Category: Georgia

  • APA – STRATFOR expert: “The Caucasus is far more dynamic and complex than a map would suggest”

    APA – STRATFOR expert: “The Caucasus is far more dynamic and complex than a map would suggest”

    STRATFOR expert: “The Caucasus is far more dynamic and complex than a map would suggest”

    Baku – APA. “The Caucasus is, geopolitically speaking, an extremely important and strategic region.

    As a land bridge between the Black and Caspian seas and a trans-continental zone between Europe and Asia, the Caucasus is significant in multiple ways because of its location. Adding to these geographical dynamics is the presence of three small states – Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan – sandwiched between three much larger ones – Russia, Turkey and Iran. This is all information that is easily gleaned from looking at a map; the region’s true importance is less obvious. A map would not tell you that Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan became independent states only 20 years ago. Nor would it tell you that Russia, Turkey and Iran were all once major empires. It certainly would not tell you that all of these former empires are once again rising in their own unique ways, and that even some of the smaller countries are beginning to make a name for themselves as significant regional players”, said STRATFOR’s Eugene Chausovsky in his report for APA on his recent trip to the Caucasus – “A Journey Through the Caucasus.

    “In short, the Caucasus is far more dynamic and complex than a map would suggest, and that is one of the reasons I visited this region: to get a first-hand perspective of the Caucasus”, the expert said. “While I try to follow the countries in the Caucasus in terms of news and current events as closely as I can on a regular basis, I have learned that there is no substitute for seeing a place with your own eyes — particularly in the Caucasus. In Azerbaijan, instead of reading about the latest rise in the country’s oil and natural gas exports or examining statistics on annual gross domestic product growth, I saw economic growth first-hand in the form of seemingly endless construction projects and gleaming new skyscrapers around Baku. Instead of reading about trade between Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, I walked along the Bulvar on the Caspian Sea where I saw countless tankers and ships, a few of which I am sure were transporting goods to Kazakhstan”.

    He also shared his ideas about Georgia: “In Georgia, I realized just how small the country – and for that matter the Caucasus region – really was. Taking a car from Tbilisi to Gori on the only major east-west road in Georgia gave me a new understanding of the size of the country and the limits imposed by its mountainous terrain. Passing only a few kilometers from the border with the breakaway territory of South Ossetia, as well as the numerous internally displaced persons’ camps along the road, certainly put the 2008 Russia-Georgia war in perspective”.

    “In Turkey, taking a ferry from the Anatolian side of Istanbul to the European side allowed me to see the scope of a cosmopolitan, world-class city of 13 million that blends European and Islamic characteristics. Walking through Istanbul, it was easy to imagine why this city was the center of the Ottoman Empire and the Byzantine Empire before that. It was equally as easy to imagine Istanbul as the financial and cultural center of a country whose presence is felt in Baku and Tbilisi and beyond”, the expert said.

    “From spending time in the region, the lasting impression that I came away with is that the Caucasus is a region that is swiftly changing and one whose future is simultaneously promising and uncertain. The static position of the Caucasus on a map is no substitute for the dynamism that I witnessed in the region’s streets, roads, mountains, seas and, most importantly, its people”.

    via APA – STRATFOR expert: “The Caucasus is far more dynamic and complex than a map would suggest”.

  • Passport-free regime between Turkey, Georgia to begin on Tuesday

    Passport-free regime between Turkey, Georgia to begin on Tuesday

    georgia turkeyThe modernized Sarp border gate will be inaugurated by the three leaders at the ceremony

    Citizens of neighboring Georgia and Turkey will be able to travel to each other’s country with only their state identity cards, beginning on May 31.

    A ceremony will be held at the Sarp land border gate on the very same day with the participation of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Georgia’s President Mikheil Saakashvili and Georgian Prime Minister Nika Gilauri.

    The modernized Sarp border gate will be inaugurated by the three leaders at the ceremony. By implementing a passport-free travel regime via the Sarp border gate — through which approximately 2 million people pass in a year — the traffic at the gate will also be eased. It is the main gate between the two neighbors through which almost 90 percent of road transport between the two countries passes.

    Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, delivering a speech in Konya on Thursday where he was campaigning for the upcoming parliamentary elections on June 12, talked about the issue.

    “The passport-free era with Georgia will start. That’s to say, with identity cards. We are waiting for them to finish arrangements concerning the Georgian alphabet. Next week, we will finalize this during the prime minister’s eastern Black Sea coast visit Inshallah,” Davutoğlu was quoted as saying by the Anatolia news agency, as he participated in a monthly meeting of the Konya Chamber of Industry.

    “Given that the human element is our most important resource, it is necessary to provide movement of the human element with the highest speed and remove any obstacles facing them ,” Davutoğlu added.

    During a visit to Tbilisi in February, Davutoğlu spoke about the protection of shared cultural heritage. He said at the time that it would be an important area of cooperation and that historic churches in Turkey are also part of Turkey’s cultural heritage. The foreign minister promised that Turkey would continue necessary restoration on Georgian churches, adding that historical and cultural heritage in Ajaria and its capital, Batumi — where a substantial number of Georgian Muslims live — is also a mutual cultural heritage for both countries.

    Immediately following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Turkey recognized the independence of Georgia, on Dec. 16, 1991, and on May 21, 1992, the Protocol on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations between the two countries was signed.

    Cihan news agency

  • Egypt’s Revolution: Creative Destruction for a ‘Greater Middle East’?

    Egypt’s Revolution: Creative Destruction for a ‘Greater Middle East’?

    F. William Engdahl, February 5, 2011
    Fast on the heels of the regime change in Tunisia came a popular-based protest movement launched on January 25 against the entrenched order of Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak. Contrary to the carefully-cultivated impression that the Obama Administration is trying to retain the present regime of Mubarak, Washington in fact is orchestrating the Egyptian as well as other regional regime changes from Syria to Yemen to Jordan and well beyond in a process some refer to as “creative destruction.”

