On December 8 several days after election results for Russia’s parliamentary elections were announced, showing a sharp drop in popularity for Prime Minister Putin’s United Russia party, Putin accused the United States and specifically Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of fuelling the Russian opposition protesters and their election protests. Putin stated, “The (US) Secretary of State was quick to evaluate the elections, saying that they are unfair and unjust even before she received materials from the Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (the OSCE international election monitors-w.e.) observers.”[1]

Putin went on to claim that Clinton’s premature comments were the necessary signal to the waiting opposition groups that the US Government would back their protests. Clinton’s comments, the seasoned Russian intelligence pro stated, became a “signal for our activists who began active work with the US Department of State.” [2]

Major western media chose either to downplay the Putin statement or to focus almost entirely on the claims of an emerging Russian opposition movement. A little research shows that, if anything, Putin was downplaying the degree of brazen US Government interference into the political processes of his country. In this case the country is not Tunisia or Yemen or even Egypt. It is the world’s second nuclear superpower, even if it might still be an economic lesser power. Hillary is playing with thermonuclear fire.

Democracy or something else?

No mistake, Putin is not a world champion practitioner of what most consider democracy. His announcement some months back that he and current President Medvedev had agreed to switch jobs after Russia’s March 4 Presidential vote struck even many Russians as crass power politics and backroom deal-making. That being said, what Washington is doing to interfere with that regime change is more than brazen and interventionist. The same Obama Administration which just signed into law measures effectively ripping to shreds the Bill of Rights of the US Constitution for American citizens[3] is posing as world supreme judge of others’ adherence to what they define as democracy.

 Let’s examine closely Putin’s charge of US interference in the election process. If we look, we find openly stated in their August 2011 Annual Report that a Washington-based NGO with the innocuous name, National Endowment for Democracy (NED), is all over the place inside Russia.

The NED is financing an International Press Center in Moscow where some 80 international NGOs can hold press briefings on whatever they choose. They fund numerous “youth advocacy” and leadership workshops to “help youth engage in political activism.” In fact, officially they spent more than $2,783,000 in 2010 on dozens of such programs across Russia. Spending for 2011 won’t be published until later in 2012. [4]

The NED is also financing key parts of the Russian “independent” polling and election monitoring, a crucial part of being able to claim election fraud. They finance in part the Regional Civic Organization in Defense of Democratic Rights and Liberties “GOLOS.” According to the NED Annual Report the funds went “to carry out a detailed analysis of the autumn 2010 and spring 2011 election cycles in Russia, which will include press monitoring, monitoring of political agitation, activity of electoral commissions, and other aspects of the application of electoral legislation in the long-term run-up to the elections.”[5]

In September, 2011, a few weeks before the December elections the NED financed a Washington invitation-only conference featuring the Russian “independent” polling organization, the Levada Center. According to NED’s own website Levada, another recipient of NED money, [6] had done a series of opinion polls, a standard method used in the West to analyze the feelings of citizens. The polls profiled “the mood of the electorate in the run up to the Duma and presidential elections, perceptions of candidates and parties, and voter confidence in the system of ‘managed democracy’ that has been established over the last decade.”

 One of the featured speakers at that Washington conference was Vladimir Kara-Murza, member of the federal council of Solidarnost (“Solidarity”), Russia’s democratic opposition movement. He is also “advisor to Duma opposition leader Boris Nemtsov” according to NED. Another speaker came from the right-wing neo-conservative Hudson Institute. [7]

Nemtsov, one of the most prominent of the Putin opposition today is also co-chairman of Solidarnost, a name curiously enough imitated from the Cold War days when the CIA financed the Polish Solidarnosc workers’ opposition of Lech Walesa. More on Nemtsov later.

And on December 15, 2011, again in Washington, just as the series of US-supported protests were being launched against Putin, led by Solidarnost and other organizations, the NED held another conference titled, Youth Activism in Russia: Can a New Generation Make a Difference? The featured speaker was Tamirlan Kurbanov, who according to the NED, “most recently served as a program officer at the Moscow office of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, where he was involved in developing and expanding the capacities of political and civic organizations; promoting citizen participation in public life, youth engagement in particular.” [8] The National Democratic Institute is an arm of the NED.

The shady history of NED

Helping youth engage in political activism is precisely what the same NED did in Egypt over the past several years in the lead up to the toppling of Mubarak. The same NED was instrumental by informed accounts in the US-backed “Color Revolutions” in 2003-2004 in Ukraine and Georgia that brought US-backed pro-NATO surrogates to power. The same NED has been active in promoting “human rights” in Myanmar, in Tibet, and China’s oil-rich Xinjiang province. [9] 

As careful analysts of the 2004 Ukraine “Orange revolution” and the numerous other US-financed color revolutions discovered, control of polling and ability to dominate international media perceptions, especially major TV such as CNN or BBC is an essential component of the Washington destabilization agenda. The Levada Center would likely be in a crucial position in this regard to issue polls showing discontent with the regime.

By their description, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is a “private, nonprofit foundation dedicated to the growth and strengthening of democratic institutions around the world. Each year, with funding from the US Congress, NED supports more than 1,000 projects of non-governmental groups abroad who are working for democratic goals in more than 90 countries.”[10]

It couldn’t sound more noble or high-minded. However, they prefer to leave out their own true history. In the early 1980’s CIA director Bill Casey convinced President Ronald Reagan to create a plausibly private NGO, the NED, to advance Washington’s global agenda via other means than direct CIA action. It was a part of the process of “privatizing” US intelligence to make their work more “effective.” Allen Weinstein, who helped draft the legislation establishing NED, said in a Washington Post interview in 1991, “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”[11] Interesting. The majority of funds for NED come from US taxpayers through Congress. It is in every way, shape and form a US Government intelligence community asset.

