Confirmaciones

La nota que sigue, de Thierry Meyssan para Red Voltaire, propone una serie de motivos alternativos para los actuales conflictos en Siria y Ucrania. A ver si te convencen:

Título: Confirmaciones en Siria

Epígrafe: Caen las máscaras al cabo de 5 años de guerra en Siria. La publicación del texto del acuerdo ruso-estadounidense revela las intenciones secretas de los Dos Grandes: Washington quiere cortar la «Ruta de la Seda», Moscú aspira a acabar con los yihadistas. El fracaso de este acuerdo y los debates del Consejo de Seguridad de la ONU demuestran además el carácter surrealista de la retórica del presidente Obama: en 5 años, Barack Obama no logró conformar nada que se pareciera a un grupo de oposición «moderada» y no estuvo por tanto en condiciones de alinear a sus famosos «moderados», contrariamente a lo que tendría que haber hecho para cumplir con los términos del acuerdo. En otras palabras, Estados Unidos no está en condiciones de cumplir el acuerdo que firmó.

Texto: El fracaso del acuerdo ruso estadounidense del 9 de septiembre de 2016 y los subsiguientes debates registrados en el Consejo de Seguridad de la ONU permiten confirmar varias hipótesis.

- El objetivo estratégico actual de Estados Unidos en Siria es, en efecto, cortar la «ruta de la seda». Al prepararla durante años y poner en el poder al presidente Xi Jinping en mayo de 2013, China adoptó la restauración de ese histórico eje de comunicación como su principal objetivo. Sin embargo, al haberse convertido China en el principal productor mundial, Xi Jinping planeó ampliar la «Ruta de la Seda» de la Antigüedad agregándole una «nueva ruta de la seda», pasando por Siberia y Europa Oriental hasta llegar a la Unión Europea.

Lógicamente, Estados Unidos organiza actualmente dos guerras a través de intermediarios: una en el Levante y otra en Ucrania. Al crear el caos en Siria y en el Donbass, el objetivo no es cumplir las cínicas teorías de Leo Strauss sino sólo cortar los dos trayectos de la ruta de la seda.

De manera nada sorprendente, el presidente ucraniano Petro Porochenko viajó a Nueva York para participar en el Consejo de Seguridad de la ONU y respaldar a la delegación de Estados Unidos que acusó a Rusia de haber bombardeado un convoy humanitario sirio.

- Por otra parte, el acuerdo ruso-estadounidense estipulaba que Estados Unidos separaría a los grupos armados «moderados» de los «extremistas», ya que esos «moderados» participarían –junto a los Dos Grandes y el Ejército Árabe Sirio– en la neutralización de los «extremistas», y que finalmente se crearía un gobierno de unión nacional en Damasco, bajo la presidencia de Bachar al-Assad. Ese gobierno de unión nacional integraría a representantes de los «moderados» que hubiesen participado en la batalla final contra los «extremistas».

Pero nada se hizo en ese sentido. El compromiso del secretario de Estado John Kerry no pasó de ser un piadoso deseo. Washington no encontró los combatientes que necesitaba para que hicieran el papel de «moderados». Porque el hecho es que todos sus «moderados» en realidad son «extremistas». Así que no tuvo más salida que aprovechar el incidente –o probablemente organizarlo– del convoy humanitario quemado para escapar a sus contradiciones. La retórica del presidente Obama –quien dice respaldar a sirios que luchan por la democracia contra un régimen que los reprime– no corresponde a la realidad. En 2013, el presidente ruso Vladimir Putin tenía toda la razón del mundo al observar con ironía que los occidentales consideraban «moderados» a los caníbales del Ejército Sirio Libre que se filmaban comiéndose el hígado de sus enemigos.

- Para terminar, el contenido del acuerdo ruso-estadounidense pone de manifiesto el hecho que el objetivo de Rusia es liquidar en Siria a los yihadistas que se preparan para atacarla en el Cáucaso. La solución negociada resultaba ideal para Moscú: ponía fin a los sufrimientos de su aliado sirio, abría una vía de comunicación para su aliado chino y le garantizaba poder acabar con el yihadismo internacional. Pero, Moscú acaba de comprobar que, desde los tiempos de la primera guerra de Afganistán, el yihadismo fue un arma estadounidense que ahora se vuelve contra su amo y que Washington no piensa abandonarla.

Por supuesto, los nuevos yihadistas no tienen conciencia de ello, pero es imposible que los que vienen luchando, con ayuda estadounidense, desde hace 38 años no sepan que sólo son una fuerza de tareas del Pentágono.

Se hunde el Deutsche?

¿Comenzó la corrida sobre el Deutsche Bank? Difícil saber si se trata de una escaramuza aislada o de un evento sistémico. El cable de EFE dice así:

Título: Deutsche Bank se hunde un 6,6% en Wall Street

Texto: El sector financiero cayó en su conjunto un 1,40% arrastrado por el descenso del primer banco alemán.

Deutsche, que cerró con una ganancia del 1% en la Bolsa alemana, ha vivido sin embargo otra jornada negra en Wal Street.

La cotización del primer banco de Alemania ha caído un 6,67%, hasta los 11,48 dólares por acción, arrastrando consigo al resto del sector financiero, que perdió en su conjunto un 1,4%.

Los inversores castigaron a Deutsche Bank después de conocerse hoy que el Gobierno alemán no se plantea una intervención del Estado y negó que se prepare un "plan de emergencia" para salvar al primer banco privado del país.

El banco alemán atraviesa una grave crisis precipitada por la multa de 14.000 millones de dólares que quiere imponerle el Departamento de Justicia estadounidense por negocios con hipotecas dudosos entre 2005 y 2007.

***

Por su parte, Mark Thompson y Paul R. La Monica escriben en CNN Money:

Título: Deutsche Bank: Does it need a bailout?

Subtítulo: Deutsche Bank is a $2 trillion problem

Texto: Deutsche Bank has lost half its market value this year and profits have collapsed. No wonder investors are worried.

The market panic reached fever pitch this week -- the stock slumped to its lowest level in more than 20 years -- on fears the bank may not be able to afford a massive U.S. fine for trading in toxic mortgages a decade ago.

