Long Live the Queen of Chaos
By Rob Urie | CounterPunch | July 29, 2016
For those to whom this hasn’t yet occurred, if Hillary Clinton is elected President she will be President. The Democratic Party platform, Bernie Sanders’ program proposals and Mrs. Clinton’s theorized move Left will be but distant memories. If Mrs. Clinton brings with her a Democratic Congress (or not) she will use it to pass the TPP and TTIP ‘trade’ agreements, to launch ‘liberal’ wars across the Middle East and rattle sabers against Russia, she will re-launch the ‘Grand Bargain’ to cut Social Security and Medicare under the pretext of a fiscal crisis and should Wall Street falter, she will ‘hold her nose’ and once again bail out her benefactors. This is the program her supporters are voting for.
By analogy, when Barack Obama entered office with a Democratic Congress in 2009 he had the best opportunity since the early 1930s to enact a new New Deal in favor of social justice and against the forces of neoliberal militarism. After bailing out Wall Street and institutionalizing the worst ‘unitary President’ excesses of the George W. Bush administration Mr. Obama ran and won again in 2012 on the well-instantiated delusion that once freed from having to run for office again he would be the ‘progressive’ his supporters always thought him to be. This despite his self-description as a ‘moderate Republican’ and his actual record at the center of the Democrats’ three decade turn to the political hard-right.
The Democratic Party line that a vote for Green Party candidate Jill Stein or a write-in vote for Bernie Sanders is a vote for Donald Trump overlooks that establishment Democrats rigged the primary process in favor of Mrs. Clinton and that it is their policies that are responsible for widespread political disaffection. The odds have it that if a vote were taken to exile both Party establishments to poorly provisioned outposts on Mars they would be on the way there now. What is so frighteningly irresponsible about Mrs. Clinton’s insertion / assertion as the Democratic Party candidate is the same problem posed by Barack Obama’s posture as a ‘progressive’ President— it leaves the radical right as the only alternative for disaffected voters.
Graph: prime-age employment— jobs for those who must work to live, have been declining since 2000. Each subsequent economic ‘recovery’ has proceeded from a lower, and more desperate, base. Democrats had available to them the New Deal economic template to work from. But they chose restoration of the unstable, destabilizing neoliberal project instead. Source: St. Louis Federal Reserve.
The illusion of political choice only works as long as the status quo functions in some basic sense. The recurring financial bubbles from Savings and Loan deregulation (1980s), privatization and equitization of government-funded research in the tech boom – bust (late 1990s) and the housing boom – bust demonstrated the fleeting nature of Wall Street fueled ‘prosperity.’ With the Middle Class on the ropes, the working class all but disappeared and the poor desperately clinging to the few crumbs that fall to them, the U.S. is but one recession away from being economically (and politically) untenable. The only programs that Democrats have— ‘free-trade,’ private debt fueled consumption, deregulation, privatization and Wall Street bailouts, are proven losers for all but a few in 2016.
One of the reasons the American political leadership needs foreign ‘enemies’ is to divert attention away from the damage that nominal Americans do— Wall Street, corporate executives, the NSA and carceral state, trade deals that act as firewalls against social and environmental resolution and local government actors for corporate power (ALEC-American Legislative Exchange Council). Another is the ‘business’ of nominal governance, the nexus of state and corporate interests that promotes geopolitical tensions, fear and paranoia as business ventures from which profits are earned through mass destruction (Vietnam, Iraq). As the most despised candidate for U.S. President in recent history, Hillary Clinton needs foreign enemies.
Flip the Democratic Party script for a moment to consider that Vladimir Putin might have a point. Hillary Clinton is the most dangerous person on the planet because she is a neoliberal militarist who is absolutely immune from the consequences of the crises she creates. Armed with nuclear weapons freshly ‘upgraded’ by Barack Obama, Mrs. Clinton and the neocon cabal she hopes to lead have destroyed Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria, have surrounded Russia with NATO troops and weapons, staged a neo-fascist coup in Ukraine, supported a right-wing coup in Honduras and have indicated their intentions to proceed apace turning entire regions of the planet into chaotic rubble with body-counts already in the millions.
This isn’t speculation about some future state of affairs. Hillary Clinton sold U.S. sanctions against Iraq in which one-half million of Iraq’s most vulnerable citizens were starved and denied life-saving medicines to ‘teach Saddam Hussein a lesson.’ And the Clinton-Bush war against Iraq cost one million more innocent lives and created chaos across the Middle East. ISIS is a direct result of Clinton-Bush policies. The liberal pretense that the U.S. War of Aggression against Iraq was ‘Bush’s war’ requires overlooking the eight years of liberal bombing and sanctions that preceded it and that Bill Clinton gave Mr. Bush political cover for the war as his wife voted for it. The U.S. war against Iraq— catastrophe that it was / is, was as bi-partisan as they come.
The system that Mrs. Clinton and Donald Trump— past friends who attend each other’s public functions and private affairs and whose children thrive together in the closed lootocracy of officialdom, are vying against one another to ‘lead’ a spoils system where ‘leadership’ means the ability to arrange profitable outcomes for private interests through ‘public’ means. Neoliberal militarism is private profits created through public death, destruction and misery. The profits explain why Hillary Clinton is never held to account for deadly sanctions, gratuitous wars that turn into geopolitical catastrophes, social policies that turned the poorest 40% of the country into a beggar class and racist strategies like mass incarceration to divide the working class. Given her actual record, Black support for Mrs. Clinton is akin to choosing between AIDS and cancer.
Americans exhibit near-heroic aversion to history and the consequences of American policies that now constitute the core of the Democratic Party’s domestic agenda. The IMF has been pushing these policies on ‘client’ (victim) states for the last half-century. The capitalist lootocracy that the Democrats (and Republicans) serve has long installed puppet governments to reign with impunity as long as they deliver local wealth to back ‘up’ to it. The Clintons are corrupt puppets who serve this system of un-enlightened self-interest as domestic agents of international capital. The sooner the youth of America and the residual Left realize that there is no hope for a better, or even livable, future through establishment politics the sooner we can get to the task at hand: a (real) political revolution.
The title of this piece is taken from Diana Johnstone’s book Queen of Chaos.
US & Saudi Arabia ‘Involved in Turkey’s Downing of Russian Su-24’ in Syria
Sputnik | July 29, 2016
German former CDU politician and Vice-President of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe Willy Wimmer told Sputnik Deutschland that he fears NATO involvement in the downing of Russia’s Su-24 bomber over Syria last November.
