Pepe Escobar dosen't have the academic credentials of Paul Crag Roberts, he looks like a hippie, and he writes on serious subjects with grave-yard humor. However he has a brilliant mind and has educated himself in the current affairs and histories of the many countries in Asia and Europe that he has covered boots-on-the-ground for Asia Times. Regarding Ukraine, you will read that Pepe has the same disdain as PCR for the US role in fomenting the current "color" revolution but adds the additional facts that Ukraine was already an economic basket case and was about to be bailed out by Russia! So if Russia now decides to allow western Ukraine to secede from the Russian-speaking east, its impending economic crash and current domination by ruthless anti-semitic neo-nazi thugs will be inherited by the EU ...thanks to high ranking US idiots.

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OpEdNews Op Eds 3/1/2014 at 01:13:40

Carnival in Crimea

By Pepe Escobar (about the author)     Permalink

opednews.com

Source: Asia Times

A crowd of angry pro-Russian demonstrators, as well as police and media, accompany Ukrainian MP
Petro Poroshenko as he walks through the streets of the Crimean city of Simferopol.
(image by ALEXEY FURMAN / NBC NEWS)

Time waits for no one, but apparently will wait for Crimea. The speaker of the Crimean parliament, Vladimir Konstantinov, has confirmed there will be a referendum on greater autonomy from Ukraine on May 25. 

Until then, Crimea will be as hot and steamy as carnival in Rio -- because Crimea is all about Sevastopol, the port of call for the Russian Black Sea fleet.

If the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is a bull, this is the red flag to end all red flags. Even if you're deep in alcohol nirvana  dancin' your troubles away at carnival in Rio -- or New Orleans, or Venice, or Trinidad and Tobago -- your brain will have registered that NATO's ultimate wet dream is to command a Western puppet Ukrainian government to kick the Russian navy out of its base in Sevastopol. The negotiated lease applies until 2042. Threats and rumors of reneging it have already emerged.

The absolute majority of the Crimean peninsula is populated by Russian speakers. Very few Ukrainians live there. In 1954, it took only 15 minutes for Ukrainian Nikita Krushchev -- he of the banging shoe at the UN floor -- to give Crimea as a free gift to Ukraine (then part of the USSR). In Russia, Crimea is perceived as Russian. Nothing will change that fact. 

We're not facing a new Crimean War -- yet. Only up to a point. NATO's wet dream is one thing; it is quite another to pull it off -- as in ending the Russian fleet routinely leaving Sevastopol across the Black Sea through the Bosphorus and then reaching Tartus, Syria's Mediterranean port. So yes, this is as much about Syria as about Crimea. 

The new Ukrainian Orange, Tangerine, Campari, Aperol Spritz or Tequila Sunrise revolution seems so far to have answered NATO's prayers. But it's a long and winding road for NATO to reenact the 1850s and remix the original Crimean War. 

For the foreseeable future, we will be drowning in a white sea of platitudes. As in Pentagon supremo Chuck Hagel "warning" Russia to stay out of the turmoil, while NATO's defense ministers issue the requisite pile of statements that no one reads "showing support" for the new leadership, and corporate shills reassure the populace this is not a new Cold War.[1] 

Dance to my strategy, suckers

Where's H L Mencken when we need him? No one ever lost money underestimating the mendacity of the Pentagon/NATO/CIA/State Department system. Especially now, when Ukrainian policy seems to have been subcontracted by the Obama administration to the likes of neo-con Victoria "F**k the EU" Nuland, married to Dubya darling neo-con Robert Kagan. 

As Immanuel Wallerstein has already observed,[2] Nuland, Kagan and the neo-con gang are as much terrified of Russia "dominating" Ukraine as of a slowly emerging, and eventually quite possible, geopolitical alliance between Germany (with France as a junior partner) and Russia. That would mean the heart of the European Union forging a counter-power to the dwindling, increasingly wobbly American power. 

