All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
Hey, check out this cool thing that someone wrote.
Three mummies were recently found in an underground temple in Luxor, Egypt.
Translated hieroglyphs identified them as the clash of civilizations, the end of history and Islamophobia.
They ruled in Western domains into the second decade of the 21st century before dying and being embalmed.
I like that.
Well, the guy who wrote that is Pepe Escobar.
And somehow they let him write it for CBS News dot com.
No way.
Welcome to the show, Pepe.
How are you doing?
How are you doing?
Yeah, but CBS, they changed my title.
They put something about the Westerns are not tremble with it.
It's completely out of context, Max.
Yeah, well, I mean, I guess they're taking it for granted that the West is trembling and and wow, here's this guy saying that we needn't be afraid.
Wow.
They're really surprised to hear it.
So it is because there are no very dangerous Islamists lurking in Egypt.
They're going to destabilize Egypt and Egypt is not going to be a US ally anymore.
This is not going to happen.
It's a completely different.
It's it's going to be a transitional process towards democracy.
And in my story, I talk about Turkey.
I talk about the Indonesian.
I talk about what happened in South America, especially in Brazil.
It's going to take time.
But, you know, the the end of the road is democracy is inevitable.
Right.
So in other words, you are down with Francis Fukuyama and Richard Perle and the guys, right?
Yeah, I wouldn't buy I wouldn't buy dinner for Francis Fukuyama.
It's the end of history.
It might be embalmed, but it's a mummy.
Exactly.
It's a walking around.
It's hard to buy dinner for a mummy.
All right.
I'm sorry.
I shouldn't I shouldn't interrupt you.
You're too far on the other side of the world for for us to talk over each other.
I'll just let you go for a little while here.
What's going on?
Look, I'm absolutely desperate at the moment.
What's happening in the Gulf, in Bahrain?
Think about it.
Imagine if Sarkozy and Berlusconi installed a no drive zone instead of a no fly zone.
And they send their troops to support Gaddafi, not the rebel.
This is exactly what Saudi Arabia is doing in Bahrain at the moment.
It's absolutely outrageous.
And two days after Robert Gates was there talking to King Hamad.
How do you react to something like this?
You know, this, in fact, it's the continuation of the end of history.
Yeah.
Well, and, you know, here's the thing about this.
And this is something that's always kind of been frustrating to me.
Is that I really am a declaration of independence kind of guy.
And it doesn't say that, you know, everybody born between Canada and Mexico or in those days on the East Coast is born with inalienable rights.
It's the belief is everybody's got just as much divine right as the king of England does, and that goes for everybody.
So, you know, we all believe in human rights locally enforced, hopefully.
And it's great to see these these bottom up uprisings.
And they really do seem to be devoid of Islamic sentiment and even devoid of anti-American sentiment.
I mean, it seems like if I was protesting over there, I'd be complaining about these are American puppet dictatorships.
But that doesn't even seem to be playing into the protest movement that much.
It's all very just bottom up.
We want economic freedom and political freedom.
You're absolutely right, Scott.
And even in Eastern Libya, of course, in Syria and Iraq and Eastern Libya, there are some Islamist groups or, let's say, new cell.
But they are not at the front.
The front are those guys who until yesterday, they were unemployed.
Then they pick up a Kalashnikov.
They get onto an SUV.
They put a keffiyeh on their head and they storm the front to fight for a better life, basically.
This is what's been happening.
These people are not Al-Qaeda mole.
They are not like Al-Libi, who went to train in Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda camp.
These are the victims of neoliberalism all over the world.
Like you find those victims in Bolivia, in Venezuela, in the Gulf or in Southeast Asia.
These are the same people.
It's a structural crisis of capitalism.
And I'm back to what Wallenstein, Emmanuel Wallenstein, has been saying for at least 30 years now.
But sooner or later, the expansion of capitalism will reach a breaking point, a ruptured point.
And this is what we're living now.
And these revolutions are intimately connected to the breaking up of the financial capitalism order or neoliberalism order, for that matter.
So people should start rereading Wallenstein, rereading David Harvey.
Fantastic David Harvey.
It's all there.
Even years before, Naomi Klein was talking about shock doctrine.
So these are the after effects of the shock doctrine everywhere.
It happened in South America.
It happened in India.
And now it's happening in the Gulf and Northern Africa.
