ON THE BEACH 2017. THE BECKONING OF NUCLEAR WAR.
Gregory Peck in a scene from the 1959 movie, “On the Beach,” showing how a nuclear war ends life on the planet.
By John Pilger | August 4, 2017
The U.S. submarine captain says, “We’ve all got to die one day, some sooner and some later. The trouble always has been that you’re never ready, because you don’t know when it’s coming. Well, now we do know and there’s nothing to be done about it.”
He says he will be dead by September. It will take about a week to die, though no one can be sure. Animals live the longest.
The war was over in a month. The United States, Russia and China were the protagonists. It is not clear if it was started by accident or mistake. There was no victor. The Northern Hemisphere is contaminated and lifeless now.
A curtain of radioactivity is moving south towards Australia and New Zealand, southern Africa and South America. By September, the last cities, towns and villages will succumb. As in the north, most buildings will remain untouched, some illuminated by the last flickers of electric light.
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper
These lines from T.S. Eliot’s poem The Hollow Men appear at the beginning of Nevil Shute’s novel On the Beach, which left me close to tears. The endorsements on the cover said the same.
Published in 1957 at the height of the Cold War when too many writers were silent or cowed, it is a masterpiece. At first the language suggests a genteel relic; yet nothing I have read on nuclear war is as unyielding in its warning. No book is more urgent.
Some readers will remember the black and white Hollywood film starring Gregory Peck as the U.S. Navy commander who takes his submarine to Australia to await the silent, formless specter descending on the last of the living world.
I read On the Beach for the first time the other day, finishing it as the U.S. Congress passed a law to wage economic war on Russia, the world’s second most lethal nuclear power. There was no justification for this insane vote, except the promise of plunder.
Aiming Toward a Hot War
The “sanctions” are aimed at Europe, too, mainly Germany, which depends on Russian natural gas and on European companies that do legitimate business with Russia. In what passed for debate on Capitol Hill, the more garrulous senators left no doubt that the embargo was designed to force Europe to import expensive American gas.
Their main aim seems to be war – real war. No provocation as extreme can suggest anything else. They seem to crave it, even though Americans have little idea what war is. The Civil War of 1861-65 was the last on their mainland. War is what the United States does to others.
The only nation to have used nuclear weapons against human beings, they have since destroyed scores of governments, many of them democracies, and laid to waste whole societies – the million deaths in Iraq were a fraction of the carnage in Indochina, which President Reagan called “a noble cause” and President Obama revised as the tragedy of an “exceptional people.” He was not referring to the Vietnamese.
Filming last year at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, I overheard a National Parks Service guide lecturing a school party of young teenagers. “Listen up,” he said. “We lost 58,000 young soldiers in Vietnam, and they died defending your freedom.”
At a stroke, the truth was inverted. No freedom was defended. Freedom was destroyed. A peasant country was invaded and millions of its people were killed, maimed, dispossessed, poisoned; 60,000 of the invaders took their own lives. Listen up, indeed.
A lobotomy is performed on each generation. Facts are removed. History is excised and replaced by what Time magazine calls “an eternal present.” Harold Pinter described this as “manipulation of power worldwide, while masquerading as a force for universal good, a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis [which meant] that it never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest.”
Those who call themselves liberals or tendentiously “the left” are eager participants in this manipulation, and its brainwashing, which today revert to one name: Trump.
Trump is mad, a fascist, a dupe of Russia. He is also a gift for “liberal brains pickled in the formaldehyde of identity politics,” wrote Luciana Bohne memorably. The obsession with Trump the man – not Trump as a symptom and caricature of an enduring system – beckons great danger for all of us.
A Narcissistic Media
While they pursue their fossilized anti-Russia agendas, narcissistic media such as the Washington Post, the BBC and the Guardian suppress the essence of the most important political story of our time as they warmonger on a scale I cannot remember in my lifetime.
On 3 Aug., in contrast to the acreage the Guardian has given to drivel that the Russians conspired with Trump (reminiscent of the far-right smearing of John Kennedy as a “Soviet agent”), the paper buried, on page 16, news that the President of the United States was forced to sign a Congressional bill declaring economic war on Russia.
Unlike every other Trump signing, this was conducted in virtual secrecy and attached with a caveat from Trump himself that it was “clearly unconstitutional.”
A coup against the man in the White House is under way. This is not because he is an odious human being, but because he has consistently made clear he does not want war with Russia.
This glimpse of sanity, or simple pragmatism, is anathema to the “national security” managers who guard a system based on war, surveillance, armaments, threats and extreme capitalism. Martin Luther King called them “the greatest purveyors of violence in the world today.”
They have encircled Russia and China with missiles and a nuclear arsenal. They have used neo-Nazis to install an unstable, aggressive regime on Russia’s “borderland” – the way through which Hitler invaded, causing the deaths of 27 million people. Their goal is to dismember the modern Russian Federation.
In response, “partnership” is a word used incessantly by Vladimir Putin – anything, it seems, that might halt an evangelical drive to war in the United States. Incredulity in Russia may have now turned to fear and perhaps a certain resolution. The Russians almost certainly have war-gamed nuclear counter strikes. Air-raid drills are not uncommon. Their history tells them to get ready.
The threat is simultaneous. Russia is first, China is next. The U.S. has just completed a huge military exercise with Australia known as Talisman Sabre. They rehearsed a blockade of the Malacca Straits and the South China Sea, through which pass China’s economic lifelines.
The admiral commanding the U.S. Pacific fleet said that, “if required,” he would nuke China. That he would say such a thing publicly in the current perfidious atmosphere begins to make fact of Nevil Shute’s fiction.