And as the current embodiment of wobbly American power, the Obama administration is really in a class by itself. They are now lost in their own, self-concocted "pivot" maze. Which pivot comes first? That one to China? But then we need to pivot to Iran first -- to end that Middle East distraction. Or maybe not. 

Take this latest sound bite by US Secretary of State John Kerry, on Iran: "We took the initiative and led the effort to try to figure out if before we go to war there actually might be a peaceful solution."

So suddenly it's not about a nuclear deal to be possibly attained in 2014 anymore; it's about "if before we go to war." It's about bombing a possible deal so the Empire may bomb a country -- again. Or maybe that's just a wet dream supplied by the Likudnik puppet masters. 

The great Michael Hudson has speculated that "multi-dimensional chess" might be "guiding US moves in the Ukraine." Not really. It's more like if we can't pivot to China -- yet -- and if the pivot to Iran is going to fail anyway (because we want it to), we might as well pivot somewhere else. Oh yes, that pesky place that prevented us from bombing Syria; it's called Russia. And all that under the profound guidance of Victoria "F**k the EU" Nuland. Where's a neo-Aristophanes to chronicle these marvels? 

And never forget US corporate media. That CNN hack has been Amanpouring lately about the Budapest Agreement -- stressing Russia should stay out of Ukraine. Well, visibly a horde of producers at ratings-falling-to-the-floor CNN have not even read the Budapest Agreement which, as University of Illinois professor Francis Boyle has noted, "also states that the US, Russia, Ukraine, and UK need to immediately jointly 'consult' -- meaning meet at least at the foreign minister level."

So who pays the bills?
 
The new prime minister of Ukraine, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, is -- what else -- a "technocratic reformer," code for Western puppet.[3] Ukraine is a (torn) basket case. The currency has fallen 20% since the start of 2014. Millions of unemployed Europeans know the European Union does not have the dough to bail out the country (perhaps Ukrainians could ask former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi for some tips). 

In Pipelineistan terms, Ukraine is an appendix to Russia; it's Russian gas that transits through Ukraine to European markets. And Ukrainian industry depends on the Russian market. 

Let's take a closer look at the new Aperol Spritz "revolutionary" wallet. Every month, the natural gas import bill from Russia is roughly US$1 billion. In January, the country also had to spend $1.1 billion in debt repayment. Foreign currency reserves plunged to $17.8 billion from $20.4 billion. Ukraine has a minimum debt repayment of no less than $17 billion in 2014. They even had to cancel a $2 billion eurobond issue late last week. 

Frankly, Russian President Vladimir Putin -- aka Vlad the Hammer -- must be grinning like the Cheshire cat. He could simply erase the significant 33% discount on natural gas imports he gave Kiev late last year. Rumor after rumor already state -- ominously -- that the Aperol Spritz revolutionaries won't have the cash to pay pensions and public servants' salaries. In June comes a monster payment to a bunch of creditors ($1 billion in debt will mature). Afterwards, it's bleaker than north Siberia in winter. 

The US offer of $1 billion is risible. And all this after the "'F**k the EU' strategy" of Victoria Nuland torpedoed an Ukrainian transitional government -- by the way, negotiated by the EU -- which might have kept the Russians on board, money-wise. 

Without Russia, Ukraine will totally depend on the West to pay all its bills, not to mention avoid being bankrupt. That amounts to a whopping $30 billion until the end of 2014. Unlike Egypt, they cannot dial the House of Saud's number and ask for some juicy petrodollars. That $15 billion loan from Russia promised recently could come in handy -- but Moscow must get something in return. 

The notion that Putin will order a military attack on the Ukraine should be billed to US corporate media's sub-zoological intellectual quotient. Vlad the Hammer just needs to watch the circus -- as in the West squabbling about where to get those billions to be squandered in a (torn) basket case. Or the International Monetary Fund churning out yet another dreadful "structural adjustment" to send Ukraine's population back to the Paleolithic. 

