The Saker — NY Times: 1949 – When China lost that ‘elusive’ quality needed for Anglobalization

Snarky backgrounder. Humorous read of some sorry history, centered around former US Secretary of State Dean Acheson.

The Vineyard of the Saker
NY Times: 1949 – When China lost that ‘elusive’ quality needed for Anglobalization
The Saker

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. — Why the Arabs don’t want us in Syria

Must-read. A tale of intrigue and perfidy necessary to understand the background of the situation in the Middle East post WWII.

Revealing. How Washington, beginning in 1949, plotted to overthrow governments and create jihadism — Ike actually used the term "holy war"— to exclude Soviet influence and gain control of petroleum resources.

A choice piece:

A charismatic young murderer named Saddam Hussein was one of the distinguished leaders of the CIA’s Ba’athist team. The Ba’ath Party’s Secretary, Ali Saleh Sa’adi, who took office alongside Saddam Hussein, would later say, “We came to power on a CIA train,” according to A Brutal Friendship: The West and the Arab Elite, by Said Aburish, a journalist and author. Aburish recounted that the CIA supplied Saddam and his cronies a murder list of people who “had to be eliminated immediately in order to ensure success.” Tim Weiner writes that Critchfield later acknowledged that the CIA had, in essence, “created Saddam Hussein.”…

At the same time, the CIA was illegally supplying Saddam’s enemy, Iran, with thousands of anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles to fight Iraq, a crime made famous during the Iran-Contra scandal.…

Fast forward:

…our war against Bashar Assad did not begin with the peaceful civil protests of the Arab Spring in 2011. Instead it began in 2000, when Qatar proposed to construct a $10 billion, 1,500 kilometer pipeline through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and Turkey. Qatar shares with Iran the South Pars/North Dome gas field, the world’s richest natural gas repository. The international trade embargo until recently prohibited Iran from selling gas abroad. Meanwhile, Qatar’s gas can reach European markets only if it is liquefied and shipped by sea, a route that restricts volume and dramatically raises costs. The proposed pipeline would have linked Qatar directly to European energy markets via distribution terminals in Turkey, which would pocket rich transit fees. The Qatar/Turkey pipeline would give the Sunni kingdoms of the Persian Gulf decisive domination of world natural gas markets and strengthen Qatar, America’s closest ally in the Arab world. Qatar hosts two massive American military bases and the U.S. Central Command’s Mideast headquarters.…

Of course, the Russians, who sell 70 percent of their gas exports to Europe, viewed the Qatar/Turkey pipeline as an existential threat. In Putin’s view, the Qatar pipeline is a NATO plot to change the status quo, deprive Russia of its only foothold in the Middle East, strangle the Russian economy and end Russian leverage in the European energy market. In 2009, Assad announced that he would refuse to sign the agreement to allow the pipeline to run through Syria “to protect the interests of our Russian ally.”
Assad further enraged the Gulf’s Sunni monarchs by endorsing a Russian-approved “Islamic pipeline” running from Iran’s side of the gas field through Syria and to the ports of Lebanon. The Islamic pipeline would make Shiite Iran, not Sunni Qatar, the principal supplier to the European energy market and dramatically increase Tehran’s influence in the Middke East and the world. Israel also was understandably determined to derail the Islamic pipeline, which would enrich Iran and Syria and presumably strengthen their proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas.

Secret cables and reports by the U.S., Saudi and Israeli intelligence agencies indicate that the moment Assad rejected the Qatari pipeline, military and intelligence planners quickly arrived at the consensus that fomenting a Sunni uprising in Syria to overthrow the uncooperative Bashar Assad was a feasible path to achieving the shared objective of completing the Qatar/Turkey gas link. In 2009, according to WikiLeaks, soon after Bashar Assad rejected the Qatar pipeline, the CIA began funding opposition groups in Syria.…

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Read the whole thing.

The conclusion:

But, if we are to have an effective foreign policy, we must recognize the Syrian conflict is a war over control of resources indistinguishable from the myriad clandestine and undeclared oil wars we have been fighting in the Mideast for 65 years. And only when we see this conflict as a proxy war over a pipeline do events become comprehensible. It’s the only paradigm that explains why the GOP on Capitol Hill and the Obama administration are still fixated on regime change rather than regional stability, why the Obama administration can find no Syrian moderates to fight the war, why ISIL blew up a Russian passenger plane, why the Saudis just executed a powerful Shiite cleric only to have their embassy burned in Tehran, why Russia is bombing non-ISIL fighters and why Turkey went out of its way to shoot down a Russian jet. The million refugees now flooding into Europe are refugees of a pipeline war and CIA blundering.…

Politico.eu
Why the Arabs don’t want us in Syria
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Patrick Smith interviews Ray McGovern — A veteran CIA agent spills the goods on the Deep State and our foreign policy nightmares

You prolly want to read this. Some bombshells.

Salon
“Intelligent people know that the empire is on the downhill”: A veteran CIA agent spills the goods on the Deep State and our foreign policy nightmares

Patrick Smith, Salon’s foreign affairs columnist and former foreign correspondent or the International Herald Tribune and The New Yorker, interviews Ray McGovern, twenty-seven year CIA veteran turned dissident.

Lisa Pease — Checkmate on ‘The Devil’s Chessboard’

More on the creation of the deep state and the role of the Dulles brothers in it.

Talbot and his research associate Karen Croft, to whom he dedicated his book, have found all sorts of nuggets in Allen Dulles’s papers, his appointment calendar, oral histories, and other less-used sources. In addition, Talbot infuses his book with anecdotes from interviews he personally conducted. While I found some points I could nitpick in various episodes, overall this is a worthy addition and a much-needed perspective that elucidates how we came to have two governments: the elected one and the one that doesn’t answer to the elected one.

Scary stuff.

Consortiums News
Checkmate on ‘The Devil’s Chessboard’

Lisa Pease

Also

Hillary up to her eyeballs. Et tu, Bernie? Tell us it isn't so.

Bowing to Silly US Propaganda

Rick Sterling

Don Quijones — The Devil’s Chessboard: The Rise of America’s Secret Government

First civilian CIA director Allen Dulles, set the tone for the development of the CIA and its intimate relationship with State through his elder brother, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. Somewhat ironically, their other brother Avery was a Jesuit priest. At least they had their own confessor for all the murders and mayhem they committed by proxies.

Bill Casey perfected its use as a primary tool of neoliberalism, neo-imperialism, and neocolonialism, "because freedom."

Raging Bull-Shit
The Devil’s Chessboard: The Rise of America’s Secret Government
Don Quijones

Mark Karlin — New Allende Overthrow Info Reconfirms US Suppresses Economically-Rebellious Democracies

New revelations about the Chilean military overthrow of the popularly elected Salvador Allende regime in 1973 once again confirm that the US is supportive of democracies that enhance US economic interests, but it is the enemy of those that don't.

Truthout/Buzzflash
New Allende Overthrow Info Reconfirms US Suppresses Economically-Rebellious Democracies
Mark Karlin, Editor Of Buzzflash At Truthout
(h/t Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism)