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Earlier today, as Iranian police struggled to disperse protesters gathered outside the Saudi consulate in Mashhad, we said the following about the rapidly deteriorating situation:

If crude needed an excuse to rally, then surely this is it as it now appears that in addition to the fact that Riyadh and Tehran are squaring off in Syria (where Iran is present and the Saudis fight by proxy) and Yemen (where the Saudis are present and the Iranians fight by proxy), the two countries are on the verge of a historic diplomatic crisis which has the potential to stoke sectarian violence across the Muslim world.

Well sure enough, just hours later, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Al-Ahmad Al-Jubeir announced that Riyadh has cut diplomatic ties with Tehran. The Saudis have demanded the Iran mission leave the country within 48 hours. Riyadh also claims Iran did not attempt to stop protesters from storming the consulate. Here’s are the bullet points:

SAUDI TO FIGHT TERRORISM IN ALL OF ITS FORMS: AL-JUBEIR
IRAN HAS SPREAD CHAOS, SECTARIANISM IN REGION, MINISTER SAYS
AL-JUBEIR COMMENTS BROADCAST ON AL-EKHBARIYA SAUDI STATE TV
ALL OPTIONS ON TABLE TO PROTECT SAUDIS, FOREIGN MINISTER SAYS
IRAQ PROMISED TO PROTECT SAUDI DIPLOMATIC MISSIONS: AL-JUBEIR
SAUDI ARABIA DETERMINED NOT TO ALLOW IRAN TO UNDERMINE SAUDI SECURITY-FOREIGN MINISTER

For those who might have missed it, the situation began to unravel on Saturday after Riyadh said it had executed prominent Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr along with 46 other prisoners. Protesters poured into the streets from Bahrain to Pakistan and before the night was done, the Saudi embassy in Tehran was in flames.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Arming Dictators: An American Tradition

November 12, 2015

Arming Dictators: An American Tradition

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Recently the Obama administration announced another military aid package for Pakistan: eight F-16 fighter jets. Once again considerations of human rights and democratic values have been sacrificed to strategic calculations. Recall, the robust figures for US military assistance to Pakistan: more than $20 billion in weapons, training, and other activities between FY2002 and FY2015, making Pakistan the 16^th ranking recipient of US arms. And that amount does not include drone strikes.

The contrast between Obama the engager and Obama the warrior is striking. US arms exports to authoritarian regimes such as Pakistan’s, just one element of military aid, continue to rise even as we celebrate the President’s initiatives with Iran and Cuba. From 2009 to 2014, I count $12.5 billion in arms exports to eight other authoritarian regimes: Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. That figure is nearly a quarter of all US military exports in those years, which total $50.7 billion.

There is no evidence that those weapons, or military assistance as a whole, have moved authoritarian governments toward greater respect for human rights, social justice, accountable government, or environmental protection. Even their support of US policy on terrorism has been tentative, and in Pakistan’s case, two-faced, since its government accepts US drone strikes while its intelligence apparatus coddles al-Qaeda and the Taliban. On the other hand, there is plenty of evidence that military aid has abetted repression, official corruption, and strong-arm rule. Pakistan has thumbed its nose at US aid even more, expanding its nuclear-weapon arsenal to more than 100—an arsenal that heightens tension with India and, because it now consists of tactical nukes, is especially vulnerable to theft by terrorist groups. On top of that, we now have word that Pakistan has its own drones, probably built with Chinese help, adding to South Asia’s instability.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Powerful Earthquake Hits Afghanistan, Pakistan, India

October 26, 2015

Powerful Earthquake Hits Afghanistan, Pakistan, India

Things are “shifting” in the Hindu Kush – literally.

Just months after back-to-back quakes hit Nepal killing thousands, a powerful earthquake shook northeast Afghanistan on Monday. Tremors were felt in Pakistan and India as well.

The quake, which the USGS says measured 7.5, “centered 82 km (51 miles) southeast of Feyzabad in a remote area of Afghanistan in the Hindu Kush mountain range,” Reuters reports.

Here’s more from Bloomberg:

USGS sited the earthquake as being 42 miles west-northwest of Chitral, Pakistan. Chitral is located around 100 miles north of the city of Peshawar.

Pakistan’s GEO TV reported people leaving their homes in Peshawar, Abbottabad and the capital Islamabad, with no reports of casualties so far.

Pakistan’s AAJ TV said at least one building collapsed in Peshawar.