NATO was involved in last year’s downing of Russia’s Su-24 bomber in Syrian airspace, Willy Wimmer, former Vice-President of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), told Sputnik Deutschland on Friday.On November 24 2015 Turkish jets downed a Russian Su-24 bomber carrying out anti-terror operations in Syria. The plane’s two co-pilots parachuted from the plane but one of them, Lieutenant Colonel Oleg Peshkov, was shot and killed by suspected Turkmen militants operating in Syria.
The incident caused a major diplomatic dispute between Turkey and Russia; the former said the bomber was shot for infringing Turkish airspace, but Russia maintains the Su-24 did not enter Turkish airspace, and was carrying out an anti-Daesh mission in Syria when it was downed.
The downing had been interpreted as a unilateral decision by Turkey, but Willy Wimmer contends that in fact, NATO and Saudi forces were involved in the incident.
“According to my information, Airborne Early Warning and Control System (AWACS) aircraft from the US and Saudi Arabia were involved,” Wimmer said.
“Aircraft like that Russian Su-24 bomber are not that easy to just shoot out of the sky. You need to take aim, and you can only do that with AWACS aircraft.”
The two AWACS planes involved in the incident took off from a US base on Cyprus, and an airbase in Saudi Arabia respectively, Wimmer said. He explained that according to NATO guidelines, if a plane is believed to be violating another country’s airspace then contact should made with the appropriate flight control center to draw the pilot’s attention to the error.In peacetime, the most military aircraft is allowed to do is to force a stray aircraft to make an emergency landing.
“What happened there does not comply with international regulations in any way. They brought the Russian plane down because they wanted to,” Wimmer said.
Wimmer believes that the motivation for enabling the otherwise inexplicable attack, was a desire on the part of Turkey’s allies to spoil diplomatic relations between Turkey and Russia.
“It must be assumed that if somebody breaks international rules, then political interests are at stake. This was about destroying the relations between the Turkish Republic and the Russian Federation, which were blossoming (back) then,” the politician said.
“Last year the construction of the South Stream pipeline (from Russia) through the EU was stopped because of American pressure. A few weeks later, Russia and Turkey successfully created a replacement, the Turkish Stream. Of course, that was diametrically opposed to the Americans’ sanctions politics against Russia. The reaction of the Americans can be interpreted accordingly,” Wimmer believes.
Last month Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wrote a letter of apology to Russian President Vladimir Putin about the downing of the Su-24. The Turkish President said that Turkey “never had a desire or a deliberate intention to down an aircraft belonging to Russia,” and expressed his deep sympathy and condolences to the relatives of the deceased Russian pilot.
Hillary Clinton and Her Hawks
By Gareth Porter | Consortium News | July 29, 2016
As Hillary Clinton begins her final charge for the White House, her advisers are already recommending air strikes and other new military measures against the Assad regime in Syria.
The clear signals of Clinton’s readiness to go to war appears to be aimed at influencing the course of the war in Syria as well as U.S. policy over the remaining six months of the Obama administration. (She also may be hoping to corral the votes of Republican neoconservatives concerned about Donald Trump’s “America First” foreign policy.)
Last month, the think tank run by Michele Flournoy, the former Defense Department official considered to be most likely to be Clinton’s choice to be Secretary of Defense, explicitly called for “limited military strikes” against the Assad regime.
And earlier this month Leon Panetta, former Defense Secretary and CIA Director, who has been advising candidate Clinton, declared in an interview that the next president would have to increase the number of Special Forces and carry out air strikes to help “moderate” groups against President Bashal al-Assad. (When Panetta gave a belligerent speech at the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday night, he was interrupted by chants from the delegates on the floor of “no more war!”
Flournoy co-founded the Center for New American Security (CNAS) in 2007 to promote support for U.S. war policies in Iraq and Afghanistan, and then became Under Secretary of Defense for Policy in the Obama administration in 2009.
Flournoy left her Pentagon position in 2012 and returned to CNAS as Chief Executive Officer. She has been described by ultimate insider journalist David Ignatius of the Washington Post, as being on a “short, short list” for the job Secretary of Defense in a Clinton administration.
Last month, CNAS published a report of a “Study Group” on military policy in Syria on the eve of the organization’s annual conference. Ostensibly focused on how to defeat the Islamic State, the report recommends new U.S. military actions against the Assad regime.
Flournoy chaired the task force, along with CNAS president Richard Fontaine, and publicly embraced its main policy recommendation in remarks at the conference.
She called for “using limited military coercion” to help support the forces seeking to force President Assad from power, in part by creating a “no bombing” zone over those areas in which the opposition groups backed by the United States could operate safely.
In an interview with Defense One, Flournoy described the no-bomb zone as saying to the Russian and Syrian governments, “If you bomb the folks we support, we will retaliate using standoff means to destroy [Russian] proxy forces, or, in this case, Syrian assets.” That would “stop the bombing of certain civilian populations,” Flournoy said.
In a letter to the editor of Defense One, Flournoy denied having advocated “putting U.S. combat troops on the ground to take territory from Assad’s forces or remove Assad from power,” which she said the title and content of the article had suggested.
But she confirmed that she had argued that “the U.S. should under some circumstances consider using limited military coercion – primarily trikes using standoff weapons – to retaliate against Syrian military targets” for attacks on civilian or opposition groups “and to set more favorable conditions on the ground for a negotiated political settlement.”
Renaming a ‘No-Fly’ Zone
The proposal for a “no bombing zone” has clearly replaced the “no fly zone,” which Clinton has repeatedly supported in the past as the slogan to cover a much broader U.S. military role in Syria.
Panetta served as Defense Secretary and CIA Director in the Obama administration when Clinton was Secretary of State, and was Clinton’s ally on Syria policy. On July 17, he gave an interview to CBS News in which he called for steps that partly complemented and partly paralleled the recommendations in the CNAS paper.
“I think the likelihood is that the next president is gonna have to consider adding additional special forces on the ground,” Panetta said, “to try to assist those moderate forces that are taking on ISIS and that are taking on Assad’s forces.”
Panetta was deliberately conflating two different issues in supporting more U.S. Special Forces in Syria. The existing military mission for those forces is to support the anti-ISIS forces made up overwhelmingly of the Kurdish YPG and a few opposition groups.
Neither the Kurds nor the opposition groups the Special Forces are supporting are fighting against the Assad regime. What Panetta presented as a need only for additional personnel is in fact a completely new U.S. mission for Special Forces of putting military pressure on the Assad regime.
He also called for increasing “strikes” in order to “put increasing pressure on ISIS but also on Assad.” That wording, which jibes with the Flournoy-CNAS recommendation, again conflates two entirely different strategic programs as a single program.
The Panetta ploys in confusing two separate policy issues reflects the reality that the majority of the American public strongly supports doing more militarily to defeat ISIS but has been opposed to U.S. war against the government in Syria.
A poll taken last spring showed 57 percent in favor of a more aggressive U.S. military force against ISIS. The last time public opinion was surveyed on the issue of war against the Assad regime, however, was in September 2013, just as Congress was about to vote on authorizing such a strike.
At that time, 55 percent to 77 percent of those surveyed opposed the use of military force against the Syrian regime, depending on whether Congress voted to authorize such a strike or to oppose it.
Shaping the Debate
It is highly unusual, if not unprecedented, for figures known to be close to a presidential candidate to make public recommendations for new and broader war abroad. The fact that such explicit plans for military strikes against the Assad regime were aired so openly soon after Clinton had clinched the Democratic nomination suggests that Clinton had encouraged Flournoy and Panetta to do so.
The rationale for doing so is evidently not to strengthen her public support at home but to shape the policy decisions made by the Obama administration and the coalition of external supporters of the armed opposition to Assad.
Obama’s refusal to threaten to use military force on behalf of the anti-Assad forces or to step up military assistance to them has provoked a series of leaks to the news media by unnamed officials – primarily from the Defense Department – criticizing Obama’s willingness to cooperate with Russia in seeking a Syrian ceasefire and political settlement as “naïve.”
The news of Clinton’s advisers calling openly for military measures signals to those critics in the administration to continue to push for a more aggressive policy on the premise that she will do just that as president.
Even more important to Clinton and close associates, however, is the hope of encouraging Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which have been supporting the armed opposition to Assad, to persist in and even intensify their efforts in the face of the prospect of U.S.-Russian cooperation in Syria.
Even before the recommendations were revealed, specialists on Syria in Washington think tanks were already observing signs that Saudi and Qatari policymakers were waiting for the Obama administration to end in the hope that Clinton would be elected and take a more activist role in the war against Assad.
The new Prime Minister of Turkey, Binali Yildirim, however, made a statement on July 13 suggesting that Turkish President Recep Yayyip Erdogan may be considering a deal with Russia and the Assad regime at the expense of both Syrian Kurds and the anti-Assad opposition.
That certainly would have alarmed Clinton’s advisers, and four days later, Panetta made his comments on network television about what “the next president” would have to do in Syria.
U.S. Awards $1.7 Billion Contract to Buy Radios for Afghan Army
By Peter Van Buren | We Meant Well | July 29, 2016
I always found myself giggling during the Democratic debates when Hillary would ask Bernie how he was going to pay for things like healthcare or college tuition, and then Bernie stammering to find an answer.
They both knew the secret but neither would say it — there’s plenty of money, we just don’t want to spend it on Americans.
We think of that as freeloading, unearned stuff. Go get a job, moocher. But then move the same question overseas and everything changes. There is always plenty of money, and the people getting free stuff from that money aren’t moochers. They’re allies.
So how much healthcare would $1.7 billion buy? Because that’s how much money the United States just laid out to buy radios for the near-useless Afghan Army. And while I don’t know how much healthcare the money would buy, I do know it will purchase a helluva lot of radios. Is everyone in Afghanistan getting one? Maybe we’re buying them for the Taliban, too.
Anyway, the $1,700,000,000 radios for Afghanistan contract was just recently awarded to the Harris Corporation. And here’s a funny thing: only one company — Harris — actually put in a bid for the contract.
But the Afghans must need more stuff than just radios, and so the U.S. has money ready for that.
The United States will provide $3 billion to the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces from 2018 to 2020 for, well, we don’t really know. Meanwhile, the U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan said the White House planned to ask Congress for about $1 billion a year in development and economic assistance for Afghanistan through 2020. And if that isn’t enough, the United States and its allies are expected to raise $15 billion for the Afghan National Defense and Security forces at a NATO summit scheduled for next month in Warsaw.
There’s money. You just can’t have any of it, moochers.
US, France: Gradual Expansion of Military Presence in the Middle East
By Peter KORZUN | Strategic Culture Foundation | 29.07.2016
The US military plans to increase the presence in Yemen. «As we continue on the mission, I think there will be some additional troops that we will ask to bring in», US Army General Joseph Votel, who heads the US Central Command, said in an interview in Baghdad on July 14, without disclosing the number.
According to him, a variety of locations could be suitable for American forces. He did not disclose potential sites.
The Saudi Arabia-led coalition of Arab states, supported by the US and the UK, has been involved in the Yemeni conflict since March 2015. So far, it has not gained much ground. The Yemeni capital Sana’a is still in the hands of the Houthis group (Ansar Allah – «Supporters of God»).
The fighting has resulted in more than 3,200 civilian deaths, over 60 percent of them from coalition airstrikes, according to the United Nations.
Around 6,000 civilians have been wounded in the conflict. Airstrikes have damaged or destroyed numerous civilian objects including homes, markets, hospitals, and schools, as well as commercial enterprises.
On 30 June an HRW report stated that US-made bombs were being used in attacks indiscriminately targeting civilians and violating the laws of war.
The report photographed «the remnants of an MK-83 air-dropped 1,000-pound bomb made in the US».
On 1 July, the UN announced that Yemen was at the highest level of humanitarian disaster with over 80% of the population needing help.
United Nations agencies agreed to classify Yemen as a level 3 emergency as the UN envoy for Yemen stated that the country is one step away from famine.
The announcement of the US plans to bring in more forces came amid the reports that the Saudi-led coalition may be preparing to attack Sana’a, the Houthi-held Yemen’s capital, following the breakdown of the UN-led peace process in Kuwait. The UN-led peace process in Kuwait was suspended after 77 days of negotiations that achieved no significant progress.
The US mission in Yemen is just the latest in a growing number of small US deployments across the world. US special operations forces (SOF) have been deployed to 135 nations – around 70% of the countries in the world.
Every day, they carry out missions in 80 to 90 nations. Approximately 11,000 special operators are deployed or stationed outside the United States with many more on standby, ready to respond in the event of an overseas crisis.
The US military is also looking to further beef up its presence in Iraq. The administration has recently announced that additional 560 troops will be sent to Iraq to strengthen the Iraqi offensive to retake Mosul, the Iraqi second biggest city, that is now an Islamic State (IS) stronghold.
General Votel said, the request for more troops will be on top of the 560 already announced. His remarks came just three days after Obama’s administration announced a 560 troop increase as part of an effort to facilitate an Iraqi offensive to retake Mosul. The General cautioned that Americans should not expect a rapid, wholesale withdrawal from the country. He emphasized that the forces will stay even after the US military accomplishes the mission of driving out IS forces from Mosul in Iraq and from the Syrian city of al-Raqqa. According to Votel, once their objectives are met in the areas, it will be imperative that they ensure the militants do not shift base and begin operating from other locations outside those cities. He said the goal was to achieve a «lasting defeat».
It’s not the US only. French President Francois Hollande has said that France will send heavy artillery to Iraq to support the fight against the Islamic State. Hollande announced the plan on July 22, saying the artillery equipment «will be in place next month». The president also reiterated that the French aircraft carrier Charles De Gaulle will be deployed in the region in late September to help in ongoing operations against the IS. Elsewhere, protests erupted in Libya on July 21 after the president confirmed for the first time that French special forces were operating in the country. Libya’s UN-backed government in Tripoli also condemned France’s military action.
It starts with clandestine operations of limited scale conducted by special operations forces to be followed by reinforcements sent to beef up the presence, and then artillery units deployed to support them on the ground. Step by step the West is expanding its military intervention on the ground in Yemen, Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East. There deployments are described as ‘small-scale’ operations conducted without putting troops on the frontlines fighting firefights. This way the leading Western nations may be trending towards another war in the Middle East without the public realizing it. In Yemen, Iraq and other places, the deployments will gradually lead to full commitment to a ground war and it will be too late to turn back the clock.
US, Israel forces stage secret military drill
Press TV – July 29, 2016
Israel and the United States have reportedly staged a joint secret war game in southern Israel amid growing military cooperation between the two sides.
Israeli media said on Thursday that the drill dubbed ‘Noble Shirley’ was held in Negev Desert to improve cooperation between American and Israeli forces.
The drill, which was said to have been conducted during day and nighttime hours over the past week, involved the US Marine Corps as well as special units from the Israeli air, naval and ground forces.
During the exercise, the troops and commandos took part in drills simulating helicopter landings behind enemy lines, and urban warfare above and below ground. They also practiced close-range combat and military takeover techniques.
Israel’s so-called ‘David’s Sling’ missile system, which targets medium to long-range missiles, was also used in the maneuver.
Moreover, forces also simulated both night-time and day-time combat situations at the Ze’elim training facility, which was built to look exactly like a Palestinian city.
The drill comes some three weeks after Israel’s ministry of military affairs and the US Missile Defense Agency completed a test aimed at ensuring Israeli and American missile systems can operate cooperatively in a future war.
During the trial, the physical connectivity between the systems was tested. The test involved sites scattered around the United States, Europe and Israel.
Elisra Group, which is an Israeli manufacturer of high-tech electronics, led the trial, which was designed to see if Israel’s David’s Sling and Arrow systems could link up with American systems.
Also in February, the US and Israel held joint ‘Juniper Cobra’ exercise in Israel. The drill is held every two years between United States’ European Command and the Israeli military.
Israeli and US authorities claim that growing military cooperation is aimed at countering terrorism. However, critics blame the US and its closest ally Israel for pursuing a vicious agenda amid ongoing militancy in the Mideast region.
‘Safe zone’ in Syria
Meanwhile, Kamal al-Labwani, a Syrian opposition figure with strong ties to Israel, has confirmed an increased interest in the creation of a so-called safe zone in southern Syria.
On July 11, the Israeli army deployed several bulldozers and a tank 300 meters (328 yards) inside Syrian territory in Quneitra and began digging, threatening to shoot anyone who approached them.
According to Labwani, the zone is supposed to run 10 kilometers deep into Syrian territory and approximately 20 kilometers along the Syrian border.
The developments come as the Damascus government says Israel and its Western and regional allies are aiding Takfiri militant groups operating inside the Arab country.
The Syrian army has repeatedly seized huge quantities of Israeli-made weapons and advanced military equipment from the foreign-backed militants inside Syria.
Reports say Tel Aviv has set up field hospitals in the Israeli-occupied side of Syria’s Golan Heights for the treatment of injured militants.
In December 2015, the Daily Mail said the Israeli regime had saved the lives over 2,000 Takfiri militants at the cost of around USD 13 million since 2013.
Israel seized the Golan Heights from Syria after the 1967 Six-Day War and later occupied it in a move that has never been recognized by the international community.
Fooling Most Of The People Most Of The Time Is What American Politics Are About, Even When It Comes To The Threat Of Nuclear War
By John Chuckman | Aletho News | July 28, 2016
I read a column recently, and it was imbued with hopeful thinking about America’s political establishment dealing with its constituents concerning the now increasing threat of nuclear catastrophe.
The author said the piece was intended as “Drano” to clear the political pipes, but I am afraid that much as I sometimes enjoy the same author’s pieces, this one for me had to be characterized as illusion. It may have a lot to do with the author not being a native of the United States, and I do think my background in that country and having studied its history removes any possibility of illusion ever seriously taking hold.
When did America’s establishment ever discuss, in elections or at other times, issues of war and peace for the people’s understanding and consent?
Virtually never.
There was no mandate for Vietnam, Cambodia, Iraq, Libya, Syria, or a dozen other conflicts.
Of course, once a war gets going, there is a tendency for Americans to close ranks with flags and ribbons and slogans such as “Support our troops” and “Love it or leave it.”
The senior leaders know this psychological pattern, and they count on it, every time.
The fundamental problem in America’s government is an elaborate political structure much resembling democracy but with actual rule by a powerful establishment and a set of special interests – all supported by a monstrous security apparatus and a huge, lumbering military, which wouldn’t even know what to do with itself in peace.
Unfortunately, I don’t think there is any apparent solution to this horrible political reality, and, while once it affected primarily Americans themselves, today it affects the planet.
There is an intense new element that has been added to America’s governing establishment: the drive of the neo-cons for American supremacy everywhere, for complete global dominance, and it is something which is frighteningly similar to past drives by fascist governments which brought only human misery on a vast scale.
The neo-cons’ underlying motive, I believe, is absolute security for America’s colony in the Middle East, Israel – put another way, their concern is for Israel’s hegemony over its entire region with no room for anyone else to act in their own interests. It is only if the United States is deeply engaged all over the planet that Israel can constantly benefit from its strange relationship with America.
It did not require the neo-cons to interest America’s establishment with interfering in other people’s affairs. America has a long history of doing so, stretching back to the Mexican War, the Spanish-American War, the Philippine-American War, the brazen seizure of Hawaii from its people and going right up to the pointless War in Vietnam and Cambodia in the hope of keeping the Pacific Ocean effectively an American lake. But the neo-cons have added a new force, a new impulse to something which would be better left alone, and they are very influential in American affairs.
