Pepe Escobar – EXCLUSIVE: The Secret Behind the Next Global Crash

Yet there will be. And the stage is already set for it. Selected Persian Gulf traders, and that includes Westerners working in the Gulf confirm that Saudi Arabia is unloading at least $1 trillion in securities and crashing global markets under orders from the Masters of the Universe – those above the lame presidency of Barack Obama. Those were the days when the House of Saud would as much as flirt with such …

John W. Whitehead – The Right To Tell The Government To Go to Hell: Free Speech In An Age Of Government Bullies, Corporate Censors And Compliant Citizens

Free speech is not for the faint of heart. Nor is it for those who are easily offended, readily intimidated or who need everything wrapped in a neat and tidy bow. Free speech is often messy, foul-mouthed, obscene, intolerant, undignified, insensitive, cantankerous, bawdy and volatile. Unfortunately, our appreciation for a robust freedom of speech has worn thin over the years. …

Pepe ESCOBAR – Planet of Fear

Facing the gleaming Doha skyline on a Persian Gulf winter carries the merit of a panoramic perspective. Most nations around it are going into melt down and the remaining ones – with the exception of Iran – exhibit neither the political leadership nor the economic and institutional infrastructure to do anything other than to meekly accept whatever tsunami hits their shores. They …

Daniel Lazare – Will Reckless Saudis Seek War with Iran?

Now that Saudi Arabia has severed diplomatic ties with Iran and reportedly bombed Iran’s embassy in Yemen, the big question is whether the Saudis are desperate and unhinged enough to launch an attack across the Persian Gulf. While Saudi leaders insist they have no such intent, there are mounting pressures pushing them in that direction. The ruling family is under unprecedented strain. Its …

Patrick L. Smith – He’s made the Middle East worse: Let’s be honest, Obama bears as much responsibility for this mess as predecessors who shaped them

It is all there now for us to see. Decades of cynical, poorly devised policy in the Middle East, vacant of any principle our indispensable nation purports to advance, return as we speak to bite our president and his foreign policy cliques on their backsides. The shambles that now ensues serves them right, absolutely.Advertisement With the sudden ignition of smoldering …

Robert Fisk – Saudi Arabia’s Mad Head-Choppers

Saudi Arabia’s binge of head-choppings – 47 in all, including the learned Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr Baqr al-Nimr, followed by a Koranic justification for the executions – was worthy of Isis. Perhaps that was the point. For this extraordinary bloodbath in the land of the Sunni Muslim al-Saud monarchy – clearly intended to infuriate the Iranians and the entire Shia …

Robert Parry – How Obama Enables Atrocities

As the New Year dawns, the neocons and their liberal interventionist sidekicks remain firmly in control of Official Washington’s storylines – on Syria, Russia and elsewhere – even as their policies continue to wreak havoc across the Mideast and threaten the stability of Europe and indeed the future of civilization. The latest proof of this dangerous reality came when Saudi …

Vanessa Beeley – Boko Haram: Another Al Qaeda Terrorist Entity Used to Justify US Military Intervention in Nigeria

Reason with this: Who is carrying out senseless killings in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon? They are the same people carrying out attacks here, and we know them. We cannot be cowed” – Sheikh Ebrahim Zakzaky According to the Nigerian Government forces, a traffic infringement justifies the massacre of over 1000 Muslims who were performing the religious ceremony of …

Ira Chernus – America’s Reckless War Against Evil

Oh, no! Not another American war against evil! This time, it’s the Islamic State (IS). After the attacks in Paris, Barack Obama, spokesman-in-chief for the United States of America, called that crew “the face of evil.” Shades of George W. Bush. The “evildoers” are back. And from every mountaintop, it seems, America now rings with calls to ramp up its …

Andrew Bacevich – A War the West Cannot Win

President Francois Hollande’s response to Friday’s vicious terrorist attacks in France, attributed to the Islamic State, was immediate and uncompromising. “We are going to lead a war which will be pitiless,” he vowed. Whether France itself possesses the will or the capacity to undertake such a war is another matter. So too is the question of whether further war can …