Silencing Dissenting Journalists
None of this is considered news. No connection is made as the bloodfest of Passchendaele a century ago is remembered. Honest reporting is no longer welcome in much of the media. Windbags, known as pundits, dominate: editors are infotainment or party-line managers. Where there was once sub-editing, there is the liberation of axe-grinding clichés. Those journalists who do not comply are defenestrated.
The urgency has plenty of precedents. In my film, The Coming War on China, John Bordne, a member of a U.S. Air Force missile combat crew based in Okinawa, Japan, describes how in 1962 – during the Cuban missile crisis – he and his colleagues were “told to launch all the missiles” from their silos.
Nuclear armed, the missiles were aimed at both China and Russia. A junior officer questioned this, and the order was eventually rescinded – but only after they were issued with service revolvers and ordered to shoot at others in a missile crew if they did not “stand down.”
At the height of the Cold War, the anti-communist hysteria in the United States was such that U.S. officials who were on official business in China were accused of treason and sacked. In 1957 – the year Shute wrote On the Beach – no official in the State Department could speak the language of the world’s most populous nation. Mandarin speakers were purged under strictures now echoed in the Congressional bill that has just passed, aimed at Russia.
The bill was bipartisan. There is no fundamental difference between Democrats and Republicans. The terms “left” and “right” are meaningless. Most of America’s modern wars were started not by conservatives, but by liberal Democrats.
When Obama left office, he presided over a record seven wars, including America’s longest war and an unprecedented campaign of extrajudicial killings – murder – by drones.
In his last year, according to a Council on Foreign Relations study, Obama, the “reluctant liberal warrior,” dropped 26,171 bombs – three bombs every hour, 24 hours a day. Having pledged to help “rid the world” of nuclear weapons, the Nobel Peace Laureate built more nuclear warheads than any president since the Cold War.
Trump is a wimp by comparison. It was Obama – with his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at his side – who destroyed Libya as a modern state and launched the human stampede to Europe. At home, immigration groups knew him as the “deporter-in-chief.”
One of Obama’s last acts as president was to sign a bill that handed a record $618 billion to the Pentagon, reflecting the soaring ascendancy of fascist militarism in the governance of the United States. Trump has endorsed this.
Buried in the detail was the establishment of a “Center for Information Analysis and Response.” This is a ministry of truth. It is tasked with providing an “official narrative of facts” that will prepare us for the real possibility of nuclear war – if we allow it.
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US Congress to Undermine INF Treaty and Entire Existing Arms Control Architecture
By Andrei AKULOV | Strategic Culture Foundation | 05.08.2017
The House and Senate are currently considering defense authorization legislation which, if passed into law, would start dismantling some of the bedrock agreements of US-Russian arms control – the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty), as well as longstanding US–Russia arms control efforts. The treaty eliminated all ground-based nuclear and conventional missiles, as well as their launchers, with ranges of 500–1,000 kilometers (310–620 mi) (short-range) and 1,000–5,500 km (620–3,420 mi) (intermediate-range). Signed in December 1987 by President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, the INF deal is accredited with significantly reducing the threat of nuclear confrontation and accelerating the end of the Cold War.
The landmark deal for the first time eliminated an entire class of missiles in Europe and set up a new framework for verifying compliance. Russia and the US have recently exchanged accusations of breaching the treaty but there have been no substantive talks on the issue.
Both versions of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2018 require the development of medium-range missiles the INF Treaty bans. They authorize programs of development on a new US mobile ground-based cruise missile (GLCM) with a range of between 500 and 5,500 kilometers.
Politico cites the Office of Management and Budget, saying it «unhelpfully ties the Administration to a specific missile system, which would limit potential military response options». Legal experts are also criticizing the legislation as congressional overreach, saying the Senate can only ratify treaties and the president alone can negotiate or pull out of them. The House has no role whatsoever in approving treaties, Politico notes.
The House version states that if Russia failed to comply with the INF terms within 15 months of the bill’s enactment, the US would no longer be legally bound by the treaty as a matter of domestic law. A similar provision could be inserted into the Senate version of the bill.
Russia’s alleged violations serve as a pretext for deploying shorter and intermediate range weapons to strike other countries, like North Korea. The US Army is believed to lack sufficient firepower in a large-scale conflict, such as missiles that can hit targets hundreds of miles away. David Johnson, a military analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment, believes that «the lack of long-range firepower in the Army [is] a problem that could haunt land forces in a war in Eastern Europe».
Army Deputy Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. John Murray told lawmakers about the need for a «long-range precision fires» program to develop a powerful new missile that can reach targets 499 kilometers out, or about 310 miles. The range has to stay below 500 kilometers to comply with the INF treaty. If it’s not in force anymore, then the Army will get what it wants.
Mark Gunzinger of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) thinks that pulling out from the treaty is the right thing to do. He believes that future ground-based strike systems could help the US suppress Russia’s advanced integrated air defense systems and freedom of action in the event of a conflict. The intermediate range missiles could help the American military gain more advantage over China and North Korea. «Perhaps the time is right for a serious debate over the US withdrawing from the INF Treaty», Gunzinger says. Michaela Dodge of the Heritage Foundation affirms that, the Treaty is no longer relevant, and the US should withdraw.
Launching a program to develop a new ground-based cruise missile would add to the fact that some missiles to be eliminated under the terms of the INF Treaty are used as targets for ballistic missile defense tests, while Aegis Ashore systems use the launching pads that can be used to fire medium range Tomahawks. The Senate version of the bill says the US has no intention to tear up the treaty but the need to close the capability gap opened by Russia is given as a reason for launching the program. The two things contradict each other. The sum of these factors make the US actually abandon the agreement while not leaving it officially.
The same thing applies to Iran. Formally, the United States has not torn up the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran. At the same time, imposing sanctions on Tehran over its ballistic missile program makes the agreement deprived of any substance. No matter what pretext is used, the fact is that punitive measures against Iran are in place. It makes Iranians put into doubt the need to further comply with the JCPOA.
The US-Russian relations under ex-President Obama left much to be desired but the issue of violating the INF Treaty was not on the agenda. If the medium-range missile development program had been launched, the Congress would have been in violation of the international agreement. It did not occur then, but it is happening now under President Trump.
This would put into doubt the reputation of the United States as a reliable partner. If one international agreement is breached by the Congress, any other treaty can be abrogated, too.
Other defense programs would suffer, with money directed to implement the program in violation of the INF. The defense budget already includes funding to develop a fleet of nuclear air-launched cruise missiles. The more, the better?
No European ally has given consent to have the weapon on its soil. Would Europeans agree to have nuclear weapons on their soil? It makes the 1983 protests leap to memory.
The US will not benefit greatly if it withdraws from the treaty. It does not have an intermediate-range ballistic missile, and developing a new one will take time and effort. The bill does not mention intermediate ballistic capability anyway. Land-based cruise missiles would not tip the balance into US favor because they are too slow to effectively knock out critical infrastructure sites in a first unexpected strike. The US military need ballistic missiles with short flight times to decapitate the enemy but the Congress wants a cruise, not a ballistic, missile.
If Europe-based cruise missiles are fired, Russia will have enough time for a launch-upon-attack against those European states, which host the weapons, and the United States.
With the INF Treaty effective no more, Moscow will be free to deploy intermediate-range missiles without restriction. In theory, its Iskander-M systems could be armed with ballistic and cruise missiles with extended range, while the American military has nothing to respond with.
The House version has a provision that would prohibit the use of funds to extend New START until Russia complies with the INF treaty. But the conclusion, whoever makes it, about Russia’s compliance can be biased or outright wrong. Signed into law, the bill would undermine the whole architecture of arms control. The New START and the INF are the only two treaties still in place. Without them, the way to uncontrolled arms race would be unhindered.
The Congress would exceed its authority. It actually forces the administration to abandon an international treaty. The Senate can ratify international treaties, not abrogate them. The House does not vote on them. Both versions of the bill encroach on the president’s foreign policy prerogatives the same way the Countering America’s Adversaries through Sanctions Act does.
The bill includes provisions to undermine the treaty while the opportunities offered by the Special Verification Commission (SVC) envisioned by the INF treaty are far from being exhausted. The parties could use the SVC venue to consider additional confidence-building measures and information exchanges that take into account technological and political developments that have occurred recently.
The bill wants the Open Skies Treaty that could be used for INF verification to be deprived of funds. The observation capabilities could be upgraded. The NATO-Russia Council could serve as another mechanism to address specific security concerns. A lot of things could be done to preserve arms control regime and prevent its crisis. The world is facing the most serious and comprehensive crisis in the fifty-year history of nuclear arms control with almost every channel of negotiation deadlocked and the entire system of existing arms control agreements in jeopardy. The US Congress appears to be adamant in its desire to make things even worse.
US ‘Constitutional Shift’: Powerless President and Omnipotent Congress
Sputnik – August 4, 2017
What the international community is observing now in Washington could be called a sluggish constitutional shift, Russian political analyst Andrei Suzdaltsev told RIA Novosti in a reference to Congress twisting Donald Trump’s arm. Meanwhile, Congress is about to stir up new frictions with Trump over the INF Treaty with Russia.
The world is witnessing what could be called a constitutional shift with Congress de facto obtaining more power than the US president, Moscow-based political analyst and academic Andrei Suzdaltsev told RIA Novosti.
On Wednesday US President Donald Trump signed into law a US sanctions bill aimed against Russia, Iran and North Korea. The sanctions target Russia’s defense, intelligence, mining, shipping and railway industries and restrict dealings with Russian banks and energy companies.
To make matters even more complicated, the new law limits the US president’s ability to lift or ease sanctions on Russia, as Congress’s approval to reconsider the restrictions will now be required.
In an apparent reference to the bill, Trump tweeted Thursday that the US-Russian relationship is at a “very dangerous” low.
”Our relationship with Russia is at an all-time & very dangerous low. You can thank Congress, the same people that can’t even give us HCare!” Trump wrote.
Incredible as it may seem, the president of the country has turned out to be powerless, Suzdaltsev said, adding that one now has to hold a dialogue with Congressional representatives.
“In fact, we are witnessing a sluggish constitutional shift in the US political system. Being a presidential republic where the head of executive power had a solid mandate America always looked at the reaction of Congress. But there was a counterweight system. Now the American elite is divided,” Suzdaltsev told RIA Novosti.
The Russian academic drew attention to the fact that the internal political crisis, which started during the election campaign in autumn 2016, is still raging on.”By forcing Trump into signing a new sanctions bill into law Congress… implemented a constitutional shift,” Suzdaltsev stressed.
“Trump is now a powerless figure incapable of conducting a political dialogue,” he said. “If one wants to hold negotiations, one needs to do this with congressmen in both houses. Actually, there is no president.”
“We are entering a period that may even be harder than the years of the Cold War,” the academic remarked.
Meanwhile, Politico reported Thursday that the US Congress continues to discuss the bill which implies America’s de facto withdrawal from the INF Treaty by suggesting developing medium-range missiles banned by the document.
The INF Treaty, concluded in 1987, envisaged the reduction of non-strategic weapons by prohibiting all nuclear and conventional missiles and their launchers with a range between 310 and 3,420 miles.
“Congress is moving to force the Pentagon to violate a nuclear arms treaty with Russia — in yet another effort to box in President Donald Trump on relations with Moscow,” the media outlet noted, adding that “the legislation is also likely to stir up new friction between lawmakers and Trump, who has already accused Congress of illegally meddling in his dealings with Russia.”
