LATIN AMERICA AND THE WASHINGTON CONSENSUS

  

LULA AND THE BRICS IN A FIGHT TO THE DEATH

By Pepe Escobar

"Information Clearing House" - "RT" - “BRICS” is the dirtiest of acronyms in the Beltway/Wall Street axis, and for a solid reason: the consolidation of the BRICS is the only organic, global-reach project with the potential to derail Exceptionalistan’s grip over the so-called “international community.”

GEOPOLITICAL PSYOPS

So it’s no surprise the three key BRICS powers have been under simultaneous attack, on many fronts, for some time now. On RUSSIA, it’s all about UKRAINE and SYRIA, the oil price war, the odd hostile raid over the ruble and the one-size-fits-all “RUSSIAN aggression” demonization. On CHINA, it’s all about “CHINESE aggression” in the SOUTHCHINA Sea and the (failed) raid over the SHANGHAI/SHENZHEN stock exchanges.

BRAZIL is the weakest link among these three key emerging powers. Already by the end of 2014 it was  clear the usual suspects would go no holds barred to destabilize the seventh largest global economy, aiming at good old regime change via a nasty cocktail of political gridlock (“ungovernability”) dragging the economy to the mud.

THREAT TO THE MONETARY MONOPOLY OF THE ANGLO SAXON ESTABLISHMENT 

 

Myriad reasons for the attack include the consolidation of the BRICS development bank; the BRICS’s concerted push for trading in their own currencies, bypassing the US dollar and aiming for a new global reserve currency to replace it; the construction of a major underwater fiber-optic telecom cable between BRAZIL and EUROPE, as well as the BRICS cable uniting SOUTH AMERICA to EAST ASIA – both bypassing US control.

And most of all, as usual, the holy of the holies – connected with Exceptionalistan’s burning desire to privatize BRAZIL’S immense natural wealth. Once again, it’s the oil.

GET LULA OR ELSE

WikiLeaks had already exposed how way back in 2009 Big Oil was active in BRAZIL, trying to modify – by all extortion means necessary – a law proposed by former president LUIZ INÁCIO LULA DA SILVA, known as LULA, establishing profitable state-run PETROBRAS as the chief operator of all offshore blocks in the largest oil discovery of the young 21st century; the pre-salt deposits.

Lula not only kept Big Oil – especially EXXONMOBIL and CHEVRON – out of the picture but he also opened BRAZILIAN oil exploration to CHINA’S SINOPEC, as part of the BRAZIL-CHINA (BRICS within BRICS) strategic partnership.

Hell hath no fury like Exceptionalistan scorned. Like the Mob, it never forgives; LULA one day would have to pay, like PUTIN must pay for getting rid of US-friendly oligarchs.

The ball started rolling with EDWARD SNOWDEN revealing how the NSA was spying on BRAZILIAN President DILMA ROUSSEFF and top PETROBRAS officials. It continued with the fact that the BRAZILIAN Federal Police cooperate, receive training and/or are fed, closely, by both the FBI and CIA (mostly in the anti-terrorism sphere). And it went on via the two-year-old “Car Wash” investigation, which uncovered a vast corruption network involving players inside PETROBRAS, top BRAZILIAN construction companies and politicians from the ruling Workers’ Party.

The corruption network is real – with “proof,” usually oral, rarely backed up by documents, obtained mostly from artful dodgers-cum-serial liars who rat on someone as part of a plea bargain.

But for the “Car Wash” prosecutors, the real deal was, from the beginning, how to ensnare LULA.

ENTER THE TROPICAL ELLIOTT NESS

That brings us to the Hollywood spectacular enacted recently in SAO PAULO that sent shockwaves around the world. LULA “detained,” interrogated, humiliated in public. This is how I analyzed it in detail.

Plan A for the Hollywood-style blitz on LULA was an ambitious double down; not only to pave the way for the impeachment of President DILMA ROUSSEFF under a “guilty by association” stretch, but to “neutralize” LULA for good, preventing him from running for office again in 2018. There was no Plan B.

