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Ecuador: Galapagos Islands Will Now Serve US Military as Airfield

teleSUR | June 12, 2019

Ecuador’s right-wing government has agreed for the United States (U.S.) to use the airport of San Cristobal, in the Galapagos Islands, as an airfield for U.S. air force and navy Pacific ocean operations, according to the Minister of Defense Oswaldo Jarrin.

“Galapagos is Ecuador’s natural aircraft carrier because it ensures permanence, replenishment, interception facilities and is 1,000 kilometers from our coasts,” he assured, explaining that now U.S. military planes will also have access to it based on “cooperation” agreements signed under Lenin Moreno’s administration to “fight drug trafficking.”

On September 2018, a Lockheed P-3 Orion intelligence-gathering plane from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency began to operate from Ecuador. While a Boeing 707 aircraft from the U.S. air force, carrying a long-range radar surveillance and control center (AWAC), will now also be “patrolling” the Pacific. Both operations are reminiscent of those made by the U.S. government from the Base in Manta from 1999 to 2009.

“A base means permanence, there will be no permanence of anyone, the P3 and Awac will meet periods no longer than a week,” Jarrin argued. Yet he himself said on Aug. 27, 2018, that “the important thing is to recognize that everything that the base did in its time, can now be done by just one plane, because of the advance of technology.”

Despite the technicalities of such “cooperation” any presence of foreign armies in Ecuadorean territory is unconstitutional. According to article five of the 2008 Constitution, Ecuador declares itself as a territory of peace, where “the establishment of foreign military bases or foreign installations for military purposes will not be allowed. In addition, it is prohibited to cede national military bases to foreign armed or security forces.”

No, Mr. Minister. Galapagos is not an “aircraft carrier” for the gringos to use. It is an Ecuadorean province, world heritage, patriotic ground.

In what seems like an attempt to appease critics, the defense official, emphasized that the readjustments to the airfield will be paid by the U.S. Yet once again history warns that this is no sort of “assurance.”

In 1942, as the U.S. was just entering World War II both in the Pacific as the western front, another right-wing government in Ecuador allowed the U.S. army and navy to use the Island of Baltra, in the Galapagos, as an airfield. An airstrip was constructed, houses, barracks, movie theaters and dining halls for the armed personnel and families, all paid by the U.S.

However, in 1946 as the U.S. left they bombed and destroyed everything leaving nothing behind for the Ecuadorans.

June 15, 2019 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

‘We need points!’ US must invade Venezuela to scare Iran & N. Korea, Graham claims

RT | June 15, 2019

Sen. Lindsey Graham has suggested President Trump “put military force on the table” by invading Venezuela (and possibly Cuba) in order to scare North Korea and Iran into doing what they’re told. What could possibly go wrong?

“Give Cuba an ultimatum – without Cuba, Maduro doesn’t last one day – tell Cuba to get out of Venezuela. Do what Reagan did in Grenada – put military force on the table!” Graham told a Fox News host, going from zero to invasion in ten seconds flat in response to a question about how Trump should handle his foreign conflicts.

“We need points on the board,” the South Carolina senator insisted. “Start with your own backyard… Fix Venezuela and everybody else will know you’re serious.” North Korea and Iran, he implied, would fall right into line after Venezuela was put in its place.

While Graham paid lip service to the president’s non-military accomplishments, reluctantly congratulating him on slowing down North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, his advice didn’t include much by way of diplomacy: “When it comes to Rocketman, letters don’t matter anymore to me, it’s performance.” Graham notably called for Trump to “end the nuclear threat” mere hours after the president’s Hanoi summit with the North Korean leader collapsed.

Graham’s Monroe-doctrine-on-steroids patter isn’t exactly unfamiliar to those who’ve been following his bellicose ravings – the Republican senator dropped a Grenada reference just last month as Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro prepared to meet his US-backed would-be replacement Juan Guaido in Oslo for negotiations, perhaps seeing his chance for a war in South America slipping away.

It’s easy to see why Graham would take such a fond view of Reagan’s bullheaded 1983 Grenada invasion. While it was universally condemned – the UN deemed it a “flagrant violation of international law” by a vote of 108 to 9, and even UK PM Margaret Thatcher privately disapproved (though she backed her ally in public) – Americans supported the invasion, having been convinced via a well-orchestrated propaganda campaign that a few hundred American medical students on the island were in mortal danger under the island’s new government.

Reagan hoped the neat and tidy four-day invasion would shore up Americans’ faith in their own military, which had been on a steady downhill slide since Vietnam, and Graham appears to believe the US would similarly receive a morale boost from Venezuela, despite the obvious differences in population and military power.

June 15, 2019 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Iran’s supreme leader ‘has no intention’ to make or use nuclear weapons – Japan’s PM

RT | June 13, 2019

Tehran has no intention of making or using nuclear weapons, Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said, according to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

“Supreme Leader Khamenei made a comment that the country will not and should not make, hold or use nuclear weapons, and that it has no such intentions,” Abe told reporters in Tehran on Thursday following his meeting with Khamenei.

The previous day, Abe called on Iran to play a constructive role in securing peace and stability in the Middle East, saying that Tokyo is determined to do everything it can to help, Reuters reported.