The NED was created during the Reagan Administration to function as a de facto CIA, privatized so as to allow it more freedom of action. NED board members are typically drawn from the Pentagon and US intelligence community. It has included retired NATO General Wesley Clark, the man who led the US bombing of Serbia in 1999. Key figures linked to clandestine CIA actions who served on NED’s board have included Otto Reich, John Negroponte, Henry Cisneros and Elliot Abrams. The Chairman of the NED Board of Directors in 2008 was Vin Weber, founder of the ultraconservative organization, Empower America, and campaign fundraiser for George W. Bush. Current NED chairman is John Bohn, former CEO of the controversial Moody’s rating agency which played a nefarious role in the still-unraveling US mortgage securities collapse. As well today’s NED board includes neo-conservative Bush-era ambassador to Iraq and to Afghanistan, Afghan-American Zalmay Khalilzad.[12]

Putin’s well-rehearsed opposition

It’s also instructive to look at the leading opposition figures who seem to have stepped forward in Russia in recent days. The current opposition “poster boy” favorite of Russian youth and especially western media is Russian blogger Alexei Navalny whose blog is titled LiveJournal. Navalny has featured prominently as a quasi-martyr of the protest movement after spending 15 days in Putin’s jail for partaking in a banned protest. At a large protest rally on Christmas Day December 25 in Moscow, Navalny, perhaps intoxicated by seeing too many romantic Sergei Eisenstein films of the 1917 Russian Revolution, told the crowd, “I see enough people here to take the Kremlin and the White House (Russia’s Presidential home-w.e.) right now…”[13]

Western establishment media is infatuated with Navalny. England’s BBC  described Navalny as “arguably the only major opposition figure to emerge in Russia in the past five years,” and US Time magazine called him “Russia’s Erin Brockovich,” a curious reference to the Hollywood film starring Julie Roberts as a trade union organizer. However, more relevant is the fact that Navalny went to the elite American East Coast Yale University, also home to the Bush family, where he was a “Yale World Fellow.” [14] 

The charismatic Navalny however is also or has been on the payroll of Washington’s regime-destabilizing National Endowment for Democracy (NED). According to a posting on Navalny’s own blog, LiveJournal, he was financed in 2007-2008 by the NED. His Washington NED contact person was Frank Conatser.[15] A facsimile of an email exchange between Navalny and Conatser fronm November 17, 2007 is partially reproduced here.

Along with Navalny, key actors in the anti-Putin protest movement are centered around Solidarnost which was created in December 2008 by Boris Nemtsov, Vladimir Ryzhkov and others. Nemtsov is hardly one to protest corruption. According to Business Week Russia of September 23, 2007, Nemtsov introduced Russian banker Boris Brevnov to Gretchen Wilson, a US citizen and an employee of the International Finance Corporation, a financing arm of the World Bank. Wilson and Brevnov married. With the help of Nemtsov Wilson managed to privatize Balakhna Pulp and Paper mill at the giveaway price of just $7 million. The enterprise was sucked dry and then sold to the Wall Street-Swiss investment bank, CS First Boston bank. The annual turnover of the mill was reportedly $250 million. [17]

CS First Boston bank also paid for Nemtsov’s trips to the very expensive Davos World Economic Forum. When Nemtsov became a member of the cabinet, his protégé Brevnov was appointed the chairman of the Unified Energy System of Russia JSC. Two years later in 2009 Boris Nemtsov, today’s “Mr. anti-corruption,” used his influence reportedly to get Brevnov off the hook for charges of embezzling billions from assets of Unified Energy System. [18]

Nemtsov also took money from jailed Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky in 1999 when the latter was using his billions to try to buy the Russian parliament or Duma. In 2004 Nemtsov met with exiled billionaire oligarch Boris Berezovsky in a secret gathering with other exiled Russian tycoons. When Nemtsov was detailed by Russian authorities for allegations of foreign funding of his new political party, “For Russia without Lawlessness and Corruption,”  US Senators John McCain and Joe Liberman and Mike Hammer of the Obama National Security Council came to support of Nemtsov. [19]

Nemtsov’s close crony, Vladimir Ryzhkov of Solidarnost is also closely tied to the Swiss Davos circles, even founding a Siberian Davos. According to Russian press accounts from April 2005, Ryzhkov formed a Committee 2008 in 2003 to “draw” funds of the imprisoned Khodorkovsky along with soliciting funds from fugitive oligarchs such as Boris Berezovsky and western foundations such as the Soros Foundation. The stated aim of the effort was to rally “democratic” forces against Putin. On May 23, 2011 Ryzhkov, Nemtzov and several others filed to register a new Party of Peoples’ Freedom to ostensibly field a presidential candidate against Putin in 2012.[20] 

Another prominent face in the recent anti-Putin rallies is former world chess champion turned right-wing politician, Garry Kasparov, another founder of Solidarnost. Kasparov was identified several years ago as being a board member of a Washington neo-conservative military think-tank. In April 2007, Kasparov admitted he was a board member of the National Security Advisory Council of Center for Security Policy, a “non-profit, non-partisan national security organization that specializes in identifying policies, actions, and resource needs that are vital to American security.” Inside Russia Kasparov is more infamous for his earlier financial ties to Leonid Nevzlin, former Yukos vice-president and partner of Michael Khodorokvsky. Nevzlin fled to Israel on being charged in Russia on charges of murder and hiring contract killers to eliminate “objectionable people” while Yukos vice-president. ^[21]

In 2009 Kasparov and Boris Nemtsov met with no less than Barack Obama to discuss Russia’s opposition to Putin at the US President’s personal invitation at Washington’s Ritz Carlton Hotel. Nemtsov had called for Obama to meet with opposition forces in Russia: “If the White House agrees to Putin’s suggestion to speak only with pro-Putin organizations… this will mean that Putin has won, but not only that: Putin will become be assured that Obama is weak,” he said. During the same 2009 US trip Nemtsov was invited to speak at the New York Council on Foreign Relations, perhaps the most influential US foreign policy think-tank. Significantly, not only has the US State Department and US-backed political NGOs such as NED poured millions into building an anti-Putin coalition inside Russia. The President personally has intervened into the process.[22]

Ryzhkov, Nemtzov, Navalty and Putin’s former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin were all involved in organizing the December 25^th Moscow Christmas anti-Putin rally which drew an estimated 120,000.[23]

Why Putin?

The salient question is why Putin at this point? We need not look far for the answer. Washington and especially Barack Obama’s Administration don’t give a hoot about whether Russia is democratic or not. Their concern is the obstacle to Washington’s plans for Full Spectrum Dominance of the planet that a Putin Presidency will represent. According to the Russian Constitution, the President of the Russian Federation head of state, supreme commander-in-chief and holder of the highest office in the Russian Federation. He will take direct control of defense and foreign policy.

We must ask what policy? Clearly strong countermeasures against the blatant NATO encirclement of Russia with Washington’s dangerous ballistic missile installations around Russia will be high on Putin’s agenda. Hillary Clinton’s “reset” will be in the dustbin if it is not already. We can also expect a more aggressive use of Russia’s energy card with pipeline diplomacy to deepen economic ties between European NATO members such as Germany, France and Italy, ultimately weakening the EU support for aggressive NATO measures against Russia. We can expect a deepening of Russia’s turn towards Eurasia, especially with China, Iran and perhaps India to firm up the shaky spine of resistance to Washington’s New World Order plans.

