Posted by seumasach on April 21, 2011
20th April, 2011
WASHINGTON — After 26 months in office, President Obama still has not forged a smoothly working national security team that can both nimbly pounce on military crises and deftly manage festering problems, say current and former U.S. officials.
Posted in Libya | Tagged: End of empire | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on April 20, 2011
Tom Engelhart
20th April, 2011
But then, how often do empires end well, really? They live vampirically by feeding off others until, sooner or later, they begin to feed on themselves, to suck their own blood, to hollow themselves out. Sooner or later, they find themselves, as in our case, economically stressed and militarily extended in wars they can’t afford to win or lose.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: "War on Terror", End of empire | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on March 23, 2011
M.K.Bhadrakumar
24th March, 2011
He can be disarmingly charming. Like any ethnic Uzbek. Plus he has cultivated a great sense of humor, especially the sardonic variety that is a Russian trademark, which sees you through adversities. He was trained in the tricks of his trade at the best professional schools in Moscow.
Posted in Afghanistan | Tagged: End of empire, Obama agenda, Russian diplomacy | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on March 3, 2011
David Lindorf
1st March, 2011
The ongoing case of Raymond Davis, the CIA contractor facing murder charges in Lahore for the execution-style slaying of two apparent agents of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, is apparently leading to a roll-back of America’s espionage and Special Operations activities in Pakistan.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: CIA, End of empire | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on March 3, 2011
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Arab revolution, End of empire | 1 Comment »
Posted by seumasach on February 25, 2011
Tom Engelhart
26th February, 2011
This is a global moment unlike any in memory, perhaps in history. Yes, comparisons can be made to the wave of people power that swept Eastern Europe as the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989-91. For those with longer memories, perhaps 1968 might come to mind, that abortive moment when, in the United States, France, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Brazil and elsewhere, including Eastern Europe, masses of people mysteriously inspired by each other took to the streets of global cities to proclaim that change was on the way.
Posted in Drive to Global War | Tagged: End of empire | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on February 25, 2011
23rd February, 2011
The wall is collapsing. Just like the Berlin wall came down in 1989, today we are seeing the collapse of the petrodollar wall across the oil producing nations of the Arab world. The petrodollar wall, unlike the Berlin wall, is not physical but a system of exchange. It is a system which exchanges oil for dollars, and dollars for security. It is a function of a uni-polar world, and given we are in a paradigm shift to a multi-polar world, the petrodollar wall no longer serves its purpose. The purpose of the so-called petrodollar wall was to ensure the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, and the accepted global system of exchange. With the drum beat for change in the global financial system beating ever louder, and the move to a new system of account away from the petrodollar wall, the pace at which regimes across the Arab world fall or change will increase. What will this mean for the price of oil?
Posted in Multipolar world | Tagged: Egyptian revolution, End of empire, new financial architecture | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on February 22, 2011
M.K.Bhadrakumar
23rd February, 2011
The Barack Obama administration’s choice of Marc Grossman as successor to the late Richard Holbrooke, former special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, is significant for three reasons. If Grossman’s diplomatic career spanned Pakistan and the Afghan mujahideen at a time when Pakistan was a “frontline” state for the United States, his two stints in Turkey in a bygone era, including as ambassador, make him an “expert” on the strange workings of a political democracy run by the country’s military.
Posted in Afghanistan | Tagged: Afghanistan, End of empire, Obama agenda | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on February 20, 2011
Another good article by Halligan, one of the few British commentators who is up with the game
Liam Halligan
19th February, 2011
There seems no end to the steady stream of highly significant economic and political developments these days. We live in incredible times.
Posted in Multipolar world, Uncategorized | Tagged: End of empire | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on February 16, 2011
Mark Thompson
15th February, 2011
While the troubles in Egypt and Tunisia are important in Washington’s geo-strategic calculations, they don’t rank highly in its selfish concern over real estate. All that changes when it comes to the tiny Persian Gulf state of Bahrain, an island tucked between Saudi Arabia and Qatar on the gulf’s western shore with fewer than 1 million residents. The home of the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet – and a recently-launched $580 million U.S. expansion effort slated to double the U.S. Navy’s acreage there – could be in jeopardy if Bahrain’s monarchy falls.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: bahrain, End of empire | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on February 14, 2011
M.K.Bhadrakumar
15th February, 2011
The United States State Department has announced that the trilateral United States-Pakistan-Afghanistan meeting at foreign minister level, scheduled to take place in Washington on February 23-24, has been indefinitely postponed. Washington ascribes the postponement due to a cabinet reshuffle in Islamabad on Friday in which foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi was replaced.
Posted in Afghanistan | Tagged: End of empire | Leave a Comment »
In These New Times 