Predictably – as in many an FBI sting – the whole op backfired. LULA, in a political master class of a speech beamed live across the country, not only convincingly clad himself as the martyr of a conspiracy, but also re-energized his troops; even respectable conservatives vocally condemned the Hollywood show, from a minister in the Supreme Court to a former justice minister, as well as top economist BRESSER PEREIRA, one of the founders of the PSDB – the former social democrats turned Exceptionalistan-allied neoliberal enforcers and leaders of the right-wing opposition.

LATIN AMERICAN CLASS STRUGGLE – FROM BRAZIL TO ARGENTINA

BRESSER actually stated the BRAZILIAN Supreme Court should intervene on Car Wash to prevent abuses. LULA, for instance, had asked for the Supreme Court to detail which jurisprudence was relevant to investigate the accusations against him. Moreover, a lawyer on center stage during the Hollywood blitz said LULA answered all questions during the almost four-hour interrogation without blinking – questions he had already answered before.

Lawyer CELSO BANDEIRA DE MELLO, for his part, went straight to the point: the BRAZILIAN upper middle classes – which include a largely appalling lot wallowing in arrogance, ignorance and prejudice, whose dream is a condo in MIAMI - are fearful and terrified to death that LULA may run, and win again, in 2018.

Background Information:

THE ARGENTINE COMPARISON

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ARGENTINE'S CLASS STRUGGLE

ARTIFICIAL CRISIS

And that brings us to the judge and executioner of the whole drama: SERGIO MORO, Car Wash’s leading actor.

MORO’S academic career is hardly exciting. He’s not exactly a theorist heavyweight. He graduated as a lawyer in 1995 in a mediocre university in the middle of nowhere in one of BRAZIL’S southern states and made a few trips to the US, one of them financed by the State Department to learn about money laundering.

As I noted before, his chef-d’oeuvre is an article published way back in 2004 in an obscure magazine (in PORTUGUESE only, titled Considerations about Mani Pulite, CEJ magazine, issue number 26, July/September 2004), where he clearly extols “authoritarian subversion of juridical order to reach specific targets” and using the media to intoxicate the political atmosphere.

In a nutshell, judge MORO literally transposed the notorious 1990s Mani Pulite (“Clean Hands”) investigation from ITALY to BRAZIL – instrumentalizing to the hilt mainstream media and the judiciary to achieve a sort of “total delegitimization” of the political system. But not the whole political system; just the Workers’ Party, as if the comprador elites permeating BRAZIL’S rightwing spectrum were cherubic angels.

Background Information:  

MEDIA INFLUENCE IN LATIN AMERICA

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HOW THE CLARIN MEDIA GROUP HELPED WIN MAURICIO MACRI ARGENTINE'S PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS

WAR BY MEDIA AND THE TRIUMPH OF PROPAGANDA

So it comes as no surprise that MORO’S prime sidekick as Car Wash unrolled is the MARINHO family’s oligopoly, the GLOBO media empire

– a nest of reactionary, and not very clever, vipers who entertained very cozy relations with the BRAZILIAN military dictatorship from the 1960s to the 1980s. Not by accident, GLOBO was informed about LULA’S Hollywood-style “arrest” way before the fact, allowing it to invest in CNN-style blanket coverage.

MORO is viewed by legions in BRAZIL as an indigenous ELLIOT NESS. Other lawyers who have closely followed his work though hint he harbors the warped fantasy of a Workers’ Party as a mob leeching and plundering the state apparatus with the aim of delivering it, in pieces, to trade unions.