Ordinary Americans are not interested in world affairs, and there is a great deal of evidence to support that statement. American Imperialists of earlier times disparaged this tendency to just want peace at home with the pejorative name, isolationism, and avoiding isolationism became an excuse for a whole series of wars and interventions.
So, Americans today cannot be allowed to fall back into their natural tendency of not caring. Thus we have the drive of the neo-cons and, tragically, thus we have America being driven into direct confrontation with Russia. And with China, too, of course, but Russia is my focus since Russia is the only country in the world literally capable of obliterating the United States. There is unquestionably a sense here of Rome wanting to go after Carthage, although cavalry, swords, spears, and catapults no longer can settle such conflicts.
The situation is compounded by the American establishment’s dawning realization that its days of largely unquestioned supremacy in the world are fading into memory, as other countries grow and develop and have important interests in world affairs. In many respects, it has been a long downhill slide for the average American since the economic heyday of the 1950s. Decline in real incomes, decline in good job opportunities at home, the export of American industries abroad to areas of less costly labor, and the virtual collapse of American towns and cities in many places, Detroit being perhaps the most sorrowful case of many – all these are evident year-in and year-out.
I do think the American establishment simply does not know how to handle its role in a brave new world, but do something it clearly thinks it must, and that is an extremely dangerous state of mind. It is armed with vast armies and terrible weapons so that it retains a sense of being able to act in some way to permanently reclaim its place, an illusion if ever there was one.
We know from scholars of the past the role that the mere existence of terrible military power can play in disaster. Huge standing armies were one of the major underlying causes of the First World War, a conflict in which twenty millions perished. Germany repeated the effort with Hitler’s government working tirelessly to create what was to become the finest and most advanced army the world had ever seen until that time, but it, too, ended in disaster, and of even greater proportions. America has not discovered the secret to making itself invulnerable, although I fear that its establishment believes that it can do so, and that represents the most dangerous possible thinking.
Contrary to political speeches, America’s establishment has never shown great concern over the welfare of ordinary Americans, and today its lack of concern is almost palpable. Washington’s white-maned, over-fed, crinkly-faced Senators spend virtually every ounce of effort in two activities: raising funds from special interests for re-election (estimated at two-thirds of an average Senator’s time) and conspiring on how to keep America dominant in the world. Anything else is just piffle. America’s unique place in the world of 1950 took care of ordinary Americans, not any effort by government. Again, the utter contempt for ordinary Americans perhaps offers a dark element in the thinking of America’s establishment when it comes to possible nuclear war.
Russia is not, of course, a direct threat to neo-con interests, except when it comes to matters like Syria, a deliberately-engineered horror to bring down the last independent-minded leader in the Middle East and to smash and Balkanize his country, parts of which, Israel has always lusted after in its vision of Greater Israel. The coup in Ukraine, which borders along a great stretch of Russia, represented a direct challenge to Russia’s security, offering a place ultimately to be filled with hostile forces and missiles and American advisors – all of which was expected to silence Russia’s independent voice in the world and its ability to in any way thwart neo-con adventures, if not, in the longer-range, savage dreams of some, to provide a platform for the ultimate destruction or overthrow of Russia herself.
Russia’s effective countering with skillful moves in its own interests both in Syria and Ukraine has driven some of America’s establishment to the edge of madness, and that madness is what we see and hear in Europe. Europe is once again being turned into a vast armed camp, and it is now seething with anti-Russian rhetoric, threats, and activities such as huge war games, the largest of which occurred around the anniversary of Hitler’s invasion of Russia, the single most destructive event in all of human history.
America has created deliberately a situation almost as dangerous as the days of the Cuban missile crisis, which itself arose from the American establishment’s belief that it had every right to interfere in Cuba’s affairs.
We have another element, now compounding the danger, in a far greater variety and level of sophistication of weapons, including some nuclear weapons whose controlled yields are regarded by America’s military as being perhaps “usable” in a theater like Europe. The installation of anti-missile systems near Russia is very much part of this threat since these systems not only are intended to neutralize Russia’s capacity for response to a sudden, massive attack but to provide a cover for future covert, easily-done substitution of other kinds of missiles into the launchers, faster-arriving, nuclear-armed missiles which would indeed be an element in such an attack.
Russia, a country twice invaded with all the might of Germany and before that by Napoleon’s Grande Armeé, cannot be expected just to sit and do nothing. It won’t. It cannot.
The world must not forget that America’s military, a number of times in the past, created complete plans for a massive, surprise nuclear attack on what was then the Soviet Union, the last of which I am aware was in the early 1960s, and it was presented as being feasible to President Kennedy, who is said to have left the Pentagon briefing sick to his stomach.
Nuclear war, just as with any other kind of war, can happen almost by accident through blunders and careless acts and overly-aggressive postures. Just let the blood of two sides get up enough, and an utter disaster could quickly overtake us. Constantly decreasing the possibilities for accidents and misunderstandings is a prime responsibility of every major world leader, and right now the United States is pretty close to having completely abdicated its responsibility.
Three Steps To Reverse A “Doomsday” Clock
By Vladimir KOZIN | Oriental Review | July 28, 2016
The recent book review “A Stark Nuclear Warning” by Jerry Brown, in which he has shared views on William J. Perry’s memoirs “My Journey at the Nuclear Brink”, raises a lot of questions and concerns.
Jerry Brown unequivocally describes Perry, who held many important positions in the past, including the U.S. Secretary of Defense in 1994-1997, as a double-hated man.
On the one hand, as the U.S. Secretary of Defense he helped to build a formidable U.S. nuclear arsenal several decades ago, being responsible for important technological advances with respect to U.S. nuclear forces, like launching the B-2 a heavy strategic bomber; revitalizing the aging B-52, a bomber from the same category as SOA (Strategic Offensive Arms) inventory; putting the Trident submarine program back on track; and making an ill-fated attempt to bring the MX ICBM, a ten-warhead missile, into operation.
On the other, William J. Perry has been identified as a staunch proponent of avoiding nuclear danger, nowadays, when he has retired and embarked “on an urgent mission to alert us to the dangerous nuclear road we are travelling.” He is clearly calling American leaders to account for what he believes “are very bad decisions”, such as the precipitous expansion of NATO right up to the Russian border (William J. Perry was a very brave man when he became the lone Cabinet member who opposed President Bill Clinton’s decision to give Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic immediate membership in the Alliance). William J. Perry has also not been supportive of President George W. Bush’s withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia in 2002.