Well, you know, I think capitalism is a bit loose of a term.
I mean, it's really the American empire that's falling apart.
And any capitalism so-called that's dependent on the American empire to force its way on the rest of the world, you know, obviously deserves to all go bankrupt.
I expect it to be next to be linked, totally.
OK, I was using a different terminology, but we were talking about the same thing.
Yeah, sure.
I mean, it's our current system of state capitalism is really what's falling apart because it's dependent on all this force.
And all that force costs a lot of money.
The American people can't afford all the money we waste on stealing.
You know, we don't make nearly the return back.
It doesn't seem like exactly.
And in fact, more than a trillion dollars for the defense department.
Come on.
Like, you know, you could solve all those structural problems in North and African Middle East, probably with 50 billion dollars.
And obviously not channeled through the IMF or the World Bank channeled by the local local representative government.
They would build some basic foodstuff problems.
They would they would solve some of the problems of their education system, for instance.
But we know this is not going to happen.
So people actually have to go out in the streets with their cash and the Kalashnikov and fight for it.
And it's even more incredible in Bahrain, because Bahrain, it's it's like Dubai.
It's not as wealthy as Dubai, of course.
But if you go to Bahrain and you stay near to put around the mouth in one of the rich scouts of the world, you think that Bahrain is just like Hong Kong or Singapore?
No, this is the 5 percent expat elite who works in the financial district and the student oligarchy linked to the Al Khalifa family and the rest of the population.
They were treated like shit.
They were treated like the people in Dubai treat the Filipinos and the South Asians, the Bangladeshis, the Nepalese, they are treated as third class citizens.
And these people are basically asking for months and months in the program about some basic rights, for some equality to be treated like normal citizens and for more political participation.
And look at the response of the Arabian and the GCC, which is a sham group of all those fake sums and monarchies and supporters by the US.
Of course, they send their tanks across the bridge and now they're taking over.
Now they're actually reading Bahrain.
This is what's happened.
And nobody's saying anything.
I was reading a Washington Post story.
They didn't have the courage to say this is basic human rights.
Yeah, well, and it's just the worst hypocrisy.
And it's you know, to me, it's really reminiscent of how ridiculous the lies about Iraq were in 2002, where they really were funny on a daily basis that they're trying to get us to believe that Saddam Hussein was going to take over the galaxy or something if we didn't stop him.
And it's the same kind of level of just foolishness of couldn't possibly be when we see America backing the Saudis rolling in to help the monarchy, the king of Bahrain put down the 70 percent majority that are rising up demanding a modicum of political freedom.
And all they got to do is say, oh, yes, we care so much about the Libyans.
We're going to intervene in Libya on behalf of the people there.
And that's all the PR cover they need for propping up every other dictatorship in the region, for doubling down on propping up every dictatorship in the region.
All they got to do is just pretend that they're bombing for freedom in Libya and their flank is completely covered.
Their PR flank is completely covered, at least in the United States.
You're totally right.
And if you if you follow what's happening through the lens of American mainstream media or most of the mainstream European papers, apart from the more progressive papers like The Independent in England, for instance.
Hold it.
Hold it right there, everybody.
It's Pepe Escobar.
He writes for The Asia Times and all over the place.
He's talking to me from the other side of the planet somewhere.
I'm not sure.
We'll find out right after this.
Santa War Radio.
All right, y'all, welcome back to the show, it's Santa War Radio, talking with Pepe Escobar, he writes for The Asia Times and all over the place.
He's got this new one at CBS News, which we were joking about how they changed the title to no reason for the West to tremble, because, of course, whenever anything happens, the West trembles.
So anyway, first of all, Pepe, tell me, where in the world are you today?
Well, I am in Brazil at the moment because I made a strategic decision to cover the Arab revolt, trying to grasp the big picture.
If I was on the terrain, I know myself, I would probably be arrested.
I would have been arrested in Egypt or certainly in Libya.
So it's a different day.
I miss the terrain, but at least I can have I try to get I try to keep my head clear and try to understand what's going on from Morocco all the way to the Gulf and beyond as well.
And I even have to think about what could happen in China.
Chinese are absolutely terrified of what's happening in the Middle East and the Gulf.
The coverage has been absolutely spotty.
You don't read that in Chinese mainstream media, only when they repatriate like they did 30,000 Chinese workers from Libya.