Residents of Delhi said tremors were felt in the Indian capital at 2:44 p.m. local time. The India Meteorological Department said the earthquake was at a depth of 118 miles (190km).

And here are a few first-hand accounts gathered by NBC:

“I just felt it go up and down as if I was on a New York subway on a really rough ride. Everything was moving up and down. My lunch on the table was literally just popping up and down.”

“There was no was way to go downstairs so we immediately climbed to the rooftop. It seemed the entire building is going to collapse. Women and children were crying and traffic was stopped on roads.”

More color from CBS:

“There are reports of casualties and destruction” in some remote districts of Badakhshan, said the provincial director of the national disaster management authority, Abdullah Humayoon Dehqan.

Power was cut across much of the Afghan capital, where tremors were felt for around 45 seconds. Houses shook, walls cracked and cars rolled in the street. Officials in the capital could not be immediately reached as telephones appeared to be cut across the country.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Read This Before the Media Uses a Drowned Refugee Boy to Start Another War

September 8, 2015

Read This Before the Media Uses a Drowned Refugee Boy to Start Another War

A baby boy turned to flotsam. Washed up on the shore, face down in the mud. His family, refugees from Syria’s civil war, had tried to reach Greece, but their over-crowded raft overturned in the Mediterranean Sea and he drowned along with his brother and mother. The viral image of 3-year-old Aylan Kurdi’s lifeless little body on a Turkish beach has shaken the conscience of the West and wrenched America’s attention to the refugee crisis now rocking Europe.

Newsflash to the oblivious citizenry of the power-projecting “free world”: this is what war looks like. This times ten million. That which is mere “foreign policy” to you and your government is desperation and death to those on the receiving end of it.

Children just as innocent and precious as Aylan are being driven into the sea in Libya, incinerated by drone in Pakistan, or starved to death in Yemen all the time, and it is all on your dime. And every single instance creates a sight just as achingly forlorn and horrifically tragic as the one above, even if it isn’t photographed and seen by millions.

Aylan drowned in the arms of his father, who had been desperately trying to keep his head above water. The prelude to the disaster probably looked something like this photo of another Syrian refugee family.

It actually shows an arrival and not a departure. Still, especially for anyone with young children, the picture is a punch in the gut. It only takes a shred of empathy to instantly imagine how the father must feel. Overwhelmed and near the end of his rope. His daughter’s arms wrapped around his neck. His son’s face buried in his chest. Both looking to him for protection and provision he ultimately might not be able to give. It is no wonder this visceral photograph has also gone viral.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Reshuffling Eurasia’s Energy Deck — Iran, China and Pipelineistan

August 4, 2015

Reshuffling Eurasia’s Energy Deck — Iran, China and Pipelineistan

Pipelineistan – the prime Eurasian energy chessboard — never sleeps. Recently, it’s Russia that has scored big on all fronts; two monster gas deals sealed with China last year; the launch of Turk Stream replacing South Stream; and the doubling of Nord Stream to Germany.

Now, with the possibility of sanctions on Iran finally vanishing by late 2015/early 2016, all elements will be in place for the revival of one of Pipelineistan’s most spectacular soap operas, which I have been following for years; the competition between the IP (Iran-Pakistan) and TAPI (Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India) gas pipelines.

The $7.5-billion IP had hit a wall for years now – a casualty of hardcore geopolitical power play. IP was initially IPI – connected to India; both India and Pakistan badly need Iranian energy. And yet relentless pressure from successive Bush and Obama administrations scared India out of the project. And then sanctions stalled it for good.

Now, Pakistan’s Minister of Petroleum and Natural Resources Shahid Khaqan Abbasi swears IP is a go. The Iranian stretch of the 1,800-kilometer pipeline has already been built. IP originates in the massive South Pars gas fields – the largest in the world – and ends in the Pakistani city of Nawabshah, close to Karachi. The geopolitical significance of this steel umbilical cord linking Iran and Pakistan couldn’t be more graphic.

Enter – who else? – China. Chinese construction companies already started working on the stretch between Nawabshah and the key strategic port of Gwadar, close to the Iranian border.