    The template for such covert regime change has been developed by the Pentagon, US intelligence agencies and various think-tanks such as RAND Corporation over decades, beginning with the May 1968 destabilization of the de Gaulle presidency in France. This is the first time since the US backed regime changes in Eastern Europe some two decades back that Washington has initiated simultaneous operations in many countries in a region. It is a strategy born of a certain desperation and one not without significant risk for the Pentagon and for the long-term Wall Street agenda. What the outcome will be for the peoples of the region and for the world is as yet unclear.
    Yet while the ultimate outcome of defiant street protests in Cairo and across Egypt and the Islamic world remains unclear, the broad outlines of a US covert strategy are already clear.
    No one can dispute the genuine grievances motivating millions to take to the streets at risk of life. No one can defend atrocities of the Mubarak regime and its torture and repression of dissent. Noone can dispute the explosive rise in food prices as Chicago and Wall Street commodity speculators, and the conversion of American farmland to the insane cultivation of corn for ethanol fuel drive grain prices through the roof. Egypt is the world’s largest wheat importer, much of it from the USA. Chicago wheat futures rose by a staggering 74% between June and November 2010 leading to an Egyptian food price inflation of some 30% despite government subsidies.
    What is widely ignored in the CNN and BBC and other Western media coverage of the Egypt events is the fact that whatever his excesses at home, Egypt’s Mubarak represented a major obstacle within the region to the larger US agenda.

    To say relations between Obama and Mubarak were ice cold from the outset would be no exaggeration. Mubarak was staunchly opposed to Obama policies on Iran and how to deal with its nuclear program, on Obama policies towards the Persian Gulf states, to Syria and to Lebanon as well as to the Palestinians.1 He was a formidable thorn in the larger Washington agenda for the entire region, Washington’s Greater Middle East Project, more recently redubbed the milder sounding “New Middle East.”

    As real as the factors are that are driving millions into the streets across North Africa and the Middle East, what cannot be ignored is the fact that Washington is deciding the timing and as they see it, trying to shape the ultimate outcome of comprehensive regime change destabilizations across the Islamic world. The day of the remarkably well-coordinated popular demonstrations demanding Mubarak step down, key members of the Egyptian military command including Chief of General Staff Lt. Gen. Sami Hafez Enan were all in Washington as guests of the Pentagon. That conveniently neutralized the decisive force of the Army to stop the anti-Mubarak protests from growing in the critical early days.2

    The strategy had been in various State Department and Pentagon files since at least a decade or longer. After George W. Bush declared a War on Terror in 2001 it was called the Greater Middle East Project. Today it is known as the less threatening-sounding “New Middle East” project. It is a strategy to break open the states of the region from Morocco to Afghanistan, the region defined by David Rockefeller’s friend Samuel Huntington in his infamous Clash of Civilizations essay in Foreign Affairs.
    Egypt rising?

    The current Pentagon scenario for Egypt reads like a Cecil B. DeMille Hollywood spectacular, only this one with a cast of millions of Twitter-savvy well-trained youth, networks of Muslim Brotherhood operatives, working with a US-trained military. In the starring role of the new production at the moment is none other than a Nobel Peace Prize winner who conveniently appears to pull all the threads of opposition to the ancien regime into what appears as a seamless transition into a New Egypt under a self-proclaimed liberal democratic revolution.

    Some background on the actors on the ground is useful before looking at what Washington’s long term strategic plan might be for the Islamic world from North Africa to the Persian Gulf and ultimately into the Islamic populations of Central Asia, to the borders of China and Russia.
    Washington ‘soft’ revolutions

    The protests that led to the abrupt firing of the entire Egyptian government by President Mubarak on the heels of the panicked flight of Tunisia’s Ben Ali into a Saudi exile are not at all as “spontaneous” as the Obama White House, Clinton State Department or CNN, BBC and other major media in the West make them to be.

    They are being organized in a Ukrainian-style high-tech electronic fashion with large internet-linked networks of youth tied to Mohammed ElBaradei and the banned and murky secret Muslim Brotherhood, whose links to British and American intelligence and freemasonry are widely reported.3

    At this point the anti-Mubarak movement looks like anything but a threat to US influence in the region, quite the opposite. It has all the footprints of another US-backed regime change along the model of the 2003-2004 Color Revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine and the failed Green Revolution against Iran’s Ahmedinejad in 2009.

    The call for an Egyptian general strike and a January 25 Day of Anger that sparked the mass protests demanding Mubarak resign was issued by a Facebook-based organization calling itself the April 6 Movement. The protests were so substantial and well-organized that it forced Mubarak to ask his cabinet to resign and appoint a new vice president, Gen. Omar Suleiman, former Minister of Intelligence.
    April 6 is headed by one Ahmed Maher Ibrahim, a 29-year-old civil engineer, who set up the Facebook site to support a workers’ call for a strike on April 6, 2008.
    According to a New York Times account from 2009, some 800,000 Egyptians, most youth, were already then Facebook or Twitter members. In an interview with the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment, April 6 Movement head Maher stated, “Being the first youth movement in Egypt to use internet-based modes of communication like Facebook and Twitter, we aim to promote democracy by encouraging public involvement in the political process.”4

    Maher also announced that his April 6 Movement backs former UN International Atomic Energy Aagency (IAEA) head and declared Egyptian Presidential candidate, ElBaradei along with ElBaradei’s National Association for Change (NAC) coalition. The NAC includes among others George Ishak, a leader in Kefaya Movement, and Mohamed Saad El-Katatni, president of the parliamentary bloc of the controversial Ikhwan or Muslim Brotherhood.5

    Today Kefaya is at the center of the unfolding Egyptian events. Not far in the background is the more discreet Muslim Brotherhood.