And that's it.
You know, you don't you don't you don't see any kind of analysis.
You don't see what could that mean to developing countries or even to China.
So at least I'm trying to cover this time and not on the ground, but trying to get the big picture.
Well, you know, Flint Leverett and his wife, Hillary Mann Leverett, over at Race for Iran, have a piece saying the point of all this ultimately is that Iran benefits, that it's America and their coalition of Sunni Arab states, basically, as the check on Iran that is now falling apart.
I'm reminded, actually, back in the 1990s when Fareed Zakaria wrote in Newsweek that if Saddam Hussein did not exist in the Middle East, we would have to invent him because he is the linchpin of our foreign policy.
That's how we get everybody together is against him.
Well, and then now that he's gone, it's Iran.
And yet now America is really losing the ability to influence those events, especially, I guess, after the Iraq war, which was fought more or less on behalf of Iran by the United States.
So I wonder what you think about that, you know, kind of, as you say, in the big picture, in the long term sense, what does it look like are going to be the major changes in terms of the balance power here?
I usually like what they have with their analytical powers.
I usually agree with them, but I would disagree with Iran.
They're not winning anything.
If you take Egypt, which is the heart of the Arab world, the most important revolution so far, their political model for the future is not Iran, it's Turkey.
So I would say and I would bet cases of champagne on it that Turkey is going to be the big winner.
OK, let's wait another six months or one year to analyze it.
But probably Turkey is going to be the big winner in terms of Middle East regional policy and in terms of being a model for most of these societies and countries that are rebelling against the old order.
Iran, it's different because if you compare the religious ruling of the jurisprudence model in Iran compared to the Turkish model where the AKP got to power through democratic elections and every election, they more or less keep their base and even expand a little bit and they're supported by the population and they support the secular Turkey.
This is the model that would appeal to the middle classes in Tunisia, in Egypt, and even to a lot of people in the Gulf.
What's happening in the Gulf is different, not that like the al-Khalifas and the House of Saudis saying Iran is destabilizing the Gulf.
No, they're not.
They're not even part of the protest in Bahrain.
The Shiite ayatollahs in Qom, for instance, they are not even talking about what's happening in Bahrain.
Remember when Ahmadinejad said that the revolution in Tahrir Square was inspired by the Iranian revolution?
This was totally dismissed in Egypt because everybody knew it was absolutely bogus.
So what Iran could gain is something unforeseen at the moment.
Let's assume that the Fifth Fleet would be thrown out of Bahrain.
Obviously, they could dock nearby in Dubai or in Abu Dhabi, for instance.
This maybe could be a reorganization of American power in the Gulf.
But it's not that America is going to leave the Gulf tomorrow.
What Washington needs to do is to work with this popular movement in the Gulf.
They're striving for a better society, just as Washington says it's doing in Libya.
It's exactly the same thing, or just as Washington said it would do in Egypt after they said that Mubarak's regime was stable.
Remember when Hillary Clinton said that.
So we need some coherence here.
And there is no coherence.
It's a tsunami, I'm sorry to say, of hypocrisy.
Yeah, it certainly is.
Well, and it's apparent for everyone in the world to see if it never was before, I guess, excluding the population of this country.
Which, I mean, really, you know, just I keep MSNBC on during the show here out of the corner of my eye on mute, like Henry Kissinger.
I watch it just for the pictures to see what it is they're talking about.
I know what they're saying, not because I wrote the script like him, but because I'm used to it.
But anyway, they don't even cover this anymore at all.
I mean, Egypt was in the news for a little while.
They talk about how we need to go be Superman and save the day in Libya, perhaps.
But we don't hear a word about Yemen or Bahrain or anything like that on the Obama News Network here.
Yeah, it's basically the whole thing's over.
Like that's last week's news, like the kid that went up in the hot air balloon.
But he really didn't.
Exactly.
It's absolutely appalling.
And the U.S. corporate media is not following on a day to day basis what's happening in Egypt.
There are extremely important developments all the time.
When they ransacked the interior ministry files, like the popular pressure all the time.
Like they are, you know, they're watching every single move by the Supreme Army Council on a daily basis.
And this has to be covered.
Like, you know, you have to enlighten the American people.
How do you build a democracy from scratch, which is exactly what the Egyptians are doing?