It will take more than a few demonstrations in sub-freezing weather in Moscow and St. Petersburg by a gaggle of corrupt or shady opposition figures such as Nemtsov or  Kasparov to derail Russia. What is clear is that Washington is pushing on all fronts—Iran and Syria, where Russia has a vital naval port, on China, now on Russia, and on the Eurozone countries led by Germany. It has the smell of an end-game attempt by a declining superpower.

The United States today is a de facto bankrupt nuclear superpower.  The reserve currency role of the dollar is being challenged as never since Bretton Woods in 1944. That role along with maintaining the United States as the world’s unchallenged military power have been the basis of the American Century hegemony since 1945.

Weakening the role of the dollar in international trade and ultimately as reserve currency, China is now settling trade with Japan in bilateral currencies, side-stepping the dollar. Russia is implementing similar steps with her major trade partners. The primary reason Washington launched a full-scale currency war against the Euro in late 2009 was to preempt a growing threat that China and others would turn away from the dollar to the Euro as reserve currency. That is no small matter. In effect Washington finances its foreign wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and elsewhere through the fact that China and other trade surplus nations invest their surplus trade dollars in US government Treasury debt. Were that to shift significantly, US interest rates would rise substantially and the financial pressures on Washington would become immense.

Faced with growing erosion of her unchallenged global status as sole superpower, Washington appears now to be turning increasingly to raw military force to hold that. For that to succeed Russia must be neutralized along with China and Iran. This will be the prime agenda of whoever is next US President.  

Endnotes:

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This is Part 7 of our interview series on the New World Order. You can listen to the previous interviews in this series here.

Dr. James Petras joins us to discuss the changing contemporary context of imperial domination, the demise of longstanding client regimes, and the previous significant ties between western imperial powers and Islamist movements and regimes, and how, faced with the ouster of Mubarak, in Egypt, Ali in Tunisia and Saleh in Yemen, mass protests in Morocco and Algeria, the US-EU have now turned to conservative Muslim leaders who are willing to work within the existing state institutional framework, uphold the capitalist order and align with the empire against anti-imperial movements and states. He shares with us his evaluation of the ‘Moderately Islamic’ Government of Turkey as an example of Israel-approved US-EU alignment against democratic and anti-imperial movements. Dr. Petras talks about the western-led operations and regime change in Libya, Syria as a collateral damage and more!

Professor James Petras is the author of more than 62 books published in 29 languages, and over 600 articles in professional journals, including the American Sociological Review, British Journal of Sociology, Social Research, and Journal of Peasant Studies. He has a long history of commitment to social justice, working in particular with the Brazilian Landless Workers Movement for 11 years. He writes a monthly column for the Mexican newspaper, La Jornada, and previously, for the Spanish daily, El Mundo. Dr. Petras received his B.A. from Boston University and Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. You can visit his website here.

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This is Part 6 of our interview series on the New World Order. You can listen to the previous interviews in this series here: Part I, Part II, Part III , Part IV, and Part 5.

Investigative journalist and NATO expert Rick Rozoff joins us to discuss the eighteen-year-old project of Zbigniew Brzezinski, Paul Wolfowitz and their cabal to destroy the post-Soviet Commonwealth of Independent States and create a chain of buffer states around Russia, enclosing it with NATO member states and partners. He provides us with analyses and implications of the invasion of Afghanistan by the U.S. and NATO, and the duo’s expansion into Central Asia where Russian, Chinese and Iranian interests converge. Mr. Rozoff talks about the Central Asia chessboard and how the region may be transformed into a battleground of conflicting 21st century geopolitical interests, the role of Islamic extremism and how it is used by the West on this grand chess board, Mujahideen and Al Qaeda’s partnership with US-NATO in the Balkans, Caucasus and Central Asia operations, the real mission of Afghanistan’s NATO-trained 7,000 troops as guardians of the oil and gas pipeline connecting Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India- the TAPI pipeline & more!

Rick Rozoff is an investigative journalist based in Chicago and has been an active opponent of war, militarism and intervention for over 40 years. He manages the Stop NATO e-mail list , and is the editor of Stop NATO, a website on the threat of international militarization, especially on the globalization of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Mr. Rozoff has a graduate degree in European literature.

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Most in the civilized world are blissfully unaware that we are marching ineluctably towards an increasingly likely pre-emptive nuclear war. No, it’s not at all about Iran and Israel. It’s about the decision of Washington and the Pentagon to push Moscow up against the wall with what is euphemistically called Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD).

On November 23, a normally low-keyed Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told the world in clear terms that Russia was prepared to deploy its missiles on the border to the EU between Poland and Lithuania, and possibly in the south near Georgia and NATO member Turkey to counter the advanced construction process of the US ballistic missile defense shield: “The Russian Federation will deploy in the west and the south of the country modern weapons systems that could be used to destroy the European component of the US missile defense,” he announced on Russian television. “One of these steps could be the deployment of the Iskander missile systems in Kaliningrad.” [i] Those would be theatre ballistic missile systems. The latest version of Iskander, the Iskander-K, whose details remain top secret, reportedly has a range up to 2000 km and carries cruise missiles and a target accuracy to 7 meters or less.

Medvedev declared he has ordered the Russian defense ministry to “immediately” put radar systems in Kaliningrad that warn of incoming missile attacks on a state of combat readiness. He called for extending the targeting range of Russia’s strategic nuclear missile forces and re-equipping Russia’s nuclear arsenal with new warheads capable of piercing the US/NATO defense shield due to become operational in six years, by 2018. Medvedev also threatened to pull Russia out of the New START missile reduction treaty if the United States moves as announced. 

