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There are times when the twilight of the American century takes on a quality of surreal absurdity I can only compare to French existentialist theater or the better productions of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, and this is one of them. Over the weekend, in response to a chemical-weapons incident in Syria that may or may not have happened—governments on all sides are making strident claims, but nobody’s offering evidence either way—US, British, and French military units launched more than a hundred state-of-the-art cruise missiles at three Syrian targets that may or may not have had anything to do with chemical weapons, damaging a few buildings and inflicting injuries on three people.

James Howard Kunstler, in a recent and appropriately blistering essay, termed this “kabuki warfare.” It’s an apt term, though I confess the situation makes me think rather more of John Cleese and the Ministry of Silly (Bombing) Runs, or perhaps a play by Camus in which Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin sit around talking while they wait for the endlessly delayed arrival of an American cruise missile named Godot. What, exactly, was accomplished by Donald Trump’s red-faced bluster, the heavily rehearsed outrage and cringing subservience of our European lapdogs-cum-allies, and all those colorful photo ops of missiles blasting off?

To be sure, there’s nothing even remotely new about the latest skit from this transatlantic flying circus. For most of a decade now the US military has been carrying out a similar sort of warfare against jihadi militias in Syria and Iraq, pretending to fight Islamic State in much the same way a mime pretends to be trapped in a phone booth—a habit pointed up by the way that the Russian military, which has a less ineffectual notion of warfare, pushed Islamic State into prompt collapse by having their cruise missiles and bombs actually hit something.

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West v Russia

April 18, 2018

West v Russia

When government attempt to persuade the people to their side, the rhetoric becomes so blatant it is stunning that so many people just believe what they are told. The typical tactic is always to paint your enemy as some “monster” as Trump just called Assad. You must always demean an opponent and the simple fact that they engage in that tactic exposes the sad fact that this is a deliberate manipulation. When it comes to the Russian President Vladimir Putin, the West portrays him as a dictator, strongman, bad person, and some sort of crazed Russian patriot who wants to dominate the world somehow. All this rhetoric is what we call phase ONE, laying the seeds to justify engaging in war.

Here is a Japanese War poster demonizing Roosevelt. You will find that every side issues the same propaganda. This is indeed Phase ONE. You must get the people on your side to support the war effort. To do so, you must absolutely demonize your opponent.

Ther point is not to defend Putin and try to show what is exaggerated propaganda. This is simply a standard method of raising support among your people. neither going to dispute nor support that characterization. Despite the West’s portrayal that Putin is some sort of “strongman” seeking to dominate the world, Putin’s popularity at home has only been increased. The sanctions the West imposed on Russia are his badge of honor just as the excessive reparation payments from people into the open arms of Hitler.

The trade sanctions against China are doing the same thing. They create the reverse image that America is the evil power.

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Putin Warns Of Global “Chaos” If West Hits Syria Again

April 16, 2018

Putin Warns Of Global “Chaos” If West Hits Syria Again

Shortly after US Ambassador Nikki Haley revealed that Russia would be slapped with a third round of sanctions on Monday for “enabling the Syrian government’s use of chemical weapons in civil war,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said that further attacks on Syria by Western forces, “in violation of the U.N. Charter,” would send international relations into “chaos.”

In a telephone conversation with his Iranian counterpart, Hassan Rouhani, Putin and Rouhani agreed that the Western strikes had damaged the chances of achieving a political resolution in the seven-year Syria conflict, according to a Kremlin statement. –Reuters

The US-led strike was denounced by Putin as an “act of aggression,” and a “war crime” by Iran’s Supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei.

“Vladimir Putin, in particular, stressed that if such actions committed in violation of the U.N. Charter continue, then it will inevitably lead to chaos in international relations,” the Kremlin statement said.

The United States, France and Britain launched over 103 missiles on Saturday night at three Syrian facilities in retaliation for a suspected poison gas attack in the city of Douma seven days prior. While the West has conclusively blamed the Assad government for the attack, serious questions have arisen over everything from Assad’s motive, the type of nerve agent used, to the credibility of the first responders – an NGO known as the White Helmets who have a reputation for staging evidence.

