Articles by Pepe Escobar
We found 240 results.
BRICS Go Over the Wall
Pepe Escobar – Asia Times,
1 Apr 2013
The BRICS meet in Durban, South Africa, this Tuesday [26 Mar 2013] to, among other steps, create their own credit rating agency, sidelining the dictatorship – or at least “biased agendas”, in New Delhi’s diplomatic take – of the Moody’s/Standard & Poor’s variety. They will also further advance the idea of the BRICS Development Bank, with a seed capital of US$50 billion (only structural details need to be finalized), helping infrastructure and sustainable development projects.
→ read full articleEl Comandante Has Left the Building
Pepe Escobar – Asia Times,
11 Mar 2013
How enlightening to watch world leaders’ reactions to the death of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. Uruguay’s President Jose Mujica – a man who shuns 90% of his salary – reminded everyone how he qualified Chavez as “the most generous leader I ever met”, while praising the “fortress of democracy” of which Chavez was a great builder. Compare it with US President Barack Obama – in what sounds like a dormant cut and paste by some White House intern – reaffirming US support for “the Venezuelan people”.
→ read full articleAll That Pivots Is Gold
Pepe Escobar – Asia Times,
4 Feb 2013
What Beijing actually wants is to get rid of the US dollar peg. For that to happen, it needs vast gold reserves. So here’s Beijing pivoting from the US dollar to the yuan – and trying to sway vast swathes of the global economy to follow the path. Oh yes, this is a film noir worthy of Dashiell Hammett – involving the Pentagon, Beijing, shadow wars, pivoting and a lot of gold.
→ read full articleWar on Terror Forever
Pepe Escobar – Asia Times,
28 Jan 2013
Exit “historical” al-Qaeda, holed up somewhere in the Waziristans, in the Pakistani tribal areas; enter al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). In Dempsey’s words, AQIM “is a threat not only to the country of Mali, but the region, and if… left unaddressed, could in fact become a global threat.” With Mali now elevated to the status of a “threat” to the whole world, GWOT is proven to be really open-ended.
→ read full articleBurn, burn – Africa’s Afghanistan
Pepe Escobar – Asia Times,
21 Jan 2013
Forget about spotting any Americans; these are – what else – contractors who do not wear military uniforms.
→ read full articleMr. President, Tear Down This Wall
Pepe Escobar – TomDispatch,
10 Dec 2012
On entering the Oval Office in Jan 2009, President Obama inherited a seemingly impregnable three-decade-long “Wall of Mistrust” in Iran-U.S. relations. To his credit, that March he directly addressed all Iranians in a message for Nowruz, the Iranian New Year, calling for an “engagement that is honed and grounded in mutual respect.” Now, with the campaign Sturm und Drang behind us but the threats still around, the question is: Can Obama 2.0 bridge the gap between current U.S. policy and Persian optics?
→ read full articleHow Sexy Is Benghazi?
Pepe Escobar – Asia Times,
19 Nov 2012
The Love Pentagon – as in the Petraeus-Broadwell-Kelley-Allen-FBI shirtless torso guy – is the farce that keeps on giving. But this should really not be about sex, lies and emails. This should be about Benghazi. With frenemies like the US, France, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, Syria certainly does not need enemies. As for blowback, brace yourselves; what happened in Benghazi is just the hors d’oeuvres to be offered by increasingly rampaging frenemies of the US.
→ read full articleWhy Qatar Wants to Invade Syria
Pepe Escobar – Asia Times,
1 Oct 2012
He stressed Arab countries had a “military duty” to invade. So let’s assume the Emir is not exactly interested in turning Syria into Scandinavia. That opens the way to an inevitable motive – connected to, what else, Pipelineistan. It’s clear what Qatar is aiming at; to kill the US$10 billion Iran-Iraq-Syria gas pipeline, a deal that was clinched even as the Syria uprising was already underway.
