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Enlightened Islam against jihadist ideology

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Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve urged French Muslim leaders on Sunday to develop an "enlightened Islam" to confront what he called the obscurantist views of Islamic State that lead young Muslims into violence.

At their first meeting since the Nov. 13 killings of 130 people, he told about 400 Muslim leaders, imams and activists that France would do everything it could to track criminals, but only they could win the battle of ideas within Islam.

The unusual meeting of 10 Muslim federations and five grand mosques was arranged to "cry loud and clear our condemnation of these acts," Anouar Kbibech, head of France's Muslim Council (CFCM), said of the massacre in Paris by mostly French and Belgian recruits to the Syrian-based Islamic State movement.

It swore allegiance to France and ended with the French national anthem, La Marseillaise. France's five-million-strong Muslim minority, Europe's largest, makes up about 8 percent of the population. Two-thirds of them are French citizens.

Cazeneuve, whose portfolio includes religious affairs, recalled Islam's "Golden Age" of prominent philosophers and cooperation among religions, which was a far cry from what he called the perverted Islam of today's jihadists.

"It is your responsibility to revive this enlightened Islam to denounce the spiritual duplicity of the terrorists and those who follow them," he told the meeting.

"You are the most legitimate and qualified to fight these deadly ideas ... we must protect our youth from the spread of this stupidity," he said. "Just think what effect this progressive Islam would have on the rest of Islam in the world."

France is home to many Muslim intellectuals who write long treatises about reforming Islam to make it fit better into western society. Most have only faint resonance among practicing Muslims here or in the Muslim world.

"ISLAM OF FRANCE"

Since the late 1980s, successive Paris governments have tried but failed to nurture a liberal "Islam of France" that would help integrate the faith into this mostly secular society.

The French Muslim community, torn apart by ethnic divisions and power politics, has for its part failed to unite to oppose radical Salafist groups that have established their presence in some mosques and neighborhoods as well as on the Internet.

Recently elected as CFCM president, Kbibech brought together the often rival federations and grand mosques to pledge to do more to train imams, fight radicalization and educate young Muslims in the principles of Islam.

"After the time for emotion, for condemnation and compassion, now is the time for action," he said. "French Muslims are ready to play their part ... to understand and prevent the drift of some of our youths into violence."

Islam played a part in this radicalization, even if only as a source for religious pretexts misused to justify violence, he said, but many political, economic and social factors also pushed young Muslims to extremism.

"We are witnessing an Islamization of their radicalism, not a radicalization of Islam," he said, citing a recent analysis by Olivier Roy, a leading French academic expert on Islam.

Cazeneuve, who announced a meeting with Muslim leaders about radicalization for early January, said French Muslims should develop a "Gallican Islam, that keeps abreast of modern society's concerns and resolves issues that (Islam) never had to resolve in its societies of origin".

Salafist Islam, the puritan literalist interpretation of the faith that is the basis for Islamic State's violent ideology, says Muslims must return to the practices of early Islam in the seventh century and shun many aspects of modern western life.

Cazeneuve said Paris would continue cracking down on what he called obscurantism and told the meeting that two mosques had been shut down and about 20 more searched since Paris decreed emergency powers to allow it to track down militants.

He praised the meeting for its unequivocal denunciation of extremism and allegiance to France and its values, calling a statement it passed "a declaration of love for the republic and for France".

(Reporting by Tom Heneghan)
Read more at Reutershttp://www.reuters.com/article/2015/11/29/us-france-shooting-muslims-idUSKBN0TI0XG20151129#pgYXXkMEh9Itd8Zk.99

Comments:
Islam is already enlightened, its against terrorism, the misguided terrorists are using name of Islam to kill the innocent people. If a bad driver bangs new Mercedes car, its not fault of Mercedes but of driver, who needs training. Keep reading >>> 

Read more on:  Islam & Terrorism

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Wow, Seth Meyers just stripped down Donald Trump’s lies and Islamophobia so clearly even your racist uncle will get it now

Wow, Seth Meyers just stripped down Donald Trump's lies and Islamophobia so clearly even your racist uncle will get it now
"When confronted about his lies, he doubles down," Meyers says, before answering back with reality.

Wow, Seth Meyers just stripped down Donald Trump's lies and Islamophobia so clearly even your racist uncle will get it now
“Late Night” host Seth Meyers was on fire Tuesday night when he lit up Donald Trump for spending the weekend lying to justify his racism and Islamophobia.

Trump swears that he saw Muslims in New Jersey celebrating on 9/11, a claim that Meyers says has been universally debunked. “But even when he was confronted about the lie by George Stephanopoulos, Trump stood his ground,” Meyers said. He then ran the clip of Trump doubling down saying that he saw it with his own eyes.

