In These New Times

A new paradigm for a post-imperial world

Author Archive

‘Insurgency winning war in Afghanistan, troops die for nothing’

Posted by seumasach on September 20, 2012

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USS Romney goes Titanic

Posted by seumasach on September 20, 2012

Pepe Escobar

Asia Times

20th September, 2012

Willard “Mitt” Romney comfortably sees himself as the chief executive officer of a US$1 billion enterprise – the Republican Party election campaign that should place him as the next President of the United States (POTUS). Meanwhile, current POTUS Barack Obama is increasingly convinced he just needs to deploy a secret weapon to clinch re-election.

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China loves a crisis

Posted by seumasach on September 20, 2012

Benjamin A.Shobert

Asia Times

21st September, 2012

Wanting Chinese investment is one thing; needing it is another. As the euro-zone crisis has deepened, one of the counter-intuitive outcomes thus far has been the increased investment by Chinese companies and the central government into European assets. The Rhodium Group, a New York-based research firm that tracks outbound Chinese investment into North America and Europe, published a study this month that showed how significant this increased investment has been.

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Iran makes a move, oil slides

Posted by seumasach on September 20, 2012

Chris Cook

Asia Times

21st September, 2012

A rapid oil price drop on Monday, September 17, took traders by surprise. [1] Who exactly dumped some 13,000 contracts of CME’s West Texas Intermediate crude oil contract and 10,000 contracts of the Intercontinental Exchange’s (ICE’s) Brent/BFOE crude oil contract into the market cratering the price by more than US$3 per barrel?

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Qatar: No option but to surrender to Assad

Posted by seumasach on September 20, 2012

Catar: No hay otra opción que rendirse ante Al-Asad

HispanTV

19th September, 2012

El ministro de Asuntos Exteriores de Catar, el jeque Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, ha declarado este miércoles que no existe otra opción que tomar la decisión de rendirse ante el presidente sirio, Bashar al-Asad, acto que representa la retirada del principal patrocinador de los terroristas en Siria.

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Syrie : Le rapport de la BBC qu’aucun média hexagonal ne commentera

Posted by seumasach on September 20, 2012

Allain Jules

20th September, 2012

Plus que jamais, Beijing appelle à une résolution pacifique et politique de la situation syrienne, même comme sur le terrain, les forces de Bachar Al-Assad sont entrain, petit à petit, d’éradiquer la vermine terroriste. Alors que la Chine a réitéré, hier, par la voix de son ministre des Affaires étrangères Yang Jiechi, que, son pays ne tolèrera aucune ingérence étrangère dans les affaires syriennes, c’est déjà le cas. Il a exhorté par la même les Syriens à s’entendre en suivant le plan de l’Envoyé spécial de la Ligue arabe et de de l’ONU en Syrie Lakhdar Brahimi. Et, surprise, un autre son de cloche vient de Grande Bretagne.

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Protecting the Lie

Posted by seumasach on September 20, 2012

Is Obama admin’s refusal to come clean on Benghazi a political choice?

Al-Qaeda Attack Harms Claims of Libya War ‘Victory’

Jason Ditz

Antiwar

17th September, 2012

In Fall of 2004, with reelection looming, a top George W. Bush aide openly mocked people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality” while insisting “that’s not the way the world really works anymore” and that the administration could create new realities at will.

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NATO: no intention to launch military intervention in Syria

Posted by seumasach on September 20, 2012

AGI

20th September, 2012

(AGI) Berlin – NATO has no intention to launch a military intervention in Syria. The statement was made on Thursday by Nato Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen who explained that the situation in Syria is completely different from the one in Libya. “In Libya we intervened on the basis of a UN mandate and we had strong support throughout the region, nothing of which relates to Syria”. “From a religious, ethnic and political standpoint, the Syrian society is also much more complex than the Libyan one and therefore an intervention would have incalculable consequences in the region. The best solution for Syria is a political one”. .

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Syria regime change plans on pause – After Benghazi attack, US not keen on Bush’s ‘democracy campaign’

Posted by seumasach on September 17, 2012

It takes , seemingly, an outside perspective to tell us what is happening in the West. The regime change programme had already failed. The US chiefs-of staff didn’t like the proposed no-fly-zone or the Banghazi-style safe havens. Now the Benghazi style has become very unfashionable overnight. The problem for the US is that “you can’t retreat” and especially you can’t retreat leaving your NATO allies, France and Turkey, twisting in the wind. The US has to abandon its Al Qaeda and Salafists allies in Syria without endangering the unity of NATO. The Benghazi attack gives them the pretext to do that and the allies will understand that there is no choice. Already the arch-hawk Fabius, French foreign secretary, is reduced to only calling for more sanctions against Assad. At the same time rotation is likely with Obama and left  going down with the ship of regime change and the way opening up to a Romney presidency and whatever that might bring.

Telegraph India

13th September, 2012

Washington, Sept. 13: The fatal attack on the American ambassador to Libya and three other US personnel at their consulate in Benghazi has had the immediate result of ending the prospect of any western military effort to change the regime in Syria in the foreseeable future.

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George takes on the Salafists

Posted by seumasach on September 15, 2012

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Putin opens Benghazi door for Obama

Posted by seumasach on September 14, 2012

M.K.Bhadrakumar

Asia Times

15th September, 2012

 

 

 

At a time when the United States-Russia “reset” lies in limbo, it should come as no surprise that President Vladimir Putin has made one of the most important statements of his four-month-old presidency, drawing attention to the commonality of interests between the two major world powers and indeed between Russia and the West on one of the hottest issues of current world politics – the Middle Eastern question.

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