→ read full articleWar Fever as Seen from Iran
Pepe Escobar – Asia Times,
27 Aug 2012
So it’s time for something completely different – and totally absent from Western corporate media; sound Iranian minds rationally analyzing what’s really going on behind the drums of war – regarding Iran, Turkey, the Arab world and across Eurasia.
→ read full articleSyria’s Pipelineistan War
Pepe Escobar – Al Jazeera,
13 Aug 2012
This is a war of deals, not bullets. Deep beneath “Damascus volcano” and “the battle of Aleppo”, the tectonic plates of the global energy chessboard keep on rumbling. More than a year ago, a $10 billion Pipelineistan deal was clinched between Iran, Iraq and Syria for a natural gas pipeline to be built by 2016 from Iran’s giant South Pars field, traversing Iraq and Syria, with a possible extension to Lebanon. Key export target market: Europe.
→ read full articleSyrian Blood Etches a New Line in the Sand
Pepe Escobar – Asia Times,
30 Jul 2012
No matter what militarized Western corporate media spins, there’s no endgame in Syria – yet. On the contrary; the sectarian game is just beginning. There’s no way to understand the Syrian dynamics without learning that most Free Syrian Army-FSA commanders are not Syrians, but Iraqi Sunnis. The over 100 heavily armed gangs engaged in civil war in Syria are overflowing with Gulf Cooperation Council funds. As it stands, the romanticized Syrian “rebels” plus the insurgents formerly known as terrorists cannot win against the Syria military – not even with the Saudis and Qataris showering them with loads of cash and weapons.
→ read full articleThere Will Be Hell to Pay for NATO’s Holy War
Pepe Escobar – Asia Times,
16 Jul 2012
Hillary has just called on “Western powers” and their Arab stooges – the NATOGCC compound that passes for the “international community” – to “make it clear that Russia and China will pay a price because they are holding up progress” regarding weaponized regime change in Syria. In non-newspeak, this means, “If you block our new war, there will be payback”.
→ read full articleDrone Me Down On the Killing Floor
Pepe Escobar – Asia Times,
19 Jun 2012
And the winner of the Humanitarian Oscar for Best Targeted Assassination with No Collateral Damage goes to… the Barack Obama White House death squad.
→ read full articleLong Live ‘Our’ Gulf Bastards
Pepe Escobar – Asia Times,
21 May 2012
Life is a golden gift from Allah if you’re a certified member of the Gulf Counter-Revolution Club (GCC), also known as the Gulf Cooperation Council; Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates can torture, kill, repress and demonize their own subjects – in full confidence the “master” will let you get away with it.
→ read full articleA History of the World, BRIC by BRIC
Pepe Escobar - TomDispatch,
30 Apr 2012
Neoliberal Dragons, Eurasian Wet Dreams, and Robocop Fantasies – The multitrillion-dollar global question remains: Is the emergence of BRICS a signal that we have truly entered a new multipolar world?
→ read full articleAll the Pain in Spain
Pepe Escobar – Al Jazeera,
16 Apr 2012
Make no mistake; the future of the euro is being played in Spain. The euro may win – but at a price; millions of Spaniards as “collateral damage”. The future may be grim, but a global ola of rebellion may still be at hand. As I left Barcelona’s airport back to Asia I couldn’t help erase the verse of a classic Echo and the Bunnymen song ringing in my head: “See you in the barricades, babe.”
→ read full articleWar Porn: The New Safe Sex
Pepe Escobar – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Apr 2012
The early 21st century is addicted to war porn, a prime spectator sport consumed by global couch and digital potatoes. Like porn, war porn cannot exist without being based on a lie – a crude representation. But unlike porn, war porn is the real thing; unlike crude, cheap snuff movies, people in war porn actually die – in droves. Iran is the new Iraq; and whatever the highway, to evoke the neo-con motto, real men go to Tehran via Damascus, or real men go to Tehran non-stop.