“But let’s remember Trump also said he met Vladimir Putin when they were on the same episode of ’60 Minutes’ even though they filmed their segments thousands of miles apart. So, Trump’s understanding about how TV works is not entirely trustworthy.”

Meyers said it would be like Trump claiming he knew the Dallas Cowboys really well because just that weekend they played a game in his living room.

Trump even quoted a Washington Post report that alleged that “these people” were celebrating in the streets, however, the reporters who wrote the story have now come out saying that 1.) they never said hundreds or thousands of people were celebrating and 2.) the reporter could never verify the report.

Of course, Trump doesn’t care about any of that. “When confronted about his lies, he doubles down,” Meyers said. “And much like the KFC Double Down, each one is getting harder to digest. Because, Washington Post article or not, Trump claimed to have seen these events with his own eyes.”
Source: http://www.salon.com/2015/11/25/wow_seth_meyers_just_stripped_down_donald_trumps_lies_and_islamophobia_so_clearly_even_your_racist_uncle_will_get_it_now/


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Muslims need to take a firm stand against Terrorists who are killing in the name of Islam

If the whole Muslim population is placed under a restive “judgment” of mistrust, it is not the fault of the “other” but our own “private bomber” who believes that they are going to “paradise” if they blow up a cathedral or an opera house full of people

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I am a Muslim and I do not approve of what some “Muslim terror groups” are doing to the world in their frenzied state of heedless revenge against an enemy which is not even there. The Islamic State group for instance, brings shame to me being a Muslim. I was shocked the day Paris was attacked for it was only innocent people who got killed and maimed. It is always the innocent who get killed in majority (or should I say all) of the attacks perpetrated and then heretically owned by Muslim terror outfits. The policy makers, the aggressors and the assumed “proponent enemies” are seated behind fortresses while our Muslim brothers kill unassuming people who are out to earn their living or by all means live a happy life. This is terrorism and there is no running away from it. If the whole Muslim population is being blamed and is placed under a restive “judgment” of mistrust, it is not the fault of the “other” but our own “private bomber” who is persistently focused on the belief that he or she is going to “paradise” if he or she manages to blow up a cathedral or an opera house full of people. It is our own people who make lives difficult for us.

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As for me, I am a man of simple faith and I believe in the ideals that my religion teaches me. But I am not frenzied; I am not out to hit out every person from a distinct faith to secure my position in paradise. I am far away from that, because first I am a human being and my religion teaches me love and compassion for not only other humans but even “inanimate” objects like the roads I walk on. My religion teaches me to feed the hungry rather than stuffing my own abdomen with loads and loads of food and I need to weigh, intrinsically, how focused I am on such “deeds”. I have to look out for my neighbours the way I look out for my father and mother. If I am a Muslim I have to abide by all that my religion preaches and not stay obscurely focused on “how to eliminate” the “other”. I would not mind if I may be hurting the sentiments of people who believe in a different, “conjured Islam” because it is high time that Muslims who love their religion for everything good it has to offer stand up against those who are out to disfigure the very instinct of it.

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I do not see the West as an oppressor of Muslims specifically since the West has intervened in the internal affairs of almost every nation and has poked its nose into “everyone else’s business”. The fact that most of the regions that have been hit by Western diktats and unwanted intervention were predominantly Muslim territories owes allegiance to the fact that these territories are home to exhaustive oil and mineral reserves. Talking of that we find that the West has intervened in almost every territory that had or has the potential to precursor hegemony over Caspian oil and natural reserves and these interventions can genuinely be classified as “intrinsic” to the power play of such nation-states, for instance the US which has kept its position as a world super-power secure for a long time now owing to its power politics mediated through its aggressive armed interventions into Iraq and Afghanistan. In order to maintain its “hegemony” the US had to categorically maintain “lockdowns” on resource-rich territories or at least tried to do, lest it only witness its fall from “glory”. We must also realize as a population that the world has evolved since monarchs and emperors would engage themselves in sword-fights to conquer new lands and the changed world order has set the economic precedent for everyone. It is monopoly over markets and economies that lay the route for greater stability and super-powerfulness. If we hold grudges over that then maybe some of us need a dozen or so teleportation machines to be transferred back to the recesses of savagery.


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So who are we fooling? Rather than laying a well-planned economic siege over magnates, who own disastrously wealthy corporations, and media giants who twist the “game” into their favour away from public discourse, why are groups like the IS irrationally disposed only to murder innocent people? My answer to my own question is that their vision is too blurred by fanatic ideologues and their ideologies to see where the world is actually heading. They are too desensitized to realize that instead of reeling in disastrous amounts of flak which puts the future of world Muslims at the crosshairs of missile launchers and snipers they could be the agents of change.