German media say the situation is so bad that the government has begun looking at a potential bailout.

Those reports were denied by government and bank officials on Wednesday.

"The federal government is not preparing any rescue plans," the German finance ministry said in a statement. "There is no reason for such speculation. The bank has made this absolutely clear."

Deutsche Bank (DB) CEO John Cryan said he had never asked Chancellor Angela Merkel for help, and that government aid is "not an option." The bank also said it is not currently considering asking investors for more cash.

But the spate of headlines, and the dramatic share price slide, show just how much is at stake.

Deutsche is Germany's biggest lender by far. It has assets valued at 1.8 trillion euros ($2 trillion) on its books.

That's equivalent to more than half the size of the German economy. Any suggestion that the top bank in Europe's biggest and most robust economy is in trouble would send shock waves through global markets.

The riskiest bank?

The International Monetary Fund rang alarm bells earlier this year. In a report in June, it said Deutsche was the biggest single source of risk in the global banking system.

The bank also employs more than 100,000 people, some 46,000 of them in Germany.

So how did it get into such hot water? There's a long list of reasons.

The sins of the past

The $14 billion demand from the U.S. Justice Department related to mortgage-backed securities is just the latest in a string of misconduct charges. Deutsche Bank has already shelled out billions of dollars for manipulating global interest rates and rigging foreign exchange markets.

Beat up business model

Stricter regulations that have been introduced since the global financial crisis have made its core investment bank safer, but also much less profitable. And it doesn't have a big retail bank or wealth management business to compensate -- smaller rivals control a much bigger share of the banking market in Germany than elsewhere.

Record low interest rates

Banks typically make steady money on the difference between the interest they pay on deposits, and what they charge on loans. When interest rates turn negative -- as they have done in Europe -- that flow of revenue is squeezed hard.

What happens now?

Cryan, who took over as CEO just over a year ago, has announced plans to shed at least 35,000 jobs by 2020, dispose of some businesses, and freeze dividend payments. On Wednesday, it sold U.K. insurer Abbey Life for $1.2 billion, a deal that will strengthen the bank's finances.

The bank will negotiate hard to reduce the amount it has to pay the U.S. for selling toxic mortgage products. But analysts say a figure above $6 billion may mean it has to raise more money from somewhere. That could be tricky.

The next Lehman Bros?

Is Deutsche Bank about to trigger a rerun of the Lehman Bros crisis of 2008? Bankers and some skeptical investors say not.

"This is not as bad as Lehman and the mortgage crisis, or even the Long-Term Capital hedge fund implosion in the late 1990s," said Brad Lamensdorf, a portfolio manager for the Ranger Equity Bear (HDGE) exchange-traded fund.

Lamensdorf started to short sell Deutsche Bank a few years ago due to concerns about its balance sheet. And he doubled down on his bet that the stock would fall earlier this summer.

Still, he's not predicting a collapse. Instead, he feels that Deutsche's rivals will profit as it continues to shrink.

"Deutsche is in a weak position because it is so leveraged and doesn't have access to credit. But its problems could mean more business for JPMorgan Chase (JPM), Goldman Sachs (GS) and other big banks," he said.

Problemitas en la banca

La nota que sigue, de Wolf Richter para WolfStreet.com, comenta sobre el problemita que enfrentan los bancos europeos esta temporada. La crisis suena a terminal, con compromisos de los bancos en "derivados" (sobre todo el Deutsche Bank), en números que superan las capacidades planetarias para cubrirlos. En fin, todo llega, chicos.


Título: EU Banking Mayhem, One Bank at a Time, then All at Once

Subtítulo: Investors are not amused.

Texto: The European banking crisis simply doesn’t let up. Currently, the big two German banks are grabbing the headlines away from the Italian banks, due to their size and the damage they could do to the global financial system. Other banks are in bigger trouble still, and some have already collapsed, with bailouts and bail-ins getting lined up.

Deutsche Bank had to endure a horrendous Monday after it was leaked on Friday that Merkel had refused to entertain bailing out the bank before the general elections a year from now. Merkel’s popularity has gotten broadsided recently, and bailing out bank bondholders with taxpayer money is just not popular at the moment.

Then Commerzbank, in which the government already owns a stake of 16% as a result of the bailout during the Financial Crisis, graced the headlines with leaks that it would lay off 9,000 employees, nearly one-fifth of its workforce. This will cost about €1 billion, according to the sources. To pay for it, the bank will scrap its dividend for 2016 to reduce the bleeding and preserve capital, in what is turning out to be the hellish environment of negative interest rates.

We’ve been writing about the European banking crisis for a long time, it seems, as it drags on, and meanders from one country to another, and sometimes we write about it in an amused fashion because we’ve got to keep our sense of humor in all this gloom.

But investors who believed in all the hype and in Draghi’s promises and in Merkel’s strength and in the willingness of all of them to do whatever it takes to protect bank bondholders and stockholders, and who believed in the miracle of Spain’s recovery, and in Italy’s new government and what not – well, they’re not amused.

For them, it has been bloody. The global financial crisis got swept under the rug. Then the euro debt crisis took down some banks at the periphery, and taxpayers stepped in to bail out the bondholders, mostly, and a lot more things got swept under the rug. But the problems weren’t solved. And as the decomposing assets under the rug kept exuding their pungent odor, investors held their nose and played along for a while.

But now it’s just getting worse. And investors are wondering what exactly is under these rugs – or maybe they’d rather not know for it’s too ugly to behold. And every time someone does look, for example at the Italian banks, they find even bigger problems that have started to metastasize.

This banking crisis has the potential to transmogrify into a financial crisis. All it takes is for one of the big ones to suddenly topple. The flow of credit would freeze up instantly. In an economic system that depends on credit, and whose lifeblood is credit, such an event is a financial crisis.