It is interesting to note that a person who took an active part in the continuous U.S. SOA and TNW (tactical nuclear weapons) build-up today has concluded that there could be no acceptable defence against a massive-scale nuclear attack. According to him, the great paradox of the nuclear age is that deterrence of nuclear war is sought by building ever more lethal and precise weapons. For the sake of reality it should be underscored that this notion has to be attributed exclusively to the USA, who has a long time ago embarked upon an “offensive unconditional nuclear deterrence strategy” which has not practically been changed so far.
Jerry Brown observes that William J. Perry is convinced that parity is “old thinking” because nuclear weapons can’t actually be used – the risk of uncontrollable and catastrophic escalation is too high. Seemingly, he shares the earlier maxim once articulated by President Ronald Reagan: “A nuclear war cannot be fought, because it can never be won.”
Unfortunately, in his remarks Jerry Brown has made a number of inaccuracies in describing some facts of the immediate past and the present-day military-political environment.
He writes that: “…both the Soviet Union and the United States had developed hydrogen bombs”. In reality, the USA was the first state that produced H-bomb (1952), the USSR responded lately (1953). As is known, the USA was the first one who has produced an A-bomb; while the Soviet Union did so only in 1949. The USA was the first one who has created a classic SOA triad (ICBM, SLBM and heavy bombers), and MIRV ICBM. The USSR followed suit.
That is why it is irrelevant to claim that “the Soviets just stepped up their nuclear efforts and so did the U.S.”
Jerry Brown reminds about the Cuban missile crisis, but does not clarify that it has been initiated by Washington who unilaterally has deployed medium-range nuclear missiles “Jupiter” with 1 megaton each in Italy and Turkey, and at a time when the USA had nuclear warheads superiority over the Soviet Union as 17:1 (revelation by Robert McNamara). Only after that dangerous action Moscow has decided to move its SNF to Cuba (note: before the Cuban missile crisis has been resolved, the Soviet leaders have not even authorized to install nuclear warheads upon the missiles and combat aircraft brought to Cuba).
Jerry Brown is of opinion that the Cold War was over, and the nuclear weapons of the former Soviet Union were located not only in Russia, but also in three new republics that “were not capable of protecting them.” After the demise of the USSR, Russia has brought all SOA and TNW from these republics back to its territory, despite the fact that all these nuclear assets have been strongly protected. This measure has been agreed upon between Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Belarus and the Western nuclear powers.
I do not believe that the Cold War is over despite the Paris Charter for a New Europe heralded that in 1990. The Cold War has entered a new phase – qualitatively more dangerous that its first phase. Cold War 2.0 is characterized by a vast military build-up of NATO near the Russian borders, and a complete stalemate in arms control: currently there are 15 unresolved issues in this domain between the USA and Russia. In the first stage of Cold War Moscow and Washington signed 7 nuclear arms control accords, CWC and BWC, CFE-1 and CFE-1A treaties, a number of CBM arrangements. Since 2010 nothing has been done in this sphere.
So, it is incorrect to state that “the leaders of the Soviet Union and the United States did not make any effort to slow nuclear competition; they did just the opposite.”
The reaction of Moscow to the fielding of the U.S. ground-based BMD assets in Europe was portrayed by Jerry Brown inaccurately. Such elements plus sea-based components of the U.S BMD “shield” really create formidable threat to Russia and its allies because of two major reasons:
(a) the launching tubes of the U.S. BMD system Mk-41 can house not only defensive interceptors, but also offensive cruise missiles and other war-fighting means in the framework of the “Prompt Global Strike” which can be used as a first-strike weapon versus Russia;
(b) the U.S. and NATO BMD system has been tied up to their nuclear and conventional forces – such “appropriate mix” has been stamped up at the three recent NATO Summits in Chicago (2012), Newport (2014) and Warsaw (2016).
Washington still does not want to abrogate its Cold War thinking: to cancel its first use of nuclear weapons’ concept. All U.S. Administrations have declined to accept several Soviet and Russian initiatives on that issue.
President Barack Obama failed to ratify the CTBT (1996), though he has promised to do it during his presidency.
Recently, in the framework of NATO the debates on the further strengthening of this largest military bloc reliance on nuclear weapons have intensified.
The talk is about expanding the geographic scope and the total number of military exercises conducted with simulated use of bombs equipped with mock nuclear warheads, carrying military computer games on the use of nuclear weapons on the European continent, as well as the development of special scenarios on transformation of hypothetical conflict involving the general conventional forces into the conflicts with the use of nuclear weapons.
Suggestions have been made that in the course of combined command and staff games of a “new type” with the help of computer simulation while resolving non-nuclear and nuclear tasks in the scenario of the regional and global environment the condition of the “use of Russian strategy of nuclear escalation” as a counterweight to the “nuclear counter-escalation” to NATO is included. The idea of involving in such games not only representatives of the military, but also high-ranking civilian government officials participating in making the important decisions of national importance is articulated.
On June 25, 2015, during a hearing before the Committee on Armed Services of the US Congress devoted to the prospective role of nuclear weapons the United States Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work called to oppose to the Russian nuclear doctrine by the U.S. nuclear capabilities with the aim to launch a strategy of “de-escalation of escalation.” In other words, it is interpreted in Washington in such a way that an escalation of threats of the limited use of nuclear weapons should be used to de-escalate conflicts fought with conventional weapons.
Commenting on the debate that took place during the meeting of the defense ministers of the member countries’ of the “transatlantic solidarity” in Brussels on 8 October 2015, the Permanent Representative of the United Kingdom to NATO Adam Thomson has publicly complained that before the Alliance held separate military exercises with the use of conventional and nuclear weapons, but has never tested the transformation of the first type of exercises in the second ones. But he further recognized with appreciation that the recommendation of the “transformation of NATO military exercises with the use of conventional weapons into nuclear drills” became the focus of attention within the Alliance.
Pentagon chief Ashton Carter on the same day told a news conference that the transatlantic pact should prepare an “updated instructions on the use of nuclear weapons” in order to adapt to new threats and challenges of the 21st century and, in particular, called for “better integrate non-nuclear and nuclear deterrence.” His compatriot Alexander Vershbow, NATO Deputy Secretary General, said at the Berlin Security Conference November 17, 2015, the Alliance also must “modernize nuclear deterrence, strengthening his best means of early warning and intelligence.”