Medvedev then correctly pointed to the inevitable link between “defensive” missiles and “offensive” missiles: “Given the intrinsic link between strategic offensive and defensive arms, conditions for our withdrawal from the New Start treaty could also arise,” he said. [ii]

The Russian President didn’t mince words: “I have ordered the armed forces to develop measures to ensure, if necessary, that we can destroy the command and control systems” of the US shield, Medvedev said. “These measures are appropriate, effective and low-cost.” Russia has repeatedly warned that the US BMD global shield is designed to destabilize the nuclear balance and risks provoking a new arms race. The Russian President said that rather than take the Russian concerns seriously, Washington has instead been “accelerating” its BMD development.[iii]

It was not the first time Medvedev threatened to take countermeasures to the increasing Pentagon military encirclement pressure on Russia. Back in November 2008 as the US BMD threat was first made known to the world, Medvedev made a televised address to the Russian people in which he declared, “I would add something about what we have had to face in recent years: what is it? It is the construction of a global missile defense system, the installation of military bases around Russia, the unbridled expansion of NATO and other similar ‘presents’ for Russia ­ we therefore have every reason to believe that they are simply testing our strength.” [iv] That threat was dropped some months later when the Obama Administration offered the now-clearly deceptive olive branch of reversing the BMD decision to deploy in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Russia is threatening to deploy its Iskander anti-BMD missiles in Kaliningrad

This time around Washington lost no time signaling it was in the developing game of thermonuclear chicken to stay. No more pretty words about “reset” in US-Russia relations. A spokesman for the Obama National Security Council declared, “we will not in any way limit or change our deployment plans for Europe.” The US Administration continues to insist on the implausible argument that the missile defense installations are aimed at a threat from a possible Iranian nuclear launch, something hardly credible. The real risk of Iranian nuclear missile attack on Europe given the reality of the global US as well as Israeli BMD installations and the reality of Iran’s nuclear delivery capabilities, is by best impartial accounts, near zero.

Two days earlier on November 21, Washington had thrown a small carrot to Moscow. US Undersecretary of State for Arms Control Ellen Tauscher said that Washington was ready to provide information about the missile’s speed after it uses up all of its fuel. This information, referred to as burnout velocity (VBO), helps to determine how to target it.[v] That clearly was not seen as a serious concession by Moscow, which demands a full hands-on partnership with the US/NATO missile deployment to insure it will never be used against Russia. After all, given Washington’s track record of lies and broken promises, there is no guarantee the speeds would even be true.

After the early October Brussels NATO defense ministers meeting, NATO head Anders Fogh Rasmussen said in regard to the nominally NATO European Missile Defense Program, “We would expect it to be fully operational in 2018.” Spain just announced it plans to join the US-controlled missile program, joining Romania, Poland, the Netherlands and Turkey, which have already agreed to deploy key components of the future missile defense network on their territories.[vi]

The concerns of Russia are caused by the dramatic improvement of an entire system of missile defense by Washington, which is taking the form of a global BMD system encircling Russia on all sides.

Full Spectrum Dominance…

The last time Washington’s Missile Defense “Shield” made headlines was in September 2009 early in the Obama Administration when the US President offered to downgrade the provocative stationing of US special radar and anti-missile missiles in Poland and the Czech Republic. That was a clear tactic to prepare the way for what Hillary Clinton ludicrously called the “reset” in US-Russian relations from the tense Bush-Putin days. However the strategic goal of encircling the one nuclear potential opponent in the world with credible missile defense remained US strategy.

Barack Obama announced back then that the US was altering Bush Administration plans to station US anti-ballistic missiles in Poland and sophisticated radar in the Czech Republic. The news was greeted in Moscow as an important concession.[vii] Subsequent developments clearly show that far from ditching its plans for a missile shield that could cripple any potential Russian nuclear launch, the US was merely opting for a more effective global system, whose feasibility had been proven in the meantime.

To assuage the Poles, the Obama Administration also agreed to provide Poland with US Patriot missiles. Poland’s Foreign Minister then and now is Radek Sikorski. From 2002 to 2005 he was in Washington as a resident fellow of the American Enterprise Institute, a noted neo-conservative hawkish think-tank,  and executive director of the New Atlantic Initiative, a project to bring as many former communist countries of eastern Europe into NATO as possible. Little wonder Moscow did not view US missiles in Poland as friendly, nor does it today.

In May 2011 the Obama Administration announced that the missiles it would now give Poland consisted of new Raytheon (RTN) SM-3 missile defense systems at the Redzikowo military base in Poland (see map), roughly 50 miles from the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, a unique piece of Russian real estate not connected to mainland Russia, but adjacent to the Baltic Sea and Lithuania. That puts US missiles closer to Russia than during the 1961 Cuba Missile Crisis when Washington placed ICBM’s at sites in Turkey aimed at key Soviet nuclear sites. [viii]

The new Raytheon SM-3 missile is part of the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System that will be aimed at intercepting short to intermediate range ballistic missiles. The SM-3 Kinetic Warhead intercepts incoming ballistic missiles outside the earth’s atmosphere. Lockheed Martin Maritime Systems and Sensors developed the Aegis BMD Weapon System. The SM-3 comes from Raytheon Missile Systems.

The Polish SM-3 missile deployment is but one part of a global web encircling Russia’s nuclear capacities. One should not forget that official Pentagon military strategy is called Full Spectrum Dominance—control of pretty much the entire universe. This past September the US and Romania, another new NATO member, signed an agreement to deploy a US-controlled Missile Defense System on the Deveselu Air Base in Romania using the SM-3 missiles.

As well Washington has signed an agreement with NATO member Turkey to place a sophisticated missile tracking radar atop a high mountain in the Kuluncak district of Malatya province in south-eastern Turkey. Though the Pentagon insists its radar is pointed at Iran, a look at a map reveals how easily the focal direction could cover key Russian nuclear sites such as Stevastopol where the bulk of the Russian Navy’s Black Sea Fleet is stationed or to the vital Russian Krasnodar radar installation.[ix]

The Malataya radar will send data to US ships equipped with the Aegis combat system that will intercept “Iranian” ballistic missiles. According to Russian military experts, one of the main aims of that radar, which targets at a range up to 2000 kilometers, will also be the surveillance and control of the air space of the South Caucasus, part of Central Asia as well as the south of Russia, in particular tracking the experimental launches of the Russian missiles at their test ranges.[x]

Further, the US-controlled BMD deployment now also includes sea-based “Aegis” systems in the Black Sea near Russia’s Sevastopol Naval Base, as well as possible deployment of intermediate range missiles in Black Sea and Caspian region.[xi]

But the European BMS deployments of the US Pentagon are but a part of a huge global web. At the Fort Greeley Alaska Missile Field the US has installed BMD ground-based missile interceptors, as well as at the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. And the Pentagon just opened two missile sites at the Pacific Missile Range Facility in Hawaii. To add to it, the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force has joined formally with the US Missile Defense Agency to develop a system of so-called Aegis BMD deploying the SM-3 Raytheon missiles on Japanese naval ships. [xii]  That gives the US a Pacific platform from which it can hit both China and Russia’s Far East as well as the Korean Peninsula. These are all a pretty long and curious way to reach any Iranian threat.

