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On the Edge of a Nuclear Abyss

By Edward J. Curtin | Behind The Curtain | March 10, 2022

Two days after Russia attacked Ukraine and the day before Vladimir Putin put Russia on nuclear alert, I wrote a little article whose first sentence was: “Not wanting to sound hyperbolic, but I am starting to conclude that the nuclear madmen running the U.S./NATO New Cold War they started decades ago are itching to start a nuclear war with Russia.”

It was an intuition based on my knowledge of U.S./Russia history, including the U.S engineered coup in Ukraine in 2014, and a reading of current events.  I refer to it as intuition, yet it is based on a lifetime’s study and teaching of political sociology and writing against war. I am not a Russian scholar, simply a writer with a sociological, historical, and artistic imagination, although my first graduate academic study in the late 1960s was a thesis on nuclear weapons and why they might be someday used again.

It no longer sounds hyperbolic to me that madmen in the declining U.S. Empire might resort, like rats in a sinking ship, to first strike use of nuclear weapons, which is official U.S. policy. My stomach is churning at the thought, despite what most experts say: that the chances of a nuclear war are slight. And despite what others say about the Ukraine war: that it is an intentional diversion from the Covid propaganda and the Great Reset (although I agree it achieves that goal).

My gut tells me no; it is very real, sui generis, and very, very dangerous now.

The eminent scholar Michel Chossudovsky of Global Research agrees that we are very close to the unthinkable. In a recent historical analysis of U.S.-Russia relations and nuclear weapons, he writes the following before quoting Vladimir Putin’s recent statement on the matter. “Vladimir Putin’s statement on February 21st, 2022 was a response to U.S. threats to use nuclear weapons on a preemptive basis against Russia, despite Joe Biden’s “reassurance” that the U.S. would not be resorting to ‘A first strike’ nuclear attack against an enemy of America”:

Let me [Putin] explain that U.S. strategic planning documents contain the possibility of a so-called preemptive strike against enemy missile systems. And who is the main enemy for the U.S. and NATO? We know that too. It’s Russia. In NATO documents, our country is officially and directly declared the main threat to North Atlantic security. And Ukraine will serve as a forward springboard for the strike.” (Putin Speech, February 21, 2022, emphasis added)

Putin is absolutely correct. It is why he put Russia’s nuclear forces on full alert.   Only those ignorant of history, which sadly includes most U.S. Americans, don’t know this.

I believe that today we are in the greatest danger of a nuclear war since the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, something I vividly remember as a teenager. The same feelings return. Dread. Anxiety. Breathlessness. I do not think these feelings are misplaced nor they are simply an emotional response. I try to continue writing on other projects that I have started but feel stymied. The possibility of nuclear war, whether intentional or accidental, obsesses me.

In order to grasp this stomach-churning possibility within the context of Ukraine, we need to put aside all talk of morality, rights, international law, and think in terms of great power politics, as John Mearsheimer has so clearly articulated. As he says, when a great power feels its existence is threatened, might makes right. You simply can’t understand world politics without thinking at this level.  Doing so does not mean justifying the use of might; it is a means of clarifying the causes of wars, which start long before the first shots are fired.

In the present crisis over Ukraine, Russia clearly feels existentially threatened by U.S./NATO military moves in Ukraine and in eastern Europe where they have positioned missiles that can be very quickly converted to nuclear and are within a few minutes range of Russia. (And of course there are U.S./NATO nuclear missiles throughout western and southern Europe.) Vladimir Putin has been talking about this for many years and is factually correct. He has reiterated that this is unacceptable to Russia and must stop. He has pushed for negotiations to end this situation.

The United States, despite its own Monroe Doctrine that prohibits another great power from putting weapons or military forces close to its borders, has blocked its ears and kept upping the ante, provoking Russian fears. This fact is not in dispute but is shrugged off by U.S./NATO as of little consequence.  Such an attitude is pure provocation as anyone with a smidgeon of historical awareness knows.

The world was very lucky sixty years ago this October when JFK and Nikita Khrushchev negotiated the end of the Cuban Missile Crisis before the world was incinerated. Kennedy, of course, was intensely pressured by the military and CIA to bomb Cuba, but he resisted. He also rejected the insane military desire to nuke the Soviet Union, calling such people crazy; at a National Security Council meeting on September 12, 1963, when the Joint Chiefs of Staff presented a report about a nuclear first strike against the Soviet Union which they wanted for that fall, he said, “Preemption is not possible for us.”

Such leadership, together with the nuclear test ban treaty he negotiated with the USSR that month, inter alia (such treaties have now been abrogated by the U.S. government), assured his assassination organized by the CIA. These days, the U.S. is led by deluded men who espouse a nuclear first strike policy, which tells one all one needs to know about the danger the world is in. The U.S. has been very sick with Russia hatred for a long time.

After the terror of the Cuban Missile Crisis, many more people took the threat of nuclear war seriously. Today very few do. It has receded into the ”unimaginable.” In 1962, however, as James W. Douglass writes in JFK and the Unspeakable:

Kennedy saw that, at least outside Washington, D.C., people were living with a deeper awareness of the ultimate choice they faced.  Nuclear weapons were real.  So, too, was the prospect of peace.  Shocked by the Cuban Missile Crisis into recognizing a real choice, people preferred peace to annihilation.

Today the reality of nuclear annihilation has receded into unconsciousness. This despite the recent statements by U.S. generals and the U.S. Ukrainian puppet Zelensky about nuclear weapons and their use that have extremely inflamed Russia’s fears, which clearly is intentional. The game is to have some officials say it and then deny it while having a policy that contradicts your denial. Keep pushing the envelope is U.S. policy. Obama-Biden reigned over the U.S. 2014 coup in Ukraine, Trump increased weapon sales to Ukraine in 2017, and Biden has picked up the baton from his partner (not his enemy) in this most deadly game. It is a bi-partisan Cold War 2, getting very hot. And it is the reason why Russia, its back to the wall, attacked Ukraine. It is obvious that this is exactly what the U.S. wanted or it would have acted very differently in the leadup to this tragedy. All the current winging of hands is pure hypocrisy, the nihilism of a nuclear power never for one moment threatened but whose designs were calculated to threaten Russia at its borders.