Commenting on the matter, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov highlighted that Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump did not discuss the issue of the INF Treaty during their meeting. He stressed that Moscow remains committed to its obligations under the agreement and expects the same from its partners.
“Russia remains committed to its obligations under this treaty, despite some claims which were voiced before. Of course, we expect that our partners under this agreement will adhere to their international obligations in this context,” Peskov told reporters.
Citing legal experts Politico remarked that the proposed legislation could be regarded as congressional overreach. “The Senate can only ratify treaties and the president alone can negotiate or pull out of them,” it argues.
British Army must stop recruiting child soldiers, veteran tells RT
© defenceimagery.mod.uk
By Claire Gilbody-Dickerson | RT | August 4, 2017
Britain should raise the military recruitment age from 16 to 18 because joining the services at such a tender age can cause irreversible psychological damage, a British Army veteran has told RT.
Wayne Sharrocks, who joined the army when he was 17, has spoken out against current military regulations, which allow recruiters to accept under 18s, who are effectively children based on international standards.
Sharrocks is calling for the recruitment age to be raised following a recent report published by Veterans for Peace (VFP) UK, which sheds light on the detrimental effects of army training on soldiers in general, and young people in particular.
Twenty-two out of every 100 British soldiers are under the age of 18. However, they are exempt from combat operations until they reach adulthood.
The 72-page report, ‘The First Ambush? Effects of army training and employment,’ says military training alone increases violent offending among recruits, with the rate of offenses rising again once they return from the front line.
The report, assembled through the testimonies of army veterans and more than 200 separate studies, also found recruits are twice as likely to drink heavily – all factors which may in turn lead to unemployment and homelessness.
Regardless of recruitment age, Sharrocks believes “military training and culture is damaging and not healthy for a person to go through.” But because young people’s minds are more “malleable” than those of adults, the effects of training are far worse for them.
It emerged last month that the British Army is actively trying to fill its ranks with young people from households with a £10,000 (US$13,000) annual income.
In a document for the British Army’s ‘This Is Belonging’ campaign, seen by the Independent and Child Soldiers International, the military says it is deliberately targeting 16 to 24-year-olds from social classes known as C2DEs – denoting the three lowest ranks of society.
The VFP report says the British Army “strategically” targets such youngsters from deprived neighborhoods by presenting a “romanticized” image of the soldier.
Members of the Scottish Parliament have backed a petition calling for further research into military recruitment of youth.
There have also been calls by the Scottish National Party (SNP) Youth for a review of the policy on military recruitment age, but a motion to raise it was opposed by senior MPs in December last year.
Sharrocks, who twice served in Afghanistan and left the army after being severely injured by an improvised explosive device (IED), said more information should be made available to young people so they know what they are signing up for.
Jay Sutherland, a Scottish 16-year-old student who has founded a campaign group against “militarism” in schools, said advertisements are “glossed over, with the military not even showing important regulations such as when you sign up you are locked in until 18 and the fact that younger recruits are twice as likely to be killed in Afghanistan than older recruits.”
An MoD spokesperson told RT it rejects claims it is targeting youth only, but said it is “proud” of offering young people in the Armed Forces opportunities that “aren’t always available elsewhere, from basic literacy education and support for postgraduate degrees, to high-quality accredited training and unique employment prospects.”
The spokesperson added that the Armed Forces allows for everyone, regardless of their background, the opportunity to reach their full potential, before adding it is encouraging young people to “aim higher” while “teaching them valuable skills”.
Dehumanizing training
Sharrocks claims military training requires soldiers to “follow orders without questioning them,” so that their “natural aversion” to killing is also “altered.”
The report itself reads: “To ensure that recruits will follow all orders and kill their opponents in war, army training indoctrinates unconditional obedience, stimulates aggression and antagonism, overpowers a healthy person’s inhibition to killing, and dehumanizes the opponent in the recruit’s imagination.”
Such practices can lead to long-lasting psychological issues such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which can lead to suicide.
VFP UK describes the case of Dan, who joined the army at 18 and developed PTSD after training and service in Iraq.
When he returned to Britain, he served time in a military prison for assaulting a warrant officer.
“After the conviction the army wouldn’t support me, my mental health deteriorated and I was left feeling isolated and alone.
“I resorted to alcohol abuse and became homeless for a year, and I have suffered with chronic PTSD.
“I really believe that underlying all my problems was the effect of the training I was put through when I joined the army.”
Sharrocks accused the army of turning its back on soldiers, who are “pushed aside” once they are deemed no longer “useful.”
Because they have been in the army for so many years, Sharrocks says some veterans lack fundamental qualifications to get a decent job in civilian life, as they have the same skill-set of a 16-year-old who has “just left school.”
Many find themselves in manual, low-skill factory jobs.
Rather than leaving charities to pick up the pieces, Sharrocks appealed for more to be done to smooth the transition from soldiering to civilian life.
Writing for the ForcesWatch website, Douglas Beattie, a member of VFP UK, said soldiers are dehumanized right from the start, regardless of their age.
“This [process] begins with isolation – for the first few weeks trainees, heads shaved and in uniform, have no right to see family or friends; they are not allowed to leave base and cannot terminate their contract.”
He also said soldiers become targets of “beastings” – humiliating treatment involving both verbal and physical violence, aimed at the individual’s utter debasement.
Read more:
Is Trump’s Russia Policy Being Hijacked?
By Pat Buchanan • Unz Review • August 4, 2017
In crafting the platform in Cleveland on which Donald Trump would run, America Firsters inflicted a major defeat on the War Party.
The platform committee rejected a plank to pull us deeper into Ukraine, by successfully opposing new U.S. arms transfers to Kiev.
Improved relations with Russia were what candidate Trump had promised, and what Americans would vote for in November.