    ElBaradei at this point is being projected as the central figure in a future Egyptian parliamentary democratic change. Curiously, though he has not lived in Egypt for the past thirty years, he has won the backing of every imaginable part of the Eyptian political spectrum from communists to Muslim Brotherhood to Kefaya and April 6 young activists.6 Judging from the calm demeanour ElBaradei presents these days to CNN interviewers, he also likely has the backing of leading Egyptian generals opposed to the Mubarak rule for whatever reasons as well as some very influential persons in Washington.

    Kefaya—Pentagon ‘non-violent warfare’

    Kefaya is at the heart of mobilizing the Egyptian protest demonstrations that back ElBaradei’s candidacy. The word Kefaya translates to “enough!”
    Curiously, the planners at the Washington National Endowment for Democracy (NED)7 and related color revolution NGOs apparently were bereft of creative new catchy names for their Egyptian Color Revolution. In their November 2003 Rose Revolution in Georgia, the US-financed NGOs chose the catch word, Kmara! In order to identify the youth-based regime change movement. Kmara in Georgian also means “enough!”

    Like Kefaya, Kmara in Georgia was also built by the Washington-financed trainers from the NED and other groups such as Gene Sharp’s misleadingly-named Albert Einstein Institution which uses what Sharp once identified as “non-violence as a method of warfare.”8

    The various youth networks in Georgia as in Kefaya were carefully trained as a loose, decentralized network of cells, deliberately avoiding a central organization that could be broken and could have brought the movement to a halt. Training of activists in techniques of non-violent resistance was done at sports facilities, making it appear innocuous. Activists were also given training in political marketing, media relations, mobilization and recruiting skills.
    The formal name of Kefaya is Egyptian Movement for Change. It was founded in 2004 by select Egyptian intellectuals at the home of Abu ‘l-Ala Madi, leader of the al-Wasat party, a party reportedly created by the Muslim Brotherhood.9 Kefaya was created as a coalition movement united only by the call for an end Mubarak’s rule.

    Kefaya as part of the amorphous April 6 Movement capitalized early on new social media and digital technology as its main means of mobilization. In particular, political blogging, posting uncensored youtube shorts and photographic images were skillfully and extremely professionally used. At a rally already back in December 2009 Kefaya had announced support for the candidacy of Mohammed ElBaradei for the 2011 Egyptian elections.10

    RAND and Kefaya

    No less a US defense establishment think-tank than the RAND Corporation has conducted a detailed study of Kefaya. The Kefaya study as RAND themselves note, was “sponsored by the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff, the Unified Combatant Commands, the Department of the Navy, the Marine Corps, the defense agencies, and the defense Intelligence Community.”11

    A nicer bunch of democratically-oriented gentlemen and women could hardly be found.
    In their 2008 report to the Pentagon, the RAND researchers noted the following in relation to Egypt’s Kefaya:
    “The United States has professed an interest in greater democratization in the Arab world, particularly since the September 2001 attacks by terrorists from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Lebanon. This interest has been part of an effort to reduce destabilizing political violence and terrorism. As President George W. Bush noted in a 2003 address to the National Endowment for Democracy, “As long as the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation, resentment, and violence ready for export” (The White House, 2003). The United States has used varying means to pursue democratization, including a military intervention that, though launched for other reasons, had the installation of a democratic government as one of its end goals.
    However, indigenous reform movements are best positioned to advance democratization in their own country.”12

    RAND researchers have spent years perfecting techniques of unconventional regime change under the name “swarming,” the method of deploying mass mobs of digitally-linked youth in hit-and-run protest formations moving like swarms of bees.13

    Washington and the stable of “human rights” and “democracy” and “non-violence” NGOs it oversees, over the past decade or more has increasingly relied on sophisticated “spontaneous” nurturing of local indigenous protest movements to create pro-Washington regime change and to advance the Pentagon agenda of global Full Spectrum Dominance. As the RAND study of Kefaya states in its concluding recommendations to the Pentagon:
    “The US government already supports reform efforts through organizations such as the US Agency for International Development and the United Nations Development Programme. Given the current negative popular standing of the United States in the region, US support for reform initiatives is best carried out through nongovernmental and nonprofit institutions.14

    The RAND 2008 study was even more concrete about future US Government support for Egyptian and other “reform” movements:
    “The US government should encourage nongovernmental organizations to offer training to reformers, including guidance on coalition building and how to deal with internal differences in pursuit of democratic reform. Academic institutions (or even nongovernmental organizations associated with US political parties, such as the International Republican Institute or the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs) could carry out such training, which would equip reform leaders to reconcile their differences peacefully and democratically.

    “Fourth, the United States should help reformers obtain and use information technology, perhaps by offering incentives for US companies to invest in the region’s communications infrastructure and information technology. US information technology companies could also help ensure that the Web sites of reformers can remain in operation and could invest in technologies such as anonymizers that could offer some shelter from government scrutiny. This could also be accomplished by employing technological safegaurds to prevent regimes from sabotaging the Web sites of reformers. “15

    As their Kefaya monograph states, it was prepared in 2008 by the “RAND National Security Research Division’s Alternative Strategy Initiative, sponsored by the Rapid Reaction Technology Office in the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics.
    The Alternative Strategy Initiative, just to underscore the point, includes “research on creative use of the media, radicalization of youth, civic involvement to stem sectarian violence, the provision of social services to mobilize aggrieved sectors of indigenous populations, and the topic of this volume, alternative movements.16

    In May 2009 just before Obama’s Cairo trip to meet Mubarak, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hosted a number of the young Egyptian activists in Washington under the auspices of Freedom House, another “human rights” Washington-based NGO with a long history of involvement in USsponsored regime change from Serbia to Georgia to Ukraine and other Color Revolutions. Clinton and Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman met the sixteen activists at the end of a two-month “fellowship” organized by Freedom House’s New Generation program.17