Crimea could even stage its own delayed carnival, voting not only for more autonomy but to leave the (torn) basket case altogether. In this case, Putin will even get Crimea for free -- Krushchev-style. Not a bad deal. Thanks to that oh so strategic "F**k the EU" Russian "pivot."  

Notes :
1.  US and Britain say Ukraine is not a battleground between East and West, Daily Telegraph, February 26, 2014. 
2.  See here. 
3.  Biden: U.S. Supports Ukraine's New Government, Voice of America, February 27, 2014. 

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Pepe Escobar is the roving correspondent for Asia Times. His regular column, "The Roving Eye," is widely read. He is an analyst for the online news channel Real News, the roving correspondent for Asia Times/Hong Kong, an analyst for RT and TomDispatch, and a frequent contributor to websites and radio shows ranging from the US to East Asia. He argues that the world has become fragmented into "stans" -- we are now living an intestinal war, an undeclared global civil war. He has published three books on geopolitics, including the spectacularly-titled "Globalistan: How the Globalised World Is Dissolving Into Liquid War". His latest book is "Obama Does Globalistan."

"WITH HER 1962 BOOK, SILENT SPRING, RACHAEL CARSON GOT DDT AND OTHER SYNTHETIC PESTICIDES BANNED AND SAVED BIRD LIFE. TODAY IT IS HUMANS WHO ARE DIRECTLY THREATENED BY TECHNOLOGIES DESIGNED TO EXTRACT THE MAXIMUM PROFIT AT THE LOWEST PRIVATE COST AND MAXIMUM SOCIAL COST FROM NATURAL RESOURCES." --Paul Craig Roberts APROPOS OF THIS, DO NOT MISS THE TWO PROCEEDING POSTS!

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Silent Spring For Us?

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June 19, 2012 | Original here

With her 1962 book, Silent Spring, Rachel Carson got DDT and other synthetic pesticides banned and saved bird life. Today it is humans who are directly threatened by technologies designed to extract the maximum profit at the lowest private cost and the maximum social cost from natural resources.

Once abundant clean water has become a scarce resource. Yet, in the US ground water and surface water are being polluted and made unusable by mountain top removal mining, fracking and other such “new technologies.” Ranchers in eastern Montana, for example, are being forced out of ranching by polluted water.

Offshore oil drilling and chemical farming run-off have destroyed fisheries in the Gulf of Mexico. In other parts of the world, explosives used to maximize short-run fish catches have destroyed coral reefs that sustained fish life (http://aquatek-california.com/coral-reef-destruction/). Deforestation for short-run agricultural production results in replacing bio-diverse rain forests with barren land. The “now generation” is leaving a resource-scarce planet to future generations.

Nuclear power plants are thoughtlessly built in earthquake and tsunami zones. Spent fuel rods are stored within the plants, a practice that adds their destructive potential to a catastrophic accident or act of nature.

The newest threat comes from genetically modified seeds that produce crops resistant to herbicides. The active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide is glyphosate, a toxic element that now contaminates groundwater in Spain and according to the US Geological Survey is now “commonly found in rain and streams in the Mississippi River Basin.”

In 2011 Don Huber, a plant pathologist and soil microbiologist, wrote to the US Secretary of Agriculture about the unexpected consequences of GMOs and the accompanying herbicides. He cited adverse effects on critical micronutrients, soil fertility, and the nutritional value of foods. He cited the impairment of metabolic pathways that prevents plants from accumulating and storing minerals, such as iron, manganese, and zinc, minerals important for liver function and immune response in animals and people. He cited toxic effects on the microorganisms in the soil that have disrupted nature’s balance and resulted in large increases in plant diseases. He cited livestock deaths from botulism, premature animal aging, and an increase in animal and human infertility.

