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SYRIA IN CRISIS
Obama invites Rouhani to join great game
 Direct US-Iranian talks are on after a three-decade freeze, with US President Barack Obama's disclosure of personal contact with Iran's new president, Hassan Rouhani, to bring Tehran into the matrix on Syria. Obama sees a major role for Iran in peace talks, while pushing Russia to the periphery on all but the destruction of its Damascus ally's chemical weapons cache. - M K Bhadrakumar
(Sep 16, '13)
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SPENGLER
US plays Monopoly,
Russia plays chess
As Russia's president carefully gauges how each Syria maneuver impacts on Moscow's spheres of interest, the US administration continues to view geopolitical real estate in isolation. The big prize is a restoration of Russia's great power status, and as American popular revulsion over foreign intervention intensifies, Vladimir Putin can simply wait as the clock runs down. - Spengler
(Sep 16, '13)
Bitter memories stir Tehran
Iran's bitter experience with chemical weapons in the 1980s highlights a common concern with Western powers over their alleged deployment by the Assad regime. Tehran likely views the Assad government - its closest ally in the regional "resistance front" against Israel - as a liability. Ultimately, neither it nor Washington want to see Sunni extremists grasp power.
- Alireza Nader
(Sep 16, '13)
SCO glimpses a new Eurasia in Bishkek
 Defiant sounds from a Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit last week in Kyrgyzstan over Syria's crisis and Iran's nuclear program underlined how the organization has evolved from an anti-terrorist coalition into a powerful counterpoint to Western international influence. If it can now forge energy links between South and Central Asia, the SCO can seriously threaten plans for a new American century.
- Brendan P O'Reilly
(Sep 16, '13)
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New role for India in Myanmar
A history of volatile relations, an ongoing border dispute and the mighty shadow of China - these loom large as India pursues a policy of full engagement with Myanmar. But as New Delhi pushes to expand its interests by putting private businesses at the forefront, India is uniquely positioned to benefit and help Myanmar overcome challenges amid the political transition now underway. - Sonu Trivedi
(Sep 16, '13)
Dark days in Pakistan's city of lights
Karachi, Pakistan's biggest city and port, was once a peaceful melting pot, but is now dangerously divided along ethnic, political and sectarian lines. Missteps in a security sweep of criminal cartels and terrorist cells provoked rioting last week, with critics saying that disconnect between civilian leaders and the security establishment doomed the clean-up attempt.
- Abubakar Siddique
(Sep 16, '13)
SPEAKING FREELY
Politics worsen Turkey's faultlines
Instead of responding with compromise to the national divisions made clear by a summer of anti-government protests, Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party continues to excuse all by pointing to its strong electoral mandate. Such a strategy will likely alienate all but pro-government supporters, yet the opposition can seemingly reply only with belligerent rhetoric.
- Ozan Serdaroglu
(Sep 16, '13)
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Putin eyes up Obama's Iran file
As even Fox News says Vladimir Putin  deserves a Nobel prize for the "deft diplomatic maneuvers" that handed his struggling American counterpart a Kremlin-embossed way out of the Syrian crisis, the Russian president has set his sights on a move that would up the ante for a gong: taking another dog-eared file out of Barack Obama's hands and turning it into a Moscow-backed peace plan for Iran.
- M K Bhadrakumar
(Sep 13, '13)
THE ROVING EYE
China stitches up
the (SCO) Silk Rd
Oh, to eavesrop at the weekend meeting of presidents Xi, Putin, and Rouhani as they craft a new multipolar international order. Before the private meeting at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit, China's Xi Jinping's lyrical praise has highlighted the strategic importance to the new order of Central Asian silk roads. Beneath the shine, Beijing is busy building a multifaceted network that is the stuff of threadbare American dreams.
- Pepe Escobar
(Sep 13, '13)
Cambodian deadlock at crucial juncture
Protests are to be staged in Phnom Penh following the official declaration that Prime Minister Hun Sen and his party are indeed winners of the July 28 general election, throwing out strong claims to the contrary by opposition leader Sam Rainsy's party. King Norodom Sihamoni's ''intervention" may result in a compromise before tensions reach a violent breaking point. - Sebastian Strangio
(Sep 13, '13)
Paving the way for the Road to Damascus
What Syria is really about involves water rights, pipelines, nation-state reconfigurations, militarized economies ... and on, and on. Somewhere well down the list are chemical weapons (perhaps), but these suit war-waging, propaganda-propounding elites. In the face of their criminal and deadly simplifications, it's high time we restored fear-mongering in America to its rightful place as a privilege that must be earned.
