These are the articles that Pepe has written since the outbreak of unrest
in the Arab world in January.

Real cowards go to Tehran
A spike in oil prices talked up by neo-con warmongers is compensating Iran for funds lost to "biting" sanctions, never mind that Asian buyers of its crude have told Washington hegemons to mind their own business. Israel lobby drafters of the sanctions couldn't foresee any of this, proving once again that they live the vegetative lives of armchair "action" men. - Pepe Escobar (Feb 21, '12)

US want SWIFT war on Iran
The European Union's oil embargo of Iran is backfiring, with the mere threat of an Iranian counter-embargo prompting an oil price spike, while the US is demanding further EU subservience by demands it expel Iranian banks from the SWIFT payment network. This is hardcore economic war - and Tehran can fight back. - Pepe Escobar (Feb 16, '12)

Why Bahrain is not Syria
The United States tells the Syrian regime to step aside for a democratic transition, while one year after crushing democracy protests Bahrain's monarch gets more weapons. Consider Russian and Chinese support for Syria and Bahrain's strategic importance for the defender of the "free world" and the dissonance passes, unlike the air of repression in the kingdom. - Pepe Escobar (Feb 14, '12)

The return of the Keyboard Warriors
For right-wing America, Iran in 2012 is the Iraq circa 2002. Whatever their route - real men go to Tehran via Damascus, or real men go to Tehran non-stop - the Keyboard Warriors now populating the media with their fallacies and imperial disdain don't just want neo-conservative revolt: they want a war, and they want it now. - Pepe Escobar (Feb 10, '12)

Exposed: The Arab agenda in Syria
Washington, London and Paris are falling over themselves to assure the real international community that the "Arab-led drive to secure a peaceful end to the 10-month crackdown" in Syria at the United Nations is not seeking another mandate for bombing a la Libya. But BRICS members Russia and China see it for what it is: no less than a crude drive for regime change. - Pepe Escobar (Feb 3, '12)

Fear and loathing in the American Gulf
In roughly one month, no less than three US aircraft carriers and their strike groups will be sloshing around the American Gulf, the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea. The only good thing among all this weaponized orgy is that Tehran and Washington are still talking - sort of - using the proverbial back channels. - Pepe Escobar (Feb 2, '12)

What is the GCC up to in Syria?
The Arab League's proposal for a new draft United Nations Security Council resolution to "solve" the Syrian saga sounds very civilized - a road map for regime change followed by full Western parliamentary democracy. Except that it masquerades behind the real agenda of UN-imposed regime change and obscures that the House of Saud and its Gulf minions are in the driver's seat. - Pepe Escobar (Jan 30'12)

All that glitters is ... oil
The real "international community" is now very much aware that India will start paying Iranian oil with gold - and not only rupees. Beijing - which already trades with Iran in yuan - may also turn to gold. Talk about the Year of the Dragon starting with a bang. And talk about the new Year of the Dragon gold standard. - Pepe Escobar (Jan 25, '12)

Iranian oil poses Asian dilemma
It makes tactical sense for countries such as China, Japan, South Korea, India and Turkey to slowly retrench from Iranian oil, but it would be a strategic disaster for them to become reliant on Western approval to access Middle Eastern energy, which will remain important in Asia's energy mix for at least some more years. - Sreeram Chaulia (Jan 24, '12)

The US-GCC fatal attraction
The United States power projection and psychodrama over Iran can be understood only by shining light on the miasma of Washington's relationship with the six oil-rich Persian Gulf monarchies that make up the Gulf Cooperation Council, also known as the Gulf Counter-revolution Club. As friends of the US with benefits, for decades they have received massive, unconditional support in exchange for pricing oil in dollars. But the days of that fatal attraction are numbered. - Pepe Escobar (Jan 19, '12)

The myth of an "isolated' Iran
United States expectations that a harsh sanctions regime might cripple Iran may prove a chimera. Though few in the US have noticed, Tehran is not as "isolated" as Washington wishes: it has the majority of the South on its side - not forgetting that China, India, Japan and South Korea buy 62% of Iran's oil exports. Follow the money and Tehran's move to torpedo the petrodollar is perhaps one key reason for the mounting crisis in the Persian Gulf. - Pepe Escobar (Jan 18, '12)

Playing chess in Eurasia
As Pipelineistan and hardcore geopolitics collide across Eurasia, China and Russia are coordinating policy in fine detail. The trick is connecting China to Central and South Asia and the Gulf, creating an economic/security powerhouse that controls 50% of the world's gas reserves and undercuts the United States' Empire of Bases. Old Europe wants in, but it may be locked out. The US, meanwhile, is watching as its New Silk Road vision crumbles. - Pepe Escobar (Dec 21, '11)

The war is pronounced dead
The tenor of the US's moving farewell ceremony, officially called "So long, towelheads", was likely to sound an uncertain trumpet for a war that was invented to get rid of non-existent weapons of mass destruction. And it now ends without the Iraqi chapter of the Empire of Bases the Pentagon badly wanted in the first place - and the oil. - Pepe Escobar (Dec 16, '11)

NATO dreams of civil war in Syria
By adopting a pincer movement from bases in Turkey and Jordan, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is actively diversifying into an Iraq-in-the-1990s strategy; to submit Syria to a prolonged state of siege before eventually going for the kill. But NATO's dream is to push Turkey to do the dirty work, even though this country remains the great imponderable on a complex chessboard. - Pepe Escobar (Dec 14, '11)