The problem isn’t restricted to a couple of Italian or German banks. It’s deep and wide.
Here are the 29 banks in the ESTX Banks Index of Eurozone banks (so Swiss and UK banks, for example are not included). It shows the percentage drop from their 52-week high. But for some of these banks, particularly for Italian and Portuguese banks, that 52-week high was just about last year’s 52-week low, so relentless has their decline been over the years. Some of them had already been reduced to penny stocks years ago, and for them, in euro terms, the biggest losses occurred back then. So these mayhem banks, color coded by country:

If a bank stock plunges from €0.04 to €0.01 over the 52-week period, such as Banco Comercial Português in Portugal, it has been toast for longer than 52 weeks, and the percentage plunge is essentially meaningless because shares were worthless to begin with.
The shares of five of these banks trade under €1. Another 8 banks trade under €3. These 29 banks form a big part of the European financial system. It includes some of the world’s largest banks, such as Deutsche Bank, Societe Generale, and BNP Paribas. It includes a slew of other “systemically important financial institutions,” such as Unicredit, ING, and Santander.

They’re troubled at the same time. The can has been kicked down the road for years. Now negative interest rates appear to have inadvertently crushed the can.

Si el mundo pudiera votar...

Si el mundo pudiera votar en las elecciones presidenciales de los Estados Unidos, a 41 días de las mismas, esto es lo que votaría: en rojo, a Trump; en azul, a Hillary. Fuente: https://worldwide.vote/hillary-vs-trump/#/results/day

Brasil: comienza el desguace

La nota que sigue es de F. William Engdahl y apareció sucesivamente en los sitios web New Eastern Outlook y The International Reporter. En la misma se argumenta sobre los verdaderos motivos detrás de la destitución de Dilma Rousseff como presidenta constitucional del Brasil: vender los más valiosos activos del estado y debilitar a los BRICS. A ver si los enfurece un poquito:

Título: Washington Tries to Break BRICS – Rape of Brazil Begins

Epígrafe: Washington’s regime change machinery has for the time being succeeded in removing an important link in the alliance of large emerging nations by railroading through a Senate impeachment of the duly elected President, Dilma Rousseff. On August 31 her Vice President Michel Temer was sworn in as President. In his first speech as president, the cynical Temer called for a government of “national salvation,” asking for the trust of the Brazilian people. He indicated plans to reform, and has also signaled his intention to overhaul the pension system and labor laws, and cut public spending, all themes beloved of Wall Street banks, of the International Monetary Fund and their Washington Consensus. Now after less than three weeks at the job, Temer has unveiled plans for wholesale privatization of Brazil’s crown jewels, starting with oil. The planned Wall Street rape of Brazil is about to begin.

Texto: It’s important to keep in mind that elected President Rousseff was not convicted or even formally charged with any concrete act of corruption, even though the pro-oligarchy mainstream Brazil media, led by O’Globo Group of the billionaire Roberto Irineu Marinho, ran a media defamation campaign creating the basis to railroad Rousseff into formal impeachment before the Senate. The shift took place after the opposition PMDB party of Temer on March 29 broke their coalition with Rousseff’s Workers’ Party, as accusations of Petrobras-linked corruption were made against Rousseff and former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

On August 31, 61 Senators voted to remove her while 20 voted against removal. The formal charge was “manipulation of the state budget” before the 2014 elections to hide the size of the deficit. She vehemently denies the charge. Indeed, the Senate issued its own expert report that concluded there was “no indication of direct or indirect action by Dilma” in any illegal budgetary maneuvers. According to the Associated Press, “Independent auditors hired by Brazil’s Senate said in a report released Monday that suspended President Dilma Rousseff didn’t engage in the creative accounting she was charged with at her impeachment trial.” Under an honest system that would have ended the impeachment then and there. Not in Brazil.

In effect, she was impeached for the dramatic decline in the Brazilian economy, a decline deliberately pushed along as US credit rating agencies downgraded Brazilian debt, and international and mainstream Brazilian media kept the Petrobras corruption allegations in the spotlight. Importantly, the Senate did not ban her from office for 8 years as Washington had hoped, and she has promised an electoral return. The Washington-steered Temer has until end of 2018 to deliver Brazil to Temer’s foreign masters before his term legally ends.

Notably, Temer himself was accused of corruption in the Petrobras state oil company investigations. He reportedly asked the then-head of the transportation unit of Petróleo Brasileiro SA in 2012 to arrange illegal campaign contributions to Temer’s party which was running a Washington-backed campaign to oust Rousseff’s Workers’ Party. Then this June, only days into his serving as acting president, two of Temer’s own chosen ministers, including the Minister of Transparency, were forced to resign in response to allegations that they sought to subvert the probe into massive graft at Petrobras.

One of the two, Temer’s extremely close ally Romero Jucá, was caught on tape plotting Dilma’s impeachment as a way to shut down the ongoing Petrobras corruption investigation, as well as indicating that Brazil’s military, the media, and the courts were all participants in the impeachment plotting.

In brief, the removal of Dilma Rousseff and her Workers’ Party after 13 years in Brazil’s leadership was a new form of Color Revolution from Washington, one we might call a judicial coup by corrupt judges and congressmen. Of the 594 members of the Congress, as the Toronto Globe and Mail reported, “318 are under investigation or face charges” while their target, President Rousseff, “herself faces no allegation of financial impropriety.”

The day after the first Lower House impeachment vote in April, a leading member of Temer’s PSDP party, Senator Aloysio Nunes, went to Washington, in a mission organized by former Bill Clinton Secretary of State Madeline Albright’s lobbying firm, Albright Stonebridge Group. Nunes, as president of the Brazilian Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee, has repeatedly advocated that Brazil once again move closer to an alliance with the US and UK.

Madeline Albright, a Director of the leading US think-tank, Council on Foreign Relations, is also chair of the prime US Government “Color Revolution” NGO, the National Democratic Institute (NDI). Nothing fishy here, or? Nunes reportedly went to Washington to rally backing for Temer and the unfolding judicial coup against Rousseff.

A key player from the side of Washington, Rousseff’s de facto political executioner, was, once again, Vice President Joe Biden, the “Dick Cheney” dirty operator-in-chief in the Obama Administration.

Biden’s fateful Brazil trip

In May, 2013, US Vice President Joe Biden made a fateful visit to Brazil to meet with President Rousseff. In January 2011 Rousseff had succeeded her Workers’ Party mentor, Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, or Lula, who constitutionally was limited to two consecutive terms. Biden went to Brazil to discuss oil with the new President. Relations between Lula and Washington had chilled as Lula backed Iran against US sanctions and came economically closer to China.