And instead, now you have these Libyan stories which they never get to the heart of the story, which is this is the same fight in Libya is the same fight in Tunisia as in Egypt.
And it's not the point of installing a no fly zone.
The point is how to actually try to help Israel, but not with a scheme like helping the Mujahideen in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
There's got to be some some ways of doing it.
Blockade, you know, cutting all the financial sources of the Qaddafi regime, of course.
But this doesn't have to involve a military invasion.
So if you invade Libya or if it's a no fly over Libya, there's going to be a no fly over Saudi Arabia as well, because they are invading a sovereign, a theoretically sovereign country as we speak.
Well, and, you know, I don't know in the back to the big picture sort of thing.
It seems like Obama could just play Gorbachev here and just say, fine, go and just let the whole empire go.
And then it wouldn't really hurt us.
We'd all just be richer.
Everything would be fine.
Right.
I mean, that's the whole point here is it's not like Ayman al-Zawahiri's leading this revolution or running this thing, which he'd have to sell his oil anyway, even if he did.
But still, there's no caliphate here.
This is each and every one of the new governments that rise in the Middle East here.
We could work with them just fine.
Isn't it the case, Pepe, that the American empire could just let the empire go and then everything would be fine?
It wouldn't be a big deal and we could all be happy.
Of course, you would have an extra 1.3 trillion that you could invest in health, education, infrastructure and, you know, and America would be the America I grew up with when I was a kid in the late 50s, early 60s.
You know, it was really the mirror of all our collective dreams everywhere.
It's I remember like when I was watching Mad Men, you remind me when I was a kid, I used to be one of those kids who were mesmerized by everything American from, you know, pair of sneakers to drag racing to the beach boy.
And like myself, my generation all over the world was exactly the same thing.
And America at that time produced things.
And of course, it was it could sell itself for, of course, a lot of people already seen through the mirage, let's put it this way, as a beacon of freedom, democracy and achievement.
And this is all gone.
This is all gone.
And it's terrible when you talk to neoliberals, when you talk to former communists, when you talk to former hippies or former activists, bombing activists in Europe, like the Brigadier General, the kind of people nowadays, they all say, yes, in fact, they brought this on themselves.
They could have it could have been an American century, the 21st.
And since the beginning of the 21st is not an American century anymore.
And it's self inflicted.
Right.
Yeah, I mean, and the thing is, too, I mean, I'm not really a collectivist, I'm an individualist.
But if if you can believe there's really such a thing as America or whatever, we really deserve it.
It was so willful.
I mean, the run up to the Iraq war lasted a year and four months or something more than that year and five months.
And the American people had every opportunity to be against it.
And they weren't.
And that was really, you know, that was the move, letting George Bush drive the hot rod over the cliff right there.
That was the end, the unraveling of it all.
And it didn't have to be a wall.
Hell, I mean, you could say Bill Clinton occupying the former Soviet Union with bases, as you know, was the beginning of the end to whatever expanding after the end of the Cold War.
But George Bush really just drove the thing off the cliff.
And which that just means we're going to fall that much harder than if we just done it the Ron Paul way and just brought our troops home because it was the right thing to do.
And then right now, our country could be the hero of the revolutions in the Middle East instead of, you know, the evil empire being overthrown.
It's true.
And it's crazy because all over these revolutions, people are not even talking about America.
It's about themselves.
It's about Tunisians, about Egyptians, about Libyans as well.
In fact, when they talk about America, when they refer to America, why are you not helping it?
Where's the beacon of democracy when we need you?
So but it's America's an afterthought for all these revolutions.
This is about I would compare to a process that took a long time in Latin America of, you know, especially South America, finding their own voice in internally and in terms of international politics.
This is what's starting to happen in the Arab world as well.
For them, it's even worse because they were humiliated a hundred years ago when they're supposed to have an Arab nation.
And the British and the French sat down and divided the Middle East according to their whims on pieces of paper and napkin.
So now they are finally, you know, they're recovering their self-dignity, their self-respect.
And that's the end of the stereotype of the crazy Arab or the bombing Arab or the crazy Muslim.
So this has nothing to do with the U.S. directly.
Indirectly, yes, because the American empire, as you said, was a crucial factor in stigmatizing and alienating the whole Arab world, always to the benefit of the arms industry or the Israel lobby or, you know, wobbly Israeli government.