The Dead Drone sketch
The Central Intelligence Agency's drone that went down in Iran is no more. It has ceased to be. It's expired and gone to meet its industrial-military complex maker! It's a stiff! Bereft of life, it rests in peace in a Shi'ite paradise! Its metabolic processes are now history, it's shuffled off its mortal coil ... but don't tell the CIA. - Pepe Escobar (Dec 8, '11)

The shadow war in Syria
Feel free to bask in the glow of yet another mercenary paradise as the stage is set for Target Syria, aka Libya 2.0. Trigger-happy Libyans formerly known as rebels have already shipped to Syria via Turkey, where the symbiosis of Western and Gulf states has set up a command center on the border. The pressure is relentless for the "civil war" prophesy of United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to come to pass. - Pepe Escobar (Dec 1'11)

That rocky road to Damascus
As they examine the regional chessboard and the formidable array of forces aligned against them, the Iranians must face, simultaneously, superpower Washington, bomb-happy North Atlantic Treaty Organization members, nuclear power Israel, all Sunni Arab absolute monarchies, and even Sunni-majority, secular Turkey. As Tehran sees it, what's really going on regarding Syria is a "humanitarian" cover for a complex anti-Shi'ite and anti-Iran operation. - Pepe Escobar (Nov 23, '11)

Exposed: US press 'freedom'
Hypocrisy is writ large over the treatment of Sam Husseini, whose behavior as an actual journalist with tough questioning of the House of Saud got him suspended from the National Press Club in Washington. Husseini didn't play by lap-dog rules that dictate how corporate media should fawn to American allies and bear teeth at its enemies to keep tidbits dropping from the establishment table. - Pepe Escobar (Nov 21, '11)

Politburo uber alles
Two decades after the end of "real socialism", politburos are back in fashion. In the eurozone, that means naked power concentrated in an imperial "Gang of Eight" and a trokia of gloriously unelected institutions that call all the shots and render national governments totally meaningless. The only thing that matters to this newly formed pantheon is what the financial markets want; mere mortals, as in European voters, are seen at best as a nuisance. - Pepe Escobar (Nov 15, '11)

Do the bomb Iran shuffle
Hardcore neo-con practitioners of the Full Spectrum Dominance doctrine are hyperventilating at the possibility of a successful attack on Iran reshuffling all the cards in the "arc of instability" from the Middle East to Central Asia. As the warmongers leer at the targets in the pack, Iran is too enticing. All they have to do is convince President Barack Obama he won't be the joker if he fights another war. - Pepe Escobar (Nov 10, '11)

A bad case of nuclear Iranophobia
A leaked report by the International Atomic Energy Agency expresses "serious concerns" about Iranian research and development "specific to nuclear weapons", even though the United Nations watchdog has no independent means to confirm the enormous mass of information - over 1,000 pages - it received from more than 10 countries over eight years. What's left is the possibility of even more sanctions on Tehran - although Russia and China won't buy into this. - Pepe Escobar (Nov 9, '11)

Fear and loathing in
the Cannes debt festival
After posing as the Great Liberator of Libya, French President Nicolas Sarkozy thought this week's Cannes Group of 20 summit would crown his Napoleonic ambitions. Instead, the Greeks made the (invisible) God of the Market angrier than Zeus and more psychotic than a German chancellor. All eyes are on China, but the Middle Kingdom's generosity carries a hefty price tag - European exceptionalism itself. - Pepe Escobar (Nov 4, '11)

The Pentagon-Arab Spring love story
The Arab counter-revolution is stronger than ever - led by the House of Saud and its monarchy minions at the Gulf Cooperation Council. Their most precious ally is the Pentagon, as further militarization of the Persian Gulf - especially via more boots on the ground in Kuwait, and more warships - is being sold as a response to "a collapse of security in Iraq or a military confrontation with Iran". - Pepe Escobar (Nov 1, '11)

A peek at the new Libya
Welcome to the new Libya. Islamist militias will turn the lives of Libyan women into a living hell. Hundreds of thousands of Sub-Saharan Africans - those who could not escape - will be ruthlessly persecuted. Libya's natural wealth will be plundered. That collection of anti-aircraft missiles appropriated by Islamists will be a supremely convincing reason for the "war on terror" in northern Africa to become eternal. There will be blood. - Pepe Escobar (Oct 21, '11)

The US power grab in Africa
Libya - where United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made a whistle-stop visit on Tuesday but didn't get to see the devastation in Sirte - is just one angle of a multi-vector US strategy in Africa. Washington's Uganda surge, where 100 "advisors" now have their boots on the ground, is a classic Pipelineistan gambit and it's not hard to fathom where that country's oil contracts will eventually land. - Pepe Escobar (Oct 20, '11)

Occupy World Street
Occupy World Street wants that forests won't be mowed down, the air won't be polluted, banks won't be double-crossing their clients, and citizens should be totally engaged in the running of public life. This implies sensible laws managed by honest and impartial people should be in place. It's not happening - thus the swelling ranks of the Indignados International. - Pepe Escobar (Oct 18, '11)

Obama, the king of Africa
The mineral rush in Africa is already one of the great resource wars of the 21st century. China is ahead, followed by companies from India, Australia, South Africa and Russia. The West is lagging. The name of the game for the United States and the Europeans is to pull no punches to undermine China. That's why Uganda is the perfect cover story for Barack Obama, the king of Africa, to plunge a dagger inside Islamic Africa. - Pepe Escobar (Oct 17, '11)

The occupy Iran Fast and
Furious plot (extended
The storyline of the apparent plan to kill the ambassador of Saudi Arabia would be hurled into the garbage can in any self-respecting Hollywood script conference. Yet it is very handy to divert attention from the Saudis as the beneficiary of a multi-billionaire United States weapons sale. And it is also very handy for Attorney General Eric Holder - caught in a monstrous scandal over Operation Fast and the Furious, a franchise that is the entertainment weapon of choice across all levels of the US government. - Pepe Escobar (Oct 13, '11)