The media propaganda against Russia and Putin is the most extreme and extensive propaganda in my lifetime. Patrick Lawrence has astutely examined this in a recent essay, where he writes the same is true for him:

Many people of many different ages have remarked in recent days that they cannot recall in their lifetimes a more pervasive, suffocating barrage of propaganda than what has engulfed us since the months that preceded Russia’s intervention. In my case it has come to supersede the worst of what I remember from the Cold War decades.

Engulfed is an appropriate word.  Lawrence rightly points to this propaganda as cognitive warfare directed at the U.S. population (and the rest of the world) and notes its connection to the January 2021 final draft of a “diabolic” NATO study called “Cognitive Warfare.” He quotes it thus: “The brain will be the battlefield of the 21st century,” . . . “Humans are the contested domain. Cognitive warfare’s objective is to make everyone a weapon.”

This cognitive warfare, however, has a longer history in cutting edge science. For each successive decade beginning with the 1990s and a declaration from President (and ex-Director of the CIA) George H. W. Bush that the 1990s would be the Decade of Brain Research, presidents have announced additional decades long projects involving the brain, with 2000-2010 being the Decade of Behavior Project, followed by mapping of the brain, artificial intelligence, etc. all organized and funded through the Office of Science and Technology Project (OSTP) and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). This medical, military, and scientific research has been part of a long range plan to extend MK-Ultra’s mind control to the population at large under the cover of medical science, and it has been simultaneously connected to the development and funding of the pharmaceutical industries research and development of new brain-altering drugs. RFK, Jr. has documented the CIA’s extensive connection to germ and mind research and promotion in his book, The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health. It is why his book is banned from the mainstream media, who do the prime work of cognitive warfare for the government. To put it clearly: these media are the CIA. And the issue of U.S. bio-weapons research and development is central to these many matters, including in Ukraine.

In other words, the cognitive warfare we are now being subjected to has many tentacles connected to much more than today’s fanatical anti-Russian propaganda over Ukraine. All the U.S. wars of aggression have been promoted under its aegis, as have the lies about the attacks of September 11, 2001, the economic warfare by the elites, the COVID crisis, etc.  It’s one piece.

Take, for example, a book written in 2010 by David Ray Griffin, a renown theologian who has written more than a dozen books about 9/11. The book is Cognitive Infiltration: An Obama Appointee’s Plan to Undermine the 9/11 Conspiracy Theory. It is a critique of law professor Cass Sunstein, appointed by Obama to be the Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Sunstein had written an article with a plan for the government to prevent the spread of anti-government “conspiracy theories” in which he promoted the use of anonymous government agents to use secret “cognitive infiltration” of these groups in order to break them up; to use media plants to disparage their arguments. He was particularly referring to those who questioned the official 9/11 narrative but his point obviously extended much further. He was working in the tradition of the great propagandists. Griffin took a scalpel to this call for cognitive warfare and was of course a victim of it as well. Sunstein has since worked for the World Health Organization (WHO) on COVID psychological responses and other COVID committees. It’s all one piece.

Sunstein’s wife is Samantha Power, Obama’s Ambassador to the United Nations and war hawk extraordinaire. She gleefully promoted the U.S. destruction of Libya under the appellation of the “responsibility to protect,” a “humane” cover for imperialism. Now she is Biden’s Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), an arm of the CIA throughout the world. It’s all one piece.

The merry-go-round goes round and round.

I have gone off on this slight tangent to emphasize how vast and interconnected are the players and groups on Team Cognitive Warfare. They have been leading the league for quite some time and are hoping their game plan against Team Russia will keep them there. So far they are winning, as Patrick Lawrence says:

Look at what has become of us. Most Americans seem to approve of these things, or at least are unstirred to object. We have lost all sense of decency, of ordinary morality, of proportion. Can anyone listen to the din of the past couple of weeks without wondering if we have made of ourselves a nation of grotesques?

It is common to observe that in war the enemy is always dehumanized. We are now face to face with another reality: Those who dehumanize others dehumanize themselves more profoundly.

Perhaps people are too ignorant to see through the propaganda. To have some group to hate is always “uplifting.” But we are all responsible for the consequences of our actions, even when those actions are just buying the propaganda and hating those one is told to hate. It is very hard to accept that the leaders of your own country commit and contemplate unspeakable evil deeds and that they wish to control your mind. To contemplate that they might once again use nuclear weapons is unspeakable but necessary if we are to prevent it.

I hope my fears are unfounded. I agree with Gilbert Doctorow that the Ukraine-Russia war separates the sheep from the goats, that there is no middle ground. This is not to celebrate war and the death of innocent people, but it does demand placing the blame squarely where it belongs and not trying to have it both ways. People like him, John Mearsheimer, the late badly missed Stephen Cohen, Ray McGovern, Scott Ritter, Pepe Escobar, Patrick Lawrence, Jack Matlock, Ted Postol, et al. are all cutting through the propaganda and delivering truth in opposition to all the lies. They go gentile with fears of nuclear war, however, as if it is somewhat possible but highly unlikely, as if their deepest thoughts are unspeakable, for to utter them would be an act of despondency.

The consensus of the experts tends to be that the U.S. wishes to draw the Russians into a long protracted guerrilla war along the lines of its secret use of mujahideen in Afghanistan in 1979 and after. There is evidence that this is already happening. But I think the U.S. strategists know that the Russians are too smart for that; that they have learned their lesson; and that they will withdraw once they feel they have accomplished their goals. Therefore, from the U.S./NATO perspective, time is reasonably short and they must act quickly, perhaps by doing a false flag operation that will justify a drastic response, or upping the tempo in some other way that would seem to justify the use of nuclear weapons, perhaps tactical at first.