June 13, 2019 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Pence Goes to War: America Will Be Fighting Forever

By Philip Giraldi | Strategic Culture Foundation | June 13, 2019

On May 25th Vice President Mike Pence was the featured speaker at the United States Military Academy commencement. His speech was predictably an encomium celebrating both the diversity and the success of the newly commissioned officers as well as of the system at West Point that had produced them, but it also included interesting insights into how he and the other non-veterans who dominate the policy making in the White House see the military.

Most media commentary on the speech was either shocked or pleasantly surprised by Pence’s prediction that the graduating officers would soon be at war. He said “It is a virtual certainty that you will fight on a battlefield for America at some point in your life. You will lead soldiers in combat. It will happen. Some of you will join the fight against radical Islamic terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq. Some of you will join the fight on the Korean Peninsula and in the Indo-Pacific, where North Korea continues to threaten the peace, and an increasingly militarized China challenges our presence in the region. Some of you will join the fight in Europe, where an aggressive Russia seeks to redraw international boundaries by force. And some of you may even be called upon to serve in this hemisphere. And when that day comes, I know you will move to the sound of the guns and do your duty, and you will fight, and you will win. The American people expect nothing less. So, wherever you’re called, I urge you to take what you learned here and put it into practice. Put your armor on, so that when — not if — that day comes, you’ll be able to stand your ground.”

Pence may or may not have known that military academy graduates have only a five-year active duty commitment after graduation. Many do not stay in the service after that point, instead using their security clearances and resumes to obtain well paying positions with defense and national security contractors. If Pence was aware of that five-year window, he was implying that he expects multiple wars will involve the United States during his own remaining time in office, assuming that he and President Donald Trump are reelected in 2020. He might even be assuming that war is inevitable no matter who is in the driver’s seat in the White House because America’s numerous enemies, which he identified, cannot otherwise be dissuaded from their “nefarious behavior.”

Pence’s choice of words is revealing. There is a “virtual certainty” of “fight[ing] on a battlefield for America” and that battlefield is global, including both transnational Islamic terrorism and the western hemisphere. The language implies that American security requires “full spectrum dominance” everywhere. It encompasses traditional national enemies, with a Pyongyang that “threatens peace,” a China that is “militarized,” and a Russia that is both “aggressive” and expansionistic. The soldiers must be prepared to fight “when – not if – that day comes.”

First of all, it is discouraging to note that Pence believes that a war or wars must take place, and further, one must have to wonder exactly what scenarios are envisioned by Pence, and also presumably by his boss and colleagues, regarding precisely how war against other nuclear powers will play out. Nor does he entertain what would happen when the rest of the world begins to perceive the United States at its enemy due to its willingness to interfere in everyone’s politics. And the American soldiers would die not knowing what they were fighting for, since they would understand from the onset that it had nothing to do with the defense of the United States.

The speech is, in short, a recognition that the Trump Administration sees perpetual war on the horizon, a viewpoint that is particularly alarming as one can quite easily make the case that the United States is not seriously threatened at all by anyone on Pence’s enemies list and is therefore the aggressor. China is a regional power, Russia does not have the resources or will to reestablish the Soviet Union, and North Korea has only limited capability to attack anyone, even if it should choose to do so. Islamic terrorism is largely a creation of the United States in the first place and maintains its potency by the adverse impact of the continued US presence in Muslim lands. And the suggestion that Venezuela and/or Cuba might be a threat to America is, quite frankly, laughable.

If Mike Pence is seriously interested in looking around to see who has been most interested in starting new wars, he should look to gentlemen named Bush and Obama, not to mention his own colleagues John Bolton and Mike Pompeo. And then there are Washington’s feckless allies Israel and Saudi Arabia, who are keen to advance their own interests by means of piles of dead American soldiers.

Is there no one around to question why exactly American soldiers are sent to die in so many places that can hardly be found on a map? Or to ask what the compelling national interests might be to require sending soldiers to such God-forsaken death pits? One can be sure that the newly minted Army officers that Pence addressed have no desire to be killed in Mali, but it would take a brave young man or woman to speak the truth if asked by a senior officer.

And Pence unfortunately has many friends who believe in force majeure as he does on Capitol Hill. Senator Lindsey Graham appeared on Fox News Sunday the day after the Vice President spoke and said “I would give Cuba an ultimatum to get out of Venezuela. If they don’t, I would let the Venezuelan military know, you got to choose between democracy and Maduro, and if you choose Maduro and Cuba, we are coming after you. This is in our backyard.”

It should be clearly understood Pence, Graham and Pompeo are all calling for wars of choice, where the military is being used as an option rather than diplomacy in a situation where there is no imminent threat. Iraq, Syria and Libya are examples of such wars and all three have turned out very badly. And then there is the moral dimension. By the standard set by the Nuremberg Trials after World War 2, initiating an armed conflict in that fashion is a war crime. Indeed, it is the ultimate war crime as it brings so many evils with it. Mike Pence’s vision of America the perpetual war criminal is not something to be proud of.

June 13, 2019 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | | Leave a comment

Bolton’s Long Goodbye

By John Kiriakou • Consortium News • June 12, 2019

John Bolton’s days as national security advisor are apparently numbered—for reasons that have all played out in the press, says John Kiriakou.