Resource hungry magnates drive opinions aided by debauch media houses which lead to aggressive interventions on part of the West in the rest of the world while our aimless armed “treatments” help them draft their courses of action. Common people are as innocent as ever and they have no idea what is generally going on. So, why should they be targeted? It would have made much more sense if our terror outfits, which in the name and under a misrepresented and misinterpreted emblem of Islam blow up the credentials of every living or dead Muslim on the face of the earth with every bombing they execute to achieve a miscalculated “revenge”, sat down with their very own people and tried to solve things by first solving their anger issues, setting their priorities right and then evolving mechanisms to eliminate disparities amongst the Ummah and then addressing the world as a singular, sane and rational voice which I am sure would be heard. Acting out of unwarranted trust-issues at the behest of blood-soaked petro-dollars pumped in by our own elite and maintain a steady body count of the “other” as segregate groups is only rendering the writing on the wall bolder – that all Muslims are ‘heedless terrorists’.
By Arshid Malik:
http://nation.com.pk/blogs/29-Nov-2015/we-muslims-need-to-take-a-firm-stand-against-our-fellow-muslims-who-are-killing-in-the-name-of-our

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China pivot fuels Eurasian century

A specter is haunting Washington, an unnerving vision of a Sino-Russian alliance wedded to an expansive symbiosis of trade and commerce across much of the Eurasian land mass - at the expense of the United States.

And no wonder Washington is anxious. That alliance is already a done deal in a variety of ways: through the BRICS group of emerging powers (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa); at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Asian counterweight to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization; inside the Group of 20; and via the 120-member-nation Non-Aligned Movement (NAM).

Trade and commerce are just part of the future bargain. Synergies in the development of new military technologies beckon as well. After Russia's Star Wars-style, ultra-sophisticated S-500 air defense anti-missile system comes online in 2018, Beijing is sure to want a version of it. Meanwhile, Russia is about to sell dozens of state-of-the-art Sukhoi Su-35 jet fighters to the Chinese as Beijing and Moscow move to seal an aviation-industrial partnership.

This week should provide the first real fireworks in the celebration of a new Eurasian century-in-the-making when Russian President Vladimir Putin drops in on Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing.

You remember "Pipelineistan," all those crucial oil and gas pipelines crisscrossing Eurasia that make up the true circulatory system for the life of the region. Now, it looks like the ultimate Pipelineistan deal, worth US$1 trillion and 10 years in the making, will be signed off on as well. In it, the giant, state-controlled Russian energy giant Gazprom will agree to supply the giant state-controlled China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) with 3.75 billion cubic feet of liquefied natural gas a day for no less than 30 years, starting in 2018. That's the equivalent of a quarter of Russia's gas exports to all of Europe. China's present daily gas demand is around 16 billion cubic feet a day, and imports account for 31.6% of total consumption.
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China's New Silk Road Promises Prosperity Across Eurasia ...

www.huffingtonpost.com/fu.../china-silk-road-eurasia_b_7899236.html

For centuries the historical Silk Road connected Asia and Europe by land and by sea. The new proposal of China, while ...
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Gazprom may still collect the bulk of its profits from Europe, but Asia could turn out to be its Everest. The company will use this mega-deal to boost investment in Eastern Siberia and the whole region will be reconfigured as a privileged gas hub for Japan and South Korea as well. If you want to know why no key country in Asia has been willing to "isolate" Russia in the midst of the Ukrainian crisis - and in defiance of the Obama administration - look no further than Pipelineistan.

Exit the Petrodollar, enter the Gas-o-Yuan
And then, talking about anxiety in Washington, there's the fate of the petrodollar to consider, or rather the "thermonuclear" possibility that Moscow and Beijing will agree on payment for the Gazprom-CNPC deal not in petrodollars but in Chinese yuan.

One can hardly imagine a more tectonic shift, with Pipelineistan intersecting with a growing Sino-Russian political-economic-energy partnership. Along with it goes the future possibility of a push, led again by China and Russia, toward a new international reserve currency - actually a basket of currencies - that would supersede the dollar (at least in the optimistic dreams of BRICS members).

Right after the potentially game-changing Sino-Russian summit comes a BRICS summit in Brazil in July. That's when a $100 billion BRICS development bank, announced in 2012, will officially be born as a potential alternative to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank as a source of project financing for the developing world.