In late 2007 Petrobras had discovered what was estimated to be a mammoth new basin of high-quality oil on the Brazilian Continental Shelf offshore in the Santos Basin. In total the Brazil Continental Shelf could contain over 100 billion barrels of oil, transforming the country into a major world oil and gas power, something Exxon and Chevron, the US oil giants wanted tocontrol.

In 2009, according to leaked US diplomatic cables published by Wikileaks, the US Consulate in Rio wrote that Exxon and Chevron were trying in vain to alter a law advanced by Rousseff’s mentor and predecessor in her Brazilian Workers’ Party , President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva. That 2009 law made the state-owned Petrobras chief operator of all offshore oilblocs. Washington and the US oil giants were not at all pleased at losing control over potentially the largest new world oil discovery in decades.

Lula had not only pushed ExxonMobil and Chevron out of the controlling position in favor of the state-owned Petrobras, but he also opened Brazilian oil exploration to the Chinese, since 2009 a core member of the BRICS developing nations with Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa.

In December, 2010 in one of his last acts as President, Lula oversaw signing of a deal between the Brazilian-Spanish energy company Repsol and China’s state-owned Sinopec. Sinopec formed a joint venture, Repsol Sinopec Brasil, investing more than $7.1 billion towards Repsol Brazil. Already in 2005 Lula had approved formation of Sinopec International Petroleum Service of Brazil Ltd as part of a new strategic alliance between China and Brazil.

In 2012 in a joint exploration drilling, Repsol Sinopec Brasil, Norway’s Statoil and Petrobras made a major new discovery in Pão de Açúcar, the third in block BM-C-33, which includes the Seat and Gávea, the latter one of the world’s 10 largest discoveries in 2011. USA and British oil majors were nowhere to be seen.

Biden’s task was to sound out Lula’s successor, Rousseff, about reversing that exclusion of US major oil companies in favor of the Chinese. Biden also met with leading energy companies in Brazil including Petrobras.

While little was publicly said, Rousseff refused to reverse the 2009 oil law in a way that would be suitable to Biden, Washington and US oil majors. Days after Biden’s visit came the Snowden NSA revelations that the US had also spied on Rousseff and top officials of Petrobras. She was livid and denounced the Obama Administration that September before the UN General Assembly for violating international law. She cancelled a planned Washington visit in protest. After that, US-Brazil relations took a dive.

After his May 2013 talks with Rousseff, Biden clearly gave her the kiss of death.

Before Biden’s May 2013 visit Dilma Rousseff had 70% of popularity rating. Less than two weeks after Biden left Brazil, nationwide protests by a very well-organized group called Movimento Passe Livre, over a nominal 10 cent bus fare increase, brought the country virtually to a halt and turned very violent. The protests bore the hallmark of typical “Color Revolution” or Twitter social media destabilizations that seem to follow Biden wherever he makes a presence. Within weeks Rousseff’s popularity plummeted to 30%.

Washington had clearly sent a signal that Rousseff had to change course or face serious problems. The Washington regime change machine, including its entire array of financial warfare operations ranging from a leaked PwC audit of Petrobras to Wall Street credit rating agency Standard & Poors’ downgrade of Brazil public debt to junk in September 2015, went into full action to remove Rousseff, a key backer of the BRICS New Development Bank and of an independent national development strategy for Brazil.

Selling the Crown Jewels

The man who has now manipulated himself into the Presidency, the corrupt Michel Temer, worked as an informer for Washington the entire time. In documents released by Wikileaks, it was revealed that Temer was an informant to US intelligence since at least 2006, via telegrams to the US embassy in Brazil classified by the Embassy as “sensitive” and “for official use only.”

Washington’s man in Brazil, Temer, has lost no time appeasing his patrons in Wall Street. Even as acting President this May, Temer named Henrique Meirelles as Minister of Finance and Social Security. Meirelles, a Harvard-educated former President of the Brazilian central bank, was President of BankBoston in the USA until 1999, and was with that bank in 1985 when it was found guilty of failing to report $1.2 billion in illegal cash transfers with Swiss banks. Meirelles is now overseeing the planned selloff of Brazil’s “crown jewels” to international investors, a move that is intended to gravely undercut the power of the state in the economy. Another of Temer’s key economic advisers is Paulo Leme, former IMF economist and now Goldman Sachs Managing Director of Emerging Markets Research. Wall Street is in the middle of the Temer-led economic rape of Brazil.

On September 13, Temer’s government unveiled a massive privatization program with the cynically misleading comment, “It is clear the public sector cannot move forward alone on these projects. We are counting on the private sector.” He omitted to say the private sector he meant were his patrons.

Temer unveiled plans that would complete the country’s largest privatization in decades. Conveniently, the process us to be completed by end of 2018, just before Temer’s term must end. The influential US-Brazil Business Council detailed the privatization list on its website. The US-Brazil Business Council was founded forty years ago by Citigroup, Monsanto, Coca-Cola, Dow Chemicals and other US multinationals.

Tenders for the first round of concessions will be issued before the end of this year. They will include privatization of four airports and two port terminals, all auctioned in the first quarter of 2017. Other concessions include five highways, one rail line, bidding on small oil blocks and a later round for large, mainly offshore, oil development blocks. As well the government will sell selected assets currently controlled by its Minerals Research Department plus six electric power distributors and three water treatment facilities.

The heart of his planned privatization are, not surprisingly, Joe Biden’s coveted state oil and gas companies along with chunks of the state Eletrobrás power company. Temer plans to get as much as $24 billion from the selloff. Fully $11 billion of the total are to come from sale of key oil and gas state holdings. Of course, when state assets such as huge oil and gas resources are sold off to foreign interests in what will clearly be a distress sale, it is a one-off deal. State oil and gas or electric power projects generate a continuing revenue stream many times any one-off privatization gains. Brazil’s economy is the ultimate loser in such privatization. Wall Street banks and multinationals are of course, as planned, the winner.

On September 19-21, according to the US-Brazil Business Council website, the Brazilian government’s key ministers for infrastructure including Minister Moreira Franco; Minister Fernando Bezerra Coelho Filho, Minister of Mines and Energy; and Minister Mauricio Quintella Lessa, Minister of Transport, Ports and Civil Aviation, will be in New York City to meet with Wall Street “infrastructure investors.”