Everybody in America knows that Donald Trump places a premium on what he considers to be “loyalty.” You’re either with him or against him. The White House staff has been a revolving door from virtually the start of his administration. It’s not unusual for aides to last mere weeks or months, only to then be thrown out on the street.

Trump then inevitably says something about “loyalty.”

The situation isn’t unique to just the White House political and domestic policy staff. It is just as pervasive at the National Security Council. Nobody is sacred. Remember, you’re either with him or against him. Now it’s John Bolton’s turn to find himself in a corner. I believe that his days as national security advisor are numbered—for reasons that have all played out in the press.

I’m one of those people—not at all unique in Washington—who has contacts and friends all over the political spectrum, including in the Trump Administration. After work and over drinks, they like to vent. What they are telling me privately is what other Washington insiders are telling the conservative press. The White House, and especially the National Security Council, are in disarray. And Bolton will soon be fired.

Bolton-Centric

The right-wing Washington Examiner reported this week that Bolton acknowledged these reports, but in a back-handed way. He said in a Wall Street Journal podcast that he believes five countries are spreading “lies about dysfunction in the Trump administration.” Those countries are North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, Russia, and China. That’s laughable.

What Bolton is saying is that there is a vast and incredibly well-coordinated international conspiracy that includes some of the most important countries in the world, the main purpose of which is to embarrass him. That sounds perfectly rational, right?

Of course, a more rational person might conclude that Bolton has done a terrible job, that the people around him have done a terrible job, that he has aired his disagreements with Trump in the media, and that the President is angry about it. That’s the more likely scenario.

Here’s what my friends are saying. Trump is concerned, like any president is near the end of his term, about his legacy. He said during the campaign that he wanted to be the president who pulled the country out of its two longest wars. He wanted to declare victory and bring the troops back from Afghanistan and Iraq. He hasn’t done that, largely at the insistence of Bolton. Here we are three years later and we’re still stuck in both of those countries.

Second, my friends say that Trump wants to end U.S. involvement in the Yemen war, but that Bolton has been insistent that the only way to guarantee the closeness of the U.S. relationships with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates is to keep providing those countries with weapons, aerial refueling planes, and intelligence support.

Obsessed With Iran

That would explain the reason why the White House did not seek to block the recent Congressional vote on Yemen support. Bolton likely talked Trump into vetoing the resolution. Or he talked the Saudis into talking Trump into it. Still, at least in internal deliberations, Trump has said that he simply doesn’t see a national security reason to keep the war going. The U.S. gets nothing out of it.

Third, the mainstream media has accused Bolton of being the reason behind the failure of Trump’s second summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Bolton towed a hard line, so much so that the North Korean media called him a “war monger” and a “human defect” once the summit ended.

This week Trump told reporters gathered on the White House south lawn that Kim had “kept his word” on nuclear and missile testing. This was a direct contradiction of Bolton, who had said just hours earlier that the North Koreans had reneged on their commitments to the U.S. Trump said simply, “My people think there could have been a violation. I view it differently.”

Most importantly, Bolton has been famous for decades for his irrationally hard line on Iran. He has made no secret of his desire to bomb Iran into the stone age, to smash and overthrow its government, and to let the chips fall where they may. The policy makes literally no sense.

Iran is a country of 80 million people. It has an active and well-trained global intelligence service. It has a robust navy with highly-specialized “swift boats” that are active in the Persian Gulf. And it controls the vital Strait of Hormuz, through which 20 percent of the world’s oil and 33 percent of its liquified natural gas flows.

Trump said just a week ago that he was willing to begin talks with the Iranians “with no preconditions.” This was a major softening of U.S. policy toward Iran and it immediately drew Bolton’s ire. Indeed, The New York Times pointed out that the policy directly “overruled a longtime goal of (Trump’s) national security advisor.”

All of this has made Trump angry. He’s constantly being one-upped by one of the Washington swamp monsters he promised to rid the city of. He finally seems to have come to realize that even establishment Republicans dislike and distrust John Bolton. And now he understands why.

Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s chief of staff, has very quietly and discreetly begun informal meetings with a list of a half-dozen possible replacements for Bolton. Let’s hope he finds one that he and Trump both like sooner, rather than later.

John Kiriakou is a former CIA counterterrorism officer and a former senior investigator with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. John became the sixth whistleblower indicted by the Obama administration under the Espionage Act—a law designed to punish spies. He served 23 months in prison as a result of his attempts to oppose the Bush administration’s torture program.

June 12, 2019 Posted by | Militarism | | Leave a comment

Carey Wedler on Tulsi Gabbard’s Hope and Change

Corbett • 06/11/2019

Yay! Another politician seems to hold a correct opinion on an important policy issue. Time to give up on those silly anarchist ideals and vote for the CFR member who’s right about one thing (and wrong about a lot of things), right guys? Well, maybe not. Joining me today to discuss the important issue of Hope And Change 2.0 is Carey Wedler of The Anti-Media.

SHOW NOTES:
Interview 1249 – Carey Wedler on How Government $ach$ Won The (s)Election

Why do Democrats & the mainstream media hate this veteran & presidential candidate?

Tulsi on The War on Syria

Tulsi voted to fund the DoD war machine

Vote Tulsi for Sensible Gun Control!

Tulsi will protect Medicare and Social Security!

Wedler: Why I’m burning my last bridge with Obama

The Anti-Media

Carey Wedler on Steemit

Watch this video on BitChute / DTube / YouTube or Download the mp4

June 11, 2019 Posted by | Militarism | | Leave a comment

US Coastguard Ships Sent Over 8,000 km From Own Shores to South China Sea for ‘Law Enforcement’

Sputnik – June 11, 2019

The US Coast Guard has deployed two cutter vessels, the USCGC Bertholf and the USCGC Stratton, with the US Seventh Fleet in Yokosuka, Japan to help challenge China’s claims over wide swaths of the South China Sea, Coast Guard Pacific Area commander Vice-Admiral Linda Fagan has said.

Speaking at a press call on Tuesday morning, Fagan indicated that the vessels were being sent to the region to assist with “law enforcement and capacity-building in the fisheries enforcement realm.”

Earlier this year, the USCGC Bertholf took part in one of the US Navy’s regular demonstrative transit sails through the Taiwan Strait in March, with China criticising that effort and saying it served only to strain China-US relations.

Last month, the Bertholf also joined two Philippine coast guard vessels for “maritime security” training operations in the South China Sea, with the drills taking place near a shoal area contested by both Beijing and Manila.According to Vice-Admiral Fagan, the Coast Guard’s mission in the region is to support its local partners. “We are very much interested in engaging with partner nations in using our authorities and capacity building in a way that is helpful,” she stressed.

Earlier this month, Chinese Defence Minister Wei Fenghe accused Washington of deliberately escalating tensions in the South China Sea, accusing ‘countries from outside’ of coming in “to flex muscles, in the name of freedom of navigation.”

“The large-scale force projection and offensive operations in the region are the most serious destabilising and uncertain factors in the South China Sea,” the defence minister said.

Formally charged with ensuring coastal defence and maritime security near America’s shores, the US Coast Guard has been regularly deployed abroad since the days of the Cold War, and has engaged in security and anti-piracy, search and rescue and other missions around the globe since then. The two Coast Guard vessels’ deployment to the South China Sea takes the ships over 8,000 km southwest of the westernmost US island in the Bering Sea, north of the Pacific Ocean.

China controls the vast majority of islands, reefs, and shoals in the South China Sea, and has regularly expressed concerns about the deployment of US vessels in the area. Along with China, portions of the strategic sea zone are claimed by the Philippines, Vietnam and Malaysia, as well as Taiwan, an island nation which Beijing considers part of its territory.The South China Sea is a major strategic passageway, with over $5 trillion worth of maritime cargo, including much of China’s Middle Eastern oil supplies, passing through the area each year. Much of the sea territory is also rich with fishing stocks and energy resources.

June 11, 2019 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

What Comes After Trump – World War III?

By Federico Pieraccini | Strategic Culture Foundation | June 11, 2019

Those who are familiar with my articles would be aware that I am not given to catastrophism or alarmism. But perhaps the time has come to reflect on who will be president after Trump (whether after this or the next term) and what this will mean for relations with Russia and China.

What will the United States’ relations with Russia and China be like when the 46th president of the United States takes office in 2025? This is a question that I often ask myself, especially in light of Trump’s political choices regarding international arms-control treaties (INF Treaty), nuclear proliferation, economic war with China, a financial crisis that is artificially postponed thanks to QE, out-of-control military spending, an increasingly aggressive NATO stance towards the Russian Federation, and continuous provocations against the People’s Republic of China. Where will we end up with after another five years of provocations? For how much longer will Putin and Xi Jinping maintain the “strategic patience” not to respond to Washington with drastic measures?

Let us imagine we are in 2025

The four current global hot spots – Iran, Syria, Venezuela and DPRK – have maintained their resistance to Washington’s diktats and have emerged more or less victorious. Syrian territory in its entirety is now under the control of Damascus; Iran has established enough deterrents not to be attacked; Pyongyang continues in its negotiations with Washington as the reunification of the two Koreas continues along; the Bolivarian revolution still lives on in Venezuela.

Putin is preparing to leave the Russian Federation as president after 25 years. Xi Jinping could see his mandate expire in a few more years. Washington is about to appoint a new president, who in all probability will be the opposite of Trump, in the same way Obama was the opposite of Bush and Trump a reaction to Obama.

So let us imagine someone emerging in the Democratic Party completely committed to advancing the view of the US deep state and the military-industrial complex – someone like Hillary Clinton, Madeleine Albright or any of the 2019 Democratic candidates for the 2020 elections (the ones with anything to commend them do not count). Such a person would be committed to reinvigorating the idea of American exceptionalism following eight years of a Trump presidency that has mostly focused (the neocons notwithstanding) on domestic issues and the policy of “America First”.

Now let us think about what has been, and will be, dismantled internationally by Trump during his presidency, namely: the suspension of the INF Treaty and an indication not to extend the New START treaty (on nuclear-arms reduction), deployment of troops on the Russian border in Europe, sanctions, tariffs and economic terrorism of all kinds.

Ask yourself how likely it is that the next US president will want and be able to improve relations with Russia and China as well as accept a multipolar world order? The answer to that is zero, with the Trump presidency only serving to remind us how every administration remains under the control of the military, industrial, spy and media apparatus, expressed in liberal and neocon ideologies.