Liquid modernity, solid elites
The Occupy Wall Street campaign is flying the flag for the peaceful rejects of liquid modernity - all but the 1% solids, the fat-cat Masters of the Universe who take all the cream but still don't have a clue that 99% of Americans are as mad as hell and can't take it anymore. Derided as a bunch of nuts or criminals, the protesters are defying the elites and challenging their logic in a movement that could sow the seeds of a humanistic neo-Renaissance for the masses. - Pepe Escobar (Oct 11, '11)

Pentagon aims at target Pakistan
If - when - the Pentagon decides that United States Special Forces will violate Pakistani sovereignty by helicopter, a la the Abbottabad raid that killed Osama bin Laden, and go for the Haqqani network in the North Waziristan tribal area, it risks a direct clash with the Pakistani army. Yet Washington is desperate, feeling the urge to do something. - Pepe Escobar (Sep 29, '11)

Decline and fall of just about everyone
Let's pick the bones of a broken system: middle classes in the Atlantic world barely hang on in quiet desperation; in the Pacific, the middle class is giving global capitalism a reprieve, for how long, we don't know; over in the Arab world, the military machine tries to keep the US and Europe in the game, the BRICS out, and the "natives" in their places. And globally, the whole world is holding its breath for the next economic shoe to drop in the West. - Pepe Escobar (Sep 26, '11)

The age of the Reaper
For the MQ-9 Reaper drone that struts its stuff equipped with Hellfire missiles and rains death from above, the sky, literally, is the limit. It's expanding its footprint from AfPak to the whole of East Africa up to the Gulf of Aden. The Reaper, though, can also wear a business suit and incorporate the persona of the president of the United States. - Pepe Escobar (Sep 22, '11)

Why the BRICS won't 'save' Europe
As national egoism drags Western Europe into the financial mire, a cavalry of emerging economies made up of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa is mulling a bailout that could also accelerate the rise of the BRICS in global influence. However, while China is still smarting over the economic impact of the Libyan bombings, other BRICS say helping Europe would simply be a poor investment - Pepe Escobar (Sep 20, '11)

To King Sarkozy, the spoils
While Neo-Napoleonic French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his sidekick British Prime Minister "David of Arabia" Cameron were basking in the glow of their victory lap in Tripoli, the place was swarming with multilingual contractors. But nobody knows what's really going on in desert catfighting and bets are on Libya turning not into Afghanistan 2.0 or Iraq 2.0, but Somalia 2.0. - Pepe Escobar (Sep 16, '11)

Turkey takes over the Arab Spring
With the whole Arab world glued to his every word, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan used his Arab Spring tour to articulate what the whole world, except Washington and Tel Aviv, knows in its collective heart over the recognition of a Palestinian state. Erdogan's tour is a realpolitik master class and leaves Israel up against a wall it hasn't faced since the 1978 Camp David accords. - Pepe Escobar (Sep 14, '11)

Libya: The real war starts now
As the Libyan Transitional National Council already behaves like a lame duck and as the militias will simply not vanish, it's not hard to picture Libya as a new Lebanon, with regions carved up between numerous factions. This includes the deadly Islamic temptation - which is spreading like a virus across the Arab Spring. In this environment, Muammar Gaddafi can reveal himself to be even more dangerous than he was in power. - Pepe Escobar (Sep 6, '11)

It's a TOTAL war, monsieur
Call it the Friends of Libya war; the R2P war (as in "responsibility to protect" Western plunder); the Air France war; the Total war; anyway, the "friends" had a blast spinning their win in Libya, which magically is not in Africa anymore. It has been relocated (upgraded?) to Arabia. - Pepe Escobar (Sep 2, '11)

Why Gaddafi got a red card
The Sunni monarchical dictator in Bahrain stays; the House of Saud club of dictators stays; even the Syrian dictator is getting a break - so far. So, what was the crucial difference with Muammar Gaddafi that got him a red card? There are enough red lines crossed by The Big G to turn this whole computer screen blood red, but let's start with the French ... - Pepe Escobar (Aug 31, '11)

How al-Qaeda got to rule in Tripoli
Abdelhakim Belhaj, the top rebel military commander in still war-torn Libya, is an al-Qaeda asset. It doesn't require a crystal ball to picture that his group - being among the war "winners" - will not be interested in relinquishing control just to please the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Libya may now face the specter of Muammar Gaddafi forces against a weak transitional central government and NATO boots on the ground; and the Belhaj-led nebula in a jihad against NATO (if they are sidelined from power). - Pepe Escobar (Aug 29, '11)

R2P is now Right 2 Plunder
The United States establishment is now brazen about the true meaning of the humanitarian imperialist doctrine of the "right to protect" - or R2P - being "the right to plunder". With so much loot at stake and all signs pointing to Quagmire City, the Big G Muammar Gaddafi may literally be buying tribal allegiance in gold and gambling that Western/Arab ops will turn Libya into the new Iraq/Afghanistan. - Pepe Escobar (Aug 26, '11)

Sweet crude of mine
From the point of view of the real Libyan war "winners", it's bye-bye to "subversive" ideas such as dumping the US dollar and the euro to create a single currency for Arab and African nations and a big hello to ultra sweet oil contracts and an array of concessions. While nothing would be sweeter for the House of Saud than a friendly new emirate in northern Africa, real control is still an open game as no one yet knows what influence Islamists will be able to wield in post-Muammar Gaddafi Libya. - Pepe Escobar (Aug 25, '11)