More BRICS cooperation meant to bypass the dollar is reflected in the "Gas-o-yuan", as in natural gas bought and paid for in Chinese currency. Gazprom is even considering marketing bonds in yuan as part of the financial planning for its expansion. Yuan-backed bonds are already trading in Hong Kong, Singapore, London, and most recently Frankfurt.

Nothing could be more sensible for the new Pipelineistan deal than to have it settled in yuan. Beijing would pay Gazprom in that currency (convertible into roubles); Gazprom would accumulate the yuan; Russia would then buy myriad made-in-China goods and services in yuan convertible into roubles.

It's common knowledge that banks in Hong Kong, from Standard Chartered to HSBC - as well as others closely linked to China via trade deals - have been diversifying into the yuan, which implies that it could become one of the de facto global reserve currencies even before it's fully convertible. (Beijing is unofficially working for a fully convertible yuan by 2018.)

The Russia-China gas deal is inextricably tied up with the energy relationship between the European Union and Russia. After all, the bulk of Russia's gross domestic product comes from oil and gas sales, as does much of its leverage in the Ukraine crisis. In turn, Germany depends on Russia for a hefty 30% of its natural gas supplies. Yet Washington's geopolitical imperatives - spiced up with Polish hysteria - have meant pushing Brussels to find ways to "punish" Moscow in the future energy sphere (while not imperiling present day energy relationships).

There's a consistent rumble in Brussels these days about the possible cancellation of the projected 16 billion euro (US$22 billion) South Stream pipeline, whose construction is to start in June. On completion, it would pump yet more Russian natural gas to Europe - in this case, underneath the Black Sea (bypassing Ukraine) to Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovenia, Serbia, Croatia, Greece, Italy, and Austria.

Bulgaria, Hungary, and the Czech Republic have already made it clear that they are firmly opposed to any cancellation, and cancellation is probably not in the cards. After all, the only obvious alternative is Caspian Sea gas from Azerbaijan, and that isn't likely to happen unless the EU develops its own construction projects.

In any case, Azerbaijan doesn't have enough capacity to supply the levels of natural gas needed, and other actors like Kazakhstan, plagued with infrastructure problems, or unreliable Turkmenistan, which prefers to sell its gas to China, are already largely out of the picture. And don't forget that South Stream, coupled with subsidiary energy projects, will create a lot of jobs and investment in many of the most economically devastated EU nations.

Nonetheless, such EU threats, however unrealistic, only serve to accelerate Russia's increasing symbiosis with Asian markets. For Beijing especially, it's a win-win situation. After all, between energy supplied across seas policed and controlled by the US Navy and steady, stable land routes out of Siberia, it's no contest.

Pick your own Silk Road
Of course, the US dollar remains the top global reserve currency, involving 33% of global foreign exchange holdings at the end of 2013, according to the IMF. It was, however, at 55% in 2000. Nobody knows the percentage in yuan (and Beijing isn't talking), but the IMF notes that reserves in "other currencies" in emerging markets have been up 400% since 2003.

The Federal Reserve is arguably monetizing 70% of the US government debt in an attempt to keep interest rates from heading skywards. Pentagon adviser Jim Rickards, as well as every Hong Kong-based banker, tends to believe that the Fed is bust (though they won't say it on the record). No one can even imagine the extent of the possible future deluge the US dollar might experience amid a $1.4 quadrillion Mount Ararat of financial derivatives.

Don't think that this is the death knell of Western capitalism, however, just the faltering of that reigning economic faith, neoliberalism, still the official ideology of the United States, the overwhelming majority of the European Union, and parts of Asia and South America.

As far as what might be called the "authoritarian neoliberalism" of the Middle Kingdom, what's not to like at the moment? China has proven that there is a result-oriented alternative to the Western "democratic" capitalist model for nations aiming to be successful. It's building not one, but myriad new Silk Roads, far-reaching webs of high-speed railways, highways, pipelines, ports, and fiber-optic networks across huge parts of Eurasia. These include a Southeast Asian road, a Central Asian road, an Indian Ocean "maritime highway" and even a high-speed rail line through Iran and Turkey reaching all the way to Germany.

In April, when President Xi Jinping visited the city of Duisburg on the Rhine River, with the world's largest inland harbor and right in the heartland of Germany's Ruhr steel industry, he made an audacious proposal: a new "economic Silk Road" should be built between China and Europe, on the basis of the Chongqing-Xinjiang-Europe railway, which already runs from China to Kazakhstan, to continue through Russia, Belarus, Poland, and finally Germany. That's 15 days by train, 20 less than for cargo ships sailing from China's eastern seaboard. Now that would represent the ultimate geopolitical earthquake in terms of integrating economic growth across Eurasia.