You name it.
So many causes and corporate capitalism and the expansion of neoliberals, you name it.
But in the end, the victims were the Arabs.
They're not victims anymore.
And this is very hard for a West that's been reared on crusade for at least a millennium to face the real game changer.
Well, and, you know, that's what you say in your article here, which, again, hilariously CBS News titled No Reason for the West to Tremble.
You sort of refer to the death of the myth of the clash of civilizations, because as we can all see from our well, I guess, especially if we're watching Al Jazeera or something.
But even on TV, you know, regular American TV, we can see that these uprisings are full of people who are just like us, that there really isn't an Islamo-fascist caliphate out to get us.
These people aren't really cartoon characters flying around on magic carpets and otherwise not, you know, mattering or whatever.
On one hand, invisible people.
On the other hand, a massive giant coming to threaten us.
In fact, they're just regular people and they're rising up.
And the most power that they could ever achieve would be just to control their own states for a change here.
And and they're just people.
And it seems like that I hope that you're right, that that myth of, you know, Muslims as this alien force, like the old USSR or something that's got to be contained or whatever, can finally die.
It seems like it should start to die just based on the the the the images on the television screen.
You're right, but the problem is for many Western elites, they'll keep perpetuating this dream.
I'm talking about people who are actually profiting from the, in fact, actual enslavement of huge parts of the former third world and the Arab world is included in that.
And the fact that this is very important.
How come you cannot watch Al Jazeera in the US?
This is completely crazy.
If you follow what what's going on through American corporate media or even through the BBC in the US, you cannot get the BBC everywhere in the US, as I can recall.
You have no clue what's going on.
Absolutely no clue.
And Al Jazeera and the coverage in Al Jazeera Arabic and Al Jazeera English is not the same.
But even without Al Jazeera English, you have a very good overview of what's happening.
Okay.
Problems as well.
They are not covering the protests in Saudi Arabia and their coverage of Bahrain for the past four weeks or so has been minimal, obviously, because Qatar is part of the GDC and there is an agreement between the New York, Qatar and the others.
We're not going to criticize ourselves in public, you know, our dirty lounge in front of our world audience, but at least compared to corporate media in the US and in Europe, it's a huge difference.
And obviously, especially mainstream American Europeans who had their prejudices, maybe not because it was not their fault, but it's what they read or they absorbed in mainstream media.
Could start having a completely different idea of the outlook and the demands and the aspirations of the common middle class Arabs from Cairo, from Tunisia, from Manama.
And even this is denied to the American people because of a market censorship.
This is completely absurd.
Hey, I want to ask you real quick about the pipeline politics of Central Asia and which soda straws are sticking into that Caspian Basin and which direction they run.
You've written tons of books, even, and tons of articles all about this, you know, the new great game fighting over these pipelines and which way they go.
But I wonder in all your research, whether you've discovered whether it matters or not, which way those soda straws poking into that ground go.
And isn't it all just a world market anyway?
It does.
It matters a lot, Scott.
For instance, this running controversy has been going for years now between these two pipelines, one from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan and then Pakistan and another one from Iran to Pakistan.
Depending on which of these pipelines you build, you could integrate, you can imagine, via a vital artery, in fact.
It's an umbilical.
When you build a pipeline, you're building an umbilical cord uniting countries.
So a war between these two or three countries, when there's a pipeline crossing them, is virtually impossible.
So if you build an Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline, the IPI pipeline, this is the integration of Southwest Asia with South Asia.
Very important.
If you build a Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan pipeline, you integrate Central Asia with South Asia.
So these are very, very important.
OK, one goes through a war zone, through Afghanistan.
That's why it's practically impossible to build it, unless the Taliban get a cut.
And the other one, Washington is against it because it originates in Iran.
So Iranians will have even more payment for their energy resources.
So this is crucial.
And also crucial, the transit countries.
And that's where Turkey is important, once again, because Turkey, this has been sold in America as who lost Turkey, which is completely absurd.
Turkey, in fact, they reoriented their foreign policy based on Davutoglu, the foreign minister.
He wrote a crucial book in 2001 called Turkey's New Strategic Path, and he outlined a new Turkish foreign policy, which has been followed by the AKP party, which basically, essentially means Turkey is the crucial transit point and crossroads, energy crossroads between the West and the East.