Disaster capitalism swoops over Libya
North Atlantic Treaty Organization winners have eyes peeled on juicy opportunities to come; the House of Saud, in the shape of the Bin Laden Group, will likely swoop on Libya's post-Gaddafi business bonanza. It is the interests of BRIC nations - who saw through the United Nations-sanctioned arming of rebels as the latest chapter in the Disaster Capitalism series - that the victors want to gouge. - Pepe Escobar (Aug 24, '11)

Welcome to Libya's 'democracy'
The Big Gaddafi's impending departure as a result of Operation Siren means humanitarian imperialism wins. The Arab monarchies win, the Pentagon wins and the idealistic "rebels" win. As the Apache gunships and jets stop firing, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization can gleam over its Mediterranean lake, while in the background the wrangling over oil and gas - and the fratricidal bloodshed - can begin in earnest.
- Pepe Escobar (Aug 23, '11)

The Big Gaddafi
The Big Gaddafi takes another toke at prime Maghreb and stares in disbelief as the Western narrative predicting his demise unfolds - all because a bunch of barbarian Bedouins decided to pee on his carpet. That rug really tied the room together. It's just a game, man ... and The Dude minds. - Pepe Escobar (Aug 19, '11)

The House of Saud paranoia
For Riyadh, the great Arab revolt is all an Iranian plot, another front for the House of Saud in the psy-ops war it is fighting against Tehran's "polytheists", directed by the Medieval Wahhabi clerical establishment. The Saudi message to Washington and London is clear - we hold the petrodollars and we're top dog in the Gulf, so forget silly ideas about "democracy". - Pepe Escobar (Jul 6, '11)

Have lobby, will travel
The "rebel" government - which is now named, after numerous permutations, the Interim Transitional National Council of Libya - has hired Patton Boggs, one of Washington's leading (and one of the most profitable) public relations firms, to "advise and assist" them in, well, winning the war - and getting their hands on billions of dollars in frozen funds from the Muammar Gaddafi regime held in the United States. - Pepe Escobar (Jul 5, '11)

What's really at stake in Libya
Hypocrisy, newspeak - and opposing acronyms - rule the relentless disinformation war over Libya. Beyond the fog, however, facts emerge that civilians are being bombed, not protected, in Tripoli and there is a refugee crisis. The only feasible way out is a ceasefire, but expect the West to fight to the death - for obvious reasons. - Pepe Escobar (Jun 29, '11)

NATO, the ultimate transformer
As a global Robocop, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is on a roll. From southeastern Europe to the eastern Mediterranean, and from the Persian Gulf to South and Central Asia, the Pentagon-led war machine is taking military establishments under its wing. All very well, unless you happen to be a civilian destined for humanitarian liberation, NATO-style. - Pepe Escobar (Jun 20, '11)

The cold hard cash counter-revolution
The House of Saud is showering billions of dollars on a "new Egypt", an imploding Yemen and a suddenly more useful Muslim Brotherhood as the great Arab revolt is smothered under a mountain of oil wealth. Washington has meanwhile granted its own loaded gifts to Cairo, while quietly working with Bahrain's crown prince on the Persian Gulf American satrapy. - Pepe Escobar (Jun 9, '11)

The secret life of Arabia
What lurks in the shadows tells us more about what's to come as the Arab Spring turns into the Arab Summer. Qatar is maneuvering its soft power towards Syria, where the repression machine has turned its guns on youths and the urban bourgeoisie has yet to make a move. Egypt may boil over too as the Saudis turn up the heat, the Wahhabi way. - Pepe Escobar (Jun 2, '11)

The counter-revolution club
The rest of the region might be teetering, but members of the Gulf Cooperation Council - Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman - are sleeping easy. Nothing will happen to them because the enlightened West - not Allah - is their supreme guardian. And for any extra muscle they might need to keep the order they desire, heavily bankrolled foreign mercenaries are just the ticket. - Pepe Escobar (May 27, '11)

What Obama could not possibly say
The true intent of the dodgy "dignity versus dictator" rhetoric of Barack Obama's Middle East "reset" speech lies in a simple tally: Israel mentioned 28 times and a big zilch for Saudi Arabia. Don't watch this United States president's lips for the truth that a US-Saudi-Israeli counter-revolution is on to smash the Arab revolt, or that "It's all about the oil, stupid". - Pepe Escobar (May 20, '11)

Sunday, bloody Sunday
The next United Nations General Assembly could be a game-changer for Israel's feeling of impunity as the new Egypt steps up to the podium. Israel's killing of 21 people marching to its borders on Sunday shows that after 63 years of unconditional support from the United States, the "pathological state" has lost none of its penchant for killing Arabs, with "maximum restraint". - Pepe Escobar (May 16, '11)

Bin Laden out, Gaddafi next
"Our" bastards are left to do their dirty work in peace, but Gaddafi beware: international law has taken it in the head from a bullet stamped "R2P" (aka "Responsibility to Protect"), courtesy of war in Libya, drones and targeted assassinations, including of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. Luckily, R2P as a humanitarian imperialist concept, as the end of sovereignty as we know it, isn't fooling everyone. - Pepe Escobar (May 11, '11)

Bahrain topples its own people
The crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Bahrain is really about a monarchy trying to get rid of its people, with tactics straight out of the collective punishment playbook as Shi'ite mosques are razed and medics incarcerated for treating demonstrators beaten up by police. No sanctions or no-fly zones for the ruling al-Khalifas, hosts of the US Navy's Fifth Fleet. - Pepe Escobar (May 10, '11)