Keep in mind that, if no bubbles burst, China is about to become - and remain - the number one global economic power, a position it enjoyed for 18 of the past 20 centuries. But don't tell London hagiographers; they still believe that US hegemony will last, well, forever.
Despite recent serious financial struggles, the BRICS countries have been consciously working to become a counterforce to the original and - having tossed Russia out in March - once again Group of 7, or G-7. They are eager to create a global architecture to replace the one first imposed in the wake of World War II, and they see themselves as a potential challenge to the exceptionalist and unipolar world that Washington imagines for our future (with itself as the global robocop and NATO as its robo-police force). Historian and imperialist cheerleader Ian Morris, in his book War! What is it Good For?, defines the US as the ultimate "globocop" and "the last best hope of Earth". If that globocop "wearies of its role", he writes, "there is no plan B".

Well, there is a plan BRICS - or so the BRICS nations would like to think, at least. And when the BRICS do act in this spirit on the global stage, they quickly conjure up a curious mix of fear, hysteria, and pugnaciousness in the Washington establishment.

Take Christopher Hill as an example. The former assistant secretary of state for East Asia and US ambassador to Iraq is now an advisor with the Albright Stonebridge Group, a consulting firm deeply connected to the White House and the State Department. When Russia was down and out, Hill used to dream of a hegemonic American "new world order". Now that the ungrateful Russians have spurned what "the West has been offering" - that is, "special status with NATO, a privileged relationship with the European Union, and partnership in international diplomatic endeavors" - they are, in his view, busy trying to revive the Soviet empire. Translation: if you're not our vassals, you're against us. Welcome to Cold War 2.0.

The Pentagon has its own version of this directed not so much at Russia as at China, which, its think tank on future warfare claims, is already at war with Washington in a number of ways. So if it's not apocalypse now, it's Armageddon tomorrow. And it goes without saying that whatever's going wrong, as the Obama administration very publicly "pivots" to Asia and the American media fills with talk about a revival of Cold War-era "containment policy" in the Pacific, it's all China's fault.

Embedded in the mad dash toward Cold War 2.0 are some ludicrous facts-on-the-ground: the US government, with $17.5 trillion in national debt and counting, is contemplating a financial showdown with Russia, the largest global energy producer and a major nuclear power, just as it's also promoting an economically unsustainable military encirclement of its largest creditor, China.

Russia runs a sizeable trade surplus. Humongous Chinese banks will have no trouble helping Russian banks out if Western funds dry up. In terms of inter-BRICS cooperation, few projects beat a $30 billion oil pipeline in the planning stages that will stretch from Russia to India via Northwest China.

Chinese companies are already eagerly discussing the possibility of taking part in the creation of a transport corridor from Russia into Crimea, as well as an airport, shipyard, and liquid natural gas terminal there. And there's another "thermonuclear" gambit in the making: the birth of a natural gas equivalent to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries that would include Russia, Iran, and reportedly disgruntled US ally Qatar.

The (unstated) BRICS long-term plan involves the creation of an alternative economic system featuring a basket of gold-backed currencies that would bypass the present America-centric global financial system. (No wonder Russia and China are amassing as much gold as they can.) The euro - a sound currency backed by large liquid bond markets and huge gold reserves - would be welcomed in as well.

It's no secret in Hong Kong that the Bank of China has been using a parallel SWIFT network to conduct every kind of trade with Tehran, which is under a heavy US sanctions regime. With Washington wielding Visa and MasterCard as weapons in a growing Cold War-style economic campaign against Russia, Moscow is about to implement an alternative payment and credit card system not controlled by Western finance. An even easier route would be to adopt the Chinese Union Pay system, whose operations have already overtaken American Express in global volume.

I'm just pivoting with myself
No amount of Obama administration "pivoting" to Asia to contain China (and threaten it with US Navy control of the energy sea lanes to that country) is likely to push Beijing far from its Deng Xiaoping-inspired, self-described "peaceful development" strategy meant to turn it into a global powerhouse of trade.

Nor are the forward deployment of US or NATO troops in Eastern Europe or other such Cold-War-ish acts likely to deter Moscow from a careful balancing act: ensuring that Russia's sphere of influence in Ukraine remains strong without compromising trade and commercial, as well as political, ties with the European Union - above all, with strategic partner Germany. This is Moscow's Holy Grail; a free-trade zone from Lisbon to Vladivostok, which (not by accident) is mirrored in China's dream of a new Silk Road to Germany.