This is Washington’s way, the way of the Wall Street Gods of Money, as I title one of my books. First, destroy any national leadership intent on genuine national development such as Dilma Rousseff. Replace them with a vassal regime willing to do anything for money, including selling the crown jewels of their own nation as people like Anatoli Chubais did in Russia in the 1990’s under Boris Yeltsin’s “shock therapy.” As reward for his behavior, Chubais today sits on the advisory board of JP MorganChase. What will Temer and associates get for their efforts remains to be seen. Washington for now has broken one of the BRICS that ultimately threaten her global hegemony. It is not likely to bring any lasting success if recent history is any guide.

Acá están, estos son

No, no están sacándole fotos a otro candidato que entró por la puerta opuesta a la de Hillary (a la derecha en la foto). Están haciéndose una selfie con la candidata de fondo para subirla al face lo antes posible. 

Esta es la gente que en algo más de un mes va a decidir sobre los destinos del mundo.

Fuente: https://twitter.com/victomato/status/780119655423676416/photo/1

Obsolescencia

Acá va una interesante nota de Fred Reed para UNZ Review. El tema: la (en su opinión) obsolescencia conceptual, no sólo tecnológica, de las actuales fuerzas armadas del Imperio. A ver si te gusta:


Título: An Obsolescent Military

Subtítulo: Bombing Everything, Gaining Nothing

Texto: What, precisely, is the US military for, and what, precisely, can it do? In practical terms, how powerful is it? On paper, it is formidable, huge, with carrier battle groups, advanced technology, remarkable submarines, satellites, and so on. What does this translate to?

Military power does not exist independently, but only in relation to specific circumstances. Comparing technical specifications of the T-14 to those of the M1A2, or Su-34 to F-15, or numbers of this to numbers of that, is an interesting intellectual exercise. It means little without reference to specific circumstances.

For example, America is vastly superior militarily to North Korea in every category of arms–but the North has nuclear bombs. It can’t deliver them to the US, but probably can to Seoul. Even without nuclear weapons, it has a large army and large numbers of artillery tubes within range of Seoul. It has an unpredictable government. As Gordon Liddy said, if your responses to provocation are wildly out of proportion to those provocations, and unpredictable, nobody will provoke you.

An American attack by air on the North, the only attack possible short of a preemptive nuclear strike, would offer a high probability of a peninsular war, devastation of Seoul, paralysis of an important trading partner–think Samsung–and an uncertain final outcome. The United States hasn’t the means of getting troops to Korea rapidly in any numbers, and the domestic political results of lots of GIs killed by a serious enemy would be politically grave. The probable cost far exceeds any possible benefit. In practical terms, Washington’s military superiority means nothing with regard to North Korea. Pyongyang knows it.

Or consider the Ukraine. On paper, US forces overall are superior to Russian. Locally, they are not. Russia borders on the Ukraine and could overrun it quickly. The US cannot rapidly bring force to bear except a degree of air power. Air power hasn’t worked against defenseless peasants in many countries. Russia is not a defenseless peasant. Europe, usually docile and obedient to America, is unlikely to engage in a shooting war with Moscow for the benefit of Washington. Europeans are aware that Russia borders on Eastern Europe, which borders on Western Europe. For Washington, fighting Russia in the Ukraine would require a huge effort with seaborne logistics and a national mobilization. Serious wars with nuclear powers do not represent the height of judgement.

Again, Washington’s military superiority means nothing.

Or consider Washington’s dispute with China in the Pacific. China cannot begin to match American naval power. It doesn’t have to. Beijing has focused on anti-ship missiles–read “carrier-killer”–such as the JD21 ballistic missile. How well it works I do not know, but the Chinese are not stupid. Is the risk of finding out worth it? Fast, stealthed, sea-skimming cruise missiles are very cheap compared to carriers, and America’s admirals know that lots of them arriving simultaneously would not have a happy ending.

Having a fleet disabled by China would be intolerable to Washington, but its possible responses would be unappealing. Would it start a conventional war with China with the ghastly global economic consequences? This would not generate allies. Cut China’s oil lanes to the Mid-East and push Beijing toward nuclear war? Destroy the Three Gorges Dam and drown god knows how many people? If China used the war as a pretext for annexing bordering counties? What would Russia do?

The consequences both probable and assured make the adventure unattractive, especially since likely pretexts for a war with China–a few rocks in the Pacific, for example–are too trivial to be worth the certain costs and uncertain outcome. Again, military superiority doesn’t mean much.

We live in a military world fundamentally different from that of the last century. All-out wars between major powers, which is to say nuclear powers, are unlikely since they would last about an hour after they became all-out, and everyone knows it. In WWII Germany could convince itself, reasonably and almost correctly, that Russia would fall in a summer, or the Japanese that a Depression-ridden, unarmed America might decide not to fight. Now, no. Threaten something that a nuclear power regards as vital and you risk frying. So nobody does.

At any rate, nobody has. Fools abound in DC and New York.

What then, in today’s world, is the point of huge conventional forces?

The American military is an upgraded World War II military, designed to fight other militarizes like itself in a world like that which existed during World War II. The Soviet Union was that kind of military. Today there are no such militaries for America to fight. We are not in the same world. Washington seems not to have noticed.

A World War II military is intended to destroy point targets of high value—aircraft, ships, factories, tanks—and to capture crucial territory, such as the enemy’s country. When you have destroyed the Wehrmacht’s heavy weaponry and occupied Germany, you have won. This is the sort of war that militaries have always relished, having much sound and fury and clear goals.

It doesn’t work that way today. Since Korea, half-organized peasant militias have baffled the Pentagon by not having targets of high value or crucial territory. In Afghanistan for example goatherds with rifles could simply disperse, providing no point targets at all, and certainly not of high value. No territory was crucial to them. If the US mounted a huge operation to take Province A, the resistance could just fade into the population or move to Province B. The US would always be victorious but never win anything. Sooner or later America would go away. The world understands this.