Welcome to the post-Osama world
Almost a decade after 9/11 - and with the "dead or alive" promise finally fulfilled - the answer to the magic bullet question on the timing of the Osama bin Laden hit is that United States psychoanalyst-in-chief Barack Obama deemed a symbolic kill of the "war on terror" necessary to purge America's desire for foreign misadventure. The post-Osama cure faces monstrous contradictions, and the Pentagon will fight on. - Pepe Escobar (May 5, '11)

Show us the shooter
The biggest manhunt ever ended with two golden bullets administered to Osama bin Laden by a Navy SEALs shooter after the verdict of guilty as (not) charged. A body bag consigned the "mastermind'' of 9/11 to the sea rather than have the CIA's dirty laundry aired in the trial of the century. The system that arranged the hit will be happy; the rest of us left in the dark. - Pepe Escobar (May 4, '11)

Obama/Osama rock the casbah
It may have turned the boogie on United States President Barack Obama's re-election, but the assassination of Osama bin Laden heralds a new breed of hell. The West's self-fulfilling prophecy that al-Qaeda, made irrelevant by the Arab revolt, will react "with a vengeance" may come true, and the Arab world will revert to barbarism instead of dreaming of democracy. - Pepe Escobar (May 3, '11)

Arab Pipelineistan's high stakes
Gas supplies from Egypt to Israel and Jordan were shut off this week when an "unknown armed gang" bombed the Arab Gas Pipeline. This is not the first time the star of Arab Pipelineistan has been disrupted, causing acute concern in capitals across the region. The discovery of massive natural gas deposits in the eastern Mediterranean, however, has the potential to end any energy war. Or does it? - Pepe Escobar (Apr 29, '11)

The Syrian chessboard
Syria matters on all fronts - from Iran to Iraq, from Turkey to Lebanon, from Palestine to Israel. But what the House of Saud intervention in Syria is inciting, above all, is tremendously destructive; a bloodthirsty sectarian epidemic spreading all across the Middle East (it started in Bahrain). (Apr 27, '11)

AfPak comes to Africa
Why haven't they thought about this before; an army of drones (only five for the moment, based in southern Italy) instead of boots on the ground? Pentagon chief Robert Gates claims the drones will strike Libya for "humanitarian reasons". The "cubicle warriors" will certainly raise some hell by dragging a mouse, but there is only one way this is headed - stalemate (and "collateral damage") as in AfPak. - Pepe Escobar (Apr 26, '11)

Fear and loathing in the House of Saud
That the United States has condoned Saudi Arabia's counter-revolution against the Great 2011 Arab Revolt and incendiary manipulation of sectarianism shatters America's ''credibility on democracy and reform''. For all its bluster, the House of Saud's actions are essentially moved by fear and may lead to a total radicalization of the Sunni-Shi'ite divide across the Arab world. - Pepe Escobar (Apr 20, '11)

Mission regime change
By jointly announcing the bombs will fall until Muammar Gaddafi is gone for good, Washington, London and Paris have torn up the original UN mandate on Libya. There will be Western boots on the ground - sooner rather than later - and what comes next is even more messy: the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as the weaponized arm of the UN, roaming Africa for conquest and plunder. - Pepe Escobar (Apr 19, '11)

Fatal Tomahawk attraction
Libyan ''rebels'', by allowing Britain and France to hijack their revolt, have lost their credibility. By imploring the Pentagon to unleash the "ground strike capability" of its tankbusters and gunships to bomb their country to kingdom come, they have also lost their moral authority. To top it off, they have allowed Western and Gulf capitals to pose as carriers of the white man's burden. - Pepe Escobar (Apr 14, '11)

Libya: Ceasefire or bust
London and Paris want a mad bombing spree in Libya. While the North Atlantic Treaty Organization at least acknowledges it can't shock and awe the enemy without provoking genocide, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi is not fool enough to stop fighting while NATO may keep on bombing. It is the African nations that have come up with a plausible ceasefire plan. - Pepe Escobar (Apr 13, '11)

I want to occupy you forever
The riposte to Pentagon head Robert Gates' entreaties for the Iraqi government to allow the US to stay on beyond the end of the year came swift and sharp from nationalist politician Muqtada al-Sadr: Leave as agreed or face Mahdi Army guerrilla tactics. The bottom line is that most Iraqis share the Shi'ite cleric's desire to end the Iraq chapter of the US empire of military bases. - Pepe Escobar (Apr 12, '11)

Let me bomb you in peace
After learning the lesson of having his tanks bombed at will by the "coalition of the willing", Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi is fighting light-armor guerrilla style against the "rebels" and the air war is now useless. If the "rebels" had their way and their own cities were carpet-bombed, collateral damage would be horrific. The last hope for sanity in all this mess is Turkey. - Pepe Escobar (Apr 8, '11)

The sweet smell of counter-revolution
The House of Saud pulled its partner in the counter-revolution double act over from the right side to the wrong side of history. As United States Secretary of Defense Robert Gates meets Saudi King Abdullah to discuss the intricacies of "US outreach" and "regime alteration", the current juncture spells out Washington/House of Saud winning, hands down, against the great 2011 Arab revolt. - Pepe Escobar (Apr 7, '11)

Turkey: The sultans of swing
While Turkey's "strategic depth" envisions an informal empire ranging from the Eastern Mediterranean to Western China, from the Balkans to the Middle East, Anatolia is the ultimate Pipelineistan crossroads for the export of Russian, Caspian-Central Asian, Iraqi and Iranian oil and gas to Europe. Much to Washington's dismay, the Arab revolt is opening a sublime portal to a new "global, political, economic and cultural order." - Pepe Escobar (Apr 6, '11)