France cited social media posts and YouTube evidence as justification for their participation in the strikes.

The French services analysed the testimonies, photos and videos that spontaneously appeared on specialized websites, in the press and on social media in the hours and days following the attack.

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Do U.S. Oligarchs Exist? Not in Mainstream Media

April 15, 2018

Do U.S. Oligarchs Exist? Not in Mainstream Media

We hear incessantly about Russian oligarchs. But do they also exist in the United States? You wouldn’t know it by watching cable news, says Jeff Cohen.

TV news shows are good at getting viewers riled up. Day and night, I hear the anchors on CNN and MSNBC getting us in a frenzy about the schemes of this or that “Russian oligarch with links to the Kremlin.” I’ve heard that phrase incessantly in recent weeks

Plenty of others have heard the “Russian oligarch” phrase. Merriam-Webster.com reported that “oligarch” was one of its most searched-for words on April 5 “following reports that Robert Mueller had questioned Russian businessmen to whom this descriptor applies.”

Webster’s defines oligarchy as a “government in which a small group exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes.” Dictionary.com calls it “a form of government in which all power is vested in a few persons or in a dominant class or clique; government by the few.” So an oligarch is not just a rich person but one who has influence or control over government, rather than directly ruling, as in a plutocracy.

One phrase I haven’t heard from any of the purportedly progressive hosts on MSNBC is: “A U.S. oligarch with links to Washington.”

That avoidance is revealing when one considers an indisputable fact: U.S. oligarchs have done far more to undermine U.S. democracy than any Russian.

When Vladimir Putin first became Russian president in the early 2000s he made a deal with the oligarchs: he would leave them alone if they kept their noses out of politics. Hence they would revert to just being filthy rich. The oligarchs who remained are presumably loyal to Putin, or at least don’t try to dominate him, the way some powerfully rich Americans seek to influence the U.S. government away from what it might otherwise do.

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

Russia’s Real Endgame

April 13, 2018

Russia’s Real Endgame

Russia’s Putin has never taken his eye off the ball. His ambition is not global hegemony or European conquest. Putin seeks what Russia has always sought: regional hegemony and a set of buffer states in eastern Europe and central Asia that can add to Russia’s strategic depth.

In Syria, Russia has the warm water port of Tartus — which is important when you consider that most Russian ports are ice-bound for months of the year.

It is strategic depth — the capacity to suffer massive invasions and still survive due to an ability to retreat to a core position and stretch enemy supply lines — that enabled Russia to defeat both Napoleon and Hitler. Putin also wants the modicum of respect that would normally accompany that geostrategic goal.

Understanding Putin is not much more complicated than that.

In the twenty-first century, a Russian sphere of influence is not achieved by conquest or subordination in the old Imperial or Communist style. It is achieved by close financial ties, direct foreign investment, free trade zones, treaties, security alliances, and a network of associations that resemble earlier versions of the EU

Russian military intervention in Crimea and eastern Ukraine is best understood not as a Russian initiative, but as a Russian reaction. It was a response to U.S. and U.K. efforts to attack Russia by pushing aggressively and prematurely for Ukraine membership in NATO. This was done by deposing a Putin ally in Kiev in early 2014.

This is not to justify Russia’s actions, merely to put them in a proper context. The time to peel off Ukraine for NATO was 1999, not 2014.

The Russian-Ukraine situation is a subset of the broader U.S.-Russian relationship. Here, the opposition comes not just from domestic opponents but from the globalist elite.

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

The Edge of the Abyss in Syria

April 12, 2018

The Edge of the Abyss in Syria

SYRIAN-WAR

For the first time since he is in office, the US President Donald Trump has launched a clear threat in the direction of his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin saying “he will pay a price”. This menace is related to the claim that the Syrian army had launched a chemical attack against the city of Duma, in eastern Ghouta, the last stronghold of Saudi Arabia’s proxies close to Damascus.