Origins of US Missile Defense

The US program to build a global network of ‘defense’ against possible enemy ballistic missile attacks began back in March 23, 1983 when then-President Ronald Reagan proposed the program popularly known as Star Wars, formally called then the Strategic Defense Initiative.

In 1994 at a private dinner discussion with this author in Moscow, the former head of economic studies for the Soviet Union’s Institute of World Economy & International Relations, IMEMO, declared that it had been the huge financial demands required by Russia to keep pace with the multi-billion dollar US Star Wars effort that finally led to the economic collapse of the Warsaw Pact and to German reunification in 1990. With a losing war in Afghanistan, collapsing oil revenues caused by a 1986 US policy of flooding the world market with Saudi oil, the military economy of the USSR was unable to keep pace, short of risking massive civilian unrest across the Warsaw Pact nations.[xiii]

This time around the US BMD deployment is designed to bring Russia to her knees as well, only in the context of a US creation of what military strategists call “Nuclear Primacy.”

Nuclear Primacy: Thinking the Unthinkable

While the Soviet era armed forces have undergone a drastic shrinking down since the collapse of the USSR in 1991, Russia has tenaciously held on to the core of its strategic nuclear deterrent. That is something that gives Washington pause when considering how to deal with Russia. The potential for Russia to deepen its military and economic cooperation with its Central Asian partners in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, above all with China, is something Washington has gone to great lengths to frustrate. Such a strategic cooperation is becoming increasingly a matter of life-or-death for both China and Russia. China’s nuclear arsenal is not yet strategic as is Russia’s.

What the Pentagon is going for is what it has dreamed of since the Soviets developed intercontinental ballistic missiles during the 1950’s. Weapons professionals term it Nuclear Primacy. Translated into layman’s language, Nuclear Primacy means that if one of two evenly-matched nuclear foes is able to deploy even a crude anti-ballistic missile defense system that can seriously damage the nuclear strike capacity of the other, while he launches a full-scale nuclear barrage against that foe, he has won the nuclear war.

The darker side of that military-strategic Nuclear Primacy coin is that the side without adequate offsetting BMD anti-missile defenses, as he watches his national security vanish with each new BMD missile and radar installation, is under growing pressure to launch a pre-emptive nuclear or other devastating strike before the window closes. That in simple words means that far from being “defensive” as Washington claims, BMD is offensive and destabilizing in the extreme. Moreover, those nations blissfully deluding themselves that by granting the Pentagon rights to install BMS infrastructure, that they are buying the security umbrella of the mighty United States Armed Forces, find that they have allowed their territory to become a potential nuclear field of battle in an ever more likely confrontation between Washington and Moscow.

Dr. Robert Bowman, a retired Lieutenant Colonel of the US Air Force and former head of President Reagan’s BMD effort of the 1980’s, then dubbed derisively “Star Wars,” noted the true nature of Washington’s current ballistic missile “defense” under what is today called the Department of Defense Missile Defense Agency:

Under Reagan and Bush I, it was the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO). Under Clinton, it became the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO). Now Bush II has made it the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) and given it the freedom from oversight and audit previously enjoyed only by the black programs. If Congress doesn’t act soon, this new independent agency may take their essentially unlimited budget and spend it outside of public and Congressional scrutiny on weapons that we won’t know anything about until they’re in space. In theory, then, the space warriors would rule the world, able to destroy any target on earth without warning. Will these new super weapons bring the American people security? Hardly.[xiv]

During the Cold War, the ability of both sides—the Warsaw Pact and NATO—to mutually annihilate one another, had led to a nuclear stalemate dubbed by military strategists, MAD—Mutually Assured Destruction. It was scary but, in a bizarre sense, more stable than what Washington now pursues relentlessly with its Ballistic Missile Defense in Europe, Asia and globally in unilateral pursuit of US nuclear primacy. MAD was based on the prospect of mutual nuclear annihilation with no decisive advantage for either side; it led to a world in which nuclear war had been ‘unthinkable.’ Now, the US was pursuing the possibility of nuclear war as ‘thinkable.’

 Lt. Colonel Bowman, in a telephone interview with this author called missile defense, “the missing link to a First Strike.” [xv]

The fact is that Washington hides behind a NATO facade with its deployment of the European BMD, while keeping absolute US control over it. Russia’s NATO envoy Dmitry Rogozin recently called the European portion of the US BMD a fig leaf for “a missile defense umbrella that says ‘Made in USA. European NATO members will have neither a button to push nor a finger to push it with.” [xvi]

That’s clearly why Russia continues to insist on guarantees – from the United States – that the shield is not directed against Russia. Worryingly enough, to date Washington has categorically refused that. Could it be that the dear souls in Washington entrusted with maintaining world peace have gone bonkers? In any case the fact that Washington continues to tear up solemn international arms treaties and illegally proceed to install its global missile shield is basis enough for those in Moscow, Beijing or elsewhere to regard US promises, even treaties as not worth the paper they were written on.

F. William Engdahl is author of A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics in the New World Order. He may be contacted through his website at www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net where this article was originally published.

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On November 7 the first of two pipelines for Nord Stream, the huge Russian-German gas pipeline project, began delivery of gas. The event was no minor affair. German Chancellor Merkel and Russian President Medvedev along with the prime ministers of France and the Netherlands and the EU Energy Commissioner formally opened the first of two 1224-kilometre pipelines at Lubmin in northern Germany, beginning delivery of the first gas direct from Russia’s Yuzhno-Russkoye gas field in Siberia to Germany.

Nord Stream was not cheap. It cost a total of more than $12 billion for the complex 760 mile long undersea pipeline through the Baltic Sea from Vyborg near Russia’s St Petersburg to north eastern Germany. It was laid in remarkable time and with extraordinary environmental precautions to insure protection of sea life, a precondition set by several EU Baltic countries. When the second pipeline is finished in late 2012, Nord Stream will be able to deliver 55 billion cubic meters of Russian gas a year, almost ten percent the entire EU annual gas consumption, or roughly one third the entire current gas consumption of China.

Nord Stream estimates it will provide enough energy to fuel 56 million West European households. With current EU political decisions over reducing CO² “carbon footprint” emissions, the Russian gas giant argues its natural gas gives 50% less CO² than rival coal plants at as much as 50% greater energy efficiency.