Billion-dollar Obama rocks Yemen
Protesters are being killed, a dictator refuses to step down, al-Qaeda is thriving, the CIA is on the ground, and civil war looms. Welcome to the curious case of Yemen, undeserving of Libyan-style humanitarian imperialism, yet where President Ali Abdullah Saleh has just been dropped from Washington's roster of "our bastards" as Barack Obama launches a US$1 billion re-election bid. - Pepe Escobar (Apr 5, '11)

Exposed: The US-Saudi Libya deal
In the beginning, there was the great 2011 Arab revolt. Then, inexorably, came the United States-Saudi counter-revolution in a deal where the US gave the green light to Saudi Arabia's invasion of Bahrain in return for Arab League support for the the Libyan no-fly zone. Revealed is the Barack Obama administration's hypocrisy, selling a crass geopolitical coup as a humanitarian operation. - Pepe Escobar (Apr 1, '11)

Tripoli, the new Troy
Muammar Gaddafi is "winning" like the king of besieged Troy did for 10 years. The problem with the Odyssey Dawn script is that a rebel Ulysses or a Helen is nowhere to be found and a cast of characters of infiltrated special forces including Central Intelligence Agency covert ops will be key. Many a Libyan will eventually have to acknowledge it's best to beware of Westerners bearing gifts. - Pepe Escobar (Mar 31, '11)

Queen Hillary of Libya
Foreign intervention in Libya - "legitimized" by dodgy United Nations cover - is shaping up as a counter-revolutionary master coup to squash the momentum of the great 2011 Arab revolt, show who's boss, and present neo-colonialism with a facelift. And the new Libyan government kingmaker presiding over its balkanization is actually a queen: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. - Pepe Escobar (Mar 30, '11)

There's no business like war business
It's easy to identify who profits from the war in Libya: The Pentagon, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the "rebels", the French and al-Qaeda. But that's only a short list of profiteers; control of an ocean of fresh water is crucial to the war mix, and nobody knows who'll end up getting the oil and the natural gas. - Pepe Escobar (Mar 29, '11)

Welcome to the new NATO quagmire
The decision for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to run the show on Libya is a copy of the International Security and Assistance Force arrangement in Afghanistan. Libya is now an official victim of the endless war club and since it is on the ground in Central Asia, NATO is about to enter the era of the double quagmire. - Pepe Escobar (Mar 25, '11)

Endgame: Divide, rule and get the oil
Western moral uprightness on Libya to coalition Gulf countries goes something like this: If you sell us a lot of oil, buy our weapons, and smash al-Qaeda, that's fine; you may even kill your own people, provided it's dozens, not thousands. That's how Saudi Arabia can get away with anything. The forces of counter-revolution are now joined at the hip with the West. - Pepe Escobar (Mar 24, '11)

The 'optics' of Odyssey Dawn
Washington is publicly projecting the illusion of being desperate to get rid of a war sold as a "limited mission" in Libya. But the masters of war are having a hard time to, in Pentagon lingo, "transition it to a coalition command". Washington should have evaluated the "optics" that remind everyone of the Iraq invasion before evoking Homer. - Pepe Escobar (Mar 23, '11)

The West bombs, the Arab League ducks
The Arab dictatorships - which once again have sanctioned an attack on a Muslim country - are scared to death of the backlash from their populations if civilian deaths in Libya from Odyssey Dawn balloon. Their astonishing dithering, and the African Union's outright hostility to the "coalition", explodes the myth that the "international community" is behind the operation. - Pepe Escobar (Mar 22, '11)

The Odyssey Dawn top 10
Gotta hand it to the Pentagon's ghost writers, allowing Homer's heroes to roam the Mediterranean in the aptly named Operation Odyssey Dawn. But with a nod to the top 10 plays in this tragedy, the operation is really House of Saud Takes Out Gaddafi. With the heavy lifting subcontracted to the West and the eastern Libya protesters posing as extras. - Pepe Escobar (Mar 21, '11)

The Club Med war
The passage of resolution 1973 has put the ball (of fire) in Gaddafi's court. Every civilian and military target in the Mediterranean is now fair game as he threatens to "get crazy", and with the colonel willing to fight to the death, it's fair to assume the Security Council vote gives a mandate that only ends with regime change. - Pepe Escobar (Mar 18, '11)

The Arab counter-revolution is winning
In the inextricable Saudi/Washington nexus, democracy may be acceptable for Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, but it's a very bad idea for Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and other friendly Gulf dictatorships. The message of the Gulf kingdoms and sheikhdoms to Washington is unambiguous and effective; if we "fall", your strategic game is in pieces. Once more, "stability" trumps democracy. - Pepe Escobar (Mar 17, '11)

Libyans and Bahrainis sheikh,
rattle and roll
In both Libya and Bahrain, the great 2011 Arab revolt seems to have reached the red line. Regime change stops here - with the House of Saud at the top of the Arab dictatorial pyramid, followed by its Gulf minions. And as Muammar Gaddafi rolls out his forces to crush rebellion in Benghazi, the world will watch the killing like silent sheep. - Pepe Escobar (Mar 16, '11)

House of Saud 'liberates' Bahrain
The House of Saud has rolled into Bahrain with armored carriers, tanks and troops to repress protests that have revealed the United States client state and its corrupt 200-year-old dynasty as the Gulf's weakest link. Media-fueled illusions of Iran as the bogeyman and Saudi Arabia as a "reluctant" regional policeman are as unreal the West's "support" for Libyan rebels. - Pepe Escobar (Mar 15, '11)

