pastor’s son, and 28 other Christians were slain in the attacks.” According to the Rev. Caleb Ahema, president of the Christian Reformed Church of Christ in Nigeria, “The attack on Christians in Taraba state is a planned genocide against Christians by Islamic insurgents who have invaded the southern part of the state, inhabited mostly by Christians, since February.”
The Palestinian Authority is considering resubmitting its resolution on Palestinian statehood to the UN Security Council, days after it was rejected on Tuesday for not getting the minimum nine “yes” votes required for adoption by the 15-member council.
Palestinian Authority spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh said Saturday, following a Palestinian leadership meeting, that the matter was being weighed, given the new make-up of the Security Council which went into effect on January 1.
Angola, Malaysia, New Zealand, Venezuela and Spain joined the UN body as non-permanent members Thursday, alongside Chad, Chile, Jordan, Lithuania and Nigeria whose terms end in 2015. With the five permanent members — the US, UK, France, Russia and China — they now make up the 15-member council.
Given the new members who are deemed by the Palestinians as being more sympathetic, the PA may once again push the resolution calling for an Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines by 2017 and a 12-month deadline for negotiations on a final peace deal.
Israel is said to be considering filing war crime lawsuits in the US and beyond against top Palestinian officials.
An Israeli official told Reuters on Saturday that Israel was “weighing the possibilities for large-scale prosecution in the United States and elsewhere” of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and other top officials, a day after the PA submitted documents to the United Nations to join the International Criminal Court.
The official added that Palestinian leaders “ought to fear legal steps” as a response to their move toward ICC membership.
“(Hamas) … commits war crimes, shooting at civilians from civilian populated areas,” the official said, in reference to the 50-day conflict Israel fought with Hamas and other terror groups in and around Gaza. Israel lost 66 soldiers and six civilians, and a Thai agricultural worker, in the month-long conflict, while the Palestinian death toll surpassed 2,100, according to Hamas officials in Gaza. Israel said half of the Gaza dead were gunmen and blamed Hamas for all civilian deaths because it operated from residential areas, placing Gazans in harm’s way.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned that it is the Palestinians who will find themselves in the dock for Hamas’s terrorism and indiscriminate rocket fire at Israel if they join the ICC. Netanyahu has accused Abbas of collaborating with the terror group after a unity deal was signed between the two rivals in April.
The unity pact between Abbas and Hamas also prompted Netanyahu to end peace talks with the Palestinian Authority after a nine-month, US-brokered effort.
In initiating a war crimes probe against Israel with the International Criminal Court, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas may fall afoul of US legislation that would mandate defunding the PA. The US funds the PA to the tune of some $400 million per year.
An unidentified Palestinian source claimed that Abbas signed a request Thursday asking the ICC to investigate war crimes allegedly “committed in Palestine” since the summer. This action may tip the scales in Washington, where there is already bipartisan frustration with Abbas’s decision to put a Palestinian statehood resolution before the United Nations Security Council on Tuesday, and, after the resolution was defeated, to sign on to the ICC on Wednesday.
Even if Abbas’s ICC investigation gambit does not play out — and Palestine’s route ahead at the ICC is strewn with legal obstacles — it is viewed by many leaders of the incoming Republican-controlled Congress as the latest justification to reexamine the PA’s American funding.
Aaron David Miller, a former presidential advisor and a distinguished scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, believes that PA funding will be increasingly at risk in the Republican-controlled Congress that will be sworn in later this month.
“I think the odds of defunding are higher than they ever were before,” he told The Times of Israel. “A whole new reality has now been created and I suspect that they are going to close any loopholes that may exist regarding the funding. The world in Washington is about to change.”
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