→ read full articleWhy Putin Is Driving Washington Nuts
Pepe Escobar – Asia Times,
12 Mar 2012
So Washington and its minions have been warned. Before last Sunday’s [4 Mar 2012] election, Putin advertised his road map: no war on Syria; no war on Iran; no “humanitarian bombing” or fomenting “color revolutions” – all “illegal instruments of soft power”. For Putin, a Washington-engineered New World Order is a no-go. What rules is “the time-honored principle of state sovereignty”.
→ read full article(Portuguese) Síria, e os “Nojentos” BRICS
Pepe Escobar, Asia Times - Pravda,
13 Feb 2012
Um coro grego de «incomodados», «repugnados» e «ultrajados» saudou, como bem se poderia prever, o duplo veto dos BRICS China e Rússia ao projeto de resolução do Conselho de Segurança da ONU para impor mudança de regime na Síria. Logo em seguida, em fila, Burhan Ghalyun, fantoche de Paris, chefe do Conselho Nacional Sírio (CNS) – grupo da oposição guarda-chuva – convocou os países «amigos do povo sírio». Todos sabem quem são: EUA, Grã-Bretanha, França, Israel e dois membros do Conselho de Cooperação do Golfo (CCG): o Qatar e a Arábia Saudita. Com amigos como esses, o «povo sírio» não precisa de inimigos.
→ read full articleExposed: The Arab Agenda in Syria
Pepe Escobar – Asia Times,
6 Feb 2012
Here’s a crash course on the “democratic” machinations of the Arab League – rather the GCC League, as real power in this pan-Arab organization is wielded by two of the six Persian Gulf monarchies composing the Gulf Cooperation Council, also known as Gulf Counter-revolution Club; Qatar and the House of Saud.
→ read full articleThe Myth of “Isolated” Iran: Following the Money in the Iran Crisis
Pepe Escobar - TomDispatch,
23 Jan 2012
So Iran may be “isolated” from the United States and Western Europe, but from the BRICS to NAM (the 120 member countries of the Non-Aligned Movement), it has the majority of the global South on its side. And then, of course, there are those staunch Washington allies, Japan and South Korea, now pleading for exemptions from the coming boycott/embargo of Iran’s Central Bank. No wonder, because these unilateral U.S. sanctions are also aimed at Asia. After all, China, India, Japan, and South Korea, together, buy no less than 62% of Iran’s oil exports.
→ read full articleThe Eagle, the Bear and the Dragon
Pepe Escobar – Al Jazeera,
26 Dec 2011
Here’s a new Cold War fable for an emerging multipolar world. Once upon a time in the young 21st century, the eagle, the bear and the dragon took their (furry) gloves off and engaged in a New Cold War.
→ read full articleLatin America’s Message to the Arab World
Pepe Escobar – Al Jazeera,
12 Dec 2011
Take a good look at this 1970 photo. The 22-year-old woman in the photo is about to be examined by a bunch of subtropical inquisitors. She has just been tortured, electrocuted and waterboarded – what Dick Cheney dismisses as “enhanced interrogation” – for 22 days. Yet she didn’t break down. Today this woman, Dilma Rousseff, is the President of Brazil.
→ read full articleObama Projects Pacific Power
Pepe Escobar – Al Jazeera,
28 Nov 2011
What’s the real story behind Washington sending a bunch of marines to Australia? US Air Force fighter jets will also be in the house, with the Marines on six-month tours starting in the summer of 2012 up to an eventual rotation of 2,500 troops. Then comes the whopper. The marines will be conducting war games on Australian soil “out of the reach of Chinese ballistic missiles”. Now imagine if Beijing decided to set up a base, say, in Catalina Island off the coast of California, or even in Hawaii, to patrol the Eastern Pacific.