    Freedom House and Washington’s government-funded regime change NGO, National Endowment for Democracy (NED) are at the heart of the uprisings now sweeping across the Islamic world. They fit the geographic context of what George W. Bush proclaimed after 2001 as his Greater Middle East Project to bring “democracy” and “liberal free market” economic reform to the Islamic countries from Afghanistan to Morocco. When Washington talks about introducing “liberal free market reform” people should watch out. It is little more than code for bringing those economies under the yoke of the dollar system and all that implies.
    Washington’s NED in a larger agenda

    If we make a list of the countries in the region which are undergoing mass-based protest movements since the Tunisian and Egyptian events and overlay them onto a map, we find an almost perfect convergence between the protest countries today and the original map of the Washington Greater Middle East Project that was first unveiled during the George W. Bush Presidency after 2001.
    Washington’s NED has been quietly engaged in preparing a wave of regime destabilizations across North Africa and the Middle East since the 2001-2003 US military invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. The list of where the NED is active is revealing. Its website lists Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Syria, Yemen and Sudan as well, interestingly, as Israel. Coincidentally these countries are almost all today subject to “spontaneous” popular regime-change uprisings.
    The International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs mentioned by the RAND document study of Kefaya are subsidiary organizations of the Washington-based and US Congress-financed National Endowment for Democracy.
    The NED is the coordinating Washington agency for regime destabilization and change. It is active from Tibet to Ukraine, from Venezuela to Tunisia, from Kuwait to Morocco in reshaping the world after the collapse of the Soviet Union into what George H.W. Bush in a 1991 speech to Congress proclaimed triumphantly as the dawn of a New World Order.18

    As the architect and first head of the NED, Allen Weinstein told the Washington Post in 1991 that, “a lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA19

    The NED Board of Directors includes or has included former Defense Secretary and CIA Deputy head, Frank Carlucci of the Carlyle Group; retired General Wesley Clark of NATO; neo-conservative warhawk Zalmay Khalilzad who was architect of George W. Bush’s Afghan invasion and later ambassador to Afghanistan as well as to occupied Iraq. Another NED board member, Vin Weber, co-chaired a major independent task force on US Policy toward Reform in the Arab World with former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, and was a founding member of the ultra-hawkish Project for a New American Century think-tank with Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld, which advocated forced regime change in Iraq as early as 1998.20

    The NED is supposedly a private, non-government, non-profit foundation, but it receives a yearly appropriation for its international work from the US Congress. The National Endowment for Democracy is dependent on the US taxpayer for funding, but because NED is not a government agency, it is not subject to normal Congressional oversight.
    NED money is channelled into target countries through four “core foundations”—the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, linked to the Democratic Party; the International Republican Institute tied to the Republican Party; the American Center for International Labor Solidarity linked to the AFL-CIO US labor federation as well as the US State Department; and the Center for International Private Enterprise linked to the free-market US Chamber of Commerce.
    The late political analyst Barbara Conry noted that,
    “NED has taken advantage of its alleged private status to influence foreign elections, an activity that is beyond the scope of AID or USIA and would otherwise be possible only through a CIA covert operation. Such activities, it may also be worth noting, would be illegal for foreign groups operating in the United States.”21

    Significantly the NED details its various projects today in Islamic countries, including in addition to Egypt, in Tunisia, Yemen, Jordan, Algeria, Morocco, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Syria, Iran and Afghanistan. In short, most every country which is presently feeling the earthquake effects of the reform protests sweeping across the Middle East and North Africa is a target of NED.22

    In 2005 US President George W. Bush made a speech to the NED. In a long, rambling discourse which equated “Islamic radicalism” with the evils of communism as the new enemy, and using a deliberately softer term “broader Middle East” for the term Greater Middle East that had aroused much distruct in the Islamic world, Bush stated,
    “The fifth element of our strategy in the war on terror is to deny the militants future recruits by replacing hatred and resentment with democracy and hope across the broader Middle East. This is a difficult and long-term project, yet there’s no alternative to it. Our future and the future of that region are linked. If the broader Middle East is left to grow in bitterness, if countries remain in misery, while radicals stir the resentments of millions, then that part of the world will be a source of endless conflict and mounting danger, and for our generation and the next. If the peoples of that region are permitted to choose their own destiny, and advance by their own energy and by their participation as free men and women, then the extremists will be marginalized, and the flow of violent radicalism to the rest of the world will slow, and eventually end… We’re encouraging our friends in the Middle East, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia, to take the path of reform, to strengthen their own societies in the fight against terror by respecting the rights and choices of their own people. We’re standing with dissidents and exiles against oppressive regimes, because we know that the dissidents of today will be the democratic leaders of tomorrow…”23

    The US Project for a ‘Greater Middle East’

    The spreading regime change operations by Washington from Tunisia to Sudan, from Yemen to Egypt to Syria are best viewed in the context of a long-standing Pentagon and State Department strategy for the entire Islamic world from Kabul in Afghanistan to Rabat in Morocco.
    The rough outlines of the Washington strategy, based in part on their successful regime change operations in the former Warsaw Pact communist bloc of Eastern Europe, were drawn up by former Pentagon consultant and neo-conservative, Richard Perle and later Bush official Douglas Feith in a white paper they drew up for the then-new Israeli Likud regime of Benjamin Netanyahu in 1996.
    That policy recommendation was titled A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm. It was the first Washington think-tank paper to openly call for removing Saddam Hussein in Iraq, for an aggressive military stance toward the Palestinians, striking Syria and Syrian targets in Lebanon.24

    Reportedly, the Netanyahu government at that time buried the Perle-Feith report, as being far too risky. By the time of the events of September 11, 2001 and the return to Washington of the arch war hawk neoconservatives around Perle and others, the Bush Administration put highest priority on an expanded version of the Perle-Feith paper, calling it their Greater Middle East Project. Feith was named Bush’s Under Secretary of Defense.
    Greater Middle East orthographic projection

    Behind the facade of proclaiming democratic reforms of autocratic regimes in the entire region, the Greater Middle East was and is a blueprint to extend US military control and to break open the statist economies in the entire span of states from Morocco to the borders of China and Russia.