China is financing the Pakistani stretch of IP. And for a very serious reason; IP, for which Gwadar is a key hub, is essential in a much larger long game; the $46 billion China-Pakistan economic corridor, which will ultimately link Xinjiang to the Persian Gulf via Pakistan. Yes, once again, we’re right into New Silk Road(s) territory.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

ISIS Planning US Nuclear Attack In Next 12 Months: Report

May 25, 2015

ISIS Planning US Nuclear Attack In Next 12 Months: Report

Three weeks after the first supposed attack by Islamic State supporters in the US, in which two ISIS “soldiers” wounded a security guard before they were killed in Garland, Texas, the time has come to raise the fear stakes.

In an article posted in the terrorist group’s English-language online magazine Dabiq (which as can be see below seems to have gotten its design cues straight from Madison Avenue and is just missing glossy pages filled with ‘scratch and sniff’ perfume ads ) ISIS claimed that it has enough money to buy a nuclear weapon from Pakistan and “carry out an attack inside the United States next year.”

In the article, the ISIS columnist said the weapon could be smuggled into the United States via its southern border with Mexico.

Curiously, the author of the piece is John Cantlie, a British photojournalist who was abducted by ISIS in 2012 and has been held hostage by the organization ever since; he has appeared in several videos since his kidnapping and criticized Western powers.

John Cantlie

As the Telegraph notes, “Mr Cantlie, whose fellow journalist hostages have all either been released or beheaded, has appeared in the group’s propaganda videos and written previous pieces. In his latest work, presumed to be written under pressure but in his hall-mark style combining hyperbole, metaphor and sarcasm, he says that President Obama’s policies for containing Isil have demonstrably failed and increased the risk to America.”

Cantlie describes the following “hypothetical” scenario in Dabiq :

Let me throw a hypothetical operation onto the table. The Islamic State has billions of dollars in the bank, so they call on their wil?yah in Pakistan to purchase a nuclear device through weapons dealers with links to corrupt officials in the region.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How the Saudis Wag the Dog

May 22, 2015

How the Saudis Wag the Dog

Even Without a Bomb or a Lobby

American diplomacy favors (majority) white, English-speaking countries (the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) and non-Hispanic European settler states (Canada, Australia and New Zealand again, but also Apartheid South Africa and, of course, Israel).

South Africa eventually fell out of favor, thanks in part to boycott, divestment and sanctions efforts in Western countries.

Similar efforts now underway directed towards Israel are beginning to change public opinion too; though elite opinion, in the United States and the other settler states especially, has, so far, hardly budged.

Thanks to its lobby and its strategic location, Israel is still, for America, the most favored nation of all.

Western European countries are also favored, though to a lesser extent – thanks, again, to cultural affinities and historical ties. Those that sent large numbers of emigrants to North America generally have a leg up. France didn’t send many emigrants, but it is also favored, at least some of the time, for philosophical and historical affinities dating back to the American and French Revolutions.

With Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf monarchies, there are no deep or longstanding cultural and historical ties; quite the contrary. Nevertheless, those nations, Saudi Arabia especially, receive favored treatment too.

The events surrounding the death of Osama bin Laden provide a window into this strange and revealing state of affairs.

* * *

When Barack Obama lied about how Navy Seals murdered bin Laden, he blew apart a carefully constructed cover story concocted in Washington and Islamabad intended to conceal the role of Pakistani intelligence and the Pakistani military.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Seymour Hersh: Obama’s Entire Account Of bin Laden’s Death Is One Big Lie; This Is What Really Happened

May 11, 2015

Seymour Hersh: Obama’s Entire Account Of bin Laden’s Death Is One Big Lie; This Is What Really Happened

The last time famed US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh made news in the global media was with his massive, 5000-word expose from April of 2014 “The Red Line and the Rat Line” revealing the true motives behind the Syrian near-war of 2013 including what we had said from the very beginning: the very professionally created YouTube clips showing the consequences of what was said to have been an Assad poison gas attack, were nothing but a fake (subsequent reports identified the propaganda source as Rami Abdul Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, whose entire operation has been funded by an unidentified European country.)

Fast forward to today when in a report whose word count doubles his previous record for the London Review of Books, Hersh targets a topic near and dear to the hearts of many Americans: the story of the capture and death of Osama bin Laden. Or rather the completely false and, according to Hersh, fabricated story, one made up entirely by the US president and spoon fed for popular consumption with the aid of a Hollywood blockbuster whose entire plot line is, if Hersh is correct, one big lie as well.