 In an interview, Huber said that the power of agri-business has made it almost impossible to do research on GMOs and that regulatory agencies with the responsibility of protecting the public are dependent on the industry’s own self-serving studies and have no independent objective science on which to base a regulatory decision.

In short, in order to secure bumper crops for several years, we are destroying the fertility of soil, animal and human life.

Mankind has been destroying the world for a long time. In his fascinating book, 1493, Charles C. Mann describes the adverse effects on the environment, people, and civilizations of the globalism unleashed by Christopher Columbus. These include the international transfer of human and plant diseases, deforestation, destructions of peoples and empires, and the impact on distant China of Spanish new world silver.

Mann provides a history lesson in unintended and unexpected consequences resulting from the actions of elites and of those that elites dominated. The Chinese government fixed taxation in terms of the quantity of silver, but the importation of Spanish silver inflated prices (decreased the value of a given quantity of silver) and left the government without sufficient revenues.

A successor government or dynasty evicted Chinese from the coast in order to deprive pirates of resources. The displaced millions of people deforested mountainsides in order to sustain themselves with terrace agriculture. The result of deforestation was floods that not only washed away the terraces but also the crops in the fertile valleys below. Consequently, floods became one of China’s greatest challenges to its food supply.

The first slaves were conquered new world natives, but the “Indians” had no immunity to European diseases. The second wave of slaves were European whites, but the Europeans had no immunity to malaria and yellow fever. By default slavery fell to blacks, many of whom had immunity to malaria and yellow fever. Thus, a black workforce could survive the infected environments and newly created wetlands in which to raise sugarcane, wetlands that were ideal homes for malaria and yellow fever bearing mosquitoes. Mann, of course, is merely reporting, not justifying black or any slavery.

Mann points out that the lowly mosquito had a large impact on American history. The Mason-Dixon Line roughly splits the East Coast into two zones, the South in which disease carrying mosquitoes were an endemic threat, and the north in which malaria was not a threat. In the South, a person who survived childhood and grew into an adult had acquired immunity. Northerners had no such protection.

This had enormous consequences when Northern armies invaded the South. Mann reports that “disease killed twice as many Union troops as Confederate bullets or shells.” Between the summers of 1863 and 1864, the official annual infection rate for what was called “intermittent fevers” was 233 percent. The average northern soldier was felled more than twice. In one year 361,968 troops were infected. Most of the deaths from malaria were indirect. The disease so badly weakened the troops that they died from dysentery, measles or strep infection.

The mosquito was the South’s most powerful ally and so prolonged the war, despite the vast numerical superiority of the Union force, that Lincoln was forced to take action that he opposed and declare emancipation of slaves. Thus, Mann writes, it is not farfetched to conclude that blacks were freed by the very malaria mosquito that had caused blacks to be the preferred workforce.

Mann shows that long before the birth of capitalism, greed drove men to barbarous treatment of their fellows. He also shows that policies, whether driven by greed or by well-intended socio-political design, inevitably had unexpected consequences. His multi-faceted history well illustrates the old adage, “the well laid plans of mice and men often go awry.”

The old world’s colonization of the new world devastated new world peoples, but the new world bit back with the spread of the potato blight to Europe and Spanish and European inflation.

Environmental destruction resulted mainly from deforestation and soils washed away by consequent floods. Prior to modern technology and toxic chemicals, the planet survived mankind.

Today the prospects for the planet are different. The human population is vast compared to earlier times, putting far more pressure on resources, and the disastrous consequences of new technologies are unknown at the time that they are employed, when the focus is on the expected benefits. Moreover, these costs are external to the business, corporation, or economic unit. The costs are inflicted on the environment and on other humans and other animal life. The costs are not included when the business calculates its profit and return on its investment. The external costs of fracking, mountain top removal mining, chemical farming, and GMOs could exceed the value of the marketable products.