    In May 2005, before the rubble from the US bombing of Baghdad had cleared, George W. Bush, a President not remembered as a great friend of democracy, proclaimed a policy of “spreading democracy” to the entire region and explicitly noted that that meant “the establishment of a USMiddle East free trade area within a decade.” 25

    Prior to the June 2004 G8 Summit on Sea Island, Georgia, Washington issued a working paper, “G8-Greater Middle East Partnership.” Under the section titled Economic Opportunities was Washington’s dramatic call for “an economic transformation similar in magnitude to that undertaken by the formerly communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe.”

    The US paper said that the key to this would be the strengthening of the private sector as the way to prosperity and democracy. It misleadingly claimed it would be done via the miracle of microfinance where as the paper put it, “a mere $100 million a year for five years will lift 1.2 million entrepreneurs (750,000 of them women) out of poverty, through $400 loans to each.” 26

    The US plan envisioned takeover of regional banking and financial affairs by new institutions ostensibly international but, like World Bank and IMF, de facto controlled by Washington, including WTO. The goal of Washington’s long-term project is to completely control the oil, to completely control the oil revenue flows, to completely control the entire economies of the region, from Morocco to the borders of China and all in between. It is a project as bold as it is desperate.

    Once the G8 US paper was leaked in 2004 in the Arabic Al-Hayat, opposition to it spread widely across the region, with a major protest to the US definition of the Greater Middle East. As an article in the French Le Monde Diplomatique in April 2004 noted, “besides the Arab countries, it covers Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, Turkey and Israel, whose only common denominator is that they lie in the zone where hostility to the US is strongest, in which Islamic fundamentalism in its anti-Western form is most rife.27 It should be noted that the NED is also active inside Israel with a number of programs.

    Notably, in 2004 it was vehement opposition from two Middle East leaders—Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and the King of Saudi Arabia—that forced the ideological zealots of the Bush Administration to temporarily put the Project for the Greater Middle East on a back burner.

    Will it work?

    At this writing it is unclear what the ultimate upshot of the latest US-led destabilizations across the Islamic world will bring. It is not clear what will result for Washington and the advocates of a USdominated New World Order. Their agenda is clearly one of creating a Greater Middle East under firm US grip as a major control of the capital flows and energy flows of a future China, Russia and a European Union that might one day entertain thoughts of drifting away from that American order.

    It has huge potential implications for the future of Israel as well. As one US commentator put it, “The Israeli calculation today is that if ‘Mubarak goes’ (which is usually stated as ‘If America lets Mubarak go’), Egypt goes. If Tunisia goes (same elaboration), Morocco and Algeria go. Turkey has already gone (for which the Israelis have only themselves to blame). Syria is gone (in part because Israel wanted to cut it off from Sea of Galilee water access). Gaza has gone to Hamas, and the Palestine Authority might soon be gone too (to Hamas?). That leaves Israel amid the ruins of a policy of military domination of the region.28

    The Washington strategy of “creative destruction” is clearly causing sleepless nights not only in the Islamic world but also reportedly in Tel Aviv, and ultimately by now also in Beijing and Moscow and across Central Asia.

    1 DEBKA, Mubarak believes a US-backed Egyptian military faction plotted his ouster, February 4, 2011, accessed in www.debka.com/weekly/480/. DEBKA is open about its good ties to Israeli intelligence and security agencies. While its writings must be read with that in mind, certain reports they publish often contain interesting leads for further investigation.

    2 Ibid.

    3 The Center for Grassroots Oversight, 1954-1970: CIA and the Muslim Brotherhood ally to oppose Egyptian President Nasser, www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=western_support_for_islamic_militancy_202700&scale=0. According to the late Miles Copeland, a CIA official stationed in Egypt during the Nasser era, the CIA allied with the Muslim Brotherhood which was opposed to Nasser’s secular regime as well as his nationalist opposition to brotherhood pan-Islamic ideology.

    4 Jijo Jacob, What is Egypt’s April 6 Movement?, February 1, 2011, accessed in http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/107387/20110201/what-is-egypt-s-april-6-movement.htm

    5 Ibid.

    6 Janine Zacharia, Opposition groups rally around Mohamed ElBaradei, Washington Post, January 31, 2011, accessed in .

    7 National Endowment for Democracy, Middle East and North Africa Program Highlights 2009, accessed in http://www.ned.org/where-we-work/middle-east-and-northern-africa/middle-east-and-north-africahighlights.

    8 Amitabh Pal, Gene Sharp: The Progressive Interview, The Progressive, March 1, 2007.

    9 Emmanuel Sivan, Why Radical Muslims Aren’t Taking over Governments, Middle East Quarterly, December 1997, pp. 3-9

    10 Carnegie Endowment, The Egyptian Movement for Change (Kifaya), accessed in http://egyptelections.carnegieendowment.org/2010/09/22/the-egyptian-movement-for-change-kifaya

    11 Nadia Oweidat, et al, The Kefaya Movement: A Case Study of a Grassroots Reform Initiative, Prepared for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Santa Monica, Ca., RAND_778.pdf, 2008, p. iv.

    12 Ibid.

    13 For a more detailed discussion of the RAND “swarming” techniques see F. William Engdahl, Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order, edition.engdahl, 2009, pp. 34-41.