Trump has increased military spending considerably, singing the praises of the military-industrial complex and promising to modernize the country’s nuclear arsenal. Such a modernization would take two decades to be completed, a detail always omitted by the media. For Trump it is a case of “America First”. For the deep state the project is long term and ought to be far more alarming for the global community.

Russia, China and the US all appear committed to further militarization, with Russia and China strongly focussing on defending their strategic interests in the face of US aggression. Beijing will focus on building a large number of aircraft carriers to defend her maritime borders, while Moscow seeks to seal her skies against missiles and stealthy aircraft (a land campaign against Russia, as history teaches us, has little chance of success).

Experts predict that any great-power conflict in the near future may consist exclusively of conventional and/or nuclear missiles, combined with robotic technology, drones, artificial intelligence, cyber warfare, A2/AD, hypersonic weapons and sabotage. In addition to nuclear weapons, the platforms from which they are launched, missiles and interceptors, a country’s computational power will be decisive, with quantum computers already a reality in China.

The US, China and Russia will no longer have any restrictions on the production of nuclear weapons after (absent any new negotiations or agreements to extend it) the New START treaty expires in 2025. The situation regarding cyberspace and near-earth space is certainly alarming, with no explicit treaties between the great powers being in place. The few agreements in force are routinely violated, especially with regard to near-earth vehicles, as Subrata Ghoshroy informs us when discussing the US X-37B military vehicle: ‘Backdoor weaponization of space?‘:

“Discussions about how to prevent an arms race in space started long ago; the UN Conference on Disarmament even started negotiations on a treaty, but the United States prevented it from going any further. And at the 2008 Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, China and Russia introduced an actual space arms control treaty, popularly known as the Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space treaty (PAROS Treaty, 2012)”

Adding to this alarming situation is the growing US commitment to the doctrine of a preventive nuclear first strike. One wonders how much longer the world will be able to prevent itself from being bombed back to the Stone Age.

I wrote an article in 2016 dismissing the possibility of a nuclear war as absurd and impossible. But while a lot has changed in the meantime, my opinion has not. Nevertheless, I struggle to understand how such an eventuality can be avoided when the US remains on a collision course with China and Russia.

Trump appears unwilling to go down in history as the president responsible for kicking off nuclear Armageddon. But what about the next president? The deep state in control of US politics would surely be able to place into office someone who would advance the final justification for a headlong confrontation with Moscow and Beijing.

If you think I am exaggerating, take Pompeo, a representative of the deep state, and his recent answer to the question of whether Trump was sent by God to save Israel from Iran. “As a Christian, I certainly believe that’s possible”, he responded. If the US elects someone influenced by the messianic vision of American exceptionalism, a vision that refuses to accept the realpolitik of multiple geopolitical poles and great-power competition, then hang on to your hats, for the chances of a nuclear winter will increase dramatically. Just remember that the alternative to Trump was Hillary Clinton, who was calling for a no-fly zone in Syria – that is, for the possibility of the US shooting down Russian fighter jets!

What would be needed if faced with such a presidency is a healthy, grass-roots internal opposition throughout Europe and the US. As things stand now, there is no longer an anti-war movement, the public disoriented by the mainstream media feeding them a constant stream of lies, misinformation and propaganda. Assange is unjustly imprisoned and Yemeni civilians are continuously bombed, and yet the media tells us that Julian works for the Kremlin, that Moscow wants to destabilize and destroy Europe, that China intends to subjugate the whole world, that Kim Jong-un is seeking the nuclearization of half of Asia, that Assad has massacred hundreds of thousands of civilians, that Saudi Arabia is a country undergoing full reform, and that al-Qaeda is fighting for freedom in Syria!

In such a current situation, truth is malleable, able to be fashioned and shaped according to the needs and requirements of the military-industrial complex, which needs justifications for its endless wars. The situation can only get worse over the next six years, with citizens less and less able to understand the world around them. The further advances in technology will only help governments and corporations to control information and decide what is right and wrong in a process of mass lobotomization. The Internet will hardly continue to be free, and even if it were to continue in its current state, the ability to offer counter-narratives will be limited by a lack of advertising revenue to expand businesses and reach more people for independent media platforms.

To avoid the possibility of nuclear annihilation we have to rely on the cool heads and leadership qualities of those who will succeed Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping (it is unclear when Xi Jinping will leave office).

Only those who assiduously keep themselves informed are able to appreciate the forbearance that the Sino-Russian leadership has and will continue to have in the face of continuing US provocations.

But what will happen when these two even-tempered leaders are no longer in power while the means to inflict a devastating blow to the US remain available to their successors? Will the same forbearance remain in the face of ongoing US provocations?

Moscow will be deploying all sorts of hypersonic weapons that the US cannot intercept, together with a hundred state-of-the-art Su-57 fighters. China will have about six to seven aircraft carriers, escorted by numerous destroyers, each with 112 vertical launch system (VLS) cells, hypersonic missiles, anti-satellite and electromagnetic weapons.

The S-500 systems will be scattered throughout Russia (and presumably also in China and Belarus), armed with hypersonic interceptors. In addition to this conventional deterrence, the current Chinese and Russian nuclear arsenal is already capable of wiping out the US in the space of a few minutes.

Washington will continue to raise the temperature vis-a-vis China and Russia, even after Putin and Xi have left the office. It is therefore likely that their successors will come from their country’s most hawkish and intransigent wings.