Yet, this week, The Wall Street Journal reports:
“The U.S. Pentagon and State Department have devised plans to supply Ukraine with antitank missiles and other weaponry and are seeking White House approval … as Kiev battles Russia-backed separatists … Defense Secretary Mattis has endorsed the plan.”
As pro-Russia rebels in East Ukraine have armored vehicles, Kiev wants U.S. tank-killing Javelin missiles, as well as antiaircraft weapons.
State and Defense want Trump to send the lethal weapons.
This is a formula for a renewed war, with far higher casualties in Ukraine than the 10,000 dead already suffered on both sides.
And it is a war Vladimir Putin will not likely allow Kiev to win.
If Ukraine’s army, bolstered by U.S. weaponry, re-engages in the east, it could face a Moscow-backed counterattack and be routed, and the Russian army could take permanent control of the Donbass.
Indeed, if Trump approves this State-Defense escalation plan, we could be looking at a rerun of the Russia-Georgia war of August 2008.
Then, to recapture its lost province of South Ossetia, which had seceded in 1992, after Georgia seceded from Russia, Georgia invaded.
Putin sent his army in, threw the Georgians out, and recognized South Ossetia, as John McCain impotently declaimed, “We are all Georgians now!”
Wisely, George W. Bush ignored McCain and did nothing.
But about this new arms deal questions arise.
As the rebels have no aircraft, whose planes are the U.S. antiaircraft missiles to shoot down? And if the Russian army just over the border can enter and crush the Ukrainian army, why would we want to restart a civil war, the only certain result of which is more dead Ukrainians on both sides?
The Journal’s answer: Our goal is to bleed Russia.
“The point of lethal aid is to raise the price Mr. Putin pays for his imperialism until he withdraws or agrees to peace. … The Russians don’t want dead soldiers arriving home before next year’s presidential election.”
Also going neocon is Mike Pence. In Georgia this week, noting that Russian tanks are still in South Ossetia, the vice president not only declared, “We stand with you,” he told Georgians the U.S. stands by its 2008 commitment to bring them into NATO.
This would mean, under Article 5 of the NATO treaty, that in a future Russia-Georgia clash the U.S. could find itself in a shooting war with Russia in the South Caucasus.
Russia’s security interests there seem clear. What are ours?
Along with Trump’s signing of the new sanctions bill imposed by Congress, which strips him of his authority to lift those sanctions without Hill approval, these developments raise larger questions.
Is President Trump losing control of Russia policy? Has he capitulated to the neocons? These are not academic questions. For consider the architect of the new arms package, Kurt Volker, the new U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations.
A former CIA agent, member of the National Security Counsel, and envoy to NATO, Volker believes Russian troops in Transnistria, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk are all there illegally — and U.S. policy should be to push them out.
A former staffer of Sen. McCain, Volker was, until July, executive director of the neocon McCain Institute. He has called for the imposition of personal sanctions on Putin and his family and European travel restrictions on the Russian president.
In the Journal this week, “officials” described his strategy:
“Volker believes … that a change in Ukraine can be brought only by raising the costs for Moscow for continued intervention in Ukraine. In public comments, he has played down the notion that supplying weapons to Ukraine would escalate the conflict with Russia.”
In short, Volker believes giving antitank and antiaircraft missiles to Ukraine will bring Putin to the negotiating table, as he fears the prospect of dead Russian soldiers coming home in caskets before his 2018 election.
As for concerns that Putin might send his army into Ukraine, such worries are unwarranted.
Volker envisions a deepening U.S. involvement in a Ukrainian civil war that can bleed and break Russia’s Ukrainian allies and convince Putin to back down and accept what we regard as a just settlement.
Does Trump believe this? Does Trump believe that confronting Putin with rising casualties among his army and allies in Ukraine is the way to force the Russian president to back down and withdraw from Crimea, Luhansk and Donetsk, as Nikita Khrushchev did from Cuba in 1962?
What if Putin refuses to back down, and chooses to confront?
Copyright 2017 Creators.com.
Rep. John Duncan, Conservative Peace Proponent, Will Not Seek Reelection to US House
By Adam Dick | Ron Paul Institute | August 1, 2017
Rep. John J. Duncan, Jr. (R-TN) announced on Monday that he will not seek reelection in 2018 to the United States House of Representatives. In addition to being one of the longest-serving Republican members of the House (representing the second district of Tennessee since 1988), Duncan, who argues that being antiwar is a conservative position, is also one of the House’s strongest proponents for peace.
In his April of 2015 editorial “A Return to The Peace Party,” Duncan lamented the Republican Party drifting toward being a war-supporting party and argued that it should revert to its past position as the peace party. “When I was a teenager,” Duncan wrote, “I remember reading a publication from the Republican National Committee that said, ‘Democrats start wars, Republicans end them.’” Duncan wrote in the editorial that he not only thought the party’s shift toward hawkishness is wrong but also declared, “I think it is a recipe for defeat if my Republican party becomes known as a party favoring permanent, forever wars — war without end.”
Duncan elaborated on his editorial’s analysis in an in-depth C-SPAN interview the next month.
Duncan has also spoken up in the House against war, including in a June of 2015 speech in which Duncan proclaimed, “there has been nothing conservative about our policy of permanent, forever, endless war in the Middle East,” and in March of 2014 when he advised in a speech in opposition to US intervention in Ukraine that, “We don’t need to be sending billions to Ukraine, and we especially should not escalate this situation into some type of military confrontation.”
Duncan has cast votes in opposition to US wars and sanctions, including when he was one of only six House Republicans to vote in October of 2002 against authorizing the US commencing a war against Iraq and one of only three House members to vote last week against legislation imposing and expanding sanctions against Iran, North Korea, and Russia.