In a nutshell, and one really needs to read Hersh’s magnum opus as no amount of abbreviation will do it justice, Hersh accuses Obama of not only taking credit for the al Qaeda leader’s death, but fabricating the story that resulted from what has been widely reported to have been a Navy seal incursion into bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound in Pakistan. As a result the military and intelligence communities were forced to scramble and then corroborate the president’s version of events.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Beyond Iran And Pakistan: 7 Nuclear Wannabes

March 26, 2015

Beyond Iran And Pakistan: 7 Nuclear Wannabes

The meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex in 2011 following the Japanese tsunami forced a major rethink of nuclear power as a safe form of electricity generation. As radiation from the plant spewed into the ocean and nearby communities following an immediate evacuation, the world reaction was swift and dramatic. Within days the spot price of uranium collapsed. Japan ordered the shutdown and maintenance of all its existing reactors. Germany, a major consumer of nuclear power, permanently closed 8 of its 17 nuclear reactors; other European countries shelved their nuclear plans.

While fear still lingers of a nuclear catastrophe on a similar scale as Fukushima, or earlier accidents such as Three Mile Island or Chernobyl, that hasn’t stopped a slew of countries from moving forward on plans to develop nuclear plants as an adjunct to existing power sources like hydro, coal, natural gas and good ol’ oil.

Especially in developing countries that lack access to fossil fuels, nuclear is seen as a viable and cost-effective form of baseload power.

Of course, these plans immediately arouse suspicions that nuclear power is being used as a ruse for developing nuclear weapons. The most obvious example is Iran, which already operates a large nuclear reactor – Bushehr 1 – but continues to engage in uranium enrichment despite a requirement by the United Nations Security Council to suspend such activities. Iran’s nuclear ambitions have resulted in U.S.-led sanctions and raised the opprobrium of Israel, which in turn has found itself at odds with the United States, particularly the Obama Administration, which seeks an accommodation with Iran.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Starved for Energy, Pakistan Braces for a Water Crisis

February 13, 2015

Starved for Energy, Pakistan Braces for a Water Crisis

Energy-starved Pakistanis, their economy battered by chronic fuel and electricity shortages, may soon have to contend with a new resource crisis: major water shortages, the Pakistani government warned this week.

A combination of global climate change and local waste and mismanagement have led to an alarmingly rapid depletion of Pakistan’s water supply, said the minister for water and energy, Khawaja Muhammad Asif.

“Under the present situation, in the next six to seven years, Pakistan can be a water-starved country,” Mr. Asif said in an interview, echoing a warning that he first issued at a news conference in Lahore this week.

The prospect of a major water crisis in Pakistan, even if several years distant, offers a stark reminder of a growing challenge in other poor and densely populated countries that are vulnerable to global climate change.

In Pakistan, it poses a further challenge to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, whose government has come under sharp criticism for failing to end the country’s electricity crisis. In some rural areas, heavy rationing has meant that as little as four hours of electricity a day is available.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

India-Pakistan border clashes turn deadly – Central & South Asia – Al Jazeera English

January 4, 2015

India-Pakistan border clashes turn deadly – Central & South Asia – Al Jazeera English.

Indian and Pakistani troops have traded fire along their tense border, killing four people including a teenage girl and forcing hundreds to flee their homes in the latest round of deadly clashes.

The violence on Saturday came a day after India said a Pakistani fishing crew suspected of involvement in “illicit” activities blew up their boat while trying to evade capture at the hands of the Indian navy.

Tension between the two neighbours escalated on Wednesday when an Indian border guard and two Pakistani paramilitary soldiers were killed during another exchange of fire.

The shelling intensified on Saturday, necessitating “evacuation of hundreds of people” living in the border areas of Samba and Hiranagar, said Rajesh Kumar, a senior police official in Indian-controlled Kashmir.

An Indian woman was killed and 10 others were wounded, Kumar said.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Clashes erupt in Pakistan ‘shut down’ protest – Central & South Asia – Al Jazeera English

December 8, 2014

Clashes erupt in Pakistan ‘shut down’ protest – Central & South Asia – Al Jazeera English.

Police have clashed with hundreds of protesters from the opposition Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, who were attempting to shut down the eastern city of Faisalabad as part of its leader Imran Khan’s movement against the federal government.

Police used water cannons, wooden batons and tear gas on Monday against protesters in several areas, including the central Millat Chowk area, local news television footage showed.

The situation remains tense, as supporters of the PTI, also known as the Movement for Justice party, refuse to back down.

Protesters conducted sit-ins at main intersections in the city, a major economic hub, and shouted slogans against the Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) government.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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