I appreciate the input of the Russia experts I mentioned above. Their expertise dwarfs mine, but I disagree. Perhaps I am an excitable sort; perhaps I am one of those Patrick Lawrence refers to, quoting Carl Jung, as too emotional and therefore incapable of clear thinking. (I will leave the issue of this long held but erroneous western philosophical belief in the division of emotions and thoughts for another day.) Perhaps I can’t see the obvious that a nuclear war will profit no one and therefore it cannot happen. Yet Ted Postol, MIT professor of technology and international security, while perhaps agreeing that an intentional nuclear war is very unlikely, has been warning of an accidental one for many years.  He is surely right on that score and well worth listening to.

But either way, I am sorry to say, perhaps because my perspective is that of a generalist, not an expert, and my thinking is informed by art as much as social science and history, my antennae pick up a very disturbing message. A voice tells me that the danger is very, very real today. It says:

Beware, we are on the edge of a nuclear abyss.

March 10, 2022 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Militarism, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Pushing toward Nuclear War

By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | March 9, 2022

According to Yahoo! News, “More than two dozen foreign policy experts have called for the United States and NATO to institute a partial no-fly zone over Ukraine, which would serve as an escalation of the conflict with Russia.” Joining them is Illinois Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger, who also happens to be a former Air Force combat officer. That would mean the U.S. military would be shooting down Russian planes containing Russian soldiers. 

So far, the idea is being resisted by President Biden and the military-intelligence establishment. However, given the extreme anti-Putin mentality that characterizes Biden, the Pentagon, and the CIA, their position could easily change on a moment’s notice.

The matter brings to mind what happened during the John Kennedy administration, the details of which were set forth in an article we posted yesterday on FFF’s website, entitled “When the Pentagon Wanted to Nuke Russia.” The article was an excerpt from FFF’s book JFK’s War with the National Security Establishment: Why Kennedy Was Assassinated by Douglas P. Horne, who served on the staff of the Assassination Records Review Board in the 1990s.

In July 1961, the U.S. military establishment was pressing Kennedy to launch a surprise nuclear attack on the Soviet Union, China, and all the other communist-bloc countries, similar to the surprise attack that Japan initiated against the United States at Pearl Harbor. 

Their attitude was that there was inevitably going to be a nuclear war anyway between the United States and the Soviet Union. Given such, the generals believed that it would be in the best interests of the United States to fire first in order to disable a large portion of the Soviet nuclear arsenal. 

The generals acknowledged to Kennedy that under their first-strike surprise-attack plan, the United States would nonetheless suffer a large number of deaths — like in the neighborhood of, say, 70 million people — as well as significant destruction of property. 

But there would still be tens of millions of Americans who would survive, given that the surprise attack would disable much of the Soviet nuclear arsenal. The important part of the first-strike plan was that there would be no Russians, Chinese, or other communists who would survive the massive U.S. surprise nuclear attack. Since there would still be millions of Americans surviving, that would mean that America will have prevailed as the winner in the war, under indefinite military rule of course. 

There is something else that is worth noting: The Pentagon’s plan called for the launching of the surprise nuclear attack “during a period of heightened tensions” with Russia and the rest of the Soviet Union.

To his everlasting credit, Kennedy walked out during the middle of the meeting in total disgust. In the process, he turned to his Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, and stated, “And we call ourselves the human race.” Do you see why they hated the guy so much?

Was that military mindset passed down from generation to generation within the Pentagon? I don’t know. But what I do know is that the political gamesmanship that the Pentagon and the CIA have played to maneuver Russia into having to choose between invading Ukraine versus permitting the Pentagon and the CIA to establish military bases, missiles, tanks, and weapon on Russia’s border constitutes an evil, irresponsible, and dangerous game, one that comes with the possibility of nuclear fire. 

In the midst of this war, where the Pentagon and the CIA are furnishing weaponry to the Ukrainians to help them kill Russian soldiers, and where U.S. officials are targeting the Russian people with death and impoverishment with brutal economic sanctions, any mishap can easily lead to a rapid escalation of hostilities between the United States and Russia, one in which it becomes in the interest of both sides to initiate a first-strike nuclear attack. Moreover, there is no telling what any exhausted person, including Vladimir Putin, will do when he is under severe pressure in a highly stressful war situation.

That’s one big reason why this entire escapade is so highly evil and irresponsible, even if it is resolved without a war between the United States and Russia. And make no mistake about the cause of the crisis: It’s not about liberty. It is entirely about NATO, the Pentagon-CIA-controlled bureaucratic dinosaur that should have gone out of existence when the Cold War racket supposedly ended decades ago. If NATO had been abolished back then, this crisis in Ukraine would never have happened. All those dead people in Ukraine would still be alive today.

In the final analysis, President Biden, the Pentagon, and the CIA were willing to sacrifice any number of Ukrainians for the sake of having Ukraine join NATO, which would thereby permit the Pentagon and the CIA to establish U.S. military bases, missiles, tanks, and weaponry on Russia’s border.

If that isn’t evil, I don’t know what is. Not one single Ukrainian life was worth NATO, the corrupt bureaucratic dinosaur that should have gone out of existence a long time ago.

Even worse, their unswerving devotion to NATO has clearly motivated Biden, the Pentagon, and the CIA to run the risk of a war with Russia, a war that could easily turn nuclear and cost the lives of countless millions of Americans. If that’s not evil, I don’t know what is. I do know this: NATO, that corrupt bureaucratic Cold War-era dinosaur, is not worth risking the life of even one American, much less untold millions of Americans. 

If the United States can escape a nuclear conflict with Russia this time, there is no telling when the Pentagon’s and the CIA’s political gamesmanship will produce the same sort of crisis in the future, either against Russia, China, or North Korea. That’s one big reason it is imperative that the American people do some serious soul-searching about what they want out of life. If they want a crisis-filled life that might well end up at some point in a nuclear holocaust, then they should keep the national-security state form of governmental structure that was brought into existence after World War II. If Americans instead want a life filled with liberty, peace, prosperity, security, and harmony, there is but one solution: restore America’s founding system of a limited-government republic and a non-interventionist foreign policy.

March 10, 2022 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

US comments on Ukrainian ‘biolabs’

Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland testifies before a Senate Foreign Relation Committee hearing on Ukraine on March 8, 2022 © Getty Images/Kevin Dietsch
RT | March 8, 2022

US Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland has confirmed that Washington has been involved in an effort to make sure no “materials” Ukraine keeps in its biolabs end up with the Russian military.