    14 Nadia Oweidat et al, op. cit., p. 48.

    15 Ibid., p. 50.

    16 Ibid., p. iii.

    17 Michel Chossudovsky, The Protest Movement in Egypt: “Dictators” do not Dictate, They Obey Orders, January 29, 2011, accessed in https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-protest-movement-in-egypt-dictators-do-not-dictate-they-obey-orders/22993

    18 George Herbert Walker Bush, State of the Union Address to Congress, 29 January 1991. In the speech Bush at one point declared in a triumphant air of celebration of the collapse of the Sovoiet Union, “What is at stake is more than one small country, it is a big idea—a new world order…”

    19 Allen Weinstein, quoted in David Ignatius, Openness is the Secret to Democracy, Washington Post National Weekly Edition, 30 September 1991, pp. 24-25.

    20 National Endowment for Democracy, Board of Directors, accessed in

    21 Barbara Conry, Loose Cannon: The National Endowment for Democracy, Cato Foreign Policy Briefing No. 27, November 8, 1993, accessed in .

    22 National Endowment for Democracy, 2009 Annual Report, Middle East and North Africa, accessed in http://www.ned.org/publications/annual-reports/2009-annual-report.

    23 George W. Bush, Speech at the National Endowment for Democracy, Washington, DC, October 6, 2005,accessed in http://www.presidentialrhetoric.com/speeches/10.06.05.html.

    24 Richard Perle, Douglas Feith et al, A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, 1996, Washington and Tel Aviv, The Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, accessed in www.iasps.org/strat1.htm

    25 George W. Bush, Remarks by the President in Commencement Address at the University of South Carolina, White House, 9 May 2003.

    26 Gilbert Achcar, Fantasy of a Region that Doesn’t Exist: Greater Middle East, the US plan, Le Monde Diplomatique, April 4, 2004, accessed in https://mondediplo.com/2004/04/04world

    27 Ibid.

    28 William Pfaff, American-Israel Policy Tested by Arab Uprisings, accessed in http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/american-israeli_policy_tested_by_arab_uprisings_20110201/

    http://www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net/print/Creative%20Destruction%20Washington%20Style.pdf

  • Turkey’s Honorary Consul Positive About Georgia Ties in 2011

    Turkey’s Honorary Consul Positive About Georgia Ties in 2011

    Mona Diamond was appointed the Turkish honorary consul general for the state of Georgia in 2005. In the same year, she became the chairman of the American Turkish Friendship Council, a not-for-profit organization for the promotion of close relations between the United States and Turkey.

    Left to right: Mona Diamond, Turkey's honorary consul general based in Atlanta with Dawn Shields, CFO of GeoResults, an Atlanta-based telecom database marketing and consulting firm and Laura Howell, a consultant with Steelcase Inc., a global workplace furnishings company, outside of the Sabanci Museum in Istanbul during a business mission to Turkey in September 2010.
    Left to right: Mona Diamond, Turkey's honorary consul general based in Atlanta with Dawn Shields, CFO of GeoResults, an Atlanta-based telecom database marketing and consulting firm and Laura Howell, a consultant with Steelcase Inc., a global workplace furnishings company, outside of the Sabanci Museum in Istanbul during a business mission to Turkey in September 2010.

    In 2009, she organized and chaired an International Women’s Entrepreneurship and Leadership Summit in Istanbul, Turkey, and in September 2010, she partnered with two Turkish American business organizations and the American Chamber of Commerce Executives to head a delegation of civic and business leaders from throughout the U.S. to several Turkish cities.

    Ms. Diamond responded to the following questions from GlobalAtlanta about her current activities in promoting relations between Georgia and Turkey as well as her plans for the coming year, including her efforts to open a breast cancer clinic in Mersin, Turkey.

    To learn more about Ms. Diamond’s activities on behalf of Turkey, go to

    GlobalAtlanta: How do you think Turkey is perceived by Americans generally? In what ways do you think that these perceptions may be inaccurate?

    Ms. Diamond: I believe most Americans know very little about the Republic of Turkey. What they do know might not necessarily be correct. For example, many Americans feel Turkey is an Arab country and that the Turkish language is written in Arabic. Both are incorrect facts. The Turkish language is written with the Latin alphabet just as in English. Turkey is considered a European country and has applied for full membership into the European Union. Turkey is also a member of NATO. Although Turkey is 98 percent Muslim, Jews, Christians and all minorities live harmoniously and are allowed to practice their religion, cultures, and traditions freely.

    Turkey is a secular country. As of 1923 many reforms were put in place by the founder of the republic and the first president, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. For example, women were given the right to vote and to be elected, equal education and employment opportunities exist both for men and women. Most Americans have no idea that the population is as large as 73 million people and that Turkey is the only country in the world that is on two continents—Europe and Asia.

    GlobalAtlanta: And vice versa, how do the Turks view Americans generally and in what ways do you think that they may be mistaken?

    Ms. Diamond: Most Turkish people form their opinions of Americans simply by what they see in the movies and watch on TV programs.

    GlobalAtlanta:How have you in your role as honorary consul general tried to change these perceptions?

    Ms. Diamond: As honorary consul general, it is my mission to introduce Turkey to the citizens of Georgia and to promote and expand educational, economic and humanitarian relationships between the Untied States and the Republic of Turkey. To achieve this mission, I founded the American Turkish Friendship Council, a 501 (c) (3) organization. This organization works hand in hand with me as honorary consul general of Georgia.

    Through this organization, we have established the Endowed Emory University Turkish Lecture Series. We partner with the Claus Halle Institute for Global Learning.

    We provide for credit Turkish language classes at Georgia State University with financial help from the Turkish consul general’s office in New York.

    Another program of the American Turkish Friendship Council is the funding of the “Catoms” (Multipurpose Community Centers) Scholarship Program. The overall objective of Catoms is to enhance the status of women and the young population in southeastern Turkey. Catoms have various social programs, including a scholarship program. They select successful students who are unable to continue their education due to social and financial problems. The friendship council is a proud sponsor of these scholarships.