Mummies and models
in the new Middle East
Egypt, previously a moribund land of "stability" and bosom buddy of whoever was in power in Washington, has been hurled into the Middle East's New Great Game. Possible models for transition range from Turkey's modern, Islamic ideal to Muslim-majority Indonesia's flourishing democracy and Latin America's path of total independence. Either way, it's enough to make Western diplomatic circles tremble. - Pepe Escobar (Mar 14, '11)

The birth of Islamic modernity
Although the symptoms are the same - unemployment, poverty, corruption, absence of freedom - the great Arab revolt is actually diverse revolutions fought with diverse strategies. The crucial unifying theme is that Arab peoples are starting to build their own modernity. That, as Gilles Kepel was prescient to note, secures the victory of Islam as democracy over Islam as a "revolutionary" vanguard. - Pepe Escobar (Mar 11, '11)

Why no-fly won't fly
As the countries known as BRICS build a wall around the plan for a no-fly zone in Libya, Muammar Gaddafi is skillfully reading the writing. No-fly, even if approved, would be useless and he knows those backing the idea can't invade Libya - that would be seen as one more chapter, after Afghanistan and Iraq, of the white man's crusade to destroy Islam (and get the oil). - Pepe Escobar (Mar 10, '11)

Rage against the House of Saud
The US$36 billion question in Saudi Arabia concerns whether an ailing monarch can bribe his subjects into submission with oil money and escape the the furious freedom winds of the great 2011 Arab revolt. The world will be able to watch a preview this Friday, as a Facebook-organized "Day of Rage" hits the globe's largest gas station. - Pepe Escobar (Mar 9, '11)

The perfect (desert) storm
The Arab revolt, North African yearnings for democracy, Western despair over oil prices, and the new American doctrine for regime alteration are kicking up a perfect storm, deploying devastating gusts of hypocritical winds such as the US request for Saudia Arabia to arm rebels, while turning a blind eye to the House of Saud's inconvenient truth. History yet again repeats itself as farce. - Pepe Escobar (Mar 8, '11)

Fly me a Tuareg on time
With most of Libya's tribes united against Muammar Gaddafi, Algeria is reported instrumental in getting mercenaries from Niger and Chad to his side. After Gaddafi propped up their rebellions for decades, nomadic Tuaregs appear to be making the grueling trip overland, organized by a former rebel commander now in Libya and lured by petrodollar-fueled pay. - Pepe Escobar (Mar 7, '11)

The lion wants his juice back
It's stalemate time in Libya. Like a lion resting under a tree, Muammar Gaddafi is surveying the odds of keeping power. He knows rebels have what it takes to defend Zawiya, Misrata and Brega, yet lack the means to attack. Having lost control of 80% of Libya's oil fields and refineries, he wants his juice back. Africa's ''king of kings'' knows Brega is key - and next time, he'll go for the kill. - Pepe Escobar (Mar 4, '11)

War porn is back in Libya
Libyan people risking their lives to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi have been saying for over a week that they don't want foreign intervention. But forget democracy; the world won't listen amid the hysteria of calls for a no-fly zone and demands for military boots to turn Libya into a North Atlantic Treaty Organization protectorate. "Shock and awe" is back and, once again, it's all about oil. (Mar 2, '11)

Don't take your eyes off the Gulf
Lute-playing septuagenarian Sultan Qabus bin Sa'id of Oman cannot understand the discord in his Disneyland-perfect territory, but as protesters keep up the pressure for reform his time may be running out. Beware the humanitarian imperialism possibly rearing its ugly head in Libya. But all eyes should be on the Strait of Hormuz; on the Omani, not the Iranian, shore. (Mar 1, '11)

And the (Arab) Oscars go to ...
In the (real) Arab world, this is what Oscar night - somewhere over the rainbow - would probably be like. Among the many winners, Social Networks Smash Kings' Speeches would be the best movie, while the best ensemble cast would go to the mother of the great 2011 Arab revolt, Tunisia. Muammar Gaddafi's last stand is a shoe-in for best James Cagney "Look Ma, top of the world!" moment. (Feb 28, '11)

The tribes against the bunker
Muammar Gaddafi says that the Libyan uprising is an al-Qaeda plot driven by hordes on milk and Nescafe spiked with hallucinogenic drugs. Reality is less lysergic; it's a concert of tribes that ultimately will bring down the African king of kings. (Feb 25, '11)

The Gulf's terror of democracy
Since Bahrain's King Hamad al-Khalifa turned the guns on democracy-loving protesters, the chant has become "Down, Down Khalifa." Flashing the cash on social programs to quell such desires, King Adullah of Saudia Arabia either gets that the great 2011 Arab revolt is about working class unrest, or he's freaking out that his oppressed subjects will raid the House of Saud. (Feb 24, '11)

Gaddafi goes Tiananmen
A disheveled prophet-as-psychopath Muammar Gaddafi emerged in his own bunker to evoke the sinister option of a Tiananmen Square-style massacre of "greasy rats" (aka Libyan people) to contain "chaos". The unhinged rant may well have been Gaddafi's Hitler moment and he has set the stage for the final showdown. (Feb 23, '11)

'Brother' Gaddafi, you're going down
The beginning of the end for Muammar Gaddafi was classic Arab dictator stuff as he left his "modernizing" son Saif to threaten and infuriate the masses by saying they risked igniting a civil war in which Libya's oil wealth "will be burned". There will be more blood after the Libyan despot turned helicopter gunships on his own people, but "Brother" Gaddafi is going down. (Feb 22, '11)