Trump is maybe thinking of bombing the Syrian Army positions spread throughout the Syrian geography, or perhaps even the Al-Muhajereen President’s palace in Damascus- of course, without necessarily saying when and where his army will strike.

On the other side, Russia is saying it won’t stand still and will respond to any threat against its soldiers. Indeed, Russian officers are deployed in every single Syrian unit on the ground and in command and control headquarters in the Levant, coordinating and participating in attacks against jihadists since September 2015. Therefore, it is almost certain that any direct hit against the Syrian Army will cause Russian casualties.

Such an act of war may trigger a Russian response by President Putin who will certainly not want to look weak in front of Russian politicians, the Russian military and in front of his own people. Russia has just returned to the international arena, not only as a country in possession of nuclear weapons, but also as a country trying to create a world balance and put an end to the US unilateral dominance that Washington enjoyed since the Perestroika in 1991.

But how could the US benefit from military action in Syria?

The mainstream media, the think tank generously financed and nourished by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Bahrein, Trump’s team and the intelligence community- are all asking the US President to go to war in Syria to change the regime of President Bashar al-Assad and replace it with “freedom fighters” that the same Donald Trump is very familiar with and has specifically criticised.

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“Events Today Could Lead To The Last War In The History Of Mankind”, Veteran Putin General Warns

April 8, 2018

“Events Today Could Lead To The Last War In The History Of Mankind”, Veteran Putin General Warns

The fallout from the Salisbury nerve agent attack reminds us of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which was the most immediate catalyst – of many parallel narrative and sequences of events – that ultimately resulted in World War I. We are not alone in this reasoning, as one high-level retired Russian general warns the Salisbury poisoning could lead to the “last war in the history of mankind.”

Ret. Lieutenant-General Evgeny Buzhinsky — who served in the Russian Armed Forces for more than forty years — said relations between Russia and Washington could become “worse” than the climax of the Cold War and “end up in a very, very bad outcome” following the nerve gas attack in the United Kingdom.

More than 150 Russian diplomats have been expelled from 25 countries — including 23 from the United Kingdom since western nations accused Russia of being the sole actor responsible for using deadly chemical weapons on Sergei Skripal and his daughter in their Salisbury home.

Buzhinsky, who is now the senior vice president of the Russian Center for Policy Studies (PIR Center), told BBC Radio Today program:

“Please, when you say the world, you mean EU and United States and some other countries … you see it’s a cold war, it’s worse than the Cold War because if the situation will develop in the way this (is) now, I’m afraid that it will end up in a very, very bad outcome.”

Nicholas Robinson, a British presenter on the BBC’s Today program pressed Buzhinsky on what he meant by “worse than a cold war,” to which the Ret. Russian Lieutenant-General responded with this bombshell: today’s current situation is spiraling out of control and could develop into a “real war.”

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Trump Threatens Putin, “Animal Assad” Over Syrian “Chemical Attack”; Russia Warns Of “Grave” Response If US Launches Strike

April 8, 2018

Trump Threatens Putin, “Animal Assad” Over Syrian “Chemical Attack”; Russia Warns Of “Grave” Response If US Launches Strike

Remember when the US admitted Syrian “Rebels” have used chemical weapons? Or when earlier this year, now former Secretary of State blamed Russia for an alleged Syrian chemical attack despite admitting he doesn’t know who actually did it? Or when the US finally admitted there was “no evidence” Assad used sarin gas?

Well, maybe you do, but the neocons back in charge of US ~~war preparations~~ foreign policy – now that war hawk John Bolton is Trump’s National Security Advisor – are so stuck with the age-old narrative that Assad is desperate to be bombed at any cost, that none of this actually matters, and instead the big story overnight is once again that, lo and behold, Assad decided to gas some “rebels” again, despite now overwhelmingly winning the war against US-backed insurgents, and despite knowing very well that exactly one year ago an alleged “chemical attack” prompted Trump to launch dozens of Tomahawks at Syria.

This is what happened (if you’ve seen this script played out before, you are not alone).