→ read full articleThe West’s Tragedy of Capital
Pepe Escobar – Al Jazeera,
14 Nov 2011
The name of the game – Marx revisited by Occupy the World – is class struggle. It’s casino capitalism, aka finance turbo-neoliberalism, as practiced by a liquid modernity elite of one per cent, versus the have-a-little-something, have-nots and have-nothing, aka the 99 per cent. So the crucial fight is against these “private proprietors of politics” – and their one per cent masters, be it in Cairo or Manhattan, Madrid or Lahore. G20? Forget it; it’s more like G7 billion. If we are truly indignados towards a system that must be toppled, we are all responsible.
→ read full articleChina and the US: The Roadmaps
Pepe Escobar – Al Jazeera,
7 Nov 2011
While Beijing tries to address the West’s concerns, Hillary Clinton has a conflicting vision for the 21st century. Inquiring minds scattered across the world have been pondering whether Washington elites are sneakily slouching towards Beijing – as in eventually focusing on China as the ultimate bogeyman and catalyst of the Pentagon-denominated Long War.
→ read full articleReal Wimps Go To Tehran Via Baghdad
Pepe Escobar – Asia Times,
31 Oct 2011
The new Holy Trinity mythology peddled by Washington to an unsuspecting world is that the Libya war is over, the Iraq war will be over by New Year’s Eve, and the Afghan war will be over by 2014. Oh yes; and Lindsay Lohan is a reincarnation of the Virgin Mary.
→ read full articleHow the West Won Libya
Pepe Escobar – Asia Times,
24 Oct 2011
They are fighting over the carcass as vultures. The French Ministry of Defense said they got him with a Rafale fighter jet firing over his convoy. The Pentagon said they got him with a Predator firing a Hellfire missile. After a wounded Colonel Muammar Gaddafi sought refuge in a filthy drain underneath a highway – an eerie echo of Saddam Hussein’s “hole” – he was found by Transitional National Council (TNC) “rebels”. And then duly executed.
→ read full articleThe West and the Rest in a One-Model-Fits-All World
Pepe Escobar - TomDispatch,
3 Oct 2011
More than 10 years ago, before 9/11, Goldman Sachs was predicting that the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China) would make the world economy’s top ten — but not until 2040. Skip a decade and the Chinese economy already has the number two spot all to itself, Brazil is number seven, India 10, and even Russia is creeping closer. In purchasing power parity, or PPP, things look even better. There, China is in second place, India is now fourth, Russia sixth, and Brazil seventh.
→ read full articleBRICS Plan To Revive the Global Economy
Pepe Escobar – Al Jazeera,
26 Sep 2011
We interrupt this programme to announce the end of two centuries of Western domination. Well, not yet. At least not this Thursday, in Washington, when finance ministers and central bank governors of the BRICS group of emerging powers – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – get together on the margins of a G-20 meeting.
→ read full articleNATO, the Ultimate Transformer
Pepe Escobar – Asia Times,
27 Jun 2011
NATO has just admitted it was “probably” responsible for the humanitarian liberation of nine Libyan civilians, plus 18 injured, via an early morning strike against an apartment building in a densely populated Tripoli neighborhood. Liberating Northern Africans in their sleep under tons of debris now adds to NATO’s – and the Pentagon’s – routine liberation of Pashtun wedding parties.
→ read full article(Castellano) La OTAN, el Transformer Sin Igual
Pepe Escobar – TeleSur,
27 Jun 2011
Después de todo, las guerras de la OTAN -que ahora cubren el “arco de inestabilidad” acuñado por el Pentágono desde el norte de África, pasando por Medio Oriente hacia Asia Central- son tanto contra regímenes “repugnantes” (como decir “no son nuestros hijueputas”) como contra civiles.
→ read full articleBin Laden Out, Gaddafi Next
Pepe Escobar – Asia Times,
16 May 2011
In the whirlwind of lies and hypocrisy engulfing the Osama bin Laden hit job, the key justice-related fact is how an unarmed man, codename “Geronimo”, was captured live then summarily executed in front of one of his daughters – after an invasion of a theoretically “sovereign” country. As for the war waged by NATO against Libya, the fact is that Western public opinion was fed a military attack against a sovereign country that has committed no violation of the United Nations charter. Talk about a wolf – neo-colonialism – in sheep’s clothing – “humanitarian war”.