“Ukraine has biological research facilities, which, in fact, we are now quite concerned… Russian troops, Russian forces may be seeking to gain control of,” Nuland said on Tuesday as she testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

“We’re working with Ukrainians on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces should they approach,” she added.

The Russian military previously claimed that the Ukrainian authorities have been hastily destroying dangerous materials, including highly pathogenic bacterial and viral agents they allegedly kept in laboratories linked to the Pentagon.

On Monday, Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov said the documents seen by the Russian military suggest that some of these laboratories worked with anthrax, among other things. Kirillov also claimed that the only reason Kiev reportedly moved to destroy the materials was out of concern that Russian experts “will highly likely prove Ukraine and the US have been in violation of the Biological Weapons Convention,” once they study the samples.

While Moscow has expressed concern over the alleged development of bioweapons in Ukraine, Nuland appeared to preemptively blame Russia for any potential release of hazardous materials amid the ongoing military conflict.

Nuland agreed with Senator Marco Rubio that if a chemical or biological “incident” or “attack” takes place in Ukraine, then Russia would be the culprit.

“There is no doubt in my mind, senator, and it is a classic Russian technique to blame on the other guy what they’re planning to do themselves,” she said.

Kiev has denied it was designing bioweapons. The Pentagon said speculation about its involvement in these programs in former Soviet states is ‘Russian disinformation’.

March 9, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Poland ready to deploy all their MIG-29 jets to the Rammstein Air Base

Statement of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland regarding the statement by the US Secretary of State on providing airplanes to Ukraine – 08.03.2022

The authorities of the Republic of Poland, after consultations between the President and the Government, are ready to deploy – immediately and free of charge – all their MIG-29 jets to the Ramstein Air Base and place them at the disposal of the Government of the United States of America.

At the same time, Poland requests the United States to provide us with used aircraft with corresponding operational capabilities. Poland is ready to immediately establish the conditions of purchase of the planes.

The Polish Government also requests other NATO Allies – owners of MIG-29 jets – to act in the same vein.

March 8, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

China urges Pentagon to open up about ‘biolabs’ in Ukraine

RT | March 8, 2022

China’s foreign ministry has called on the US to disclose information on the Pentagon’s alleged biological laboratories in Ukraine “as soon as possible”.

On Monday, the Russian military said Ukrainian authorities had been destroying pathogens studied at its laboratories. Moscow claimed that 30 US-financed Ukrainian biolabs have been actively cooperating with the American military.

Kiev has denied developing bioweapons. According to the website of the US embassy in Kiev, the US Department of Defense’s Biological Threat Reduction Program only “collaborates with partner countries to counter the threat of outbreaks” of infectious diseases. In 2020, the embassy called such theories about US-funded biolabs in Ukraine “disinformation.”

Speaking at a press briefing on Tuesday, however, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian claimed that, according to his country’s information, the laboratories in Ukraine are just “a tip of an iceberg” and that the US Department of Defense “controls 336 biological laboratories in 30 countries around the world.” This is done under the pretext of “cooperating to reduce biosecurity risks” and “strengthening global public health,” Zhao said.

It is the first time that Beijing has disclosed the alleged figure. Zhao said that according to data “released by the United States itself,” there are 26 US laboratories in Ukraine. In light of Russia’s military offensive in the country, he urged “all parties concerned” to ensure the safety of the labs.

“In particular, the United States, as the party which knows these laboratories best, should publish the relevant details as soon as possible, including which viruses are stored and which research has been carried out,” he said.

He claimed the US “has been exclusively obstructing” the establishment of an independent verification mechanism. Such behavior, Zhao said, “further aggravates the concerns of the international community.”

According to a report in The Rio Times, the US embassy in Ukraine deleted all information about Pentagon-financed bio-labs in the country from its website on February 26. However, journalist Dilyana Gaytandzhieva claimed embassy staff forgot to remove a document showing that the Pentagon is funding two new biolabs in Kiev and Odessa.

“Ukraine has no control over the military biolabs. The Ukrainian government is not allowed to release sensitive information about the program,” the Brazilian news outlet claimed.

Over the past 20 years, the Science and Technology Center in Ukraine, jointly established with the United States, invested over $285 million in about 1,850 projects carried out by scientists who, according to Gaytandzhieva, previously worked on the development of weapons of mass destruction.

US authorities are yet to comment on the latest claims.

March 8, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Ukraine and the Global American Empire

eugyppius | March 8, 2022

Some have asked for my thoughts on Ukraine.

Since 2014, the Ukraine has been experiencing a quiet civil war, between the Ukrainian majority in the west, and a Russian minority concentrated in the east. The ethnic Ukrainian side in this conflicted has been co-opted by the supranational global imperial monolith. This is the cadre of western elites that determines political, medical and cultural orthodoxy across the world. They control not only all major political parties in most western countries, but also global international consortia from the United Nations to the World Economic Forum to the European Union to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. Their goal is to further squeeze Russia by turning Ukraine – including the Russian-speaking eastern regions – into another political constituent of American globalism.

To the Russians – many Russians – this is unacceptable. After the Soviet Union collapsed, the globalists descended upon Russia to rape and pillage. In the years after 2000, NATO expansion was used to hem in Russia along the Baltic. These were hard years, but Russia finally reasserted its sovereignty. Since then, the western globalists have considered unaligned Russia to be their enemy, and they have adopted Ukraine as a convenient proxy against her. Ukraine is useful for this purpose, because it has considerable strategic significance, whether as a gateway to Russia through the open Ukrainian plains, or as a staging ground for American missiles.

The same western globalists who hate Russia, also count us as their enemies, and my sincere advice is to take them seriously in this. They have a kind of myopia for internal political dissidents; we are the unaligned domestic element, Russia is the unaligned international element, and so when Donald Trump is elected to the presidency, this must be, for them, the result of Russian interference.

I keep calling these people American or western globalists, but that’s only one way to understand them. I don’t have anything against Americans; I lived there for many years and have a great many American friends. It is only an historical accident, probably, that America finds itself at the centre of this globalist excrescence, this post-political, post-national order.