Duncan voted against the Iraq War despite the strong support in his district for starting the war. “When I pushed that button to vote no on that war,” Duncan is quoted in a Knoxville News Sentinel article regarding his vote, “I thought I might be ending my political career. I’m not trying to over-dramatize it. I really thought I might be.”
That vote did not end Duncan’s political career. But, 15 years and eight elections later, Duncan himself has decided to leave the House.
Commenting this week regarding his work in the House in a statement about his decision to not seek reelection, Duncan wrote, “During my time in Congress, I’ve worked as hard as I can to fight for what I believe in – fiscal conservatism, smaller government, and a more humble foreign policy that puts America first.”
Duncan is a member of the Advisory Board of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.
Insane policy towards North Korea
By Ron Forthofer | Dissident Voice | August 1, 2017
This year we commemorate the 72nd anniversary of the unjustifiable US use of nuclear weapons against civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Those two attacks demonstrated the horrific power of the atomic bomb, a bomb that is tiny in comparison to the nuclear weapons available today.
Here are a few quotes that are worth pondering as we now face an avoidable crisis with North Korea, a nation with a few nuclear weapons.
After the initial use of atomic weapons, Admiral William Leahy, effectively Chief of Staff to presidents Roosevelt and Truman, commented:
It is my opinion that the use of the barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan … My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.
In 1948 General Omar Bradley said:
Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living.
William Perry, former a Secretary of Defense under Bill Clinton, recently wrote:
I believe that the risk of a nuclear catastrophe today is greater than it was during the Cold War — and yet our public is blissfully unaware of the new nuclear dangers they face.
Steven Starr with Physicians for Social Responsibility wrote in 2014:
These peer-reviewed studies – which were analyzed by the best scientists in the world and found to be without error – also predict that a war fought with less than half of US or Russian strategic nuclear weapons would destroy the human race.
Given what we know, it is criminally irresponsible to continue tit-for-tat provocations with North Korea. Russia, China and North Korea have offered a solution that would freeze North Korea’s nuclear weapon and ballistic missile programs in exchange for a freeze on joint war games by the US, South Korea and now Japan that alarm North Korea with the possibility of a nuclear attack.
For the US to continue with sanctions and war games instead of negotiating is insane as it is endangering the world. An attack by the US on North Korea would likely draw China and Russia into the fighting. Not to negotiate shows that General Bradley’s quote is still correct about our leaders. We must demand that the US negotiate to prevent perhaps the greatest catastrophe of all time.
Ron Forthofer is a retired professor of biostatistics from the University of Texas School of Public Health in Houston and was a Green Party candidate for Congress and also for governor of Colorado.
Shall We Fight Them All?
By Pat Buchanan • Unz Review • August 1, 2017
Saturday, Kim Jong Un tested an ICBM of sufficient range to hit the U.S. mainland. He is now working on its accuracy, and a nuclear warhead small enough to fit atop that missile that can survive re-entry.
Unless we believe Kim is a suicidal madman, his goal seems clear. He wants what every nuclear power wants — the ability to strike his enemy’s homeland with horrific impact, in order to deter that enemy.
Kim wants his regime recognized and respected, and the U.S., which carpet-bombed the North from 1950-1953, out of Korea.
Where does this leave us? Says Cliff Kupchan of the Eurasia Group, “The U.S. is on the verge of a binary choice: either accept North Korea into the nuclear club or conduct a military strike that would entail enormous civilian casualties.”
A time for truth. U.S. sanctions on North Korea, like those voted for by Congress last week, are not going to stop Kim from acquiring ICBMs. He is too close to the goal line.
And any pre-emptive strike on the North could trigger a counterattack on Seoul by massed artillery on the DMZ, leaving tens of thousands of South Koreans dead, alongside U.S. soldiers and their dependents.
We could be in an all-out war to the finish with the North, a war the American people do not want to fight.
Saturday, President Trump tweeted out his frustration over China’s failure to pull our chestnuts out of the fire: “They do NOTHING for us with North Korea, just talk. We will no longer allow this to continue. China could easily solve this problem.”
Sunday, U.S. B-1B bombers flew over Korea and the Pacific air commander Gen. Terrence J. O’Shaughnessy warned his units were ready to hit North Korea with “rapid, lethal, and overwhelming force.”
Yet, also Sunday, Xi Jinping reviewed a huge parade of tanks, planes, troops and missiles as Chinese officials mocked Trump as a “greenhorn President” and “spoiled child” who is running a bluff against North Korea. Is he? We shall soon see.
According to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Trump vowed Monday he would take “all necessary measures” to protect U.S. allies. And U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley bristled, “The time for talk is over.”
Are we headed for a military showdown and war with the North? The markets, hitting records again Monday, don’t seem to think so.
But North Korea is not the only potential adversary with whom our relations are rapidly deteriorating.
After Congress voted overwhelmingly for new sanctions on Russia last week and Trump agreed to sign the bill that strips him of authority to lift the sanctions without Hill approval, Russia abandoned its hopes for a rapprochement with Trump’s America. Sunday, Putin ordered U.S. embassy and consulate staff cut by 755 positions.
The Second Cold War, begun when we moved NATO to Russia’s borders and helped dump over a pro-Russian regime in Kiev, is getting colder. Expect Moscow to reciprocate Congress’ hostility when we ask for her assistance in Syria and with North Korea.
Last week’s sanctions bill also hit Iran after it tested a rocket to put a satellite in orbit, though the nuclear deal forbids only the testing of ballistic missiles that can carry nuclear warheads. Defiant, Iranians say their missile tests will continue.
Recent days have also seen U.S. warships and Iranian patrol boats in close proximity, with the U.S. ships firing flares and warning shots. Our planes and ships have also, with increasingly frequency, come to close quarters with Russian and Chinese ships and planes in the Baltic and South China seas.
