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发帖数: 1853 | 1 By Pepe Escobar
"The intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." Everyone
remembers the Downing Street Memo, which unveiled the Bush/Blair "policy" in
the run-up to the 2003 bombing/invasion/occupation of Iraq. The "policy"
was to get rid of Saddam Hussein via a lightning war. The justification was
"terrorism" and (non-existent) weapons of mass destruction (WMD), which had
"disappeared", mounted in trucks, deep into Syria. Forget about intelligence
and facts.
The tragedy of MH17 - turned, incidentally, into a WMD - might be seen as a
warped rerun of imperial policy in Iraq. No need for a memo this time. The
"policy" of the Empire of Chaos is clear, and multi-pronged; diversify the "
pivot to Asia" by establishing a beachhead in Ukraine to sabotage trade
between Europe and Russia; expand the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to
Ukraine; break the Russia-China strategic partnership; prevent by all means
the trade/economic integration of Eurasia, from the Russia-Germany
partnership to the New Silk Roads converging from China to the Ruhr; keep
Europe under US hegemony.
The key reason why Russian President Vladimir Putin did not "invade"
Eastern Ukraine - as much as he's been enticed to by Washington/NATO - to
stop a US military adviser-facilitated running slaughter of civilians is
that he does not want to antagonize the European Union, Russia's top trading
partner.
Crucially, Washington's intervention in Kosovo invoking R2P -
Responsibility to Protect - was justified at the time for exactly the same
reasons a Russian intervention in Donetsk and Luhansk could be totally
justified now. Except that Moscow won't do it - because the Kremlin is
playing a very long game.
The MH17 tragedy may have been a horrendous mistake. But it may also have
been a desperate gambit by the Kiev minions of the Empire of Chaos. By now,
Russian intel may have already mastered the key facts. Washington's
predictable modus operandi was to shoot from the hip, igniting and in theory
winning the spin war, and doubling down by releasing the proverbial army of
"top officials" brimming with social media evidence. Moscow will take time
to build a meticulous case, and only then lay it out in detail.
Hegemony lost
The Big Picture spells out the Empire of Chaos elites as extremely uneasy.
Take Dr Zbigniew "The Grand Chessboard" Brzezinski, who as a former foreign
policy mentor has the ears of the increasingly dejected White House paperboy
. Dr Zbig was on CNN this Sunday challenging Europe's leaders to "stand up
to Putin". He wonders if "Europe wants to become a satellite" and worries
about "a moment of decisive significance for the future of the system - of
the world system".
And it's all Putin's fault, of course: "We're not starting the Cold War. He
[Putin] has started it. But he has gotten himself into a horrendous jam. I
strongly suspect that a lot of people in Russia, even not far away from him
who are worried that Russia's status in the world is dramatically being
undermined, that Russia's economically beginning to fail, that Russia's
threatened by the prospect of becoming a satellite to China, that Russia's
becoming self-isolated and discredited."
Obviously Dr Zbig is blissfully unaware of the finer points of the Russia-
China strategic partnership, as well as their concerted voice inside the
BRICS, the G-20 and myriad other mechanisms. His trademark Russophobia in
the end always gets the better of him. And to think that in his latest book,
Strategic Vision (2012), Dr Zbig was in favor of an enlarged "West"
annexing Turkey and Russia, with the Empire of Chaos posing as "promoter"
and "guarantor" of broader unity in the West, and a "balancer" and "
conciliator" between the major powers in the East. A quick look at the
record since 2012 - Libya, Syria, Ukraine, encirclement of China - reveals
the Empire of Chaos only as fomenter of, what else, chaos.
Now compare a fearful Dr Zbig with Immanuel Wallerstein - who was a huge
influence in my 2007 warped geopolitical travel book Globalistan. In this
piece (in Spanish) Wallerstein argues that the Empire of Chaos simply can't
accept its geopolitical decadence - and that's why it has become so
dangerous. Restoring its hegemony in the world-system has become the supreme
obsession; and that's where the whole "policy" that is an essential
background to the MH17 tragedy reveals Ukraine as the definitive do or die
battleground.
In Europe, everything hinges on Germany. Especially after the National
Security Agency scandal and its ramifications, the key debate raging in
Berlin is how to position itself geopolitically bypassing the US. And the
answer, as pressed by large swathes of German big business, lies in a
strategic partnership with Russia.
Show me the missile
Slowly, with no hype and no spin, the Russian military are starting to
deliver the goods. Here, courtesy of the Vineyard of The Saker blog, is
their key presentation so far. As The Saker put it, Russia had - and has - a
"20/20 radar vision", or full spectrum surveillance, on everything going on
in Ukraine. And so, arguably, does NATO. What the Russian Ministry of
Defense is saying is as important as the clues it is laying out for experts
to follow.
The damaged MH17 starboard jet engine suggests a shape charge from an air-
to-air missile - and not a Buk; that's consistent with the Russian Ministry
of Defense presentation graphically highlighting an Ukrainian SU-25
shadowing MH17. Increasingly, the Buk scenario - hysterically peddled by the
Empire of Chaos - is being discarded. Not to mention, again, that not a
single eyewitness saw the very graphic, thick missile trace that would have
been clearly visible had a Buk been used.
Way beyond the established fact of a Ukrainian SU-25 trailing MH17, plenty
of unanswered questions remain, some involving a murky security procedure at
Amsterdam's Schiphol airport - where security is operated by ICTS, an
Israeli company based in The Netherlands and founded by former officers from
the Israeli Shin Bet intel agency. And then there is the unexplained
presence of "foreign" advisors in Kiev's control tower.
As much as Bashar al-Assad in Syria had absolutely no motive to "gas his
own people" - as the hysterical narrative went at the time - the Eastern
Ukraine federalists have no motive to down a civilian airliner. And as much
as Washington doesn't give a damn about the current civilian slaughter in
Gaza, it doesn't give a damn about the MH17 civilian deaths; the one and
only obsession is to force Europeans to sanction Russia to death.
Translation: break up Europe-Russia commercial and geopolitical integration.
One week before the MH17 tragedy, the Russian Institute of Strategic
Studies was already sounding the alarm concerning the Empire of Chaos's "
policy" and its refusal to "adhere to the principles and norms of
international law and the rules and spirit of the existing system of
international relations".
Moscow, in building its case on the MH17 tragedy, will bide its time to
debunk Kiev's claims and maximize its own credibility. The game now moves to
the black boxes and the cockpit voice recorder. Still Ukraine will remain
the do or die battlefield - a chessboard drenched in blood.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/CEN-01-230714.html |
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