In 2025 Putin and Xi will hopefully have succeeded in avoiding a conflict with the US through the skillful employment of diplomatic, economic and often military means, playing a moderating role that stands in contrast to that played by the West, which, not understanding this approach, brands it as extremist.

Imagine that the tensions between these three countries continues to steadily increase over the next five years at the same rate as it has over the last 10 years. How will the respective deep states of Russia and China react? Imagine in these two countries the appointment of two intransigent personalities ready to respond to US provocations.

Washington continues its inexorable decline relative to other powers as a result of the new multipolar reality, which evens out the distribution of geopolitical weight over a wider area of the global chessboard. We must hope, for the sake of humanity, that Washington’s decline will accelerate to such an extent under the Trump presidency that the US will be forced to focus instead on its own internal problems. Reaching such a point would require the collapse of the global economy that is based on the US dollar; but this is another story altogether that could also end in bloodshed.

Trump is appreciated by a part of the deep state for his efforts to reinvigorate Washington’s military-industrial complex by practically offering it a blank check. This is without considering Trump’s economic-financial assault on allies and enemies alike, which seems to be an attempt to squeeze the last drops out of any remaining advantage to the dollar-based system before it collapses.

The long-term plan of the US elites sometimes seems to be to provoke a great-power conflict in order to gain victory and then construct a new global financial order atop the rubble.

The selling of US government bonds by Russia, China and several other countries is an important indicator of global economic trends. The conversion of these securities into gold and other currencies is further confirmation of multipolarity. The IMF’s inclusion of the yuan in its basket of reserve currencies is a tangible example of the multipolar world in action and the diminishing power of the US. The sustainability of US public and private debt comes from investor confidence in US government bonds. The system hangs together through the willingness of investors to buy this trash printed by the Fed. The investors’ confidence lies not so much in the ability of the US to repay the debt but in its ability to use the most powerful military in the world to bully other countries into purchasing US securities that only serve to further fuel US imperialism.

Moscow and Beijing’s efforts to untangle themselves from this system is the way they will deny oxygen to the economic-military threat posed by Washington.

If the US deep state thinks it can squeeze out any last remaining benefits from the dollar system, collapse everything in a great-power conflagration, and then revive the US dollar system in a new form atop the rubble, then it is miscalculating terribly.

If my predictions regarding technological progress between now and 2025 are correct, with quantum computing and artificial intelligence and so on, then perhaps Moscow and Beijing will be able to avert this apocalypse with the clicks of a mouse thousands of miles away. Science fiction? Possibly. But who would have been able to imagine that Bashar al-Assad’s Syria would be capable, after six years of war, to repel 90% of the latest-generation missiles launched by Israel? Technology has a democratizing effect.

If you think I am exaggerating, try reflecting on the fact that Washington has been at war almost every year since World War II, conducting clandestine operations in more than 50 countries and killing millions of civilians directly and indirectly, all the while having the world believe it is a blameless force for good on the side of truth and justice.

We live in a world based on lies. Without this reality changing in the foreseeable future, with the mainstream media continuing to keep much of the population disoriented and confused, then it is not too difficult to imagine the United States by 2025 pulling the rug out from under everybody’s feet through a great-power conflict, so as to build atop the debris a new, unchallengeable Pax Americana.

June 11, 2019 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Tulsi Gabbard Pushes No War Agenda – and the Media Is out to Kill Her Chances

By Philip Giraldi | Strategic Culture Foundation | June 6, 2019

Voters looking ahead to 2020 are being bombarded with soundbites from the twenty plus Democratic would-be candidates. That Joe Biden is apparently leading the pack according to opinion polls should come as no surprise as he stands for nothing apart from being the Establishment favorite who will tirelessly work to support the status quo.

The most interesting candidate is undoubtedly Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, who is a fourth term Congresswoman from Hawaii, where she was born and raised. She is also the real deal on national security, having been-there and done-it through service as an officer with the Hawaiian National Guard on a combat deployment in Iraq. Though in Congress full time, she still performs her Guard duty.

Tulsi’s own military experience notwithstanding, she gives every indication of being honestly anti-war. In the speech announcing her candidacy she pledged “focus on the issue of war and peace” to “end the regime-change wars that have taken far too many lives and undermined our security by strengthening terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda.” She referred to the danger posed by blundering into a possible nuclear war and indicated her dismay over what appears to be a re-emergence of the Cold War.

In a recent interview with Fox News’s Tucker Carlson, Gabbard doubled down on her anti-war credentials, telling the host that war with Iran would be “devastating,” adding that “I know where this path leads us and I’m concerned because the American people don’t seem to be prepared for how devastating and costly such a war would be… So, what we are facing is, essentially, a war that has no frontlines, total chaos, engulfs the whole region, is not contained within Iran or Iraq but would extend to Syria and Lebanon and Israel across the region, setting us up in a situation where, in Iraq, we lost over 4,000 of my brothers and sisters in uniform. A war with Iran would take far more American lives, it would cost more civilian lives across the region… Not to speak of the fact that this would cost trillions of taxpayer dollars coming out of our pockets to go and pay for this endless war that begs the question as a soldier, what are we fighting for? What does victory look like? What is the mission?”