While wary of a war with North Korea, Washington seems to be salivating for a war with Iran. Indeed, Trump’s threat to declare Iran in violation of the nuclear arms deal suggests a confrontation is coming.
One wonders: If Congress is hell-bent on confronting the evil that is Iran, why does it not cancel Iran’s purchases and options to buy the 140 planes the mullahs have ordered from Boeing?
Why are we selling U.S. airliners to the “world’s greatest state sponsor of terror”? Let Airbus take the blood money.
Apparently, U.S. wars in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Somalia are insufficient to satiate our War Party. Now it wants us to lead the Sunnis of the Middle East in taking down the Shiites, who are dominant in Iran, Iraq, Syria and South Lebanon, and are a majority in Bahrain and the oil-producing regions of Saudi Arabia.
The U.S. military has its work cut out for it. President Trump may need those transgender troops.
Among the reasons Trump routed his Republican rivals in 2016 is that he seemed to share an American desire to look homeward.
Yet, today, our relations with China and Russia are as bad as they have been in decades, while there is open talk of war with Iran and North Korea.
Was this what America voted for, or is this what America voted against?
Copyright 2017 Creators.com.
US Air Force won’t reimburse Colorado county for water pollution
RT | July 31, 2017
Colorado communities whose drinking water supply was contaminated by chemicals used at the Peterson Air Force Base are frustrated as the military is refusing to reimburse their cleanup costs and promising aid only after years of environmental studies.
Firefighting foam containing perfluorinated compounds (PFCs) has seeped into the Widefield Aquifer over the decades, making well water in southern El Paso County unsafe to drink, according to a recent US Air Force study.
The chemicals were detected at 88,000 parts per trillion near the fire training area at Peterson AFB, which is 1,257 times higher than the advisory level set by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
So far, the water districts of Security, Widefield and the city of Fountain have spent $6 million dealing with the contamination, and the costs are expected to rise to $12.7 million by the end of 2018, according to the Colorado Springs Gazette.
“We really need financial help,” said Roy Heald, manager of the Security Water and Sanitation Districts. “We need to get going on those things before the 2020s.”
However, the USAF said it does not have the authority to reimburse communities for costs of dealing with environmental contamination.
“We don’t back pay – we cannot reimburse,” said Cornell Long, a chemist with the Air Force Civil Engineer Center, according to AP.
The inspection report released last week cost $400,000 and local officials said it was limited in scope. The Air Force is funding another study this fall to better understand how the groundwater moves under the base, and plans another study in the spring of 2019 to explore options for fixing the contamination. Funding for those studies is yet to be approved by Congress.
While “interim measures” might come sooner, the Air Force does not expect to implement remediation plans until the 2020s, the Civil Engineer Center leaders said last week.
Most of the $4.3 million the Air Force has pledged in aid has not been delivered, according to the Gazette. Of that amount, only $1.7 million will go to pay the utility costs, while much of the rest will be spent on bottled water and filters.
Meanwhile, local residents are facing higher prices for drinking water. Fountain is planning to raise water rates by 5.3 percent. Widefield is planning to build a water treatment plant for the affected wells, at a cost of up to $12 million. Security is currently paying $1 million a year to Colorado Springs Utilities for clean water, and is considering a rate increase and a treatment plan.
By the time the Air Force finishes its studies, the local districts will have borne most of the costs, said El Paso County Commissioner Mark Waller, a former Air Force officer.
“That’s not an excuse, I think, that should be used in order to end up not paying for these things,” he told the Gazette.
State Senator Bob Gardner (R-Colorado Springs) says El Paso County has a “large reservoir of patience,” and is very supportive of the military, but that the Air Force risks that well running dry if the bills keep stacking up.
“That needs to be compensated,” he said. “And the military needs to go ahead and step up and not study and study and study.”
Communities around the Pease AFB in New Hampshire and Wurtsmith AFB in Michigan – both closed years ago – are also dealing with PFC pollution. Residents of Oscoda, Michigan who rely on private water wells were told to seek an alternative water supply, while a “do not eat” advisory is in effect for fish caught near the base.
Earlier this year, the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) acknowledged “a national-scale problem” related to PFCs, but “we don’t have the authority and we don’t have the resources” to do much about it, director Pat Breysse said.
Read more:
Militarization of Scandinavian Peninsula: Time to Ring Alarm Bells
By Alex GORKA | Strategic Culture Foundation | 31.07.2017
Much has been said about NATO reinforcements in the Baltic States and Poland perceived in Moscow as provocative actions undermining security in Europe, while very little has been said about gradual but steady militarization of Scandinavia. The theme does not hit headlines and it is not in focus of public discourse but one step is taken after another to turn the region into a springboard for staging offensive actions against Russia.
Ørland in southern Norway is being expanded to become Norway’s main air force base hosting US-made F-35 Lightnings – the stealth aircraft to become the backbone of Norwegian air power. Norway has purchased 56 of such aircraft. F-35 is an offensive, not defensive, weapon. The nuclear capable platforms can strike deep into Russia’s territory.
Providing training to Norwegian pilots operating the planes carrying nuclear weapons, such as B61-12 glider warheads, constitutes a violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1968. Article I of the NPT prohibits the transfer of nuclear weapons from NWS (nuclear weapons states) to other states: «Each nuclear-weapon State Party to the Treaty undertakes not to transfer to any recipient whatsoever nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices or control over such weapons or explosive devices». Article II requires NNWS (non-nuclear weapons states) not to receive nuclear weapons: «Each non-nuclear-weapon State Party to the Treaty undertakes not to receive the transfer from any transfer or whatsoever of nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices or of control over such weapons or explosive devices». How can Russia be sure that these aircraft don’t carry nuclear weapons when there is no agreement of any kind in place to verify compliance with the NPT?