- Norman Ball
(Sep 13, '13)
And then there
was one
Even if global economic power has become, thanks to a rising China, more "multipolar", no actual state seriously contests the United States' role on the planet. It's taken a couple of decades since the Soviet Union collapsed even to be able to consider what that really means: delusional thinking of the first order as, from 9/11 to the Syrian crisis, Washington re-imagines the world. - Tom Engelhardt
(Sep 13, '13)
Ramallah and Gaza drift further apart
The cultural and economic distance between the geographically close Palestinian cities of Gaza and Ramallah underlines a fragmentation of national identity that has deepened since the Oslo accords. While the same issues affect Palestinians today as they did 20 years ago - from illegal settlements to US backing of Israel - unity around the cause is absent.
- Ramzy Baroud
(Sep 13, '13)
Russia's 'outsourced' jihadis come home
The prospect of battle-hardened fighters  coming home from Syria to join the intensifying insurgency in the Northern Caucasus is spurring Russian authorities to change tack. Where once the Kremlin turned a blind eye to the southern exodus, calls by "Caucasus Emirates" leader Dokku Umarov for jihadis to return cannot be ignored.
- Dmitry Shlapentokh
(Sep 13, '13)
 BOOK REVIEW
How oil poisoned
Gulf governance
Collaborative Colonialism: The Political Economy of Oil in the Persian Gulf by Hossein Askari
Given the "collaborative colonialism" relationship between Western powers and Arab countries, with callous, often corrupt, regimes backed militarily in return for secure oil supplies, Askari sees little motivation for Gulf countries to improve governance despite increasingly restive populations. His suggestion of intergenerational oil funds as an alternative reflects a compassion for the region that runs throughout the book.
- Robert E Looney
(Sep 13, '13)
9/11: Currency joins insider trades claims
The US Stock Exchange Commission denies, in the face of strong evidence, that advance knowledge helped insider traders to benefit from the 9/11 terror attacks. Now currency anomalies for the same period point to similar advance knowledge. - Lars Schall
(Sep 13, '13)
JOHN PILGER
Enemy whose name we dare not speak
Regardless of diplomatic attempts to delay  an attack on Syria, the United States' objective has nothing to do with chemical weapons and everything to do with wiping out the last independent states in the Middle East. Barack Obama accepted the war crimes of the Pentagon of his predecessor, George W Bush, and militarism camouflaged as democracy.
(Sep 12, '13)
THE ROVING EYE
Al-Qaeda's air force still on stand-by
It was 12 years ago today that, according to the official narrative, Arabs with minimal flying skills turned jets into missiles to attack the US homeland in the name of al-Qaeda. 9/11 elevated them to Ultimate Evil status. Twelve years on, the President of the United States wriggles on a Syrian hook, and the amorphous "al-CIAeda" eagerly awaits the US Air Force to clear the road to Damascus. - Pepe Escobar
(Sep 11, '13)
US STRIKES ON SYRIA
Kerry becomes first war casualty
 The strain of defending an indefensible brief to push for a US military strike on Syria is beginning to show as US Secretary of State John Kerry performs taxing diplomatic acrobats. As gaffe piles upon gaffe, the United States is being forced to consider the merits of Russia's proposal for Syria to hand over chemical weapons. It's time for a contorting President Barack Obama to step up to the bar.
- M K Bhadrakumar
(Sep 10, '13) |
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Syria's looming economic disaster
Syria's civil war has devastated the country's economy, wrecked its infrastructure and sent the local currency into freefall. No matter the war's outcome, absent funds, professionals and political will to do what is necessary for recovery, the outlook is bleak. - Artem Perminov
CREDIT BUBBLE BULLETIN
Myth-making at the Fed
Larry Summers' decision to withdraw from the race to head the Federal Reserve opens the door to a range of candidates, all primed to control inflation (and deflation) via the "money supply". That they believe they can do so is just one of the myths Ben Bernanke's successor will inherit.
Doug Noland looks at the previous week's events each Monday.
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Post-2014 Afghan
scenario gains clarity
For the first time a senior political personality in the region put a figure on the likely American troop presence in Afghanistan beyond 2014. No doubt, Mushahid Hussain Sayed, chairman of the Pakistani senate committee on defense, is an authoritative figure to do that. - M K Bhadrakumar
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[Re Cheers and jeers greet Obama's bear hug, September 12, 2013] Despite all the noise coming from opponents and proponents of President Obama's Syrian policy, certain inconvenient facts are indisputable. Fact one: before the bombs start falling, diplomacy must be the way forward not an afterthought.
Fariborz S Fatemi
USA
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