Rolf Peter Sieferle, one of my favourite thinkers, wrote about the fundamental conflict, between the globalists on one hand, and the unaligned people like me and unaligned countries like Russia, in more abstract terms. For him, the clash is between “politics” and “system”:1

Politics belongs to an older stratum of existence, ordered in terms of the state and of history, crystallised in statesmen, leaders and ideologues. It has programmes, values and goals. What is required are virtues and commitments directed towards a super-ordinate whole. The last resort of politics is war – the willingness of the individual to sacrifice himself for a higher cause, for his community.

System characterises newly emerging orders of higher complexity, which successively displace politics. Systems organise themselves without focus, without values, goals or programmes. Their only maxim is freedom and emancipation for individuals. Virtue and sacrifice are anachronisms. Wars are nothing but catastrophic conflicts that must be prevented through skilful management. Order is created by objective, autonomous constraints, not by a normative orientation. The structures of systems are as inescapable for individuals as a magnetic field is for iron filings. They do not “know” anything about it, but they conform to their predefined paths. The most important processes are not controlled and can hardly be grasped theoretically.

System has largely prevailed in advanced “western” countries. Yet the rest of the world in many ways still thinks politically. This strikes the West as anachronistic fundamentalism. …

The system-globalists don’t recognise the legitimacy of Russian strategic interests, or the legitimacy of anybody’s strategic interests. Globalists do not have security concerns in that way. Many of them even believe their own hollow rhetoric, that they are spreading freedom and democracy, even after these last two years of experimentation in forced vaccination and intermittent mass house arrest. Even if they don’t believe all of that about democracy, they nevertheless imagine that they are missionaries of light and goodness to all peoples everywhere, and that human potential will only be fully realised, when every last Russian is on Facebook and subscribed to Amazon Prime.

The global American empire doesn’t invade; that is not what systems do. It assimilates. It is basically a borg that imposes economic and political constraints on an ever expanding expanse of the globe, which progressively fatten, distract and deracinate populations, with a view towards blending them into the same shallow multinational consumerist soup. Their plan was to make Ukraine part of the borg, and in this way further encroach upon Russia. Russia responded in political fashion, by taking up arms. Because the western borg never knows when to stop, Ukraine will now be destroyed and probably partitioned, as a means of keeping it forever outside the western globalist fold.

However much the globalists like the idea of encircling Russia with NATO, in their saner moments they’re not actually willing to risk nuclear war to defend the easternmost reaches of Europe. For the globalists, Ukraine was just a pawn. After they finish throwing their tantrum, they’ll go pick another proxy fight somewhere else, and ruin some other country; and they’ll also continue to grind away at unaligned unassimilated internal dissidents within their borders too. They make no distinctions here.

Western media and politicians don’t want to explain the cause of the Ukrainian war, because it is a defeat that they brought upon themselves. This is why they have chosen instead to portray Putin as some kind of crazy lunatic, in the mould of a Kim Jong-un or a Saddam Hussein. That is precisely wrong: Those are unpredictable tin-pot dictators who command paper-tiger armies. The Russians are a nuclear-armed global force, and the Ukrainian war is not something that Putin himself dreamed up yesterday. It surely enjoys substantial support within the Russian political and military establishment.

So, now that I’ve angered some of you: Nothing in the above is at all original; a lot of people (from John Mearsheimer to Noam Chomsky to a late 1990s Joe Biden) have made similar observations. I think there is little room for original thought, when it comes to the major events of global politics. Most of what is happening becomes obvious, as soon as you step outside the crazy media framing and observe things as they are.

1 – From Sieferle, Finis Germania (2017) p. 40–41. My translation.

March 8, 2022 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

US gives NATO countries ‘green light’ to provide fighter jets to Ukraine

RT | March 6, 2022

US Secretary of State Tony Blinken told CBS News on Sunday that Washington has given a “green light” to NATO members to supply Ukraine with fighter jets, and that the US would work to replace any jets sent to Kiev. Blinken spoke after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged US lawmakers to intervene in the ongoing conflict with Russia.

Asked whether NATO members could begin sending planes to Ukraine, Blinken said “that gets a green light.” The US’ top diplomat then said that Washington was already working with Polish officials to “backfill” any aircraft they send to Ukraine – meaning the US would replace every Polish aircraft given to Kiev with an American one.

Supporting the delivery of jets to Ukraine occupies a middle ground for the US between active intervention in Ukraine and purely economic retaliation against Moscow. The government in Kiev has made no secret of its desire for the US to intervene militarily, with President Zelensky urging American lawmakers on Saturday to enforce a “no-fly zone” over Ukraine. Such a measure would see the US and any willing NATO allies commit to shooting down Russian aircraft, something Moscow has explicitly said it would perceive as an act of war.

The US and NATO have ruled out a no-fly zone, and repeatedly stated that they would not send troops to Ukraine.

However, delivering fighter jets to the Ukrainians has not proven simple thus far. The European Union pledged warplanes to Ukraine late last month, but faced two significant hurdles: first finding jets that Ukrainian pilots could fly, and then finding countries willing to deliver them from their airports.

The Ukrainian Air Force uses Soviet-designed MiG-29 and Sukhoi Su-24, Su-25, and Su-27 jets in combat roles, and with the Su-25 used by Bulgaria and the MiG-29 used by Poland, Bulgaria and Slovakia, the jets would need to be sourced from these countries.

Shortly after the EU’s announcement, Poland stated that it wouldn’t send jets to Ukraine nor allow its airports to be used for deliveries. Bulgaria and Slovakia then stated that they wouldn’t take part in any deal, effectively killing off the EU’s arms supply plans.

However, Blinken’s statement on Sunday suggests that the plan may have been revived, but by the US and Poland rather than the EU. Blinken did not give any indication how soon Polish planes could be on their way to Ukraine, but said that discussions between Washington and Warsaw were “active.”

March 6, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Russia claims it obliterated Ukraine foreign weapons depot

RT | March 5, 2022

A long-range precision strike on a military depot in the Ukrainian city of Zhytomyr has destroyed a warehouse storing West-supplied weapons, the Russian Defense Ministry claimed in its latest update on Saturday.