Ørland is located near Værnes – the base that hosts 330 US Marines. In May, the base hosted the biennial NATO military exercise «Arctic Challenge Exercise 2017» to involve over 100 planes from 12 nations. It was the first time a US strategic bomber (B-52H) took part in the training event.
The choice of the base was carefully calculated to keep the planes away from the reach of Russian Iskander missiles (500 kilometres) but no location in Norway is beyond the operational range of Kalibr ship-based sea-to-shore missiles and aircraft armed with long-range air-to-surface missiles.
In June, Norway’s government announced that the decision was taken to extend the rotational US Marine Corps force stationed at Værnes through 2018. The move contradicts the tried-and-true Norwegian policy of not deploying foreign military bases in the country in times of peace.
Also in June, the United States, United Kingdom and Norway agreed in principle to create a trilateral coalition built around the P-8 maritime aircraft to include joint operations in the North Atlantic near the Russian Northern Fleet bases.
Norway is to contribute into NATO ballistic missile defense (BMD) system by integrating its Globus II/III radar in the Vardøya Island located near the Russian border just a few kilometers from the home base of strategic submarines and 5 Aegis-equipped Fridtjof Nansen-class frigates. The radar construction is underway. The Vardøya radar can distinguish real warheads from dummies. Another radar located in Svalbard (the Arctic) can also be used by US military for missile defense purposes.
The country’s ground forces are stationed in Lithuania as part of a NATO multinational force under German command.
Sweden, a close NATO ally, has been upgrading its military with a sharp hike in spending. Last December, the Swedish government told municipal authorities to prepare civil defense infrastructure and procedures for a possible war. The move was prompted by the country’s return to the Cold War-era ‘Total Defense Strategy’. In September, 2016, 150 troops were put on permanent service on the island of Gotland to «defend it from Russia». Sweden maintained a permanent military garrison on Gotland for hundreds of years until 2005.The Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB) has ordered a review of 350 civilian bunkers on the island. The shelters are designed to protect people against the shock wave and radiation from a nuclear detonation, as well as chemical and biological weapons.
In March, Stockholm announced plans to reintroduce compulsory military service abandoned in 2010. The conscription will come into force on January 1, 2018.
Sweden said in June it wishes to join a British-led «Joint Expeditionary Force», making Swedish participation in a general European war all but inevitable.
This month, the Swedish military announced plans to conduct its largest joint military exercise with NATO in 20 years. Called Aurora 17, the training event is scheduled for September. The drills will take place across the entire country but focusing on the Mälardalen Valley, the areas around cities of Stockholm and Gothenberg and on the strategic island of Gotland. More than 19,000 Swedish troops will take part along with 1,435 soldiers from the US, 270 from Finland, 120 from France and between 40-60 each from Denmark, Norway, Lithuania and Estonia.
In June, Russian President Putin warned «If Sweden joins NATO this will affect our relations in a negative way because we will consider that the infrastructure of the military bloc now approaches us from the Swedish side».
In June, 2016, Finland took part in NATO BALTOPS naval exercise. It was the first time NATO forces trained on Finnish territory (The coastal area at Syndale). Back then, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told his Finnish counterpart, Timo Soini, that the Kremlin would take unspecified measures to respond to increased NATO activity in the Baltic region. According to Lavrov, «We do not hide our negative attitude to the movement of NATO’s military infrastructure towards our borders, to dragging new states into the military activity of the bloc».
All these facts and events summed together demonstrate that militarization of Scandinavia is progressing by leaps and bounds to undermine the security in Europe. No hue and cry is raised in the Russian media but the developments are closely watched by Moscow. Visiting Finland on July 27, President Putin said Russia was «keeping an eye on certain intensification in the movement of military aircraft, ships and troops. In order for us to avoid negative consequences, situations that no one wants, we need to maintain dialogue». He also stressed readiness for dialogue with neutral countries that border the Baltic Sea like Finland which is not part of the NATO military alliance.
The facts listed above show the situation is grave enough to top the agenda of the NATO-Russia Council. But it’s not the case as yet. Last year, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the current President of Germany who was Foreign Minister at the time, slammed NATO for «saber-rattling and war cries» and provocative military activities in the proximity of Russia’s borders. He called for an arms control deal between the West and Russia. Fifteen other members of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) joined Steinmeier’s initiative: France, Italy, Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Spain, Finland, the Netherlands, Norway, Romania, Sweden, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Portugal.
Actually, the initiative to relaunch the negotiation process does not belong to Germany. Russia’s proposal to discuss a new European security treaty was rejected by the West. The draft document was published in 2009. In March 2015, Russia expressed its readiness for negotiations concerning a new agreement regarding the control of conventional weapons in Europe.
Moscow has never rejected the idea of launching talks to address the problem. It does not reject it now. The NATO-Russia Council could make a contribution into launching discussions on the matter. It has not done so as yet. Actually, nothing is done to ease the tensions in Europe and the Scandinavian Peninsula in particular. Meanwhile, the situation is aggravating misunderstandings and whipping up tensions.
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How Ukraine Tortured and Slaughtered Donbass
By Kit Klarenberg | Al Mayadeen | July 11, 2024
Almost immediately after the proxy war erupted, ISIS-tier footage of the torture and murder of Russians in Ukrainian custody emerged.
On July 6th, the New York Times published an astonishing investigation: In Ukraine, Killings of Surrendering Russians Divide an American-Led Unit. The article documents in grim detail how Chosen Company, an international volunteer battalion for Kiev, routinely executes Russian prisoners of war. It is the very first mainstream admission that this practice – a brazen breach of the Geneva Conventions, and a grave war crime – is widespread among Ukraine’s fighters, both foreign and homegrown. … continue
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