And everything that they do is subordinated to this.
So this means they want to have all the energy possible from Russia, from Turkmenistan, from Iran, channeled through Turkey and then distributed to the West.
And even if there's some left to the West, to Europe, sorry, and then if there's some left to the West as well.
So everything that Turkey does, we have to analyze through the energy prism.
So that's where pipelines are important, because all the major pipelines that will be built eventually will have to cross Turkish territory.
So it's inescapable.
They are an energy power and they are a political power to be reckoned with in the Middle East.
And that's what that's an extra reason, in my opinion, that Turkey is going to be the big winner of all this and not Iran by any chance.
OK, now, a couple of things there.
First, I guess a minor point who lost Turkey.
It's got to be fair to say that the Bush administration's invasion of Iraq, which they wanted to stage from Turkey, which the people rose up basically would not allow, was really a major turning point in the beginning and the end of Turkey's relationship with the United States, as it was, at least from my view.
And I'll let you comment on that.
But then also, I just want to make sure that I kind of get your point right.
You know, these pipelines could connect all of these countries, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, India even, and get all these countries trading with each other in a way where they become interdependent with each other economically and therefore much less likely to go to war with each other.
I'm thinking specifically of India and Pakistan here, which would all be to the good.
What I didn't hear you say, Pepe, was that somehow Americans wouldn't be able to fill up their tank anymore if the pipeline went this way or that way.
All you're saying is that countries could, such as Iran, Pakistan, might be able to flex a little bit more independence from the American empire were we to get out of the way and let these pipelines be built.
There's something slightly different in this formulation.
The thing is that if you unite Iran and Pakistan with a pipeline, this means better development opportunities for both.
In the case of Pakistan, it means Pakistan having a more independent foreign policy vis-a-vis Washington.
Theoretically, I'm not saying this is going to happen.
And for Iran, it means Iran trying to inject more foreign investment, in fact, in their own energy industry.
This is something they need badly.
They couldn't do it because of American sanctions, and European corporations are following the American sanctions as well.
So this does not revert necessarily immediately to the U.S. benefit, but it reverts immediately to more independence, more revenue for this country.
In the case of Afghanistan, if you have Afghanistan getting transit rights with a pipeline, they could get like 300 million dollars a year for it.
It's a fortune for the Hamid Karzai government.
And obviously, if that happens, he will be much more independent vis-a-vis the U.S.
I'm not defending Hamid Karzai.
Please don't misunderstand me.
What I'm saying is that it alters foreign policy if you are more economically independent.
Right.
And now, but so as to whether Americans would still be able to get oil, where everything to change in all these Central Asian politics and pipelines.
Do you have an answer to that?
Because that's the American people's concern.
Yeah.
I mean, this is how they sell it.
Ultimately, you can get Pepe.
People will tell you that, hey, look, you know what?
You're right that it is all just mass murder and whatever.
But still, we need that oil.
I mean, people say that.
I agree, but my point would be try to try to pull a China, diversify your sources of energy.
This is what the Chinese have been doing.
I wrote about this late last year, in fact, and I think you comment on that as well.
China has they have an energy diversifying policy that encompasses virtually every area in the world, South America, Africa, Middle East, Central Asia, Asia, first, Russia, everywhere.
The US could do the same thing.
The US could buy more oil from Venezuela if they stop demonizing Hugo Chavez.
They could buy more, more oil from Ecuador.
They could buy more oil from Western African countries, including Angola, for instance, which is a major supplier to China.
The US could go there and offer better terms to Angola.
Yes, and also Brazil soon is going to get an oil power.
We got we got telephone problems here, man.
I'm sorry.
Can you get an oil power?
Oh, Pepe, I'm sorry, man.
Your phone, something terrible happened to it.
I'm going to go ahead and blame the National Security Agency for, you know, failed attempt at humor purposes.
But anyway, that was the great Pepe Escobar.
I could see why they wouldn't want him explaining all the pipeline stuff to us here.
But we can reprise this interview.
Don't you worry.
Look up Pepe Escobar at Asia Times dot com.
I think it is.
But anyway, the Asia Times, that's not hard to find.
Oh, well, I have it right here.
A times dot com.
Pepe Escobar has written a million articles there.
It's too bad because I had so many more things I want to talk to him about, including more about the politics of Saudi Arabia.