According to one of these lawyers who talked to BRAZILIAN independent media, a former president of the Lawyers’ Association in Rio, MORO is surrounded by a bunch of young fanatical prosecutors, with little juridical knowledge, and posing as the BRAZILIAN ANTONIO DI PIETRO (but without the solidity of the “Clean Hands” MILANESE prosecutor). Worse, MORO is oblivious that the implosion of the ITALIAN political system led to the rise of BERLUSCONI. In BRAZIL, it would certainly lead to the rise of a clown/village idiot supported by the GLOBO Empire, whose oligopolistic practices are quite Berlusconian.

THE DIGITAL PINOCHETS

A case can be made that the Hollywood blitz on LULA holds a direct parallel to the first attempt at a coup d’etat in CHILE in 1973, which tested the waters in terms of popular response before the real deal. In the BRAZILIAN remix, assorted GLOBO media maggots pose as digital PINOCHETS. At least many a street in SAO PAULO now bears graffiti to the effect of “Military coup – Never again.”

WHITE COUP INSTEAD OF MILITARY

Yes, because this is all about a white coup – in the form of a ROUSSEFF impeachment and sending LULA to the gallows. But old (military) habits die hard; GLOBO media maggots are now extolling the Army to take to the streets to “neutralize” popular militias. And this is just the beginning. Right-wingers are getting ready for a national mobilization, calling for – what else – ROUSSEFF’S impeachment.

Car Wash’s merit is to investigate corruption, collusion and traffic of influence in abysmally corrupt BRAZIL. But everyone, every political faction, should be investigated – including those representing BRAZILIAN comprador elites. That’s not the case. Because the political project allied with Car Wash couldn’t care less about “justice”; the only thing that matters is to perpetuate a vicious political crisis as a means to drag the seventh largest economy in the world into the mud and reach the Holy Grail: a white coup, or good ol’ regime change. But 2016 is not 1973, and the whole world by now knows who’s a sucker for regime change.

LIBYA - EXPOSING THE LIBYAN AGENDA:

ALL ABOUT MONEY, BANKING, AND PREVENTING AFRICAN ECONOMIC SOVEREIGNTY?

Critics have long questioned why violent intervention was necessary in LIBYA. HILLARY CLINTON’S recently published emails confirm that it was less about protecting the people from a dictator than about money, banking, and preventing AFRICAN economic sovereignty.

Background Information: 

AFRICAN ECONOMIC SOVEREIGNTY

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WAS LIBYA GETTING A TOO POWERFUL PLAYER IN AFRICA FOR WESTERN ENTITIES?

IT’S ALL ABOUT WATER, OIL AND

THE INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS

LIBYA HAS BASICALLY BEEN “FAILED” BY WESTERN ENTITIES

The brief visit of then-Secretary of State HILLARY CLINTON to LIBYA in October 2011 was referred to by the media as a “victory lap.” “We came, we saw, he died!” she crowed in a CBS video interview on hearing of the capture and brutal murder of LIBYAN leader MUAMMAR EL-QADDAFI.

But the victory lap, was premature. LIBYA was relegated to the back burner by the State Department, “as the country dissolved into chaos, leading to a civil war that would destabilize the region, fueling the refugee crisis in EUROPE and allowing the Islamic State to establish a LIBYAN haven that the UNITED STATES is now desperately trying to contain.”

Background Information: 

US STRATEGY IN LIBYA

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WASHINGTON’SAL QAEDA ALLY NOW LEADING ISIS IN LIBYA

DOOMED FROM DAY ONE

US-NATO intervention was allegedly undertaken on humanitarian grounds, after reports of mass atrocities; but human rights organizations questioned the claims after finding a lack of evidence. Today, however, verifiable atrocities are occurring. As DAN KOVALIK wrote in the Huffington Post, “the human rights situation in LIBYA is a disaster, as ‘thousands of detainees [including children] languish in prisons without proper judicial review,’ and ‘kidnappings and targeted killings are rampant’.”