The warehouse was located on a military base in the northwest of Ukraine, the spokesman for the ministry, Major General Igor Konashenkov, said. The site had been used to store the American and Anglo-Swedish Javelin and NLAW man-portable anti-tank systems shipped to Ukraine in the run-up to the ongoing crisis.

Konashenkov claimed the number of Ukrainian military infrastructure targets destroyed during the operation had now surpassed 2,000. Russian troops and the allied forces of the Lugansk and Donetsk People’s Republics, Ukraine’s breakaway provinces, which Russia recently recognized as independent states, have also made progress since the start of the conflict, he said.

The major general announced a temporary ceasefire for the cities of Mariupol and Volnovakha in the east, which will be in operation from 10am to 4pm local time. He said Russian and Ukrainian forces had agreed on establishing humanitarian corridors to allow civilians to evacuate from the two cities.

Russia invaded Ukraine nine days ago, citing the growing threat posed by NATO’s creeping expansion, and what it claimed was continued Ukrainian violence against the breakaway regions to justify its offensive. Western nations have condemned it as an unprovoked act of aggression and imposed harsh sanctions intended to cripple the Russian economy.

March 5, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Western anti-Russian agenda threatens UN’s existence

By Lucas Leiroz | March 4, 2022

Amid the abusive wave of sanctions against Russia due to the special operation in Ukraine, some specific rumors have caught the attention of experts, suggesting that there are plans on the part of the Western states to simply pressure to remove Russia’s permanent seat on the UN Security Council (UNSC). This kind of illegal maneuver is a real coup attempt and could lead to the end of the UN.

Apparently, an effort is under way to diplomatically isolate Moscow and even challenge Russia’s right to a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, alleging that Russia took the seat of the former Soviet Union in 1991 without proper authorization – which in fact is nothing more than a public “justification” to promote such an illegal maneuver.

Currently, there are reports circulating on several websites alleging that Western diplomats, mainly American and British, are starting a research work to investigate whether there is a legal possibility of removing Russia from its position on the UNSC within the current international documents. Obviously, this type of “research” is useless and there is no possibility of carrying out such a maneuver within the limits of public international law. In practice, when reporting that diplomats are investigating this kind of maneuver, it is only possible to conclude that they are somehow conspiring to carry out a coup against Moscow at the United Nations.

This absolutely absurd idea has become a common discourse in the Western media recently. This is due to the fact that the West has become furious with the Russian veto on the American resolution against the operation in Ukraine, voted on at the UNSC last week. Western political analysts began to say that “administrative reform” was needed at the UN to prevent “aggressor nations” from vetoing sanctions against themselves. Shortly thereafter, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelesnky, during one of his online speeches, claimed that Kiev “demands” Russian removal from the Council, strengthening Western discourse.

Quite unexpectedly, diplomats seem to have paid attention to this utterly unrealistic idea suggested by Zelensky and some ideologically fanatical analysts, initiating the current plan, in which Western officials plan to form a legal argument about the “illegitimacy” of the Russian presence on the Council. It is expected that some document will soon emerge containing various distortions and arbitrary interpretations of the norms of international law, just in order to justify the idea of removing Russia.

It is questionable whether the analysts and diplomats involved in this type of maneuver are taking into account all the consequences of this attitude. This irresponsible, illegal, rude and anti-diplomatic act could simply generate the biggest crisis in international relations since the Second World War, directly threatening the stability of global peace.

The very existence of the UN will lose its meaning without the Russian presence in its Security Council, considering the country’s military and nuclear importance. If that happens, the Russian attitude may simply be to abandon the UN, as it will have become a mere pro-Western international organization. China would certainly take the Russian side in this dispute as it would also have its interests affected by the coup in the Security Council. Russia and China would perhaps form a new organization together. And that would be the end of the UN as the regulator of world peace. The UN would have the same end of its predecessor league and this is something that everyone wants to avoid – except the Western officials who are planning the coup against Russia.

Obviously, administrative reform is needed at the UN and until a few days ago there was a consensus on the need to expand the Security Council’s permanent seats, including new emerging states of geopolitical relevance, such as India, Pakistan, Brazil, among others. Trying to reduce the Council is absurd considering that the world is increasingly multipolar. This would be a mere attempt on the part of NATO to carry out a global coup d’état, but instead of controlling the world, it would only bring about the end of the UN.

It is necessary that good sense prevails in the UN, in order for such an illogical project to be promptly rejected, so that the organization survives. The attempt to “cancel” Russia cannot go beyond the limits of international law. It is essential that the main world powers are on the Security Council and that the most important of them have veto power to prevent the interests of one side from prevailing over those of the other. It is this structure that guarantees world peace. It is necessary to increase the permanent seats, giving this right to new world powers, adapting the UN’s structure to the multipolar world. Any attempt to the contrary threatens the very existence of the organization.

Lucas Leiroz is a researcher in Social Sciences at the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant.

March 4, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

How JFK Would Have Handled the Ukraine Crisis

By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | March 3, 2022

There is no doubt that President Kennedy would have handled the Ukraine crisis totally different from the way that President Biden has handled it. Unlike Biden, Kennedy would have resolved the situation so that there never would have been a Russian invasion of Ukraine, which would have meant that all the death and suffering being wreaked in that country today would never have occurred.

Kennedy had a unique ability to step into the shoes of his adversary to determine why he was taking a particular position or course of action. In the case of Ukraine, he would have easily realized that all that Russia wanted was a guarantee that Ukraine would not be admitted into NATO. He would have understood Russia’s reasoning that admitting Ukraine into NATO would have entitled the Pentagon and the CIA to install their bases, missiles, weaponry, tanks, and troops along Russia’s border. He would have understood why Russia would find that unacceptable.

Therefore, Kennedy would simply have issued the guarantee that Ukraine would never be admitted into NATO. He would have concluded that that would be a preferable outcome compared to a Russian invasion of Ukraine, which he would have known would have entailed massive death and destruction of innocent people. He also would have known that there would be a grave risk that such a war could turn into a nuclear conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union. He would not have believed that such a risk would be worth taking. In his mind, it would have been much more preferable to simply issue the guarantee, no matter how much pressure he would have been getting from the Pentagon and the CIA to do the opposite.