Even if Moscow is being more than somewhat opportunist and is not convinced about the shoddy science of global warming, Gazprom does not hesitate to use this as a shrewd political selling point. The EU is going for natural gas energy big time and Moscow intends to be a major, if not the major beneficiary of that push. In addition to delivering Siberian gas to Germany, Nord Stream will deliver to the United Kingdom, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, France and the Czech Republic.

Moscow appears to hold a winning hand in the one important non-military lever it has to tip the global geopolitical balance of power in its direction and away from Washington’s overwhelming dominance. Oil and natural gas are at the heart of the strategy. For some months Russian production of crude oil has surpassed Saudi Arabia’s to be the world’s largest oil producer with over 10.3 million barrels daily, nearly one million barrels more.[1] And in terms of known reserves of natural gas Russia is far away the world leader according to industry data.

Russian natural gas has increasingly been the foundation for a brilliant series of Russian energy geopolitical initiatives for several years. Gazprom, a closely-held state company, is the centerpiece of this energy strategy.

To counter the eastward march of NATO into countries of the former Warsaw Pact such as Poland, the Czech Republic or Romania and the various US attempts to lure Ukraine and Georgia into NATO, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, both as President and more recently as Prime Minister, has used the economic lever of Gazprom. With its enormous gas resources Russia seeks to win stronger economic ties in Western Europe, thereby hopefully neutralizing somewhat the potential military strategic threat from the NATO encirclement. No country has been more the focus of this Russian pipeline diplomacy than former wartime foe Germany where Nord Stream lands.

The undersea route across the Baltic to Germany was chosen by a German-Russian consortium including Gazprom with 51% and the German chemicals group BASF Wintershall and E.ON Ruhrgas of Germany each today with 15.5% share, giving the German-Russian partners a dominating 82% control. Further adding to the political support from key EU countries, later they were joined by N.V. Nederlandse Gasunie and France’s GDF Suez which each own a 9% share.

The Baltic undersea route was chosen deliberately to avoid potential geopolitical disruptions such as occurred several years ago when a pro-NATO Ukrainian government blocked Russian gas deliveries to Western Europe to undercut Russian attempts to come closer to western Europe. Behind Ukraine was the long arm of Washington. [2]

Had Ukraine joined NATO as Washington urgently sought after Kiev’s 2004 “Orange Revolution” brought Washington’s man Viktor Yushchenko in as President, then Ukraine would have been in a strategic position to economically strangle Russia on command. Prior to opening of Nord Stream in November some 80% of all Russian gas exports to EU countries—mainly to Germany, Italy and France—were flowing across Ukrainian territory. Political instability and ongoing NATO meddling in Ukraine dictated the decision to build the new Nord Stream undersea route to Germany and other EU markets bypassing entirely Ukraine and Poland. Today some 40% of all state revenue in Russia comes from Russia’s oil and gas exports.[3]

South Stream vs. Nabucco

While few outside the energy industry and special political interest groups have paid much attention to it, at the same time Nord Stream was coming into play a ferocious geopolitical battle has also been raging over a second planned major Gazprom Russian gas pipeline project to EU countries called South Stream. South Stream gas pipeline will be laid on the Black Sea floor, pass through Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary and Slovakia and on to west European markets from the southern part of the EU.

To politically counter the growing Russian energy ties to the EU, with strong Washington backing, the EU Commission proposed an alternative in 2002 called the Nabucco pipeline, curiously named after the Verdi opera. To date Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Austria have agreed “in principle” to build the 3,900 km Nabucco pipeline that theoretically would pump up to 31 billion cubic meters of gas annually from the Caspian and the Middle East across Turkey into western Europe. Nabucco partners to date include energy companies RWE of Germany; OMV of Austria; MOL of Hungary; Botas of Turkey; Bulgaria Energy Holding of Bulgaria; and Transgaz of Romania.

The problem is that the Nabucco partners have yet to secure gas anywhere to fill the pipeline. Moscow has deftly locked up the gas from the obvious supplier Azerbaijan, and surplus gas from former Soviet Republic Turkmenistan is also secured in deals with Gazprom, leaving only Iran as an option, something politically Washington is not ready to consider, to put it mildly.

Both Nord Stream and South Stream came into being when Ukraine’s previous Yushchenko regime, with reported strong US behind-the-scenes backing, twice disrupted transit gas flows to European markets beginning 2006. To assure stability of supplies, Moscow created both new pipeline projects to bypass Ukraine.[4]

The geopolitical problem for Washington and its allies in Brussels is the fact that its Nabucco project appears dead in the water before it even gets started. Not only has Gazprom locked up the major gas supply sources including Azerbaijan. Nabucco is also far more costly than its Russian rival.

Latest estimates put Nabucco’s ultimate construction cost at almost double that of South Stream. Tamás Fellegi, Hungarian National Development Minister, recently stated that the cost of Nabucco gas pipeline will exceed original plans by four times. “No one can predict the final cost of Nabucco, but according to optimistic estimates, its cost may reach 24-26 billion euro,” Fellegi said.[5]

In late October Gazprom made a major move to secure partners for its South Stream in a Moscow meeting with its largest consortium partner, Italy’s ENI. [6] Some days before in September, Gazprom secured the significant participation into South Stream of its major Nord Stream German partner, BASF Wintershall, a major blow to Nabucco hopes. They joined the major French energy company EDF to give the South Stream project major clout versus the floundering Nabucco.

Last April, Turkey, also at least on paper a key player in Nabucco, gave permission to Gazprom to begin offshore prospecting for the potential undersea route of South Stream, a first step to gain Turkish approval to begin construction in Turkish territorial waters on the Black Sea. Turkey is trying to play a new role as an energy crossroads between the EU and its neighbors. By giving Gazprom the green light to begin prospecting, Turkey’s Erdogan government clearly has decided not to put all its energy eggs into the NATO Nabucco basket.[7]

Possible routes for Gazprom’s South Stream Pipeline

Already Gazprom is the largest natural gas supplier to the EU. Gazprom with Nord Stream and other lines plans to increase its gas supply to Europe this year by 12% to 155 billion cubic meters. It now controls 25% of the total European gas market and aims to reach 30% with completion of South Stream and other projects.