Before 2011, LIBYA had achieved economic independence, with its own water, its own food, its own oil, its own money, and its own state-owned bank. It had arisen under QADDAFI from one of the poorest of countries to the richest in AFRICA. Education and medical treatment were free; having a home was considered a human right; and LIBYANS participated in an original system of local democracy. The country boasted the world’s largest irrigation system, the Great Man-made River project, which brought water from the desert to the cities and coastal areas; and QADDAFI was embarking on a program to spread this model throughout AFRICA.

Background Information: 

LIBYA - A THRIVING COUNTRY BEFORE WESTERN INTERVENTION 

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THINGS WERE LOOKING GOOD FOR LIBYA – TOO GOOD?

  

VOLATILE SAHEL REGION

But that was before US-NATO forces bombed the irrigation system and wreaked havoc on the country. Today the situation is so dire that President OBAMA has asked his advisers to draw up options including a new military front in LIBYA, and the Defense Department is reportedly standing ready with “the full spectrum of military operations required.”

The Secretary of State’s victory lap was indeed premature, if what we’re talking about is the officially stated goal of humanitarian intervention. But her newly-released emails reveal another agenda behind the LIBYAN war; and this one, it seems, was achieved.

Mission Accomplished?

Of the 3,000 emails released from HILLARY CLINTON’S private email server in late December 2015, about a third were from her close confidante SIDNEY BLUMENTHAL, special adviser for the CLINTON'S during the MONICA LEWINSKY scandal. One of these emails, dated April 2, 2011, reads in part:

CENTRAL BANK OF LIBYA

“QADDAFI’S government holds 143 tons of gold, and a similar amount in silver . . . . This gold was accumulated prior to the current rebellion and was intended to be used to establish a pan-AFRICAN currency based on the LIBYAN golden DINAR. This plan was designed to provide the FRANCOPHONE AFRICAN Countries with an alternative to the FRENCH franc (CFA).”

In a “source comment,” the original declassified email adds:

“According to knowledgeable individuals this quantity of gold and silver is valued at more than $7 billion. FRENCH intelligence officers discovered this plan shortly after the current rebellion began, and this was one of the factors that influenced President NICOLAS SARKOZY’S decision to commit FRANCE to the attack on LIBYA. According to these individuals SARKOZY’S plans are driven by the following issues:

A desire to gain a greater share of LIBYA oil production,

Increase FRENCH influence in NORTH AFRICA,

Improve his internal political situation in FRANCE,

Provide the FRENCH military with an opportunity to reassert its position in the world,

Address the concern of his advisers over Qaddafi’s long term plans to supplant France as the dominant power in Francophone Africa.”

Conspicuously absent is any mention of humanitarian concerns.

THE OBJECTIVES ARE MONEY, POWER AND OIL.

Background Information: 

GRAB FOR LIBYA’S MONEY AND GOLD RESERVES 

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GRAB FOR THE CENTRAL BANK OF LIBYA BY INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS

OVER$100 BILLION UNDER THE GOVERNOR OF THE CENTRAL BANK OF LIBYA

Other explosive confirmations in the newly-published emails are detailed by investigative journalist ROBERT PARRY. They include admissions of rebel war crimes, of special ops trainers inside LIBYA from nearly the start of protests, and of AL QAEDA embedded in the US-backed opposition. Key propaganda themes for violent intervention are acknowledged to be mere rumors. Political analysts suggest they may have originated with BLUMENTHAL himself. They include the bizarre claim that QADDAFI had a “rape policy” involving passing Viagra out to his troops, a charge later raised by UN Ambassador SUSAN RICE in a UN presentation. These analysts ask rhetorically:

“So do you think it would it be easier for the OBAMA administration to rally American support behind this “regime change” by explaining how the FRENCH wanted to steal LIBYA’S wealth and maintain FRENCH neocolonial influence

over AFRICA – or would AMERICANS respond better to propaganda themes about GADDAFI passing out Viagra to his troops so they could rape more women while his snipers targeted innocent children? Bingo!”