Gabbard, and also Carlson, did not hesitate to name names among those pushing for war, one of which begins with B-O-L-T-O-N. She then asked “How does a war with Iran serve the best interest of the American people of the United States? And the fact is it does not,” Gabbard said. “It better serves the interest of people like [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Bibi Netanyahu and Saudi Arabia who are trying to push us into this war with Iran.”

Clearly not afraid to challenge the full gamut establishment politics, Tulsi Gabbard had previously called for an end to the “illegal war to overthrow the Syrian government,” also observing that “the war to overthrow Assad is counter-productive because it actually helps ISIS and other Islamic extremists achieve their goal of overthrowing the Syrian government of Assad and taking control of all of Syria – which will simply increase human suffering in the region, exacerbate the refugee crisis, and pose a greater threat to the world.” She then backed up her words with action by secretly arranging for a personal trip to Damascus in 2017 to meet with President Bashar al-Assad, saying it was important to meet adversaries “if you are serious about pursuing peace.” She made her own assessment of the situation in Syria and now favors pulling US troops out of the country as well as ending American interventions for “regime change” in the region.

In 2015, Gabbard supported President Barack Obama’s nuclear agreement with Iran and in 2016 she backed Bernie Sanders’ antiwar candidacy. More recently, she has criticized President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal. Last May, she criticized Israel for shooting “unarmed protesters” in Gaza, a very bold step indeed given the power of the Israel Lobby.

Tulsi Gabbard could well be the only genuine antiwar candidate that might truly be electable in the past fifty years, and that is why the war party is out to get her. Two weeks ago, the Daily Beast displayed a headline: “Tulsi Gabbard’s Campaign Is Being Boosted by Putin Apologists.” The article also had a sub-headline: “The Hawaii congresswoman is quickly becoming the top candidate for Democrats who think the Russian leader is misunderstood.”

The obvious smear job was picked by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, television’s best known Hillary Clinton clone, who brought it up in an interview with Gabbard shortly thereafter. He asked whether Gabbard was “softer” on Putin than were some of the other candidates. Gabbard answered: “It’s unfortunate that you’re citing that article, George, because it’s a whole lot of fake news.” Politico reported the exchange and wrote: “’Fake news’ is a favorite phrase of President Donald Trump…,” putting the ball back in Tulsi’s court rather than criticizing Stephanopoulos’s pointless question. Soon thereafter CNN produced its own version of Tulsi the Russophile, observing that Gabbard was using a Trump expression to “attack the credibility of negative coverage.”

Tulsi responded “Stephanopoulos shamelessly implied that because I oppose going to war with Russia, I’m not a loyal American, but a Putin puppet. It just shows what absurd lengths warmongers in the media will go, to try to destroy the reputation of anyone who dares oppose their warmongering.”

Tulsi Gabbard had attracted other enemies prior to the Stephanopoulos attack. Glenn Greenwald at The Intercept described how NBC news published a widely distributed story on February 1st, claiming that “experts who track websites and social media linked to Russia have seen stirrings of a possible campaign of support for Hawaii Democrat Tulsi Gabbard.”

But the expert cited by NBC turned out to be a firm New Knowledge, which was exposed by no less than The New York Times for falsifying Russian troll accounts for the Democratic Party in the Alabama Senate race to suggest that the Kremlin was interfering in that election. According to Greenwald, the group ultimately behind this attack on Gabbard is The Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD), which sponsors a tool called Hamilton 68, a news “intelligence net checker” that claims to track Russian efforts to disseminate disinformation. The ASD website advises that “Securing Democracy is a Global Necessity.”

ASD was set up in 2017 by the usual neocon crowd with funding from The Atlanticist and anti-Russian German Marshall Fund. It is loaded with a full complement of Zionists and interventionists/globalists, to include Michael Chertoff, Michael McFaul, Michael Morell, Kori Schake and Bill Kristol. It claims, innocently, to be a bipartisan transatlantic national security advocacy group that seeks to identify and counter efforts by Russia to undermine democracies in the United States and Europe but it is actually itself a major source of disinformation.

No doubt stories headlined “Tulsi Gabbard Communist Stooge” are in the works somewhere in the mainstream media. The Establishment politicians and their media component have difficulty in understanding just how much they are despised for their mendacity and unwillingness to support policies that would truly benefit the American people but they are well able to dominate press coverage. Given the flood of contrived negativity towards her campaign, it is not clear if Tulsi Gabbard will ever be able to get her message across. But, for the moment, she seems to be the “real thing,” a genuine anti-war candidate who is determined to run on that platform. It might just resonate with the majority of Americans who have grown tired of perpetual warfare to “spread democracy” and other related frauds perpetrated by the band of oligarchs and traitors that run the United States.

June 6, 2019 Posted by | Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

Instead of a US Peace Plan for the Middle East, How about a US Peace Plan for the US?

A Map of US Military Bases

US military bases globally (by PatriotMyke, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License)
By Thomas L. Knapp | Garrison Center | June 3, 2019

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo describes the Trump administration’s plan for peace between Israel and Palestinian Arabs as “unexecutable.” President Trump says Pompeo “may be right.”

Good! As addiction counselors say, the first step is admitting you have a problem. With addiction, the way out is not “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” It’s admitting that the thing you’re addicted to will never solve your problems and giving up that thing.