Rainer Seele, chairman of Wintershall, suggested the geopolitical thinking behind the decision to join South Stream: “In the global race against Asian countries for raw materials, South Stream, like Nord Stream, will ensure access to energy resources which are vital to our economy.” [8]

But rather than Asia, the real focus of South Stream lies to the West. The ongoing battle between Russia’s South Stream and the Washington-backed Nabucco is intensely geopolitical. The winner will hold a major advantage in the future political terrain of Europe.

According to Andrei Polischuk, an energy analyst at the BKS Finance Group, Nabucco is in far the weaker position at present. “This project is facing several problems. One of them is how to fill it with gas and how to find a resource basis. The second is its growing cost. Earlier, the project was estimated at 8 billion US dollars, but at present, it has grown up to 12 to 15 billion US dollars.” says Polischuk. “All these projects have first and foremost a hidden political motive. By implementing them, Europe tries to lower its dependence on Russian gas.” [9]

Reinhard Mitschek, director of Nabucco Gas Pipeline International, recently admitted that Nabucco now has been pushed back until 2017, three years later than originally planned. The construction work won’t begin until at least 2013. He feebly admitted in a recent press conference when pressed on a date for gas deliveries, that gas would flow, “as soon as there are firm indications that gas supply commitments are in place.” [10]

EU Nacht und Nebel Raid on Gazprom

As if on cue, just days before the planned opening ceremony for Gazprom’s Nord Stream pipeline the EU launched an unprecedented “nacht und nebel” style raid on the offices of Gazprom and its EU partners covering ten countries.

In response to a complaint by the Washington-friendly government of Lithuania, on September 28 EU officials raided Gazprom and associated offices in central and eastern European states to investigate firms involved in the supply, transmission and storage of natural gas. The Commission claimed the raids were linked to “suspicions” about anti-competitive practices.

The raids were an unprecedented use of new EU “antitrust” weapons including the threat of fines up to 10% of a company’s global turnover. Following a Thatcherite “free market” model, the EU Commission has in recent years forced E.ON, RWE and ENI to open up or sell their energy pipelines to rivals. E.ON and GDF were also forced to dismantle their market-sharing deals.

The EU is working a so-called Third Energy Package, which imposes limits on ownership of EU pipeline infrastructure by gas suppliers and calls for the “unbundling” of over-concentrated ownership. Under the rules, Russia could be forced to sell off parts of its pipeline network in the EU, something Moscow is understandably not about to do. It could open a Pandora’s box of geopolitical interference with potential for anti-Russian companies to in effect sabotage the vital and growing Russian gas trade with the EU, a mainstay today of Russian state finances.

The Gazprom raids were explicitly political. The EU even admits it has little evidence: “We’re at the beginning of the investigation; we have our suspicions and we have to see whether these are confirmed on the basis of the evidence we find and our analysis,” Commission spokeswoman Amelia Torres told press in Brussels.[11]

According to Reuters, “A Commission official, who declined to be named, told Reuters the raids were part of the EU’s efforts to wean itself off reliance on Russian gas and concerns about Gazprom’s power as a state-controlled entity.” Gazprom itself clearly links the raids to their recent progress on South Stream: “My guess is that it comes as Russia is speeding up its projects, including the South Stream underwater link,” a Gazprom source said. [12]

Vladimir Feigin, a member of the Russian delegation discussing the issue with EU officials, charges the European Commission with taking a “dangerous path” with the raids. “It’s not a simple demonstration of muscles … There are lots of issues, which are highly politicized, including Gazprom’s long-term contracts,” he insisted. [13]

While free market game rules may sound attractive to market outsiders, for the future planning of Gazprom long-term fixed contracts are essential. As oil markets reveal in recent years, while prices sometimes fall, most often they are subject to manipulation by major Wall Street banks like JP MorganChase, Citigroup or Goldman Sachs, the gang that pushed oil prices above $147 a barrel in June 2008 at a time supply on the world market was in glut, making a literal killing in the process.[14]

In anticipation of the larger export market for its gas to Europe, Gazprom has been making huge infrastructure investments across Europe which could be wiped out by an adverse EU decision. It is in the process of doubling its underground storage capacities for gas. It already operates gas storage facilities in Austria and leases facilities in Britain, France and Germany to handle the planned new flow from Nord Stream and South Stream. As well, Gazprom has built a joint venture storage facility with Serbia to serve gas exports to Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Hungary. Feasibility studies are being done for similar joint storage projects in the Czech Republic, France, Romania, Belgium, Britain, Slovakia, Turkey and Greece. This, in addition to the major investment in the pipelines, makes it clear the EU raids are aimed at Moscow’s energy jugular.[15]

Were Moscow to succeed in completing South Stream and retain its integral control over the delivery pipeline infrastructure, it would represent nothing less than a major geopolitical defeat for Washington. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990’s, Washington energy geopolitics in the Caspian region and across Eurasia into Russia have attempted to weaken if not permanently cripple the one major remaining geopolitical lever Moscow holds to counter Washington’s NATO encirclement strategy. Not letting itself be totally dependent on EU gas or oil revenues, Moscow has recently indicated it is greatly increasing its focus on building long-term energy partnerships with its eastern neighbors of Eurasia, most notably with China. The geopolitical implications for Washington of that shift will be examined in a subsequent article.

F. William Engdahl is author of A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics in the New World Order. He may be contacted through his website at www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net where this article was originally published.

Endnotes:

[1] News Wires, Russian Output Hits Post-Soviet Highs, 2 November 2011, accessed in http://www.upstreamonline.com/live/article286798.ece.

[2] F. William Engdahl, Ukraine Geopolitics and the US-NATO Military Agenda: Tectonic Shift in Heartland Power–Part I, accessed in http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=18128.

[3] Friedbert Pflüger, Russia and Europe: Time to bury the hatchet-and embrace the market, 20 October, 2011, European Energy Review.

[4] RIA Novosti, Ukraine lost reputation of reliable gas transit country – Yanukovych, 19 October, 2011, accessed in http://en.ria.ru/world/20111019/167874442.html

[5] ABC.AZ, Nabucco project cost to exceed value of South Stream and make it world’s most expensive gas pipeline, 24 October 2011, http://abc.az/eng/news/main/58939.html

[6] ENI, Gazprom CEOs discuss South Stream Development, October 17, 2011, accessed in

www.offshoreenergy.com

[7] Newswires, Turkey gives offshore permit to Gazprom for South Stream project, 11 April, 2011.

