NATO ministers in Brussels have decided to ignore US wishes and to delay the admission of Ukraine and of Georgia in effect indefinitely in what the Washington Administration is sheepishly trying to claim is a positive ‘compromise.’ The decision, following EU member state alarm last August over the prospect of European states having to go to war at some point against Russia over an incalculable despot in the Caucasus or in Kiev who decided to provoke Moscow to react, was simply too much.
F. William Engdahl
comm: 0
America’s de facto Finance Czar, US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has reached for the panic button and made a dramatic 180-degree reversal of his financial bailout plan passed only days before. On September 23 in testimony before the US Congress, Paulson, former CEO of the politically influential Wall Street investment firm, Goldman Sachs, declared his adamant opposition to the idea of the US Government taking equity stakes in troubled major banks in order to provide them capital and stabilize the frozen interbank trading market. On October 13, that opposition to ‘nationalization’ collapsed. What happened to cause that sudden reverse is what interests us here. It shows the utter lack of coherency in the US financial elites over how to deal with their home-grown securitization of risk fiasco.
F. William Engdahl
comm: 0
While attention is concentrated on the ongoing financial debacle taking place within the world’s largest financial system, the United States, there are ominous indications that the Bush Administration has long been preparing FEMA detention camps should popular protests at any point require imposition of Martial Law and a Presidential State of Emergency. Details of the camps, now said to number more than 800 across the United States is difficult to obtain for clear reasons. What has been verified is unsettling.
F. William Engdahl
comm: 0
The GOOD NEWS is that this nation – its people – will now be compelled to beat their “swords into plowshares” and their “spears into pruning hooks”. Just as the Phoenix rose from its ashes, so too will America ascend to even greater heights. As long as She ascends with the guidance of the highest of ideals, loftiest of principles and noblest of intentions.
T. Anthony Michael
comm: 0
What’s clear from the behavior of European financial markets over the past two weeks is that the dramatic stories of financial meltdown and panic are deliberately being used by certain influential factions in and outside the EU to shape the future face of global banking in the wake of the US sub-prime and Asset-Backed Security (ABS) debacle. The most interesting development in recent days has been the unified and strong position of the German Chancellor, Finance Minister, Bundesbank and coalition Government, all opposing an American-style EU Superfund bank bailout. Meanwhile Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson pursues his Crony Capitalism to the detriment of the nation and benefit of his cronies in the financial world. It’s an explosive cocktail that need not have been.
F. William Engdahl
comm: 0
A week ago, most Americans had never heard of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. Now, following her Vice Presidential acceptance speech viewed live by more than 40 million people, Palin is viewed favorably by 58% of American voters according to the latest Rasmussen Reports survey. The self-described ‘hockey mom’s’ poll ratings, if they are to be believed, are that of a rock superstar who is rated now higher than either McCain or Democrat Obama. The same Bush-Cheney propaganda apparatus that made the nation believe Saddam Hussein was the new Hitler and that Georgia was a helpless victim of ruthless Russian aggression after 8.8.08 in Georgia is clearly behind one of the most impressive media propaganda efforts in recent history—the effort to package Republican Vice Presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, Governor of Alaska for less than 19 months, to be the American dream candidate. A view into her background is beginning to leak out from those who know her in Alaska.
F. William Engdahl
comm: 0
As details of the larger strategic picture emerge over what is at stake in the Georgia and larger Caucasus crisis it is becoming clearer that Moscow is determined to roll back not to the borders of Stalin and the Cold War of 1948. What Putin and now Medvedev have begun is a process of defusing the highly dangerous NATO expansion, led by the Washington warhawks since the end of the Cold War in 1990. Had events progressed as Washington had planned up until the surprise rejection of NATO membership from no less than ten European NATO member countries, including Germany and France at the April NATO Summit, Georgia would today have been in the admission process to NATO-ization along with Ukraine. That would have opened the door to full-scale encirclement of Russia militarily and economically. In a certain sense it is not interesting who fired the first shot in South Ossetia in the night of 8 August. Clear is that Russia had prepared well for such a shot. To understand events, we need to go back to the basics of geopolitical fundamentals and US or Anglo-American strategy since 1945. This is what Russia has challenged by its response to Georgia’s attack.
F. William Engdahl
comm: 0
The controversy over the Georgian surprise military attacks on South Ossetia and Abkhazia on 8.8.08 makes a closer look at the controversial Georgian President and his puppet masters important. An examination shows 41 year old Mikhail Saakashvili to be a ruthless and corrupt totalitarian who is tied to not only the US NATO establishment, but also to the Israeli military and intelligence establishment. The famous ‘Rose Revolution of November 2003 that forced the ageing Edouard Shevardnadze from power and swept the then 36 year old US university graduate into power was run and financed by the US State Department, the Soros Foundations, and agencies tied to the Pentagon and US intelligence community.
F. William Engdahl
comm: 0
The dramatic military attack by the military of the Republic of Georgia on South Ossetia in the last days has brought the world one major step closer to the ultimate horror of the Cold War era—a thermonuclear war between Russia and the United States—by miscalculation. What is playing out in the Caucasus is being reported in US media in an alarmingly misleading light, making Moscow appear the lone aggressor. The question is whether George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are encouraging the unstable Georgian President, Mikhail Saakashvili in order to force the next US President to back the NATO military agenda of the Bush Doctrine. This time Washington may have badly misjudged the possibilities, as it did in Iraq, but this time with possible nuclear consequences.
F. William Engdahl
comm: 0
When Henry Paulson agreed to leave his job as chairman of the powerful Wall Street investment bank, Goldman Sachs to go to Washington as Treasury Secretary in 2006 he demanded extraordinary powers as de facto economic czar. He got it. Paulson is also head of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets -- the secretary of the treasury and the chairmen of the Federal Reserve Board, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The Working Group is the financial world's equivalent of the Pentagon war room. Paulson, not Fed chairman Bernanke, is the person running the Administration’s crisis management. And his recent actions indicate he has lost control as the snowballing problems from the semi-government mortgage companies Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to the collapse of the multi-trillion dollar market in Asset Backed Securities (ABS) to the real economy are compounding into the worst crisis since the 1930’s Great Depression.
F. William Engdahl
comm: 0
The announcement by US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson together with Federal Reserve chief Bernanke, that the US Government will bailout the two largest guarantors of housing mortgage debt—the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—far from calming financial markets, has confirmed what we have said repeatedly in this space: The Financial Tsunami which began in August 2007 in the relatively small “sub-prime” high risk US mortgage securitization market, far from being over, is only gathering momentum.
F. William Engdahl
comm: 0
A TV feature by Arkady Mamontov, shown at Russian RTR channel on 30.09.2007
WarAndPeace.Ru
comm: 0
The hijacking of Al-Qaeda and the nurturing of the Terrorism Fairy
Maher Osseiran
comm: 0
Some serious pressure about to be put on the Petrol D0llar
Bloomberg
comm: 0
Russia helps Europe building its military presence in space
c4isr
comm: 0