Toppling the Global Financial Scheme

QADDAFI’S threatened attempt to establish an independent AFRICAN currency was not taken lightly by WESTERN interests. In 2011, SARKOZY reportedly called the LIBYAN leader a threat to the financial security of the world. How could this tiny country of six million people pose such a threat? First some background.

It is banks, not governments, which create most of the money in Western economies, as the BANK OF ENGLAND recently acknowledged. This has been going on for centuries, through the process called “fractional reserve” lending. Originally, the reserves were in gold.  In 1933, President FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT replaced gold domestically with central bank-created reserves, but gold remained the reserve currency internationally.

In 1944, the INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND and the WORLD BANK were created in BRETTON WOODS, NEW HAMPSHIRE, to unify this bank-created money system globally. An IMF ruling said that no paper money could have gold backing. A money supply created privately as debt at interest requires a continual supply of debtors; and over the next half century, most developing countries wound up in debt to the IMF. The loans came with strings attached, including “structural adjustment” policies involving austerity measures and privatization of public assets.

After 1944, the US dollar traded interchangeably with gold as global reserve currency. When the US was no longer able to maintain the dollar’s gold backing, in the 1970s it made a deal with OPEC to “back” the dollar with oil, creating the “petro-dollar.”  Oil would be sold only in US dollars, which would be deposited in Wall Street and other international banks.  

In 2001, dissatisfied with the shrinking value of the dollars that OPEC was getting for its oil, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein broke the pact and sold oil in euros. Regime change swiftly followed, accompanied by widespread destruction of the country.

In LIBYA, QADDAFI also broke the pact; but he did more than just sell his oil in another currency.

NATIONALIZING OIL COMPANIES AND CREATING A PAN AFRICAN CURRENCY BROKE QADDAFI’S BACK. FROM THIS MOMENT, QADDAFI WAS ONCE AGAIN THE BAD DICTATOR

Post 2011 relations with LIBYA

For decades, LIBYA and other AFRICAN countries had been attempting to create a pan-AFRICAN gold standard.  LIBYA’S AL-QADHAFI and other heads of AFRICAN STATES had wanted an independent, pan-African, “hard currency.”

Under AL-QADHAFI’S leadership, AFRICAN nations had convened at least twice for monetary unification.  The countries discussed the possibility of using the LIBYAN dinar and the silver dirham as the only possible money to buy AFRICAN oil.

Libyan Gold Dinar 

Until the recent US/NATO invasion, the gold dinar was issued by the CENTRAL BANK OF LIBYA (CBL).  The LIBYAN bank was 100% state owned and independent.  Foreigners had to go through the CBL to do business with LIBYA.  The CENTRAL BANK OF LIBYA issued the dinar, using the country’s 143.8 tons of gold.

LIBYA’S QADHAFI (AFRICAN Union 2009 Chair) conceived and financed a plan to unify the sovereign STATES OF AFRICA with one gold currency (UNITED STATES OF AFRICA).  In 2004, a pan-AFRICAN Parliament (53 nations) laid plans for the AFRICAN Economic Community – with a single gold currency by 2023.

AFRICAN oil-producing nations were planning to abandon the petro-dollar, and demand gold payment for oil/gas.

SHOWING WHAT IS POSSIBLE

QADDAFI had done more than organize an AFRICAN monetary coup. He had demonstrated that financial independence could be achieved. His greatest infrastructure project, the Great Man-made River, was turning arid regions into a breadbasket for LIBYA; and the $33 billion project was being funded interest-free without foreign debt, through LIBYA’S own state-owned bank.

That could explain why this critical piece of infrastructure was destroyed in 2011. NATO not only bombed the pipeline but finished off the project by bombing the factory producing the pipes necessary to repair it. Crippling a civilian irrigation system serving up to 70% of the population hardly looks like humanitarian intervention.