[8] UPI, Wintershall joins South Stream consortium, September 16, 2011, accessed in

http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Energy-Resources/2011/09/16/Wintershall-joins-South-Stream-consortium/UPI-92591316173513/#ixzz1dUq77i89.

[9] Moscow Times, Europe still wants to go around South Stream, September 30, 2011, accessed in http://english.ruvr.ru/2011/09/30/57380344.html.

[10] M K Bhadrakumar, Russia redrawing Europe energy map, Asia Times Online, May 12, 2011, accessed in http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/ME12Ag02.html.

[11] Reuters, EU raids Gazprom offices in anti-trust probe, 29 September 2011, accessed in http://www.euractiv.com/energy/eu-raids-gazprom-offices-anti-trust-probe-news-508007.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Ibid.

[14] F. William Engdahl, More on the real reason behind high oil prices: Part II, Global Research, May 21, 2008, accessed in http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9042.

[15] M K Bhadrakumar, op. cit.

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A few Interesting News Items

Crackdown on Terrorism in Xinjiang

There is an interesting news item on Xinjiang which was picked up by only a very few in the US media:

“Police in China’s far west have launched a crackdown on terrorism and stepped up a hunt for suspects who took part in deadly ethnic riots there four months ago, the regional public security ministry said Tuesday.

Hundreds have already been arrested and nine people sentenced to death following the July 5 riots, which saw Uighurs (WEE’-gurs) attacking Han Chinese in the regional capital of Urumqi. Nearly 200 people were killed in those attacks and in the revenge killings of Uighurs by Han Chinese in the days that followed.

Uighurs are a Turkic Muslim ethnic group linguistically and culturally distinct from China’s majority Han. The Uighurs see Xinjiang as their homeland and resent the millions of Han Chinese who have poured into the region in recent decades. A simmering separatist campaign has occasionally boiled over into violence in the past 20 years.

China says overseas Uighur separatists orchestrated the riots to worsen ethnic divisions and bolster their campaign for independence but the government has provided little evidence to back up its claim.”

The Chinese government doesn’t want to provide any evidence because right now they don’t want that kind of an international incident. However, anyone who knows about this conflict and the related developments would know that the overseas orchestrators are: number One – the United States – followed by Turkey and Pakistan’s ISI. Unfortunately, thanks to our media, mainstream and alternative alike, very few people in the US have ever heard of this ongoing saga.

EU to Kiss & Make Up with Tashkent

This development reported by Asia Times is not that unrelated to the piece above.

“The worsening Afghan war has brought some good news for Uzbekistan. On Tuesday, the European Union announced it was lifting a four-year old arms embargo against Uzbekistan. The EU imposed wide-ranging sanctions in 2005 after Uzbek troops fired on civilians during an uprising in the city of Andizhan in Ferghana Valley, and Tashkent rejected calls by Western countries for an international inquiry into those killings. Tuesday’s decision completes an incremental process stretched over the past year or so on the EU’s part to kiss and make up with Tashkent.

…

Aside from the veracity of the EU claim, the reality is that Europe not only blinked first, it also bent its knees while doing so. Brussels kept a straight face, though, assuring the world audience that it would “closely and continuously observe the human-rights situation in Uzbekistan … [and] assess progress made by the Uzbek authorities.”

…

Clearly, no story quite ends in the Central Asian steppes. There is always a sub-plot, often more than one. It is against this complex backdrop that the uniqueness of Uzbekistan – a cradle of Islamic culture and civilization – needs to be grasped. The West learned the hard way that the pre-requisite of an effective engagement in Central Asia is a full-fledged relationship with the regime in Tashkent.”

I encourage you to read the entire article. As I’ve emphasized repeatedly there is no real coverage of this simmering region by the media in the United States. Asia Times is one of a very few news publication with consistently solid and thorough coverage of this highly important area.

Scowcroft’s Pimping Business

Here is an item totally hidden in one of McClatchy’s blog pages. Thanks to one of our readers who brought it to my attention:

“There’s nothing like litigation to crack open a window into a secretive world of power and intrigue. All those lovely depositions and legal documents…

On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Rosemary M. Collyer kept alive a lawsuit filed by the Scowcroft Group against Toreador Resources Group. That’s Scowcroft, as in former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft and former CIA deputy operations director James Pavitt and former undersecretary of state Arnold Kanter and former assistant secretary of state Walter H. Kansteiner III and…

The Scowcroft Group says that Toreador failed to pay it an agreed-upon “success fee” for a deal involving the purchase by a Turkish company of the South Akcakoca Sub-Basin natural gas concession.

Scowcroft contends the work included:

“obtaining necessary Turkish government approvals for the…transaction…and ensuring the Turkish Ministry of Energy’s endorsement of the transaction and the rapid governmental approval of the transaction.”

Begging the question: just how does one go about “ensuring the Turkish Ministry of Energy’s endorsement”?[Emphasis Added]

The deal closed last year for $55 million, and the Scowcroft Group says it is owed $850,000. Judge Collyer declined to dismiss the case, which means unless it settles there should be a lot more information on the public record about how an international consulting firm does its business.”

Those of you familiar with my case know all about Mr. Scowcroft’s Lobby business for Turkey and his chairmanship of The American Turkish Council (ATC). Just like AIPAC, without having to register under FARA, Mr. Scowcroft has been serving the Turkish business, government and operatives’ businesses (includes ANY kind of business) for years, and with NO scrutiny. This sheds a tiny bit of light on how these kinds of pimping operations go. To put it simply:

The pimps here are a former national security adviser, a former CIA deputy operations director, a former undersecretary of state, and a former assistant secretary of state. Just like any good ole ordinary pimp these pimps want their commission for facilitating business transactions. Except these particular pimps have been milking their past positions, and thanks to our media only God knows how their ongoing access to those pimps-to-be who are still in the government is contributing to their lucrative pimping business…

Boiling Frogs Interviews

Our upcoming interview episodes include Elizabeth Gould & Paul Fitzgerald on Afghanistan, Joe Lauria talking about the latest involving the United Nation, Mizgin Yilmaz on Kurdish related issues and Turkey, and Kristina Borjesson on the worse than sorry state of the US media today.

One of our upcoming guests is Andy Worthington, author of the Guantanamo Files, The first book to tell the story of every man trapped in Guantanamo. Andy lives in the UK, but will be in the US for the screening of ‘Outside the Law: Stories from Guantanamo.’ I’ll attend the screening in Washington DC at the New America Foundation. I know the film will be screened in other US locations, including on the West Coast; check it out if you are interested.