Businesses have no incentive to take these costs into account, because to do so reduces their profits and could indicate that the full cost of production exceeds the value of the output. Governments have proven to be largely ineffective in controlling external costs, because of the ability of private interests to influence the decisions of government. Even if one country were to confront these costs, other countries would take advantage of the situation. Companies that externalize some of their costs can undersell companies that internalize all of the costs of their production. Thus, the planet can be destroyed by the short-term profit and convenience interests of one generation.

The main lesson that emerges from Mann’s highly readable book is that people today have no better grasp of the consequences of their actions than superstitious and unscientific people centuries ago. Modern technological man is just as easily bamboozled by propaganda as ancient man was by superstition and ignorance.

If you doubt that the peoples of Western civilization live in an artificial reality created by propaganda, watch the documentary on psyops at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZiAV6fU2NM&feature=player_embedded#! The documentary does a good job despite wandering off into a couple of side issues on which it takes one-sided positions. It is a bit heavy on blaming the rich, and overlooks that Stalin, for example, had plenty of propaganda and wasn’t looking to make himself a billionaire. Not all the rich are against the people. Billionaires Roger Milliken and Sir James Goldsmith fought against jobs offshoring and globalism, which increases the powerlessness of the people vis-a-vis the elites. Both spoke for the people to no avail.

The documentary also blames the Constitution for limiting the participation of the mass of the people in governing themselves without acknowledging that the Constitution restricted the power of government and guaranteed civil liberty by making law a shield of the people instead of a weapon in the hands of the government. It is not the Constitution’s fault, or the fault of Founding Father James Madison, that the American people succumbed to propaganda by Bush and Obama and gave up their civil liberty in order to be “safe” from “Muslim terrorists.”

The documentary shows that propaganda is a form of mind control, and controlled minds are indeed the American predicament.

In 1962 Rachel Carson caught Monsanto off guard and thus gained an audience. Today she would not get the same attention. Ready and waiting psyops would go into operation to discredit her. I just read an article by an economist who wrote that economists have decided that environmentalism is a religion, in other words, an unscientific belief system that preaches “religious values.” This demonstrates what little importance economists attribute to external costs and the ability of externalized costs to destroy the productive power of the planet. Thus, the question, “silent spring for us?” is not merely rhetorical. It is real.

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Dr. Roberts’ latest book is Economies in Collapse: The Failure of Globalism, published in Europe, June, 2012. Seller information will be made available as soon as possible.

U.S. SABER RATTLING IN THE PERSIAN GULF HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ARRESTING IRAN’S INCIPIENT NUCLEAR WEAPONS PROGRAM AND EVERYTHING TO DO WITH THE GLOBAL BANKS COVERING UP THEIR RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE IMPENDING COLLAPSE OF THE WORLD FINANCIAL SYSTEM

Blogger’s Remarks: The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has found no evidence that Iran is actively working towards developing a nuclear weapon, much less evidence that they are on the verge of completing one. While it is true that Iran is performing low enrichment of uranium suitable for use in nuclear reactors, the IAEA has been actively monitoring their facilities on site. In February of 2009 the IAEA “…reported that Iran continued to enrich uranium contrary to the decisions of the Security Council and had produced over a ton of low enriched uranium.” However, converting low enriched uranium to highly-enriched weapons grade requires many repeated enrichment cycles, an operation that would have been easily recognized by IAEA inspectors …unless some of the low enriched material had been taken to a separate location unknown to the inspectors. Indeed several “news reports” based of hearsay evidence released by U.S. authorities allege that Iran is close to developing a nuclear weapon. But in response to these allegations, “IAEA spokesman (sic) Melissa Fleming asserted that the IAEA had no reason at all to believe that the estimates of low-enriched uranium produced by Iran were an intentional error, and that no nuclear material could be removed from the facility for further enrichment to make nuclear weapons without the agency's knowledge since the facility is subject to video surveillance and the nuclear material is kept under seal.” [This information was extracted from Wikipedia, which provided the following reference: Iran cooperates after understating atom stocks-IAEA" by Mark Heinrich, Reuters Sun February 22, 2009]