Further, the underlying nature of conflict has changed. For most of history until the Soviet Union evaporated, empires expanded by military conquest. In today’s world, countries have not lost their imperial ambitions, but the approach is no longer military. China seems intent on bringing Eurasia under its hegemony, and advances toward doing it, but its approach is economic, not martial. The Chinese are not warm and fuzzy. They are, however, smart. It is much cheaper and safer to expand commercially than militarily, and wiser to sidestep martial confrontation—in a word, to ignore America. More correctly it is sidestepping the Pentagon.

Military and diplomatic power spring from economic power, and China is proving successful economically. Using commercial clout, she is expanding her influence, but in ways not easily bombed. She is pushing the BRICS alliance, from which the US is excluded. She is enlarging the SCO, from which America is excluded. Perhaps most importantly, she has set up the AIIB, the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank, which does not include the US but includes Washington’s European allies. These organizations will probably trade mostly not in dollars, a serious threat to Washington’s economic hegemony.

What is the relevance of the Pentagon? How do you bomb a trade agreement?
China enjoys solvency, and hegemonizes enthusiastically with it. Thus in Pakistan it has built the Karakoram Highway from Xian Jiang to Karachi, which will increase trade between the two. It is putting in the two power reactors near Karachi. It is investing in Afghan resources, increasing trade with Iran. . When the US finally leaves, China, without firing a shot, will be predominant in the region.

What is the relevance of aircraft carriers?

Beijing is talking seriously about building more rail lines, including high-speed rail, from itself to Europe, accompanied by fiber-optic lines and so on. This is not just talk. China has the money and a very large network of high-speed rail domestically. (The US has not a single mile.) Google “China-Europe Rail lines.”

What is the Pentagon going to do? Bomb the tracks?

As trade and ease of travel from Berlin to Beijing increase, and as China prospers and wants more European goods, European businessmen will want to cuddle up to that fabulously large market—which will loosen Washington’s grip on the throat of Europe. Say it three times slowly: Eur-asia. Eur-asia. Eur-asia. I promise it is what the Chinese are saying.

What is the Pentagon’s trillion-dollar military going to bomb? Europe? Railways across Kazakhstan? BMW plants?

All of which is to say that while the US military looks formidable, it isn’t particularly useful, and aids China by bankrupting the US. Repeatedly it has demonstrated that it cannot defeat campesinos armed with those most formidable weapons, the AK, the RPG, and the IED. The US does not have the land forces to fight a major or semi-major enemy. It could bomb Iran, with unpredictable consequences, but couldn’t possibly conquer it.

The wars in the Mid-East illustrate the principle nicely. Iraq didn’t work. Libya didn’t work. Iran didn’t back down. ISIS and related curiosities? The Pentagon is again bombing an enemy that can’t fight back—its specialty—but that it seems unable defeat.

Wrong military, wrong enemy, wrong war, wrong world.

Hillary y la demolición de Libia y Siria

La nota que sigue, de Manlio Dinucci para Red Voltaire, cuenta algo de lo que se desprende de los mails hackeados de la hoy candidata Hillary Clinton mientras fue Secretaria de Estado del presidente Obama. Dos países en particular fueron motivo de sus furias: Libia y Siria. Ninguno había agredido al Imperio. El primero derrotado por la NATO, el segundo está todavía en veremos; ambos, de todos modos, fueron demolidos hasta los cimientos. Lo interesante son los motivos, y esta nota habla de ellos.

Título: Los emails explosivos de Hillary Clinton

Epígrafe: Los anglosajones son expertos en “lavado” de la memoria colectiva. Les basta con presentar excusas a quienes no tienen cómo castigarlos por los errores cometidos y, partir de ahí, ¡borrón y cuenta nueva! Por supuesto, las excusas nunca van dirigidas a los organismos a los que mintieron.

Texto: De vez en cuando, Occidente saca del armario algunos esqueletos, en lo que constituye un ejercicio de «limpieza moral de verano» con objetivos político-mediáticos.

En Gran Bretaña, una comisión de la Cámara de los Comunes criticó a David Cameron por la intervención militar de 2011 en Libia, emprendida bajo su mandato como primer ministro. Pero la comisión no criticó a Cameron por la agresión militar que destruyó un Estado soberano sino por haber emprendido esa guerra sin «inteligencia» adecuada y sin plan para la «reconstrucción» [1].

Lo mismo hizo Barack Obama en abril de este año 2016, cuando declaró haber cometido en el caso de Libia el «peor error», pero no por haber destruido ese país utilizando las fuerzas de la OTAN bajo las órdenes de Estados Unidos sino por no haber planificado «The Day after», o sea lo que vendría después. Al mismo tiempo, Obama reiteró su apoyo a Hillary Clinton, hoy candidata a la presidencia. O sea, la misma Hillary Clinton que, como secretaria de Estado, lo convenció para que autorizara una operación secreta contra Libia –incluyendo el envío de fuerzas especiales y la entrega de armamento a grupos terroristas– para preparar el asalto aeronaval de Estados Unidos y la OTAN contra ese país.

Los correos electrónicos de Hillary Clinton, posteriormente revelados, demuestran cual fue el verdadero objetivo de la guerra contra Libia: impedir el proyecto de creación de organismos financieros autónomos de la Unión Africana y de una moneda africana alternativa al dólar y al franco CFA, que Kadhafi pensaba concretar gracias a los multimillonarios fondos soberanos de Libia.

Después de haber destruido el Estado libio, Estados Unidos y la OTAN, junto a las monarquías del Golfo, emprendieron la operación secreta que debía acabar con el Estado sirio, infiltrando en Siria fuerzas especiales y grupos terroristas que acabaron pariendo el Emirato Islámico (Daesh, también designado como Estado Islámico o con siglas como EI, EIIL, ISIL o ISIS).

Uno de los numerosos correos electrónicos de Hillary Clinton que el Departamento de Estado tuvo que desclasificar a raíz del escándalo provocado por las revelaciones de Wikileaks menciona uno de los objetivos fundamentales de la operación, aún en marcha, contra Siria. En el correo electrónico desclasificado como «case number F-2014-20439, Doc No. C05794498» [2], la secretaria de Estado Hillary Clinton escribe, el 31 de diciembre de 2012:

«Es la relación estratégica entre Irán y el régimen de Bachar al-Assad lo que permite a Irán socavar la seguridad de Israel, no a través de un ataque directo sino a través de sus aliados en Líbano, como el Hezbollah.»

