The New Great Game Round-Up: January 26, 2014
by Christoph Germann
Boiling Frogs Post
January 26, 2014
Western mainstream media reporting about China’s fight against the “liberation of East Turkestan” follows some basic rules, one of which is to highlight the oppression of the Uyghur population at any given opportunity. So Western media outlets widely covered the arrest of Uyghur economics professor Ilham Tohti. European and American officials, led by U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki, voiced their concern and demanded an explanation. The Chinese government, not amused by all this hype, decided to set the record straight and explained why the West’s new darling had been detained [emphasis mine]:
Leave no chance for malicious preaching
The nearly live coverage shows a particularly close link between Tohti and the West.
Indeed, Tohti is no ordinary Joe. Closely watched by the World Uyghur Congress, he is known to have often given aggressive lectures in class. He founded the Uighur Online website in 2006, which was very active around the riots in Urumqi, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in 2009, which left nearly 200 people dead.
The authorities must resolutely crack down on the terrorists, as well as the “brains” behind them. Without the brains, the terrorists will be like a clueless mob.
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Xinjiang’s Never-Ending Struggle
Beijing knows of course that the real “brains” behind the terrorists are to be found in Washington but it is arguably more difficult to put them behind bars. According to Xinjiang’s police, Tohti engaged in separatist activities and “colluded with overseas East Turkistan separatist forces”, which include among others the NED-funded World Uyghur Congress. While Western media reported extensively about the arrest of the Uyghur economics professor, another incident involving the Turkic ethnic group received considerably less coverage, although the information came from the West’s preferred source, CIA propaganda project Radio Free Asia (RFA):
Uyghur Attack on Police Station Leaves Three Dead, Two Injured
Chinese authorities have shot dead three Uyghurs who attacked a police station in northwestern China’s restive Xinjiang region, officials said Wednesday, calling the attack an act of “separatism.”
The assault on the Yengieriq town police station in Aksu prefecture’s Awat county is the latest in a string of raids by Uyghurs who exile rights groups say could be retaliating for discrimination by Chinese authorities against the ethnic minority group.
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As usual, Radio Free Asia portrays the attack as inevitable consequence of government discrimination against the Uyghur population.
US Feigns “Horror” Over Cooked-Up Report on Syrian War They Engineered
Update: Further details have emerged regarding the authors of the report. It was produced by British law firm Carter-Ruck on behalf of Qatar who funded it (CNN). Carter-Ruck had in the past defended Saudis suspected of funding Al Qaeda.ABC’s “U.S.: Saudis Still Filling Al Qaeda’s Coffers,” would report that Yasin al Qadi was being represented by Carter-Ruck against US charges filed just after 9/11 claiming he was financing Al Qaeda. It should also be noted that Yasin al Qadi is a close ally of US’ partner in the Syrian conflict, Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey. The suspicious report, conveniently released just a day before the Geneva conference, emerging from a tangled web of state-sponsored terrorism and dubious Western law firms only further taints the West’s image as they go into “peace talks” regarding Syria.
January 22, 2014 (LD) – As with every Western-backed conference assembled regarding Syria, dramtic fabrications revealed just ahead of proceedings are intended to give them and their predetermined outcomes both gravity and “urgency.” Upcoming “peace talks” to be held in Switzerland are no exception. A report cooked up by the unelected dictatorship in Qatar is based on an anonymous source, codename “Caesar,” and remains admittedly unverified.
The BBC’s report, “US and UN express horror at Syria torture report,” claims:
The report, by three former war crimes prosecutors, is based on the evidence of a defected military police photographer, referred to only as Caesar, who along with others reportedly smuggled about 55,000 digital images of some 11,000 dead detainees out of Syria.
The BBC then reveals the propaganda value the report is intended to serve in upcoming talks by stating:
US state department spokeswoman Marie Harf said it “underscores that it makes it even more important that we make progress [at Geneva II]. The situation on the ground is so horrific that we need to get a political transition in place, and we need to get the Assad regime out of power.”
Of course, spokesman for UN Human Rights Chief Navi Pillay would admit the report remains unverified (emphasis added):
Rupert Colville, spokesman for UN human rights chief Navi Pillay, told AFP: “This report is extremely alarming, and the alleged scale of the deaths in detention, if verified, is truly horrifying.
Codename Caesar, Codename Curveball
Image: From Independent’s “Man whose WMD lies led to 100,000 deaths confesses all: Defector tells how US officials ‘sexed up’ his fictions to make the case for 2003 invasion.” In retrospect, the corporate-media has no problem admitting the insidious lies that were told to justify the invasion and occupation of Iraq – the lead up to the war was another story. A verbatim repeat of these admitted lies are being directed at Syria amidst the West’s failure to overthrow the government with terrorist proxies.