    The main project of the friendship council is The Turkish Breast Cancer Center in the city of Mersin, Turkey. The center, which will be located in the State Hospital in Mersin, will serve a region of the country in need of a comprehensive approach to the detection and treatment of breast cancer.

    The clinic will provide the resources necessary to detect, diagnose and treat breast cancer at the earliest stage possible and to promote awareness of the disease. Early detection followed by treatment and rehabilitation is the key to increased recovery rates.

    We are very proud to be working very closely with the Turkish minister of health, Dr. Recep Akdag, and his staff who have made major changes and overall improvement of health and to provide a higher standard of living to the citizens of Turkey.

    Turkey has an outstanding medical health system with highly qualified physicians and state of the art hospitals. Many patients from foreign countries are coming to receive medical care in Turkey each year.

    The Breast Cancer Center to be established in Mersin will yet be another area of medical expertise. This project will be a collaboration of Turkish and U.S. doctors under the guidance of Dr. Lorraine Tafra, former president of the American Society of Breast Surgeons and director of the Anne Arundel Medical Centers Breast Center Clinic in Maryland.

    The above examples are but a few of the projects of the ATFC  and demonstrate how as honorary consul general of Turkey and the chairman of the American Turkish Friendship Council, I try to influence the population of Georgia to work together in building relationships and mutual understanding with the citizens of Turkey.

    GlobalAtlanta: In what ways has Turkey’s economy changed in recent years and what opportunities do these changes represent for U.S. companies?

    Ms. Diamond: There have been many changes in Turkey’s economy in the last decade. Turkey conveys the highest quality of goods to meet world standards and offers the market the best pricing structures. The Turkish economy has become the 17th largest economy in the world with its GNP at 750 billion U.S. dollars. Turkey is predicted to enter the top 10 economies in 2023. The Turkish economy grew with a 5.8 percent average increase between 2002 and 2008. The national income per capita exceeds $10,000 and has tripled since 2002 as inflation is only about 5 percent.

    GlobalAtlanta: How is it that Turkey has emerged with a higher credit rating after the economic crisis than before?

    Ms. Diamond: According to Deputy Prime Minister Ali Babacan, Turkey has experienced a turning point in the history of the economy in the last eight years. Strengthening the economic structure, increasing the level of prosperity and eliminating the problems that constitute obstacles for a functioning healthy economy have formed the main frame of the reform efforts that were started in 2002. Reorganization of the banking system, strengthening of the public financial structure and rationalizing the social security system have all served to this purpose.

    In this way, Turkey’s economy has grown uninterrupted for a long time and has become Europe’s sixth and the world’s seventeenth largest economy. The banking sector with high quality assets and 20 percent of capital adequacy level did not need any public contribution even during the crisis period. The Turkish banking structure has a significantly stronger structure than many developed or developing countries. The increase in the problematic loans of the banking sector with high asset quality is also at a minimal level.

    GlobalAtlanta: You led a large and diverse delegation from the U.S. to Turkey earlier this year. The delegation was composed of chamber of commerce representatives, economic development officials, attorneys and business people. Are trips like this effective in initiating trade and other business relations? Do you have any specific examples?

    Ms. Diamond: In September 2010 as honorary consul general of Turkey, I partnered with TABA, Turkish American Business Association and TACCI, the Turkish American Chambers of Commerce. We took a diverse delegation from the U.S. to visit the cities of Istanbul, Izmir, Bursa and Kocaeli. The delegation composed of presidents of chambers of commerce, economic development official, attorneys and business people interested in initiating trade with Turkey. Highlights of the trip were meeting with high ranking government officials such as the Minister of Trade Zafer Caglayan.

    Minister Caglayan pointed out that Turkey and the U.S. are two countries with years of deep routed friendship and alliance. U.S. exports to Turkey are in a highly increasing trend but imports from Turkey have not increased at the same level. The minister feels it is of utmost importance that a trade balance exists between the U.S. and Turkey. The aim is to double exports from Turkey over the next five years.

    President Obama and the Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan have established the Economic and Commercial Strategic Cooperation Framework recently. Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Ali Babacan and Minister of Trade Zafer Caglayan will represent Turkey. U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke and U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk will be the representatives for the United States. Turkish and American businessmen doing business in both countries will come up with new projects and ideas aimed at elevating to a higher level the economic and commercial relations between the two countries.

    Several of the attendees have shown an interest in joint ventures with Turkish companies and some in establishing a distribution center for their goods. Overall, the trade mission to Turkey was very positive.

    GlobalAtlanta: In what specific areas do you think U.S. companies (especially small- and medium-sized companies) should invest in Turkey?

    Ms. Diamond: Turkey has a young, dynamic and well-educated population. Turkey’s location is at the center of commercial transit points. The fast developing domestic market is also an important reason for the foreign investor in Turkey. In the last six years the GNP increased from $220 billion to $750 billion.

    The population of Turkey is 73 million people. The average age is 28. The potential of Turkey is unbelievable; it has 400,000 university graduates, more than 44 million credit card holders and nearly 30 million Internet users.
    Turkey has a stabilized political system and stabilized economy and a low inflation rate, competitive interest rates, which makes it enticing for foreign investment.

    The Turkish government also offers incentives for foreign investors. So many top American companies have their business in Turkey including Best Buy, Citibank, The Coca-Cola Company, Conrad, Ernst &Young, Ford, Frito-Lay, Goodyear, Hewlett-Packard, Hilton, IBM, Johnson & Johnson, JP Morgan, Merrill Lynch, Motorola, Pfizer, Philip Morris International, Procter & Gamble, Starbucks Coffee, The Ritz Carlton Hotel, UPS, Wells Fargo and Nike.

    GlobalAtlanta: What will be your major goals as honorary consul general for 2011?