On Saturday night, an alleged chemical attack on a rebel-held town in eastern Ghouta reportedly killed dozens of people, according to US-linked medical services with Washington immediately responding that the reports – if confirmed – would demand an immediate international response. Actually scratch the “if confirmed” part – after all, the last time the US “intervened” in Syria, on April 7, 2017, the US did not need confirmation; Trump just needed a geopolitical distraction.

It seems that he needs another one again, and ideally one that shows just how angry he is with Putin now that an interview with Mueller is reportedly imminent.

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

The Skripal Poisonings and the Ongoing Vilification of Putin

March 28, 2018

The Skripal Poisonings and the Ongoing Vilification of Putin

Photo by @markheybo | CC BY 2.0

Sergei Skripal and his daughter were poisoned by a nerve agent on March 4 on a park bench in Salisbury, England.

Skripal had been a Russian double agent, a spy who turned over 300 names of Russian spies to British intelligence from 1995 to 2004. He was (not so surprisingly) arrested in Russia in 2004 and sentenced to thirteen years in prison. He was released in a spy-swap in 2010, settled in the UK and became a British citizen.

I see no reason to judge his moral character, although some might reflect that in Kantian general terms what he did was rather bad. (In precisely the same sense that it would be bad for a British citizen to become a double agent for Russia.) Double agents are often punished harshly; this is the way of the world.

Skripal posed no further threat to the Russian state. There is at least one report that he sought to return to Russia recently. It’s hard to comprehend why at this time Moscow would poison him and his young daughter visiting from Russia with a nerve agent (Novichok) created in the USSR from the 1970s but subsequently banned and destroyed under international supervision. Cui bono? Who profits from these poisonings?

In all the outrage, expressed in Britain and elsewhere, about this attack, there is precious little analysis. The Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov has said, “This is nonsense. This has nothing to do with us.” The group of military-grade nerve agents called Novichok have been described in academic literature such that many different actors could produce Novichok. The Russians say they have long since destroyed their stocks and suggest the Czech Republic could be the source of the substance used.

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Army document: US strategy to ‘dethrone’ Putin for oil pipelines might provoke WW3

March 8, 2018

French soldiers unload tanks from a train in northern Poland for a NATO military exercise (Source: LA Times)

Published by INSURGE intelligence, a crowdfundedinvestigative journalism platform for people and planet. Support us to report where others fear to tread.

A US Army document concedes the real interests driving US military strategy toward Russia: dominating oil pipeline routes, accessing the vast natural resources of Central Asia, and enforcing the expansion of American capitalism worldwide.

The Russians are coming. They hacked our elections. They are lurking behind numerous alternative political movements and news outlets. Such is the overwhelming chorus from traditional reporting on Russia, which sees the United States as being under threat from fanatical Russian expansionism — expansionism which has gone so far as to interfere dramatically in the 2016 Presidential elections.

Russia is certainly an authoritarian regime with its own regional imperial ambitions. President Vladimir Putin and his cronies are responsible for massive deaths and human rights violations against populations at home and abroad (the latter in war theaters like Syria and elsewhere). Putin has strengthened a system of oligarchical state-dominated predatory capitalism which has widened extreme inequality and concentrated elite wealth. And we will no doubt learn more about what shenanigans Russia did, or did not, get up to in relation to US elections.

For the most part, these are not especially dangerous things to report on from the comfort of the West. Somewhat lacking from conventional reporting, on the other hand, is serious reflection on whether US policies toward Russia have contributed directly to the deterioration of US-Russia relations.

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Washington Is Intent on Destroying Iran

March 8, 2018

Washington Is Intent on Destroying Iran

On February 18 the leader of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, declared that Iran “is trying to establish this continuous empire surrounding the Middle East from the south in Yemen but also trying to create a land bridge from Iran to Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Gaza. This is a very dangerous development for our region.” Netanyahu’s presentation was dismissed by the Iranian foreign minister as “a cartoonish circus,” but it was nonetheless a reflection of the policy of the United States, which is Israel’s mentor and unconditional ally.