Qatar stadium design critics: it ‘looks like a vagina’ — video included
NWO Truth
November 16, 2013
AECOM Technology Corporation posted a short video animation of the design for Qatar’s new Al Wakrah sports stadium Saturday, which under almost immediate criticism for its resemblance to female genitalia.
Buzzfeed’s Matt Kiebus noted that the $120 billion project bears little resemblance to an ancient dhow boat “that Qataris traditionally used for pearl diving.”
Qatar is building the 45,000-capacity stadium to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup. (Read more…) The climate-controlled stadium will be about 12 miles south of Doha, in “one of the oldest inhabited areas in Qatar, with a rich cultural heritage evidenced by its traditional Islamic architecture, historical buildings, distinctive mosques and archaeological sites,” according to AECOM.
Watch the video and draw your own design conclusions below.
[VIA The Raw Story]
Is The United States Going To Go To War With Syria Over A Natural Gas Pipeline?
by Michael Snyder
MND – Your Daily Dose of Counter-Theory
September 3, 2013
[Potent News editor’s note: While I don’t think the situation is as simple as a natural gas pipeline (for reasons I expand on halfway through Potent News Blast #10) I still think the information below is relevant and valuable.]
Why has the little nation of Qatar spent 3 billion dollars to support the rebels in Syria? Could it be because Qatar is the largest exporter of liquid natural gas in the world and Assad won’t let them build a natural gas pipeline through Syria? Of course. Qatar wants to install a puppet regime in Syria that will allow them to build a pipeline which will enable them to sell lots and lots of natural gas to Europe. Why is Saudi Arabia spending huge amounts of money to help the rebels and why has Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan been “jetting from covert command centers near the Syrian front lines to the Élysée Palace in Paris and the Kremlin in Moscow, seeking to undermine the Assad regime”? Well, it turns out that Saudi Arabia intends to install their own puppet government in Syria which will allow the Saudis to control the flow of energy through the region. On the other side, Russia very much prefers the Assad regime for a whole bunch of reasons. One of those reasons is that Assad is helping to block the flow of natural gas out of the Persian Gulf into Europe, thus ensuring higher profits for Gazprom. Now the United States is getting directly involved in the conflict. If the U.S. is successful in getting rid of the Assad regime, it will be good for either the Saudis or Qatar (and possibly for both), and it will be really bad for Russia. This is a strategic geopolitical conflict about natural resources, religion and money, and it really has nothing to do with chemical weapons at all.
It has been common knowledge that Qatar has desperately wanted to construct a natural gas pipeline that will enable it to get natural gas to Europe for a very long time. The following is an excerpt from an article from 2009…
Qatar has proposed a gas pipeline from the Gulf to Turkey in a sign the emirate is considering a further expansion of exports from the world’s biggest gasfield after it finishes an ambitious programme to more than double its capacity to produce liquefied natural gas (LNG).
“We are eager to have a gas pipeline from Qatar to Turkey,” Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, the ruler of Qatar, said last week, following talks with the Turkish president Abdullah Gul and the prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the western Turkish resort town of Bodrum. “We discussed this matter in the framework of co-operation in the field of energy. In this regard, a working group will be set up that will come up with concrete results in the shortest possible time,” he said, according to Turkey’s Anatolia news agency.
Other reports in the Turkish press said the two states were exploring the possibility of Qatar supplying gas to the strategic Nabucco pipeline project, which would transport Central Asian and Middle Eastern gas to Europe, bypassing Russia. A Qatar-to-Turkey pipeline might hook up with Nabucco at its proposed starting point in eastern Turkey. Last month, Mr Erdogan and the prime ministers of four European countries signed a transit agreement for Nabucco, clearing the way for a final investment decision next year on the EU-backed project to reduce European dependence on Russian gas.
“For this aim, I think a gas pipeline between Turkey and Qatar would solve the issue once and for all,” Mr Erdogan added, according to reports in several newspapers. The reports said two different routes for such a pipeline were possible. One would lead from Qatar through Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq to Turkey. The other would go through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and on to Turkey. It was not clear whether the second option would be connected to the Pan-Arab pipeline, carrying Egyptian gas through Jordan to Syria. That pipeline, which is due to be extended to Turkey, has also been proposed as a source of gas for Nabucco.
Based on production from the massive North Field in the Gulf, Qatar has established a commanding position as the world’s leading LNG exporter. It is consolidating that through a construction programme aimed at increasing its annual LNG production capacity to 77 million tonnes by the end of next year, from 31 million tonnes last year. However, in 2005, the emirate placed a moratorium on plans for further development of the North Field in order to conduct a reservoir study.