The United States suffers from a long-term addiction, since at least the end of World War 2, to trying to run the world.

That addiction has cost American taxpayers trillions of dollars.

It’s cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans and millions of citizens of other countries.

It’s empowered evil regimes to suppress human rights both at home and abroad.

And it has never, ever “worked” in the sense of bringing about lasting peace, any more than booze saves marriages or methamphetamine repairs mental anguish.

In fact, just like booze or methamphetamine, the US addiction to world “leadership” wrecks the lives of everyone around the addict too. Which means that if the US gets its act together, everyone else, not just Americans, will be better off.

Here’s a four-step peace plan that addresses the roots of the problem instead of just unsuccessfully trying to treat the symptoms:

First, the US should shut down its military bases on foreign soil and withdraw its troops from the foreign countries they’re currently operating in.

Second, the US should end economic sanctions on, and extend full diplomatic recognition and trade privileges to, all the countries it’s currently bullying.

Third, the US should end all foreign aid, especially military aid.

Fourth and finally, the US should dramatically decrease its so-called “defense” budget to levels consistent with actual defense.

Cold turkey withdrawal may be out of the question, but the US can and should wean itself off the damaging drug of foreign interventionism.

Let the Arabs and Israelis settle their own hash. Quit taking sides between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Stop pretending North Korea is or ever has been a threat to the United States. Step back and let Venezuelans, Syrians, and Libyans decide who’s going to run Venezuela, Syria, and Libya.

It won’t be easy, but it’s not complicated either. The US can continue drinking itself to death on the poison of foreign meddling, or not. Not is better.

June 3, 2019 Posted by | Militarism | | Leave a comment

Okinawa Governor Warns of Civil Unrest if US Doesn’t Give Up Local Marine Base

Sputnik – May 30, 2019

Should the US prolong its military use of Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in the Japanese prefecture of Okinawa, it could see civil unrest in the region, Okinawa Governor Denny Tamaki recently wrote in a letter to US officials.

“If the US continues to use [MCAS Futenma], it may give rise to anti-base protests against all US military bases in Okinawa, or even an overall anti-US movement like what was seen in the past,” Tamaki noted, recalling the turbulent days of the early 1970s when Japanese demonstrators unified under an anti-American stance.

“If that happens, such movements would have a significant impact on the Japan-US Security Arrangements as well as the Japan-US Alliance including operation of Kadena Air Base and White Beach Naval Facility.”

Tamaki further noted in the letter that US Marine air operations should be removed completely from the island, since the US has the capability to handle any possible threats from China or North Korea with its Air Force and Navy.

Most notably, in December 1970, tensions came to a boil in Okinawa after an intoxicated American driver struck an Okinawan pedestrian, triggering one of the largest anti-US demonstrations. That incident, later known as the Koza Riots, saw thousands of Okinawans protest against the American presence on the island.

According to the Japan Times, local residents pulled American drivers from their cars, beat them and set their vehicles ablaze. More than 80 cars were left burning, and dozens of Americans were hospitalized.

Bruce Lieber, a veteran once assigned to the 20th Military Police Company in Okinawa, told the Times that he had been one of the first individuals on the scene. “It was really frightening. The crowd surrounded us, then they flipped our car and set it on fire,” he recalled.

Despite the years since the Koza Riots, tensions have continued to simmer. Locals have repeatedly called for US officials to close down the Futenma base due to environmental concerns, repeated aerial mishaps and violent incidents perpetrated by US servicemembers.

In 2017, a helicopter window from a CH-53E Super Stallion became detached and landed on the sports field of an elementary school, where dozens of students were playing at the time. Sputnik reported that one student suffered a minor injury as a result.

Over the last several years, US and Japanese officials have drawn up various plans to relocate the service’s base to Henoko Bay in the Okinawan city of Nago. However, the project has been repeatedly postponed due to opposition from local officials and residents who want the base removed from the prefecture.

According to Stars & Stripes, the relocation plan was expected to be completed by 2014. Landfill work for the base was recently resumed in December 2018 — a decision which was made before an island-wide referendum saw 70% of Okinawans vote against the relocation.

Updated estimates for the project suggest the base could be completed sometime between 2025 and 2026, if not later, the military website reported.

May 30, 2019 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism | | Leave a comment

Defense Cooperation Agreement Between US, UAE Now in Effect – White House

Sputnik – May 29, 2019

The White House issued a press release Wednesday, revealing that US National Security Advisor John Bolton and United Arab Emirates National Security Advisor Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan signed a Defense Cooperation Agreement (DCA).

“The DCA will enhance military coordination between the United States and the United Arab Emirates, further advancing an already robust military, political, and economic partnership at a critical time,” reads the statement. “The United States and the United Arab Emirates share a deep interest in promoting prosperity and stability in the region.”

“The DCA will advance that interest by fostering closer collaboration on defense and security matters and supporting efforts by both nations to maintain security in the Gulf region,” it adds.

The US also has defense cooperation agreements with Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait.

​The latest agreement comes days after the US Defense Department announced that officials from the US and Estonia signed a five-year document to continue a defense cooperation between the two countries through 2024. According to a release from the defense agency, Estonia joins fellow Baltic states Lithuania and Latvia in the move.

May 30, 2019 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , , | Leave a comment