In 2014-2016 in order to develop new nuclear posture the U.S. strategic nuclear forces held several military exercises in Central and Eastern Europe, and North Africa, employing heavy strategic bombers B-52H and B-2A, capable of carrying nuclear weapons.
In March 2004 Washington initiated on the constant basis a large-scale NATO air patrol operations in the airspace of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, code-named “Baltic Air Policing”. It involves combat aircraft (DCA), which are potential carriers of tactical nuclear weapons. Over the past twelve years, i.e. from March 2004 to July 2016, fifteen countries of the Alliance, that is, more than half of NATO member-states have been participated in this operation near Russian borders, including the three major Western nuclear powers: the USA, the United Kingdom and France. This operation is conducted day-in-day-out, and 365/366 days per annum.
Washington is modernizing its TNW, including those fielded in Europe, and has no intention to pull them back to the CONUS.
Two of the five existing types of nuclear bombs, namely B-61-7 and B-61-11, as well as a new perspective bomb B-61-12 have “of strategic importance”, as may be delivered to targets not only by tactical aircraft but also by heavy strategic bombers B-52H and B-2A: each can carry 16 such bombs. Both types of strategic bombers can to travel the distance of 11,000 km without refueling in the air, and more than 18,000 km with mid-air refueling. For this reason these types of bombs in the documents of the Pentagon and the State Department are labeled as “strategic”.
A new bomb B-61-12 with a pin-point accuracy is a first-strike nuclear weapon.
Hans Kristensen, a Danish researcher, working at FAS, points out that “… it is expected that in the next decade, NATO’s nuclear forces will undergo major improvements that will affect increasing quality performance characteristics of both the nuclear weapons and their means of delivery. The planned modernization will significantly increase the military potential of the Alliance’s nuclear policy in Europe.”
The “doomsday” clock is ticking. Nowadays it shows 23.57. Too alarming.
What to do? Seemingly, three initial steps are badly needed.
First. To make a pledge of no-fist-use of nuclear weapons a universal norm, starting from the USA and Russia. As a preliminary step towards this goal to make a commitment to resort to a defensive unconditional nuclear deterrence that threatens no one. Such notion will require no costs.
Second. The USA should withdraw all its TNW from Europe and the Asian part of Turkey.
Third. A multilateral new ABM Treaty limiting the number of BMD interceptors and their geographical deployments has to be elaborated.
The next U.S. Administration has to seriously consider these steps.
Prof. Vladimir Kozin is Head of Advisers’ Group at the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies, Member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences and Professor of the Academy of Military Sciences of the Russian Federation. More substantial remarks on these topics can be found in his monographs: “Evolution of the U.S. Ballistic Missile Defense and Russia’s Stance” (1945-2013); “The U.S. Military Doctrine and its Military Policy Forecasting till 2075: Critical Analysis and Practical Recommendations” (in Russian); “Military policy and strategy of the USA in geopolitical dynamics of the XXI century” (as a co-author; in Russian); “Militarization of Outer Space and Its Impacts on Global Security Environment”; “The U.S. Tactical Nuclear Weapons: Reduction or Modernization?” (in Russian; the English translation ongoing); “Evolution of the U.S. Missile Defense Beyond 2040 and Russia’s Stance”; “The Chicago Triad of the USA and NATO and its Consequences for Russia” (in Russian).
Neo-con West and global destruction
By Mark Taliano | American Herald tribune | July 28, 2016
The neo-con “West” and its allies want to destroy the Middle East so that they can control the Middle East.
Under the auspices of their imperial “New Middle East” project, the criminals (U.S–led NATO, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), and Israel, are targeting everything that they falsely profess to cherish.
All of the “values” that the politicians falsely parade as important, even sacrosanct, are instrumentalized as false fronts that belie the dark undercurrents dragging humanity towards a barren “New World Order” of globalized degeneracy and despair.
Nation-state self-determination, sovereignty, territorial integrity – all vital components of world peace, prosperity, and democracy are meaningless to the elites, except for their propaganda value.
A meta-national project of top down control, enforced by anonymous elites, controls how we think, feel, and live.
This dystopian present has rendered political choices moot. Choices are non-choices, puppet shows sold by empty words and conflicting narratives — all bereft of substance.
The real agenda is unspeakable. The real agenda must be unspeakable, because it is poison, a dark distillate of degenerate barbarism, mostly hidden from view.
This real agenda, masked beneath the Big Lies, and the stories told by scripted “politicians”, bares its sanguine teeth, and imposes its dark will with barely a whimper. There are no “mistakes”. It’s all by design.
War planners knew full well that the sanctions imposed prior to the invasion of Iraq were targeting children. They accurately predicted when the plants would fail, and how many lives would be lost.
A Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) document accurately predicted that,
“IT PROBABLY WILL TAKE AT LEAST SIX MONTHS (TO JUNE 1991) BEFORE THE (water treatment) SYSTEM IS FULLY DEGRADED.” And that,
“FAILING TO SECURE SUPPLIES WILL RESULT IN A SHORTAGE OF
PURE DRINKING WATER FOR MUCH OF THE POPULATION. THIS COULD LEAD
TO INCREASED INCIDENCES, IF NOT EPIDEMICS, OF DISEASE … “
The end result? Over 500,000 children under the age of five were killed, with intent (murder), in addition to over one million other people, none of whom who had committed a crime.
The “West” regularly targets innocent people, including children, with a view to weakening the morale of countries about to be conquered. Madeleine Albright infamously intoned that the “price (murdering 500,000 children) … is worth it”, in one of the rare moments when dark truths and media messaging intersect.
War planners also knew that they were supporting al Qaeda ground troops in Libya when they exploited the Responsibility To Protect (R2P) clause to bomb the sovereign state of Libya, to assassinate Muammar Gaddafi, to destroy water infrastructure, to loot, to plunder, to commit genocide, and to set up an ISIS strongehold. Prior to the invasion, Libya’s standard of living was the highest in Africa. There were no mistakes.
The weapons ratline from Libya to Syria was not a mistake either. The West intentionally funded its terrorist proxies so that they would be well provisioned to invade Syria. The weaponization and training of its terrorist foot soldiers supplements the terrorists’ now dwindling additional sources of income such as funding from illicit drugs, the plunder of historical Syrian artifacts, the theft of Syrian oil resources, and so on. All planned by the West. Again, no mistakes.