Increasingly wary of Washington, Berlin for its part abhors the notion of Europe being caught in the grips of a Cold War 2.0. German leaders have more important fish to fry, including trying to stabilize a wobbly EU while warding off an economic collapse in southern and central Europe and the advance of ever more extreme rightwing parties.

On the other side of the Atlantic, President Obama and his top officials show every sign of becoming entangled in their own pivoting - to Iran, to China, to Russia's eastern borderlands, and (under the radar) to Africa. The irony of all these military-first maneuvers is that they are actually helping Moscow, Tehran, and Beijing build up their own strategic depth in Eurasia and elsewhere, as reflected in Syria, or crucially in ever more energy deals. They are also helping cement the growing strategic partnership between China and Iran. The unrelenting Ministry of Truth narrative out of Washington about all these developments now carefully ignores the fact that, without Moscow, the "West" would never have sat down to discuss a final nuclear deal with Iran or gotten a chemical disarmament agreement out of Damascus.

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US implementing project to capture Eurasia landmass: Pund

“To implement this project both Russia and China have to be destabilized, fragmented and converted into willing vassals of US imperialism,” Dennis Etler, a professor of Anthropology at Cabrillo College in Aptos, California, told Press TV on Sunday ...
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When the disputes between China and its neighbors in the South China Sea and between that country and Japan over the Senkaku/Diaoyou islands meet the Ukraine crisis, the inevitable conclusion will be that both Russia and China consider their borderlands and sea lanes private property and aren't going to take challenges quietly - be it via NATO expansion, US military encirclement, or missile shields. Neither Beijing nor Moscow is bent on the usual form of imperialist expansion, despite the version of events now being fed to Western publics. Their "red lines" remain essentially defensive in nature, no matter the bluster sometimes involved in securing them.

Whatever Washington may want or fear or try to prevent, the facts on the ground suggest that, in the years ahead, Beijing, Moscow, and Tehran will only grow closer, slowly but surely creating a new geopolitical axis in Eurasia. Meanwhile, a discombobulated America seems to be aiding and abetting the deconstruction of its own unipolar world order, while offering the BRICS a genuine window of opportunity to try to change the rules of the game.

Russia and China in pivot mode
In Washington's think-tank land, the conviction that the Obama administration should be focused on replaying the Cold War via a new version of containment policy to "limit the development of Russia as a hegemonic power" has taken hold. The recipe: weaponize the neighbors from the Baltic states to Azerbaijan to "contain" Russia. Cold War 2.0 is on because, from the point of view of Washington's elites, the first one never really left town.

Yet as much as the US may fight the emergence of a multipolar, multi-powered world, economic facts on the ground regularly point to such developments. The question remains: will the decline of the hegemon be slow and reasonably dignified, or will the whole world be dragged down with it in what has been called "the Samson option"?

While we watch the spectacle unfold, with no end-game in sight, keep in mind that a new force is growing in Eurasia, with the Sino-Russian strategic alliance threatening to dominate its heartland along with great stretches of its inner rim. Now, that's a nightmare of Mackinderesque proportions from Washington's point of view. Think, for instance, of how Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former national security adviser who became a mentor on global politics to President Obama, would see it.

In his 1997 book The Grand Chessboard, Brzezinski argued that "the struggle for global primacy [would] continue to be played" on the Eurasian "chessboard", of which "Ukraine was a geopolitical pivot". "If Moscow regains control over Ukraine," he wrote at the time, Russia would "automatically regain the wherewithal to become a powerful imperial state, spanning Europe and Asia."

That remains most of the rationale behind the American imperial containment policy - from Russia's European "near abroad" to the South China Sea. Still, with no end-game in sight, keep your eye on Russia pivoting to Asia, China pivoting across the world, and the BRICS hard at work trying to bring about the new Eurasian Century.

By By Pepe Escobar
Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007), Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge (Nimble Books, 2007), and Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).
Source: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/CHIN-02-190514.html

Pepe Escobar "The New Grand Chessboard: Power ... - Vimeo


The New Grand Chessboard Energy and power in the heart of Eurasia In the 19th century, there was the ...

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In his commentary today, The Real News Network's, Pepe Escobar ... "The GrandChessboard" in 1997 ...