How do we know that this would have been how Kennedy would have resolved the crisis? Because that’s how he resolved the Cuban Missile Crisis.

After the debacle of the CIA’s invasion at the Bay of Pigs, the Pentagon and the CIA were constantly exhorting Kennedy to initiate a full-scale military invasion of Cuba. They maintained that the communist regime in Cuba posed a grave threat to “national security.” The Pentagon even presented him with a plan called Operation Northwoods, which was false-flag operation designed to give Kennedy a pretext for ordering an invasion of Cuba.

The Cubans knew that the Pentagon and the CIA were hell-bent on invading the island and effecting regime change. Thus, once Kennedy discovered that the Soviets had installed nuclear missiles in Cuba, he began trying to figure out why they would do that. He concluded that the missiles were intended to deter a U.S. invasion of Cuba or, in the case of an invasion, to enable the Cuban regime to defend itself. He also learned that the Soviets were chagrinned that the Pentagon had installed nuclear missiles in Turkey pointed at the Soviet Union.

Thus, to resolve the crisis, Kennedy simply issued a double guarantee to the Soviets. He guaranteed that the U.S. would not invade Cuba and he guaranteed the removal of the Pentagon’s missiles in Turkey. In return for that double guarantee, the Soviets removed their missiles from Cuba and took them home. The crisis was over.

Needless to say, the Pentagon and the CIA were livid. They looked on Kennedy as an incompetent coward who had guaranteed the permanent existence of a grave threat to national security. One member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff compared Kennedy’s actions during the crisis to those of Neville Chamberlin’s appeasement of Hitler at Munich. He called Kennedy’s resolution of the crisis the biggest defeat in U.S. history.

By that time, Kennedy didn’t care what the Pentagon and the CIA thought because he held the entire military-intelligence establishment in deep disdain. Unlike Biden, he was willing to confront and oppose the fierce anti-Soviet and anti-Russian animus that characterized the national-security establishment. In fact, in his Peace Speech at American University the following year, he effectively announced an end to the Cold War and the establishment of a peaceful and friendly relationship with the Soviet Union.

Unfortunately, unlike Kennedy, Biden lacks the intestinal fortitude to oppose the fierce anti-Russia animus that still characterizes the U.S. military-intelligence establishment. As we have seen in the Ukraine crisis, Joe Biden is no John Kennedy.

March 3, 2022 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Military lab changed mission statement after report questioned value of its work

A BSL-4 lab at Fort Detrick is shown. (Courtesy of: the Office of the Maryland Governor)
By Emily Kopp | US Right To Know | March 1, 2022

The Army’s premier biolab changed its mission statement after a 2014 report by high-ranking officials concluded its work has become less useful since its Cold War heyday and no longer delivers medical products for service members.

The report, which had not been previously released, was obtained through a state public records request by U.S. Right to Know.

The challenges at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, or USAMRIID, come to light at a time of fierce debate about the degree to which research on novel pathogens contributes tangible benefits. Scientists with different theories about the COVID-19 pandemic’s origins have been tangled in arguments over whether certain work on dangerous pathogens can help predict pandemics or poses unacceptable risks.

Located 50 miles outside of Washington at Fort Detrick, USAMRIID was once charged with responding to the Soviet Union’s biological weapons program, but stopped developing bioweapons in 1969. It now conducts research on biological threats including Ebola, Zika, anthrax and plague, and conducts research for universities and private companies. It employs about 900 military, civilian and contract researchers.

The global biological threat landscape has changed due to gain-of-function technology, the limited capacity of the intelligence community to identify biological threats, and the proliferation of “dual use” research programs that generate pathogens that could be harmful in the wrong hands, the report states.

USAMRIID has in recent years suffered many troubles, including biosafety breaches, a shut down of its high security work, and accusations from Department of Defense leadership of wasting taxpayer funds.

The report by government experts, including former USAMRIID Commander David Franz, describes an agency adrift as America’s first biodefense research facility struggled to deliver on the promises in its mission statement.

The report concludes that the lab’s work may not always generate medical advances, and should not be expected to in the eyes of its funders in Washington.

“The emphasis on products to the warfighter has become less relevant,” the report reads. “Because prophylaxis for ‘biological agents’ (traditional vaccines) requires great specificity and a period of at least weeks before protection is achieved, the era of vaccines for the force, one of USARMIID’s greatest historic strengths, is essentially over.”

The experts behind the report recommended changing the mission of the military lab away from generating vaccines and drugs.

It appears USAMRIID’s leaders listened.

By Jan. 2015 – several months after study’s authors had convened in June 2014 – the vision of the lab had changed on its website from “right product, right time for the Warfighter” to a more general statement about leadership in medical biological defense, according to changes accessed via the WayBack Machine.

“To be the leader in the advancement of medical biological defense with world renowned experts dedicated to protecting our military forces and the nation,” USAMRIID’s vision statement now reads.

In the years since USAMRIID’s 2014 consultants fought to prove its importance to the Pentagon, the lab has faced allegations of “financial mismanagement,” according to a Defense Department letter reported by CQ Roll Call.

Other problems

USAMRIID is one of two facilities at Fort Detrick with laboratories designed to handle the most dangerous pathogens in the world, so-called BSL-4 labs. There are 14 BSL-4 labs in North America.

These labs have come under greater scrutiny amid concerns by Republicans and some independent biosecurity experts that the COVID-19 pandemic may have arisen from a lab accident in China.

USAMRIID has not developed a COVID-19 vaccine candidate, though the lab has tested COVID-19 vaccines in the pre-clinical trial stage, according to Caree Vander Linden, public affairs officer at USAMRIID.

Vander Linden also provided U.S. Right to Know with a spreadsheet of 43 scientific papers produced by the lab about COVID-19. For example, the lab recently announced engineering hamsters to increase their expression of the human ACE2 receptor — a key protein used by SARS-CoV-2 to enter airway cells — to enable the study of more severe disease. Remdesivir, the first therapeutic with approval from the Food and Drug Administration to treat COVID-19, was also developed with the help of USAMRIID.