Equally degenerate is the fact that the Western intelligence agencies, allied with Wahhabi Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan’s ISIS, perpetuate the degeneracy by raising new recruits into the culture of the un-islamic, Wahhabi ideology. Prof. Michel Chossudovsky explains in America’s “War on Terrorism” that
“In 1979, the largest covert operation in the history of the CIA was launched in Afghanistan: With the active encouragement of the CIA and Pakistan’s ISI, who wanted to turn the Afghan Jihad into a global war waged by all Muslim states against the Soviet Union, some 35,000 Muslim radicals from 40 Islamic countries joined Afghanistan’s fight between 1982 and 1992. Tens of thousands more came to study in Pakistani madrasahs. Eventually, more than 100,000 foreign Muslim radicals were directly influenced by the Afghan jihad. ”
Just as the CIA, through the Pakistani ISI, creates “radicals” by indoctrinating children in “madrasah” schools, so too ISIS indoctrinates Syrian children in the ways of the degenerate Wahhabi ideology in ISIS occupied areas of Syria.
Samuel Westrop writes in “U.K: Jihadists as Charity Workers”, that
“ISIS has supplemented its violence with dawa’h programs – a system of social provision, or ‘soft-power outreach’ – in areas under its control. A key component of this dawa’h … is providing educational outreach initiatives ‘as part of its wider strategy to foster a new generation of Syrians in support of its ideological agenda.’ “
The cancer of this un-islamic ideology is intentionally promoted in occupied areas of secular, pluralist, democratic Syria with a view to “weaponizing” children, and to destroying the country with an internalized cancer of Wahhabism and violence.
None of this is accidental. All of it is the fruit of considerable forethought and pre-planning by the imperial “West”, its allies, and their intelligence agencies.
Whereas the West proclaims that it is spreading democracy, it is spreading terrorism, Wahhabism, death and destruction on each and every one of its pre-planned imperial invasions.
Syria’s stand against the Western agencies of death and destruction is a stand for all of humanity against the dark forces that fester beneath our politician’s empty words and the courtesan media’s toxic lies.
A jolly bit of tender
Crimes Of Britain | July 28, 2016
Churchill has been chosen by the Bank of England’s to be the face on their new £5 note set to be in circulation from September 2016.
The Governor of the Bank of England stated “Our banknotes acknowledge the life and work of great Britons. Sir Winston Churchill was a truly great British leader, orator and writer. Above that, he remains a hero of the entire free world. His energy, courage, eloquence, wit and public service are an inspiration to us all. I am proud to announce that he will appear on our next banknote”.
Churchill is fawned over in Britain. He was voted ‘Greatest Briton’ of all time in a poll run by the BBC in 2002. He is praised across the political spectrum, held up as the man who stopped Brits speaking German. When the truth is Churchill was never an opponent of fascism. He was a white supremacist who talked of the need of non-Anglo Saxons to “recognise the superiority of race”. In 1927 he praised Mussolini, “What a man! I have lost my heart!… Fascism has rendered a service to the entire world”. He went on to hold Hitler up as the ideal figure to lead Britain if they were to be defeated, “If our country were defeated, I hope we should find a champion as indomitable to restore our courage and lead us back to our place among the nations”.
Winnie was still swilling champagne when he engineered a famine in Bengal which saw at least 4 million men, women and children to starve to death. Food literally taken from the mouths of starving people to ship it where it wasn’t even needed. The Black and Tan thugs were his brainchild. An advocate for the use of poison gases whilst Secretary for War and Air. He assisted greatly in the looting of Iran which kept Britain afloat. And when the government of Mohammad Mosaddegh threatened British ‘interests’, Churchill was there ready to desecrate democracy. He believed that Kenya’s fertile highlands should be only for white colonial settlers, and approved the removal of the local population. Over 150,000 men, women and children were forced into concentration camps. It was Churchill who arranged for Ibn Saud to receive a subsidy of £100,000 a year in 1922. He later gifted the founder of Saudi Arabia a Rolls Royce and lamented that his “admiration for him was deep, because of his unfailing loyalty to us”. When the democratically elected government in ‘British Guiana’ rolled out their nationalisation plan Churchill sent war ships and 700 British troops to put a stop to that. He assisted Zionism and was rewarded with a bust in Al Quds for his contribution in helping create the colonial settler state of ‘Israel’. Winston and his cabinet were deeply concerned about British people viewing Black American GIs favourably in WW2. He was obsessed so much that he wanted to get the Americans to stop sending Black soldiers to Britain. His racism didn’t stop there, when debating the adoption of new laws limiting immigration from the Caribbean he suggested the use of the motto “Keep England White”. All of Churchill’s wars were for defending and preserving the thieving British Empire.
I am releasing an in depth piece on his genocidal campaigns in the coming weeks. The British press have churned out a few articles here and there on Churchill but have glossed over the true extent of his crimes. Presenting them as OK because he led the Brits in their ‘finest hour’.
It really is no surprise that he is to decorate English currency, he is your archetypal Brit at the end of the day.
Ukraine regime seizes on provocations by right-wing extremists to ban pro-peace religious procession from entering Kyiv
New Cold War – July 26, 2016
July 2016 procession for peace in Ukraine
A paramilitary force of the right-wing Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists, headed by Nikolai Kokhanivskiy, has put up a picket on Zhytomyr highway near Kyiv to block the mass religious procession for peace which began several weeks ago from entering Kyiv. They are prepared to stop the “‘Moscow popy” (pejorative term for Orthodox Church priests). A report in Ukrinform is here.
“They must understand that Kyiv is Ukraine, so they have to turn around and march to Donetsk and Moscow, not Kyiv”, said Kokhanivsky.
When asked what his force will do with women and children marching in the procession, he answered that they will deal only with the “popy”.
The title of the news article in Ukrinform, the Ukrainian state news agency, calls the Orthodox Church procession a “Moscow procession” while OUN men in military uniforms are called “activists”. The procession has been harassed and threatened by right-wing nationalists along its two routes, which began in western Ukraine and in eastern Ukraine in early July.
The procession is ignoring the authorities’ ban from entering Kyiv and continues marching. Pilgrims are also refusing to board buses offered by authorities, reports Ukrinform.
A July 26 news report is published in French on the procession; it is here.
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Secret document reveals plans for civil war in Lebanon, Israeli false flags, and invasion
By Randi Nord | Geopolitics Alert | April 5, 2019
Beirut – During his visit with US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, Lebanese President Michael Aoun reportedly received a US-Israeli document detailing plans for creating a civil war in Lebanon with covert false flag operations and possible Israeli invasion.
Although the source of the document is Israeli and created in partnership with Washington, no one knows who presented it to Aoun. The Lebanese TV station, Al-Jadeed, initially reported the document on Lebanese TV and a video on its website. Geopolitics Alert translated the report for this article. … continue
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