Last November Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei suggested to President Vladimir Putin that Tehran and Moscow should cooperate more fully to try to dissuade the US from further disruptive dabbling throughout the Middle East. His opinion was that “Our cooperation can isolate America. The failure of US-backed terrorists in Syria cannot be denied but Americans continue their plots,” which is certainly the case, because although the so-called “moderate rebels” who were recruited to overthrow President Assad, with massive amounts of assistance from the Pentagon and the CIA, collapsed in ignominious failure, the US fandangos continue. Washington is not going to give up, and the Trump administration seems to relish being isolated by almost everyone.

During his time in the White House, President Obama tried to get US-Iran relations on an even keel, and managed to temporarily overcome the Washington warmongers to some extent and push forward the tension-reducing, trade-improving, Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) concerning Iran’s nuclear programme, which the BBC described as “the signature foreign policy achievement of Barack Obama’s presidency.” It was settled two years ago by China, France, Germany, Russia, the UK and the US in a most welcome example of international solidarity and downright common sense, and removed sanctions on Iran in exchange for Teheran’s agreement to limit its nuclear research and development.

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

Matt Taibbi Exposes The Sheer Absurdity Of The Ongoing Russian Witch Hunt

March 7, 2018

Matt Taibbi Exposes The Sheer Absurdity Of The Ongoing Russian Witch Hunt

Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone has written perhaps the best summary of how absurd political discourse in the U.S. has become – as nonconforming opinions are now “blacklisted” over the manufactured specter of “red dawn” Putin puppets behind just about controversial topic.

“One of the first rules of a shunning campaign is that it doesn’t have to make sense,” Taibbi writes. “It just has to be what everyone’s saying. Since most Americans went to high school, we tend to be instinctively familiar with the concept.”

The crazy inverse logic of the new national blacklist was on full display after special prosecutor Robert Mueller indicted 13 Russian “troll farm” operatives in February. In the wake of this foreign meddling charge, CNN reporter Drew Griffin banged on the door of an elderly female Trump supporter named Florine Goldfarb and accused her of being a Russia-collaborator. –Rolling Stone

Goldfarb attended a pro-Trump rally allegedly promoted over Facebook by “Russian trolls,” despite no Russians having attended, nor any pro-Russia topics discussed. As Taibbi writes “They were plain, ordinary, Floridian Trump supporters – idiots, maybe, but not traitors.”

While CNN’s treatment of Goldfarb is a prime example of Russophobia in action, its nebulous underpinnings are perhaps the most frightening aspect of the propaganda campaign which has gone completely off the rails.

Since Trump’s election, we’ve been told Putin was all or partly behind the lot of it: the Catalan independence movement, the Sanders campaign, Brexit, Jill Stein’s Green Party run, Black Lives Matter, the resignations of intra-party Trump critics Bob Corker and Jeff Flake, Sean Hannity’s broadcasts, and, of course, the election of Trump himself.

We’ve jumped straight past debating the efficacy of democracy to just reflexively identifying most anti-establishment sentiment as illegitimate, treasonous, and foreign in nature. –Rolling Stone

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

Putin Says “US Political System Eating Itself Up”, Explains Preparation For Nuclear War

March 7, 2018

Putin Says “US Political System Eating Itself Up”, Explains Preparation For Nuclear War

In a move that will likely prompt more calls for collusion, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin offered more words of praise for President Trump on Wednesday, but added that he was sorely disappointed with the U.S. political system, saying that it has been “eating itself up.”

Speaking in an interview with Russian state television, Putin lavished Trump with praise, describing him as a great communicator: “I have no disappointment at all,” Putin said according to AP, when asked about the U.S. president. “Moreover, on a personal level he made a very good impression on me.”

Putin also praised Trump as a “balanced” man, who easily gets into the gist of various issues and listens to his interlocutor. “It’s possible to negotiate with him, to search for compromises,” Putin added.

The two leaders met on the sidelines of international summits last year.

The Russian president also noted that he spent some time talking to Melania Trump when he sat next to her during an official dinner at the G-20 summit in Hamburg, Germany in July. The Russian leader said he told her and the wife of the Italian premier “about Siberia and Kamchatka, about fishing … about bears on Kamchatka and tigers in the Far East.”