La señora Clinton subraya entonces que «la mejor manera de ayudar a Israel es ayudar a la rebelión en Siria que ya dura desde hace más de un año», o sea desde 2011, y sostiene que para poner de rodillas a Bachar al-Assad hay que recurrir «al uso de la fuerza» para «poner en peligro su vida y la de su familia».

En ese correo electrónico, Hillary Clinton concluye:

«El derrocamiento de Assad sería no sólo una inmensa ganancia para la seguridad de Israel, sino que también haría disminuir el temor israelí comprensible de perder el monopolio nuclear.»

O sea, en ese correo electrónico la secretaria de Estado reconoce lo que nadie dice oficialmente: el hecho que Israel es el único país del Medio Oriente que posee armas nucleares [Desde aquella época, Arabia Saudita compró la bomba atómica [3].]

El apoyo de la administración Obama a Israel, más allá de alguna que otra disensión más bien formales, acaba de ser ampliamente confirmado por el acuerdo, firmado en Washington el 14 de septiembre de 2016, donde Estados Unidos se compromete a equipar a Israel con el armamento más moderno de sus arsenales por un valor total de 38 000 millones de dólares en 10 años, con un financiamiento anual de 3 300 millones más medio millón para la «defensa antimisiles».

En todo caso, luego de la intervención rusa que dio al traste con el plan tendiente a destruir Siria desde adentro imponiéndole una guerra, Estados Unidos se las arregló para obtener una «tregua» (que inmediatamente viola) mientras emprende en Libia una nueva ofensiva disfrazada de operación humanitaria, con la participación de los “mili-humanitarios” de Italia.

Mientras tanto, Israel, en la sombra, sigue fortaleciendo su ventaja nuclear, que tanto estima Hillary Clinton.

Notas:

[1] Libya: Examination of intervention and collapse and the UK’s future policy options, House of Commons, Foreign Committee, 6 de septiembre de 2016.

[2] «New Iran and Syria», Hillary Clinton, 31 de diciembre de 2012, (Wikileaks).

[3] «Alerta roja nuclear», por Manlio Dinucci, Il Manifesto (Italia), Red Voltaire, 25 de febrero de 2016. «Arabia Saudita tiene la bomba atómica», por Giulietto Chiesa, Il Fatto Quotidiano (Italia), Red Voltaire, 2 de marzo de 2016.

Incapaces de acordar

Seguimos los acontecimientos de Siria con el interés que nos provoca el accionar del Imperio en las situaciones delicadas. Por lo general los chicos de la "stars & stripes" terminan llamando al General Custer, mueren quichicientos indios y se proclama a los cuatro vientos que ganaron los buenos. Luego sigue el packaging de las pelis de Holywood, los Pulitzers a los periodistas comprometidos (con la causa, por lo general), series de toda calaña donde se demuestra una vez más que los sucios barbudos son eso, sucios y barbudos, y poca cosa más. A fuerza de repetir el guión, sin embargo, la cosa suena ya a cartón pintado. Para colmo, ni siquiera funciona. Leemos en el sitio web The Vineyard of the Saker: 


Título: Why the recent developments in Syria show that the Obama Administration is in a state of confused agony

Texto: The latest developments in Syria are not, I believe, the result of some deliberate plan of the USA to help their “moderate terrorist” allies on the ground, but they are the symptom of something even worse: the complete loss of control of the USA over the situation in Syria and, possibly, elsewhere.  Let me just re-state what just happened:

First, after days and days of intensive negotiations, Secretary Kerry and Foreign Minister Lavrov finally reached a deal on a cease-fire in Syria which had the potential to at least “freeze” the situation on the ground until the Presidential election in the USA and a change in administration (this is now the single most important event in the near future, therefore no plans of any kind can extend beyond that date).

Then the USAF, along with a few others, bombed a Syrian Army unit which was not on the move or engaged in intense operations, but which was simply holding a key sector of the front.  The US strike was followed by a massive offensive of the “moderate terrorists” which was barely contained by the Syrian military and the Russian Aerospace forces.  Needless to say, following such a brazen provocation the cease-fire was dead.  The Russians expressed their total disgust and outrage at this attack and openly began saying that the Americans were “недоговороспособны”.  What that word means is literally “not-agreement-capable” or unable to make and then abide by an agreement.  While polite, this expression is also extremely strong as it implies not so much a deliberate deception as the lack of the very ability to make a deal and abide by it.  For example, the Russians have often said that the Kiev regime is “not-agreement-capable”, and that makes sense considering that the Nazi occupied Ukraine is essentially a failed state.  But to say that a nuclear world superpower is “not-agreement-capable” is a terrible and extreme diagnostic.  It basically means that the Americans have gone crazy and lost the very ability to make any kind of deal.  Again, a government which breaks its promises or tries to deceive but who, at least in theory, remains capable of sticking to an agreement would not be described as “not-agreement-capable”.  That expression is only used to describe an entity which does not even have the skillset needed to negotiate and stick to an agreement in its political toolkit.  This is an absolutely devastating diagnostic.

Next came the pathetic and absolutely unprofessional scene of US Ambassador Samantha Powers simply walking out of a UNSC meeting when the Russian representative was speaking.  Again, the Russians were simply blown away, not by the infantile attempt at offending, but at the total lack of diplomatic professionalism shown the Powers.  From a Russian point of view, for one superpower to simply walk out at the very moment the other superpower is making a crucial statement is simply irresponsible and, again, the sign that their American counterparts have totally “lost it”.

Finally, there came the crowning moment: the attack of the humanitarian convey in Syria which the USA blamed, of course, on Russia.  The Russians, again, could barely believe their own eyes.  First, this was such a blatant and, frankly, Kindergarten-level attempt to show that “the Russians make mistakes too” and that “the Russians killed the cease-fire”.  Second, there was this amazing statement of the Americans who said there are only two air forces which could have done that – either the Russians or the Syrians (how the Americans hoped to get away with this in an airspace thoroughly controlled by Russian radars is beyond me!).  Somehow, the Americans “forgot” to mention that their own air force was also present in the region, along with the air forces of many US allies.  Most importantly, they forgot to mention that that night armed US Predator drones were flying right over that convoy.