Therefore, I am in serious disagreement with the assertion by Edwin Black in the following video that there is any great urgency to stifle Iran’s unproven (and no more than incipient) quest to develop a nuclear weapon. On the other hand, I’m in complete agreement with Black’s reasoning that Washington’s saber rattling in the Persian Gulf will lead to catastrophic consequences for most of the western world (especially the U.S. 5th Fleet!) the moment an all-out attack is launched. The case for war currently being hyped by the mainstream stream media proves that the U.S. government is either run by idiots …or more likely by the global banks, who may reason that a market-crashing event of this magnitude would obscure the fact that their unregulated derivatives trading (amounting to almost $1 QUADRILLION!!!) will be the true reason why the western world’s financial markets will crash in 2012. Treasonous BASTARDS!!! (Read this to understand why.)  They almost pulled this off in 2007 but were foiled by members of the military who gave their lives to prevent it: see here.

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Original Here

‘US not ready for all-out conflict with Iran’

Published: 30 December, 2011, 00:10

Edited: 30 December, 2011, 11:42

AFP Photo / Adam Jan 

In the wake of Iran and the US threatening each other with navy might in the Persian Gulf, investigative writer Edwin Black says full military conflict would cripple the oil-dependent US – as well as the rest of the world.

After the International Atomic Energy Agency published a report on the Iranian nuclear program in November, Washington came up with fresh proposals to impose an embargo on Iranian oil. Iran responded with threats to block the Strait of Hormuz, the gateway for the Gulf countries’ crude exports to the rest of the world. With the two countries now showing off their naval capacities on either side of the strait, investigative writer Edwin Black tells RT that in embargos and sanctions Washington is seeking an alternative to a military strike.

America is indeed concerned that Iran may be on the fast track of developing nuclear weapons. But, Black says, the US government is unprepared for this conflict as this would mean Gulf oil supplies would be choked off.

“They do not have a plan for an oil interruption. There is a 57-day supply of unrefined oil that can be stretched to about a hundred days,” he told RT.

Iran would not limit itself to merely blocking the Strait of Hormuz, remarks Black. In the event of an all-out conflict, Tehran could target Saudi Arabia’s oil facilities, such as the desulphurization plant at Ab Tak, which processes 70 per cent of Saudi oil, and the Ras Tanura terminal, a major oil port and oil operations center for Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil company.

“If that is done, the world will be crippled,” he pointed out.

Saudi Arabia, which has declared it will increase oil exports if Iran shuts the Strait of Hormuz, would not fill in the black hole of the world’s oil demands, observes Edwin Black. The main oil transport routes include the same strait, which would cease to be available. Other transport options do not have enough capacity.

“There is a backdoor pipeline in Yanbo which has a capacity of about 1-5 million barrels per day, but this cannot make up for the 70 million barrels a day. And the Yanbo pipeline can be bombed as easily as Ras Tanura,” says Black.

“The outlook is indeed grim,” he concludes. Most of the world is petrol addicted with maybe Brazil only enjoying the option of using alternative sources of energy. But with the US determination not to let Iran have nuclear weapons, some kind of military conflict looks inevitable.

­'Iran and US playing lose-lose game'

Shirin Shafaie, from the School of Oriental and African Studies and Campaign against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran, says the crisis around Iran’s nuclear program requires an urgent diplomatic solution of mutual concessions.

“This is a lose-lose situation,” Shafaie told RT. “Everybody is going to lose in that – except some military industrial complexes in the West. But if there is a diplomatic solution, we have a very good nuclear deal between Iran, Turkey and Brazil, which could be revived. On this deal, Iran could have most of its uranium, which is required for fuel rods, enriched abroad. President Obama supported the deal in his letter to the leaders of Brazil and Turkey in 2010.”

Watch RT's full interview with Shirin Shafaie