AFRICAN SELF-RELIANCE - AT ODDS WITH THE GEO - STRATEGIC AND POLITICAL ECONOMIC AMBITIONS OF WESTERN ENTITIES

The goal of US military intervention was to disrupt an emerging pattern of independence and a network of collaboration within AFRICA that would facilitate increased AFRICAN self-reliance. This is at odds with the geostrategic and political economic ambitions of extra-continental EUROPEAN powers, namely the US.

MYSTERY SOLVED – GLOBAL MONETARY SYSTEM AFTER LIBYA'S MONEY RESERVE

Hilary Clinton’s emails shed light on another enigma remarked on by early political observers. Why, within weeks of initiating fighting, did the rebels set up their own central bank? Robert Wenzel wrote in The Economic Policy Journal in 2011:

This suggests we have a bit more than a rag tag bunch of rebels running around and that there are some pretty sophisticated influences. I have never before heard of a central bank being created in just a matter of weeks out of a popular uprising.

It was all highly suspicious, but as Alex Newman concluded in a November 2011 article:

Whether salvaging central banking and the corrupt global monetary system were truly among the reasons for Gadhafi’s overthrow . . . may never be known for certain – at least not publicly.

LIBYAN INTERVENTION

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LIBYAN INTERVENTION IS AND WAS ALL ABOUT WATER, OIL AND

THE INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS

· LIBYA possessed more than us$150 billion in overseas financial assets and had one of the largest sovereign investment funds in the world at the start of 2011

·        In 2008 GOLDMAN SACHS was given us$1.3 billion dollars by the LIBYAN investment authority.

·  Then, in an blink of an eye, GOLDMAN SACHS had effectively appropriated us$1.3 billion dollars from TRIPOLI

· GOLDMAN SACHS was not alone in filching LIBYAN investment funds: SOCIÉTÉ GÉNÉRALE S.A., CARLYLE GROUP, J.P. MORGAN CHASE, OCH-ZIFF CAPITAL MANAGEMENT GROUP, and LEHMAN BROTHERS holdings were also all in possession of vast LIBYAN investments and funds.

·  NATO’s war on LIBYA and the freeze of LIBYAN financial assets profited all the INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS.

·   While LIBYAN energy reserves and geopolitics played major roles in launching the 2011 war, it was also waged in part to appropriate TRIPOLI’S vast financial holdings and to supplement and maintain the crumbling financial hegemony of Wall Street and other financial centers.

·    WALL STREET COULD NOT ALLOW TRIPOLI TO BE DEBT-FREE, to continue accumulating international financial possessions, and to be a creditor nation giving international loans and investing funds in other countries, particularly in AFRICA.

·         The NUBIAN SANDSTONE AQUIFER SYSTEM

·     LIBYAN government had spent about us$19.6 billion dollars on the water project

·   Huge water multinationals in the US, FRANCE were salivating at the idea of privatizing LIBYAN fresh water and controlling the NUBIAN SANDSTONE AQUIFER SYSTEM.

·        NUBIAN SANDSTONE AQUIFER SYSTEM is the world’s largest fossil aquifer system and will be “the biggest and in some cases the only future source of water to meet growing demands and development” among CHAD, EGYPT, LIBYA, and SUDAN

·         Was LIBYA getting a too powerful player in AFRICA for the liking's of western powers?

There the matter would have remained – suspicious but unverified like so many stories of fraud and corruption – but for the publication of Hillary Clinton’s emails after an FBI probe. They add substantial weight to Newman’s suspicions: violent intervention was not chiefly about the security of the people. It was about the security of global banking, money and oil.

Adapted by Geopolitical Analysis and Monitoring from the original article

written by Ellen Brown, who  is an attorney, founder of the Public Banking Institute, and author of twelve books including the best-selling Web of Debt. Her latest book, The Public Bank Solution, explores successful public banking models historically and globally. Her 300+ blog articles are at EllenBrown.com. Listen to “It’s Our Money with Ellen Brown” on PRN.FM.