Vander Linden did not respond to questions about the report and the change of the USAMRIID mission statement. Franz did not respond to requests for comment.

Morale has plummeted since the deadly release of anthrax from the lab in 2001, the 2014 report suggests. That has been worsened by the expansion of work on biorisks at other labs. Now USAMRIID struggles to retain talent. Much of the work at USAMRIID is that of a contract research organization performing tasks for the private sector.

“The concept that USAMRIID is more of an ‘insurance policy’ to deal with the unknown and unexpected than a ‘factory’ to produce medical ‘things’ for the soldier should be understood by all,” it states.

The report criticizes the biosafety regulations at the Fort Detrick lab, saying the routine presence of inspectors is a distraction.

“The heavy regulatory burden … and oversight following the 9-11 attacks and the anthrax letters has diverted both funding and human resources from the research mission,” the report states.

Yet in the years since, serious safety breaches have occurred at USAMRIID. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention flagged failures to “implement and maintain containment procedures sufficient to contain select agents or toxins” in biosafety level 3 and 4 laboratories, the Frederick News-Post reported, culminating in a shutdown of USAMRIID’s two top security labs and a suspension of its registration with the Federal Select Agent Program.

Though work resumed in November 2019, the lab’s Defense Department funding remained frozen until April 2020.

Both the Biden and Trump administrations have sought cuts to USAMRIID. But members of the Maryland congressional delegation have fought to maintain funding levels.

Congress appropriated $130 million for the expansion of USAMRIID in fiscal 2021.

Unpredictable threats

While USAMRIID once focused on responding to the Soviet Union, new biological threats are more diverse and harder to nail down, according to the report.

“The intelligence community is limited in its ability to identify specific threats,” the report states.

This unpredictability is due in part to so-called “gain-of-function” research, a term used to describe research that can make pathogens more virulent or transmissible.

“Threat agents … might include traditional ones to those that blur the line between chemistry and biology or even those modified through ‘gain of function’ techniques,” the report reads.

Potentially dangerous biological research is now characterized by “small footprint, dual-use offensive capabilities that might be found in a few large and medium nation states,” according to the report.

Two of the 2014 report’s authors – Franz and former director of the National Science Foundation Rita Colwell – have connections to EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit under investigation for its gain-of-function work on coronaviruses with the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Colwell is on the board of directors, while Franz was a booster of the organization, according to a 2019 social media post.

Other consultants who coauthored the report include former secretary of the Navy Richard Danzig; former deputy commander-in-chief of United States Strategic Command Robert Hinson; former director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority Carol Linden; and former chief of staff of the U.S. Army Dennis J. Reimer; executive director of the Maryland Biotechnology Center Judy Britz; distinguished research fellow at National Defense University Seth Carus; Harvard professor of biologically inspired engineering David Walt; and NIH researcher Richard Whitley.

March 3, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Why did the US embassy official website just REMOVE all evidence of Ukrainian bioweapons labs?

By Lance D Johnson | Natural News | March 2, 2022

The official US embassy website recently REMOVED all evidence of bio-labs in Ukraine. These bio-labs are funded and jointly operated by the US Department of Defense (DOD). The laboratory documents were public knowledge up until February 25, 2022. These documents include important construction, financing and permit details for bioweapon laboratories in Ukraine. But now the US government is scrubbing these documents from the internet and becoming less transparent with this critical information. This comes at a time when the world population is waking up to the reality of gain-of-function bioweapons research, lab leaks and predatory vaccine and diagnostics development. These bio-labs generate pathogens of pandemic potential that exploit human immune systems and are the foundation for which medical fraud, malpractice, vaccine-induced death and genocide originates.

Could the existence of these bioweapons’ labs have something to do with Russia’s “special military mission?” For years, Russia has accused the US of developing bioweapons near its borders. Are the Russians currently gathering evidence from these labs? What is the current status of these facilities? What if Russia was not conducting an imperialist invasion and occupation of Ukraine — a reality that has been propagated by Western media outlets? What if Russia was instead targeting international crime syndicates and going after criminal elements in the Ukrainian government that have harmed the Ukrainian people and others around the world?

The U.S. erected a vast network of bio-labs in Ukraine and is scrubbing details from the net

The US DOD funded at least 15 different bio-labs in Ukraine. These are not Chinese or Russian bio-labs. At least eight of these are bioweapons labs are operated exclusively by the US. These laboratories “consolidate and secure pathogens and toxins of security concern” to conduct “enhanced bio-security, bio-safety, and bio-surveillance measures” through “international research partnerships.” Each facility costs the US taxpayers anywhere from $1.8 to over $3 million. The DOD facilitated the permit process to allow Ukrainian scientists to work with pathogens of pandemic potential.

The US DOD works directly with Ukraine’s Ministry of Health, State Service of Ukraine for Food Safety and Consumer Protection, the National Academy of Agrarian Sciences and the Ministry of Defense. This network of bio-labs includes facilities in Odessa, Vinnytsia, Uzhgorod, Lviv, Kiev, Kherson, Ternopil, Crimea, Luhansk and two suspect facilities in Kharkiv and Mykolaiv.

In recent years, many of these labs have reached Bio-safety Level 2 status, allowing scientists to experiment with viruses and bacteria. Over the past two years, these laboratories, in cooperation with the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, erected four more mobile laboratories to conduct epidemiological surveillance of the Ukrainian people. These laboratories are part of a multi-national working group that creates disease surveillance networks that “strengthen global health security.”

Up until February 25, 2022, the existence and details of these bioweapons labs were public knowledge. The US embassy had previously disclosed the locations and details of these laboratories in a series of PDF files online. On February 26, 2022, the official embassy website shut down the links to all 15 bioweapon laboratories. All the documents associated with these labs have been removed from the internet. If you click on any of the links, the PDF files are no longer available. Thankfully, these files have been archived and can still be accessed. What is the US embassy trying to hide?

March 3, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

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