Next stop: The House of Saud
The great 2011 Arab revolt will only fulfill its historic mission when it shakes the foundations of the House of Saud. While their extraordinary oil wealth and a vast repression apparatus make it wishful thinking its rulers will ever reform themselves, protests in Bahrain could spill over to Saudi Arabia, giving the nation's unemployed youths reasons to dream of following the winds of the new Egypt. (Feb 18, '11)

All about Pearl roundabout
Bahrain answered the Shi'ite majority's calls for constitutional change and fair elections with tear gas, rubber bullets and death as police cleared the well-organized protest camp at the Pearl roundabout in Manama. The crackdown at "martyr's square" is bound to add charge to an explosive mix in which two-thirds of the population are denied the rights enjoyed by the ruling Sunni minority. (Feb 17, '11)

Iran's post-Islamist generation
Young protesters in Iran may yet get a chance to call the Iranian regime's bluff over how it can censor, beat and arrest the sons of the land while lauding the revolutionary youth of Egypt. Rejecting corrupted dictatorships and Islam as a political ideology for failing to end poverty and government lies, they are from a Generation Why?, and view the Islamic revolution as a spent force. (Feb 16, '11)

Is the revolution being co-opted?
It's too early to tell whether the military junta now in power will really deliver on the new local remix of "orderly transition" or run rings around the street. As much as Karl Marx remarked that the Paris Commune failed because it did not march on Versailles, giving time for the counter-revolution to prepare a counter-offensive, the young Egyptian revolutionaries have to seize the day. (Feb 15, '11)

Under the (Egyptian) volcano
Forget about the Egyptian army swiftly handing power to a civilian-led interim government. Its leaders are United States-enabled stakeholders of a vast dynasty controlling the Egyptian economy. There's no way a new Egypt may be born without overthrowing this whole system. The street has to take on the army. Expect major fireworks. (Feb 14, '11)

Give me liberty or give me death
Pharaoh Mubarak is an ancient immovable statue buried in the desert sands while, amid signs of civil war in the palace, his princeling Omar "Sheikh al-Torture" Suleiman doesn't hold all the chariot's reins. Over in the Republic, the meek president (Barack Obama) appears lukewarm on people power. So what's a revolution to do? The time for freedom or death is now. (Feb 11, '11)

Bread, dignity and lies
As a part of the mix in raising bread prices, Wall Street greed is a crucial specter in the hunger of the working-class masses now entering the battle in Egypt. And with Vice President Omar "Sheik al-Torture" Suleiman warning that the only alternative to dialogue with the opposition is "a coup", the street sees any mention of talk for what it is; a mirage. No wonder the protests are getting bigger. (Feb 10, '11)

Don't cry for me, Suleiman
The Egyptian street revolution proves that the ghastly "Arab exception" concept - that dictatorship and hardcore repression are intrinsic to the Arab world - was always a manufactured consensus. It's a no-brainer, between Washington-supported Omar "Sheik al-Torture" Suleiman and the protesters, who's on the right side of history. (Feb 9, '11)

'Sheik al-Torture' is now a democrat
If French philosopher Jean Baudrillard was alive, he would say revolution in Egypt never took place except on the world's television screens. The regime was never shaken to the core - because the army remains in charge and it is comfortable with "acting president" Omar Suleiman (aka "Sheik al-Torture") running the show. So are the democrats in Washington. (Feb 8, '11)

Counter-revolution brought to you by ...
The usual suspects - the army, President Hosni Mubarak's comprador elites and the triad of Washington, Tel Aviv and European capitals - all want Vice President Omar Suleiman, dubbed "Sheikh al-Torture" and the man with the plan, to restore stability in Egypt. After more than two weeks of protest, this is "orderly transition". The street has pyramids of reasons to worry. (Feb 7, '11)

Why the US fears Arab democracy
In a sane world, the White House would back people power in the Middle East unconditionally. But Barack Obama is boxed in by (to cut to the chase) Israel and oil. People power only fuels Israel's paranoia about encirclement by "hostile" forces, and the Washington imperative for self-interest trumps the very ideals that the US president was championing in Cairo less than two years ago. (Feb 4, '11)

Dead men walking, with license to kill
Egypt's counter-revolution is on. And if President Hosni Mubarak is a "dead man walking", as opposition figure Mohamed ElBaradei has coined it, what about his zombie army of machete-wielding thugs paid by his cronies? Masked goon squads encircling protesters in Cairo represent the ugly face of Mubarakism - and, with the army and police eerily gone, the ominous sign of state terror unleashed. (Feb 3, '11)

Who's to cut off the head of the snake?
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's defiant dismissal of the will of the people lining the streets of Cairo and Alexandria came after an about-turn on three decades of support by Washington that amounted to a mealy-mouthed call for "orderly transition". It seems that the military elite is the only weapon available to hasten Mubarak's understanding of the word "now". (Feb 2, '11)

The brotherhood factor
Demands on the streets for a one-way ticket out for President Hosni Mubarak will forge a path to free and fair elections and a role in government for the Muslim Brotherhood. Contrary to alarmist rightwing sirens, no "Islamic fervor" envelopes the Middle East, and a Muslim Brotherhood refuting violence and bowing to secularist majority opinion in a post-revolutionary Egypt cannot possibly spook the West. (Feb 1, '11)

Rage, rage against counter-revolution
The Age of Rage from Northern Africa to the Middle East is not an Islamic revolution, it's a graphic example of grassroots activism against repression, mass unemployment and rising food prices. But at street level in the Egyptian intifada, suspicions are that a United States-orchestrated coup will keep the military in place, even if President Hosni Mubarak has to go. Expect the counter-revolution to be fierce. (Jan 31, '11)

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