TO BE OR NOT TO BE - TURKISH – SAUDI GROUND INVASION IN SYRIA

MUNICH PUTS STAMP ON TIGHTENED US-RUSSIAN MILITARY COOPERATION IN SYRIA

Via DEBKAfile’s

At the end of hours of debate in MUNICH, US Secretary of State JOHN KERRY announced early Friday, Feb. 12, that the US, RUSSIA and other powers had agreed to a “cessation of hostilities” in SYRIA’S civil war to take place next week and immediate humanitarian access to besieged areas.

RUSSIAN Foreign Minister SERGEI LAVROV added: The cessation would go into effect in due course but, he stressed, “terrorist” groups would continue to be targeted.

Possibly for the first time in his diplomatic career, KERRY termed an international document he initiated “words on paper” because, he said, “the proof of commitment will come only with implementation.”

The document was signed by 17 nations, including SAUDI Foreign Minister ADEL AL-JUBAYR for the SYRIAN opposition and IRAN’S top diplomat MUHAMMED JAVAD ZARIF in the name of the ASSAD regime.

LAVROV listed the terrorist groups that will continue to be targeted as the ISLAMIC STATE and JABHAT AL-NUSRA, an AL-QAEDA affiliate in SYRIA. Since JABHAT members are integrated in many non-jihadi rebel groups, DEBKAfile’s analysts infer enough caveats in the paper to be used as carte blanche for RUSSIA, SYRIA, IRAN and HIZBALLAH to carry on fighting the ASSAD regime’s enemies, even after the ceasefire goes into effect.

Image DEBKAfile's

The nub of the MUNICH accord was therefore the parties authorized to name the terrorists. This was spelled out as follows: “The determination of eligible targets and geographic areas is to be left up to a task force of nations headed by RUSSIA and the UNITED STATES.”

This puts the entire agreement in the joint hands of the US and RUSSIA. LAVROV emphasized, “The key thing is to build direct contacts, not only on procedures to avoid incidents, but also cooperation between our militaries.”

The MUNICH accord therefore provided the framework for expanding the existing US-RUSSIAN coordination on air force flights over SYRIA to cover their direct collaboration in broader aspects of military operations in the war-torn country.

LAVROV mentioned a “qualitative” change in US military policy to cooperate with RUSSIA in continuing the fight against the ISLAMIC STATE, but it clearly goes beyond that.

DEBKAfile’s military sources report that this collaboration has been in place since December, when Presidents BARACK OBAMA and VLADIMIR PUTIN concluded a secret pact for working together to end the SYRIAN war.

This pact was first revealed by DEBKA Weekly as setting out a division of military responsibility between the two powers: The AMERICANS took charge of areas east of the EUPHRATES, leaving the RUSSIANS responsible for the territory west of the river. The MUNICH accord provides this pact with a formal framework

A glance at the attached map shows the specifics of their arrangement:

The RUSSIANS military is in control of all the land in southern, central and western SYRIA, including DAMASCUS, the southern town of DARAA, HOMS, HAMA and LATAKIA in the center and ALEPPO in the north.

THE MUNICH ACCORD FOR ENDING HOSTILITIES IN SYRIA PROVIDED A RUBBER STAMP FOR THE HOSTILITIES TO CONTINUE

The US military has control of the KURDISH towns of HASSAKEH and QAMISHLI in the north, the ISIS de facto SYRIAN capital of RAQQA and the border regions between SYRIA and IRAQ. The SYRIAN-TURKISH border district is divided between the RUSSIANS and AMERICANS.

Therefore, behind the diplomatic bombast, the MUNICH accord for ending hostilities in SYRIA provided a rubber stamp for the hostilities to continue, amid the ramping up of US military intervention in the war, both by air and on the ground, in close collaboration with RUSSIA.

Neither KERRY nor LAVROV referred to the massive refugee crisis building up primarily on the locked SYRIAN-TURKISH frontier, indicating ANKARA’S exclusion from the MUNICH deliberations and the big power planning for SYRIA’S future.