“I made some exaggerations,” the action-loving Russian leader said with a grin. “When you talk about fishing, you can’t help exaggerating.”

Asked jokingly by the interviewer if he was trying to recruit the women, the KGB veteran responded by saying: “No, I stopped dealing with that a long time ago.” He added with a smile: “But I liked doing that, it was my job for many years.”

* * *

Putin then changed the topic, and vented his frustration with the U.S. political system saying “it has demonstrated its inefficiency and has been eating itself up.”

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

Light It Up

March 5, 2018

Light It Up

It must be hard on The New York Times editors to set their hair on fire day after day in their effort to start World War Three. Today’s lead story, Russian Threat on Two Fronts Meets Strategic Void in the U.S., aims to keep ramping up twin hysterias over a new missile gap and fear of Russian “meddling” in the 2018 midterm elections.

The Times’s world-view begins to look like the script of a Batman sequel with Vlad Putin cast in The Joker role of the cackling psychopath who must be stopped at all costs! America’s generals have switched on the Batman signal beacon, but Donald Trump in the role of the Caped Crusader, merely dithers and broods in the splendid isolation of his 1600 Penn Avenue Bat Cave, suffering yet another of his endless bipolar identity crises. For God’s sake, The Times, shrieks, do something! The Russians are coming! (Gotham City’s Chief of Police Hillary said exactly that last week in a Tweet!)

I think they misunderstood Mr. Putin’s recent message when he announced a new hypersonic missile technology that would, supposedly, cut through any imaginable US missile defense. The actual message, for the non mental defectives left in this drooling idiocracy of a republic, was as follows: Nuclear war remains unthinkable, so kindly stop thinking about it.

Mr. Putin’s other strategic position is also misrepresented — actually, not even acknowledged — in Monday’s NYT propaganda blast, namely, to discourage the USA’s decades-long policy of regime change here, there, and everywhere on the planet, creating a debris trail of one failed state after another. As a true-blue American, I must say these are two admirable propositions. Is it fatuous to add that atomic war is unlikely to benefit anyone? Or that the world has had enough of US military “meddling” in foreign lands?

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

The US Empire Is Acting Like A Desperate, Cornered Animal, Because That’s What It Is

March 4, 2018

The US Empire Is Acting Like A Desperate, Cornered Animal, Because That’s What It Is

I love Americans. I get friendly flak from some of my more jaded lefty readers whenever I say that, because having to deal with the flaws of one’s own countrymen is a very different experience than appreciating them from afar, but I do. I insist that Americans are generally good-hearted human beings, who just happen to also have a lot of ideas swimming around in their heads which benefit their government’s war machine and ruling oligarchs.

Indeed, America itself could be described as one gigantic ongoing psyop infecting 323 million otherwise healthy homo sapiens. Propaganda is one of the most under-appreciated and overlooked aspects of human experience; the way those in power use media to manipulate how people think and vote affects every significant issue in a truly massive way, yet it rarely even comes up in conversation. Americans are some of the most aggressively propagandized people on our planet, and their mass media machine keeps acting stranger and stranger.

Take today, for instance. The Pentagon has announced that it has approved the sale of 210 Javelin anti-tank missiles and 37 Javelin Command Launch Units to Ukraine, yet another step taken against Russia in what’s beginning to feel like almost daily escalations between the two nuclear superpowers. In response to these relentless increases in aggression from the US, Putin has announced the addition of new weapons of nuclear war to the Russian Federation’s arsenal, including nuclear-armed submarine drones and what he claims is a “low-flying low-visibility cruise missile armed with a nuclear warhead and possessing a practically unlimited range, unpredictable flight path and the capability to impregnate practically all interception lines is invulnerable to all existing and future anti-missile and air defense weapons.”

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

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A US Army document concedes the real interests driving US military strategy toward Russia: dominating oil pipeline routes, accessing the vast natural resources of Central Asia, and enforcing the expansion of American capitalism worldwide.

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