The Best of Escobar: 


Words US 'thinkland' dare not speak Winston Churchill lamented the absence of war - and the loss of empire. His successor, the Empire of Chaos, faces the same quandary, particularly as some wars, as in Ukraine by proxy, are not going so well. No wonder US Think Tankland is contorting itself to produce "forecasts" that dare not reveal the most likely future, with China, Russia and Germany at the helm. - Pepe Escobar (Mar 9, '15)

Germany's future lies East
Germany, sooner or later, must answer a categorical imperative - how to keep running massive trade surpluses while dumping its euro trade partners. The only possible answer is more trade with Russia, China and East Asia. It will take quite a while, but a Berlin-Moscow-Beijing commercial axis is all but inevitable. - Pepe Escobar (Mar 3, '15)

Year of the Sheep, Century of the Dragon?
Seen from the Chinese capital as the Year of the Sheep starts, the malaise affecting the West seems like a mirage in a galaxy far, far away. On the other hand, the China that surrounds you looks all too solid and nothing like the embattled nation you hear about in the Western media, with its falling industrial figures, its real estate bubble, and its looming environmental disasters. - Pepe Escobar (Feb 23, '15)

Turkey - the ultimate crossroads
Casanova wrote that as Constantine arrived in Istanbul by the sea, seduced by the sight of Byzantium, he instantly proclaimed: “This is the seat of the empire of the world." More recently,Turkey under the AKP party and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been busy positioning itself as the ultimate crossroads between East and West, between Eurasia and NATOstan - on Erdogan's own terms. - Pepe Escobar (Feb 2, '15)

Who profits from killing Charlie?
Who gains from killing Stephane Charbonnier and his colleagues at French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo? Only those whose agenda is to demonize Islam. Not even a bunch of brainwashed fanatics would pull off the Charlie carnage to show people who accuse them of being barbarians that they are, in fact, barbarians. French intel at least has concluded that this is no underwear bomber stunt. This is a pro job. - Pepe Escobar (Jan 8, '15)

Russia, China mock divide and rule
A case can be made that the geopolitical shift towards Russia-China integration and a trade/commerce alliance of the pair with Germany is the greatest strategic maneuver of the past 100 years. As Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping build a new economic reality on the Eurasian ground, Western economic attacks rage like hurricanes. Someone should tell the West that "divide and rule" tactics are not working, and will only make 2015 a hair-raising year. - Pepe Escobar (Dec 23, '14)

Go west, young Han
If everything happens according to plan (and according to the dreams of China's leaders), the "New Silk Road" will become the project of the new century and the greatest trade story in the world for the next decade. Washington may be intent on "pivoting to Asia", but Beijing has its own plan to pirouette to Europe across Eurasia. -Pepe Escobar (Dec 17, '14)

Russia, Turkey pivot across Eurasia
Russia's decision to use Turkey as a transit country for gas destined for Europe sends geopolitical shockwaves all across Eurasia. Turkey is the obvious gainer, but how the fragile Balkans will feel about being subordinated to the whims of Ankara for their energy supplies is one big unknown. - Pepe Escobar (Dec 8, '14)

Will Russia, Germany save Europe from war?
Are the United States, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Russia on a mad spiral leading to yet another war in Europe - one in which the quality of armed power stands firmly against the West? Such a hair-raising Apocalypse Now scenario can be avoided - by returning to borders altered by the likes of Stalin, Hitler and Lenin. Everyone would win - except for the Empire of Chaos. - Pepe Escobar (Dec 1, '14)

Washington plays Russian roulette
Washington loaded the gun long before Vladimir Putin accused the United States of provoking him to pick it up - and long before most watching the game of Russian roulette could identify the weapon as caliber Cold War 2.0. With the bullet marked once for "Eurasian integration" and twice to target "regime change", Barack Obama is holding tensions high. When Hillary Clinton seizes the day, all bets will be off. - Pepe Escobar (Nov 21, '14)

China's silky road to glory
Any remaining doubts about the stupidity of Western corporate media should have been banished by the puerile coverage of Russian President Vladimir Putin's gentlemanly conduct at the APEC summit in Beijing. Infinitely more relevant to the real world, and largely ignored, was the fact that China got what it wanted - on all fronts. - Pepe Escobar (Nov 14, '14)

Lame-duck Obama's brave new world
Barack Obama, fresh from his shellacking in Congressional elections, now heads for more of a roasting in Beijing, where he may - or may not - get stuffed by Vlad "the Hammer" Putin, but will for sure face another thrilling round in the titanic battle over rival Asian trade deals. However the lame duck is sliced, the APEC sauce will go to the gander, China's President Xi Jinping. - Pepe Escobar (Nov 7, '14)

The Caliph fit to join OPEC
Caliph Ibrahim's Islamic State is now for all practical purposes an oil major worth of OPEC membership, with US$2 million in profits a day from juicy energy deals and prices to die for. All its gains would not even be remotely possible without US/Western overt/covert complicity, proving once and for all that The Caliph is theultimate gift that keeps on giving in the Global War On Terror. - Pepe Escobar (Oct 31, '14)