    Ms. Diamond: It is with great personal satisfaction that I serve as the honorary consul general for Turkey in Georgia. I have the opportunity to introduce Turkey to so many Americans and build bridges of understanding between Turkey and the United States. In the year 2011 we will be working to put a Breast Cancer Center in Mersin, Turkey. This is collaboration between American and Turkish doctors and will be placed in the State Hospital. The aim is to bring breast cancer awareness to women in the Mersin region of Turkey.

    We will continue with giving scholarships to keep girls in schools in the eastern cities of Turkey through Catoms.

    We will also partake as we do each year with the Endowed Turkish Lecture Series at Emory University, with the Turkish language program that is taught at Georgia State University.

    At Oglethorpe University, we are planning to have a contemporary art exhibit from Turkey. The High Museum of Art is working with us in order to bring an art exhibit to this museum as well.

    We will decorate a tree from Turkey and display it at Fernbank as we have done for the first time in 2010. Also, we will continue to be involved with Congressman John Lewis’s International Fair.

    Once again, we hope to bring many speakers from Turkey to talk about investment in the country and joint ventures that can take place between Turkish and American partners.

    As you can see, we expect 2011 to be a very exciting year and hope to bring more Americans together with our Turkish population here in Atlanta.

    We want our friends to learn about our culture, food, history and business opportunities and to visit Turkey if at all possible. The future looks very bright.

    As honorary consul general and chairman of the American Turkish Friendship Council, I invite one and all to join us and experience the warm hospitality of Turkey!

  • Was Turkey preparing to occupy Adjara?

    Was Turkey preparing to occupy Adjara?

    by georgiatoday.ge

    Armenian and Russian sources have seized on American embassy cables published by WikiLeaks which claim that Turkish armed forces were ready to occupy Adjara during the war of August 2008 in the event of Russian troops coming 100 km from the Georgian-Turkish border.

    The leaked information suggests that Turkey’s Prime Minister, Recep Erdogan and members of the Turkish parliament flew to Moscow to inform Russia’s President Dimitri Medvedev that Turkey, as a NATO member country would have the right to bring military units to the conflict zone in order to protect the territory of the neighboring country.

    In such a scenario, the cables claim, Turkey would have sent its ground units into Adjara supported by air power. There is in fact a precedent for the scenario, as in 1921 when the Red Army conquered Georgia, Turkey’s military units moved in to occupy Adjara.

    Is this all true?

    The cables claim that on March 3, 2009 the Georgian Interior Minister, Vano Merabishvili told Georgian journalists that if during the Russian-Georgian war, the government had not been able to ensure the country’s security, Turkey was ready to bring its armed forces in through Adjara to protect Georgia.

    According to the Kars agreement, signed by Russia after the occupation of Georgia in 1921, Turkey has the right under international law to bring troops into the Autonomous Republic of Adjara, but it is hard to believe that an armed conflict could take place between NATO-member Turkey and Russia over the territory.

    There are several reasons for doubting that the sides would ever have

    come to blows: First – the Turkey would not have been able to act in

    the name of NATO without the consent of every NATO member state.

    Second – Turkey could bring troops to Adjara but not as a NATO-member state, it would only have been possible to use the Kars agreement to justify a military presence in the territory, not actual conflict.

    Third – Ankara would have done its best not to allow military confrontation between the Turkish and Russian military units to occur as such an event would cause a serious international incident.

    On the morning of August 11, 2008, Russian jets bombed a Georgian military base in Khelvachauri, Adjara as well as Sharabidzes, Kapandichi and Makho, villages 10 km from the Georgian-Turkish border.

    Russian planes flew well within the exclusion zone near the Georgian-Turkish border but no response was seen from Ankara.

    During the August war, a Russian commando unit entered Poti and bombed several sites in the port town. One month later, a Russian control-checkpoint was still located at the entrance to Poti. Even though these actions took place less than 100 km from the Georgian-Turkish border (70 km), there was no serious military reaction from the side of the Turkish government.

    These factors certainly shed doubt on the truth of the reports being circulated in the Russian and Armenian media.

    It cannot be ruled out that agencies of certain countries may be trying to use the WikiLeaks data to spread misinformation as it is quite difficult to check the validity of the information in the vast hoard of data that can be found on the website.

    /Times.am/

  • Ilham Aliyev: What about cutting gas supply to Turkey?

    Ilham Aliyev: What about cutting gas supply to Turkey?

    aliyevAzerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev stated that the trilateral meeting of energy ministers in Tbilisi will clarify whether Turkey was willing to help Georgia with its winter gas problems, reads one of the WikiLeaks-published secret cables, the Guardian reported. At the meeting with the U.S. Ambassador, Azerbaijani leader “accused BP for linking commercial issues to the current gas problems, and reported that “nothing had changed” in Azerbaijan’s gas negotiations with Russia during Russia PM Fradkov’s visit to Baku”.

    Aliyev said that BP could deliver more associated gas from the Azeri-Cirag-Gunesli (ACG) field to Azerbaijan for domestic use, but that it was linking its cooperation in this regard with its desire to extend its Production Sharing Agreement (PSA) with Azerbaijan to develop ACG deep gas. According to him, BP was using blackmail.  “If BP won’t give us more ACG associated gas, I have instructed our officials to tell them no PSA extensions or ACG deep gas,” he said.

    “Aliyev concluded by saying that if Turkey agreed to redistribute its 2007 Shah Deniz gas that “would almost be the way out,” but that then Azerbaijan would still need BP support in both redistributing this Shah Deniz gas and also in giving Azerbaijan more ACG associated gas.

    The President also mused that “we could cut the gas supply to Turkey” if need be. The Ambassador pointed out that this would be an extreme measure with serious repercussions. She asked Aliyev if he knew the reasons for Turkish truculence concerning gas redistribution. He said he did not, but suspected it could be monetary, i.e. buying gas at USD 120 per mcm and selling it at USD 230,” the document reads.

    via Ilham Aliyev: What about cutting gas supply to Turkey? | Armenia News – NEWS.am.