As you just read, there were two proposed routes for the pipeline. Unfortunately for Qatar, Saudi Arabia said no to the first route and Syria said no to the second route. The following is from an absolutely outstanding article in the Guardian…
In 2009 – the same year former French foreign minister Dumas alleges the British began planning operations in Syria – Assad refused to sign a proposed agreement with Qatar that would run a pipeline from the latter’s North field, contiguous with Iran’s South Pars field, through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and on to Turkey, with a view to supply European markets – albeit crucially bypassing Russia. Assad’s rationale was “to protect the interests of [his] Russian ally, which is Europe’s top supplier of natural gas.”
Instead, the following year, Assad pursued negotiations for an alternative $10 billion pipeline plan with Iran, across Iraq to Syria, that would also potentially allow Iran to supply gas to Europe from its South Pars field shared with Qatar. The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for the project was signed in July 2012 – just as Syria’s civil war was spreading to Damascus and Aleppo – and earlier this year Iraq signed a framework agreement for construction of the gas pipelines.
The Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline plan was a “direct slap in the face” to Qatar’s plans. No wonder Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan, in a failed attempt to bribe Russia to switch sides, told President Vladmir Putin that “whatever regime comes after” Assad, it will be “completely” in Saudi Arabia’s hands and will “not sign any agreement allowing any Gulf country to transport its gas across Syria to Europe and compete with Russian gas exports”, according to diplomatic sources. When Putin refused, the Prince vowed military action.
The war on Iran begins…in Syria
RT Op-Edge
August 28, 2013
Eric Draitser is an independent geopolitical analyst based in New York City and the founder of StopImperialism.com.
A picture released by the US Navy shows an F/A-18C Hornet assigned to the Rampagers of Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 83 preparing to launch from the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69) on June 17, 2013 in the Mediterranean Sea. (AFP Photo/US Navy)
As the United States, along with its European and Israeli allies, prepares to launch yet another illegal war of aggression in the Middle East, the geopolitics of the US strategy could not be more apparent.
Despite the high-minded talk of humanitarianism, the US is advancing a transparently neo-colonialist agenda aimed at securing hegemony in the region by destroying what little opposition remains.
Lights…camera…war!
The images and videos flooding the internet since last week purport to show ‘evidence’ of a chemical weapons attack perpetrated by the Assad regime. This development neatly and conveniently coincides with the declaration by the Obama administration that the use of such weapons constitutes a ‘red line’, merely a euphemism for the point at which the US would feel emboldened to militarily intervene on behalf of the rebels.
And so, as news outlets report on the ‘likely use of chemical weapons’ by Damascus without anything other than unverifiable hearsay and ambiguous video footage, the drumbeat of war gets louder and louder.
A clear-thinking and rational political analyst would immediately be suspicious about the attack considering the presence of international chemical weapons investigators in Syria, as well as the fact that Damascus was undeniably winning the war against the jihadi rebel factions in cities like Qussair, Homs, Aleppo and elsewhere. That Assad would sabotage his own military victories and provide the perfect pretext for a foreign intervention is not only far-fetched, it runs contrary to his own record throughout this conflict. Remember that Damascus has shown restraint in the face of international war crimes committed against it by Israel, Turkey and other regional actors who have been fomenting the conflict in Syria for more than two years.
VIDEO — Libya Update June 29/30 – Phone Call
108morris108
June 29, 2013
The battle lines are being drawn between Tribal loyalties and Muslim Brotherhood loyalties. Many people have died in Tripoli (40) in Benghazi (40) and also Sabha. The Government seems powerless, behind the scenes Qatar is a big player, and the weapons depots are open.
Qatari princess says Doha’s support for Syria militants ‘scandalous’
Friends of Syria
May 25, 2013
The daughter of Qatari ruler Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani has censured Doha’s support for the militants in Syria.
In a message she posted on Twitter, Sheikha Hind bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani stated that the backing of the militants was a ‘scandal in the history of Qatar.’
She also denounced the atrocities committed by the militants and said the armed groups had committed crimes against the Syrian people – an apparent reference to a gruesome video recently published on the Internet.
The video shows a cannibal militant in Syria cutting an organ of a Syrian soldier out of his chest and biting into it.
The Qatari princess also slammed the intervention of militants from Saudi Arabia in Syria and their ‘execution of Syrian citizens.’
Turmoil has gripped Syria since March 2011, and many people, including large numbers of Syrian security forces, have been killed in the unrest.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said on May 18 that militants from 29 different countries were fighting against the government in different parts of the country.
In January, Prince Turki al-Faisal, former Saudi spy chief, called for sending heavy weaponry to the militants in Syria.
MR/HSN
PN 