The loser in Brazil is neoliberalism
Irate Brazilian taxpayers are desperate for decent roads, urban security, better public hospitals and schools and less red tape and bureaucracy. But a slim majority still decided to stick with President Dilma Rousseff and her Xi Jinping-style anti-corruption drive over a turbo-neoliberalist challenger promising a "capitalist shock" that would see macroecomic policy run like a Wall Street fantasy. - Pepe Escobar (Oct 28, '14)

The Kobani riddle
The barbarians, in the form of Islamic State goons, are at the gates of Kobani, the bombed-out city in northern Syria which is also the epicenter of a non-violent experiment in local democracy. But don't expect the US, Turkey and the administration of Iraqi Kurdistan to save Kobani: the city is now an easy-to-lose pawn in a pitiless game because it embodies a people-power challenge to the hegemony of the nation-state. - Pepe Escobar (Oct 24, '14)

Do the Trans-Siberian shuffle
Take a trip back in time on a rumbling Trans-Siberian rail journey in the early years of the 1990s, then leap forward to the modern-era, circa 2020, with the route linked to a Chinese-driven high-speed rail network flashing across Eurasia. It's as if we were still frozen in time: both Russia and China remain pariahs in the eyes of the world's unipolar, imperial elite. - Pepe Escobar(Oct 17, '14)

A Caliph in a wilderness of mirrors
Islamic State goons are taking over the whole, notorious Baghdad belt - the previous "triangle of death" in those hardcore days of US occupation circa 2004. Yes, Donald Rumsfeld's "remnants" are back, razing Ramadi and Fallujah to an accumulation of bombed-out schools, hospitals, homes, mosques and bridges. How could the Pentagon's spectacular Full Spectrum Dominance possibly not see any of this happening? - Pepe Escobar (Oct 15, '14)

Pure War in Tehran
Paul Virilio's 1983 classic Pure War turned out to be the perfect companion during a frantic week in Tehran revisiting the symbiotic twists that entwine the military-industrial complex and large-scale terrorism, in a city where Virilio's assertion that "peace" merely extends war by other means rings particularly true. - Pepe Escobar (Oct 8, '14)

China, Russia hold US in Eurasian squeeze
Think of China as a magnet for a new world order in a future Eurasian century in which the United States might find itself progressively squeezed out of Eurasia, with a future Beijing-Moscow-Berlin strategic trade and commercial alliance emerging as a Great Game-changer. Place your bets soon. They’ll be called in by 2025. - Pepe Escobar (Oct 6, '14)

Operation Tomahawk The Caliph
So the Tomahawks are finally flying again, targeting the self-declared leader of Islamic State and even greater bad-asses in the mysterious Khorasan group. As the militants dissolve Maoist-style, The Pentagon will soon be bombing vast tracts of desert for nothing - if that's not the case already, while the people who are really capable of defeating The Caliph's goons don't tomahawk. - Pepe Escobar (Sep 24, '14)

Obama's 'stupid stuff' turned upside down
First US President Barack Obama promised there would be no ground troops to fight The Caliph - as in a re-invasion of Iraq. Then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey argues that if Obama's self-defined "Don't So Stupid Stuff" foreign policy doctrine does not work he'll go for ground troops. "Don't Do Stupid Stuff" changes its tune like surfing on iTunes. And the tune now is the "Syraq" offensive remixed. - Pepe Escobar(Sep 18, '14)

Will NATO liberate Jihadistan?
Even as North Atlantic Treaty Organization heads of state gather for a confab in the United Kingdom, Islamic State leader Caliph Ibrahim broadcasts his disdain of Western military power with the beheading of another American journalist - then declares that Russia's Vladimir Putin is next - which would kind of place him as a NATO contractor. And in return? The Pentagon couldn't care less. - Pepe Escobar (Sep 5, '14)

NATO attacks!
The Ukraine battleground at least has the merit of exposing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as naked, even as the alliance's summit this week will showcase outgoing secretary-general Anders "Fogh of War" Rasmussen baring his teeth and straining one last time to cross multiple battlelines as if trying to remake Tim Burton'sMars Attacks! - Pepe Escobar (Sep 3, '14)

Obama's 'stupid stuff' legacy
Dr Zbigniew Brzezinski, the grand old man of geopolitical strategy and long-time adviser to White House inhabitants, has long delivered his own version of sage advise to present incumbent Barack Obama. Yet what a mess has been made of such "wisdom". As always alert former secretary of state Hillary Clinton said: "Don't do stupid stuff". Yet "stupid stuff" is all that the Obama foreign policy team knows how to do. -Pepe Escobar (Sep 2, '14)
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