→ read full article(Castellano) Déjame Bombardearte en Paz
Pepe Escobar - TeleSur,
11 Apr 2011
Si el anterior supremo del Pentágono, el “conocido desconocido” Donald Rumsfeld, estuviera aún en el negocio, no pararía de quejarse de que Libia no ofrezca objetivos bombardeables, al igual que Afganistán en 2001. Por muy lejos que se apreste a llegar el atolladero estadounidense, Libia es mucho más grande que Vietnam, Iraq y Afganistán juntos. Aunque los posibles “objetivos” se concentran en unas cuantas ciudades a lo largo de la costa mediterránea.
→ read full articleLet Me Bomb You in Peace
Pepe Escobar – Asia Times,
11 Apr 2011
If former Pentagon supremo Donald “known unknown” Rumsfeld were still in business, he’d be grumbling that Libya presents no bombable targets – as in Afghanistan in 2001. As far as United States quagmires go, Libya is bigger than Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan combined. But any possible “targets” concentrate in a few cities along the Mediterranean coast.
→ read full articleExposed: The US-Saudi Libya deal
Pepe Escobar – Asia Times,
4 Apr 2011
Two diplomatic sources at the United Nations independently confirmed that Washington, via Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, gave the go-ahead for Saudi Arabia to invade Bahrain and crush the pro-democracy movement in their neighbor in exchange for a “yes” vote by the Arab League for a no-fly zone over Libya – the main rationale that led to United Nations Security Council resolution 1973.
→ read full article(Castellano) ¿Quién le Corta la Cabeza a la Serpiente?
Pepe Escobar – TeleSur,
14 Feb 2011
El “mensajero” de Obama para la última pantomima de Mubarak fue Frank Wisner, un ex diplomático y ex ejecutivo del American International Group (AIG), muy próximo al sistema oligárquico de Mubarak, y cuyo hermano, Graham, se ha dedicado a representar sus amplios intereses comerciales. Ha sido Wisner quien, en última instancia, ha venido haciendo lobby para el régimen de Mubarak entre los expertos en Oriente Medio de Washington, a diferencia, por ejemplo, del bipartidista Grupo de Trabajo de Egipto que dirigen el antiguo miembro del Consejo para la Seguridad Nacional, Elliott Abrams, y Michele Dunne, del Carnegie Endowment.
→ read full articleLULADINEJAD
Pepe Escobar – The Real News Network,
25 Nov 2009
How the West could learn from Lula’s way of playing politics. Pepe Escobar, born in Brazil is the roving correspondent for Asia Times and an analyst for The Real News Network. He’s been a foreign correspondent since 1985, based in London, Milan, Los Angeles, Paris, Singapore, and Bangkok. Since the late 1990s, he has specialized […]
→ read full articleBLUE GOLD, TURKMEN BASHES, AND ASIAN GRIDS
Pepe Escobar,
13 May 2009
Pipeline-istan in Conflict Nothing of significance takes place in Eurasia without an energy angle. As Barack Obama heads into his second hundred days in office, let’s head for the big picture ourselves, the ultimate global plot line, the tumultuous rush towards a new, polycentric world order. In its first hundred days, the Obama presidency introduced […]
→ read full articleA Bailout and a New World
Pepe Escobar,
30 Sep 2008
The George W Bush administration’s US$700 billion no-accountability scheme, globally, informally dubbed "cash for trash", is making all the headlines. Simultaneously, there’s the small matter of the United Nations General Assembly sanctioning the troubled birth of a new, multipolar world. As a 21st-century counterpart to the Dadaist Manifesto, this chain of events is priceless. One […]
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