What happened in Syria is painfully obvious: the Pentagon sabotaged the deal made between Kerry and Lavrov and when the Pentagon was accused of being responsible, it mounted a rather crude false flag attack and tried to blame it on the Russians.

All this simply goes to show that the Obama Administration is in a state of confused agony.  The White House apparently is so freaked out at the prospects of a Trump victory in November that it has basically lost control of its foreign policy in general and, especially, in Syria.  The Russians are quite literally right: the Obama Administration is truly “not-agreement-capable”.

Of course, the fact that the Americans are acting like clueless frustrated children does not mean that Russia will reciprocate in kind.  We have already seen Lavrov go back and further negotiate with Kerry.  Not because the Russians are naive, but precisely because, unlike their US colleagues, the Russians are professionals who know that negotiations and open lines of communications are always, and by definition, preferable to a walk-away, especially when dealing with a superpower.  Those observers who criticize Russia for being “weak” or “naive” simply project their own, mostly American, “reaction set” on the Russians and fail to realize the simply truth that Russians are not Americans, they think differently and they act differently.  For one thing, the Russians don’t care if they are perceived as “weak” or “naive”.  In fact, they would prefer to be perceived as such if that furthers their goals and confuses the opponent about their real intentions and capabilities.  The Russians know that they did not build the biggest country on the planet by being “weak” or “naive” and they won’t be take lessons from a country which is younger that many Russian buildings.  The western paradigm is usually like this: a crises leads to a breakdown in negotiations and conflict follows.  The Russian paradigm is completely different: a crisis leads to negotiations which are conducted up the the last second before a conflict erupts.  There are two reasons for that: first, continuing to negotiate up to the last second makes it possible to seek a way out of the confrontation up to the last second and, second, negotiations up to the last second make it possible to come as close as possible to achieving strategic surprise for an attack.  This is exactly how Russia acted in Crimea and in Syria – with absolutely no warning signs or, even less so, a well-publicized display of power to attempt to intimidate somebody (intimidation is also a western political strategy the Russians don’t use).

So Lavrov will continue to negotiate, no matter how ridiculous and useless such negotiations will appear.  And Lavrov himself will probably never officially utter the word “недоговороспособны”, but the message to the Russian people and to the Syrian, Iranian and Chinese allies of Russia will be that at this point Russia has lost any hope of dealing with the current US Administration.

Obama and Co. now have their hands full with trying to hide Hillary’s health and character problems and right now they probably can think of only one thing: how to survive the upcoming Hillary-Trump debate.  The Pentagon and the Department of State are mostly busy fighting each other over Syria, Turkey, the Kurds and Russia.  The CIA seems to be fighting itself, though this is hard to ascertain.

It is likely that some kind of deal with still be announced by Kerry and Lavrov, if not today, then tomorrow or the day after.  But, frankly, I completely agree with the Russians: the American are truly “not-agreement-capable” and at this point in time, both the conflict in Syria and the one in the Ukraine are frozen.  I don’t mean “frozen” in the sense of “no fighting”, not at all, but I do mean “frozen” in the same of “no major developments possible”.  There will still be combats, especially now that the Wahabi and Nazi allies of the USA feel that their boss is not in charge because he is busy with elections and race riots, but since there is no quick military solution possible in either one of these wars, the tactical clashes and offensives will not yield any strategic result.

Barring an election-canceling false flag inside the USA, like the murder of either Hillary or Trump by a “lone gunman”, the wars in the Ukraine and Syria will go on with no prospects of any kind of meaningful negotiations.  And whether Trump or Hillary get into the White House next, a major “reset” will take place in early 2017.  Trump will probably want to meet Putin for a major negotiations session involving all the key outstanding issues between the USA and Russia.  If Hillary and her Neocons make it into the White House then some kind of war between Russia and the USA will become almost impossible to prevent.

PS: some Russian military experts are saying that the kind of damage shown in the footage of the attack on the humanitarian convey is not consistent with an airstrike or even an artillery strike and that it looks much more like the result of a blast of several IEDs.  If so, then that would still not point at Russia, but at the “moderate terrorist” forces in control of that location.  This could still be a US ordered-false flag attack or, alternatively, the proof that the US has lost control over its Wahabi allies on the ground.

Otoño caliente

Se recalienta el otoño en el corazón del Imperio. Tres días sucesivos de protestas, con momentos de fuerte violencia, en Charlotte, Carolina del Norte. En el video de abajo, una periodista le pregunta a un manifestante qué se siente ser joven y negro en los EEUU de hoy.

"Miedo, se siente miedo", dice el chico de 24 años. "No estamos enojados, no odiamos a nadie; estamos confundidos. Queremos saber qué es lo que está pasando. No puede ser que me levante cada mañana con miedo por el hecho de ser negro, simplemente"

El video, acá:

https://youtu.be/z5OfZ0rcsdo

Si andan con tiempo, o insomnes, péguenle una mirada a este otro video. Dura más de cuatro horas y media. Algo se está armando allá en el norte. 

https://youtu.be/OseEJXHevJ0

¿Qué le pasa a esta gente?

Como prácticamente no pasa nada en ningún lado (chiste) decidimos tomarnos el día y repasar las últimas tendencias de la moda. Nos ponemos entonces a mirar la colección de Prada y nos quedamos estupefactos. En realidad nunca antes habíamos hecho algo así, motivo por el cual este post les podrá  parecer ingenuo, pero... ¿qué les pasa a estas chicas, por dio...? No es sólo que ya son unos esqueletos, unas pobres perchas humanoides sin vestigios de calorías. Lo que nos asusta son las caripelas! La que no simula ser un zombie parece estar oliendo mierda. Su percepción del entorno es igual a cero. Parecen un ejército de robots a punto de eliminar a la raza humana del planeta. Hasta ahora las chicas y chicos de la moda nos tenían acostumbrados a esas caritas de rebeldes sin causa que permitían a unos cuantos vivos de este planeta vender unos trapos por varios miles de euros. Pero esto... esto nos desconcierta. Las fotos son del Telegraph de Londres de hoy.

Que vuelvan las gordis YA !!!!!!