Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

US paranoid about Russia-China summit

BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR |  INDIAN PUNCHLINE |MARCH 19, 2023 

The arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court against Vladimir Putin can only be seen as a publicity stunt by the Anglo-Saxon clique, with the US leading from the rear. Ironically, though, the ICC acted on the eve of the 20th anniversary of the Anglo-Saxon invasion of Iraq in 2003, which led to horrific war crimes but the “judges” at Hague slept over it. Both Washington and London admit today that the 2003 invasion was illegal — based on trumped up allegations against Saddam Hussein.  

There’s no chance, of course, that the ICC warrant will ever be taken seriously. ICC has no jurisdiction in Russia, which like the US is not a signatory to the Rome Statute. But the intention here is something else.

The mud-throwing at Putin is yet another display of President Biden’s visceral hatred towards the Russian leader that goes back in time by well over a decade, and is timed to distract attention from the state visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping to Moscow on Monday, an event that not only has spectacular optics but is sure to intensify the “no limit” partnership between the two superpowers. 

The Anglo-Saxon clique is watching the talks in Moscow tomorrow with dismay. To be sure, Moscow and Beijing have decided to stand together to push back the US hegemony.

Today, China exceeds the combined manufacturing capacity of the US and its European allies, and, equally, Russia has emerged as the world’s largest nuclear weapon state superior to the US both in the quantity and quality of the weaponry. 

It has dawned on the American mind that Russia cannot be defeated in Ukraine. There is a chicken-and-egg situation facing NATO, according to a report in Politico. Massive investments are needed to catch up with Russia’s defence industry but Europe’s ailing economies have other critical priorities.

The notions of defeating Russia in a proxy war in conditions of “sanctions from hell” have turned out to be delusional. It is US banks that are collapsing, it is European economies that are threatened by stagnation. 

The US’ exasperation is evident in the top secret mission by MQ-9 Reaper drone near the Crimean peninsula on March 14. US Global Hawk drones have been spotted regularly over the Black Sea in recent years but this case was different. 

The Reaper’s transponder was switched off as it entered Russia’s temporary regime for the airspace established for the purposes of the special military operation near the Crimean peninsula (which Moscow had duly notified to all users of international airspace in accordance with international norms.)

In the event, Russia’s Su-27 fighter jets outmanoeuvred the Reaper, which lost control and drowned in the Black Sea. Moscow conferred state awards to the two pilots who drove Reaper to the seabed.

The Russian ambassador in Washington has since warned that while Moscow is not seeking any escalation, any deliberate attack on a Russian aircraft in neutral airspace will be construed as “an open declaration of war against the largest nuclear power.” 

If the US planned the drone incident to test Russia’s reaction, well, the latter has given an unambiguous message. And all this took place in the immediate run-up to President Xi’s visit. 

Biden since hit back by welcoming the ICC warrant on Putin saying “it’s justified… (and) makes a very strong point.” But Biden’s memory is failing him. For, the stated American position on ICC is that Washington not only doesn’t recognise the jurisdiction of the ICC but if any US national is arrested or brought before the ICC, Washington reserves the right to use military force to rescue the detainee! 

Furthermore, Washington threatens reprisal against any country that cooperates with an ICC warrant against a US citizen. The George W Bush administration stated this categorically against the backdrop of the horrific war crimes in Iraq, and the US never resiled from it. 

By the way, there has been no referral by the UN Security Council or General Assembly to the ICC. So, who organised this arrest warrant? Britain — who else? The Brits bullied the ICC judges who are highly vulnerable to blackmail, as they draw fat salaries and would sup with the devil if it helped secure extended terms for them at the Hague. This becomes yet another case study of the piecemeal destruction of the UN system by the Anglo-Saxon clique in the recent years.

Suffice to say, the drone incident and the ICC warrant vitiate the climate for any dialogue between Moscow and Kiev. Evidently, the Anglo-Saxon clique is worried like hell that China might spring another surprise as it did recently by mediating the recent Saudi-Iranian deal. 

In a meaningful remark, the Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said on Friday that Xi’s visit is partially to promote “peace.” Beijing has already released a “peace plan” for Ukraine, a 12-point agenda for “a political resolution of the Ukraine crisis,” which is  on Zelensky’s table in Kiev although the West studiously chose to ignore it. 

In a phone call on Thursday, Chinese foreign minister Qin Gang told his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba that Beijing hopes “all parties will remain calm, rational and restrained, and resume peace talks as soon as possible.” 

The Chinese readout said Kuleba discussed “the prospect of peace talks … and noted that China’s position paper on the political settlement of the Ukraine crisis shows its sincerity in promoting a ceasefire and an end to the conflict. He expressed the hope to maintain communication with China.”

Unsurprisingly, Biden is paranoid about China’s push to mediate between Moscow and Kiev. The point is, he and Zelensky are locked in a deathly embrace — the corruption scam involving the activities of Biden’s son in Kiev is hanging over POTUS like the Damocles’ sword, while on the other hand, Zelensky is fighting for political survival and is increasingly acting on his own. 

Disregarding western doubts about the wisdom of holding the shattered frontline city of Bakhmut, Zelensky is digging in and keeping up an attritional defence that may drag on. (Politico) 

Evidently, Biden is acting like a cat on a hot tin rood. He can neither let go Zelensky nor can afford to be locked into a forever war in Ukraine while Taiwan Straits beckons.

Beijing’s stance has visibly hardened lately and the scorn that the US poured on China’s national pride by shooting down its weather balloon has only exacerbated the distrust. Similarly, the nadir has been reached for Russia with the Reaper drone provocation and the Anglo-Saxon clique’s ICC scam. A point of no return has been reached.

Xi has chosen Russia for his first visit abroad in his third term also, the war in Ukraine notwithstanding. While announcing Xi’s visit to Russia, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said, “As the world enters a new period of turbulence and change, as a permanent member of the UN Security Council and an important power, the significance and influence of China-Russia relations go far beyond the bilateral scope.”

Again, Biden would have thought he was putting Putin on the mat with the Reaper stunt and the ICC scam. But Putin is nonchalant, choosing today to defiantly make his first-ever visit to Donbass.

Putin toured Mariupol, the port city that was bitterly contested by the NATO operatives, drove a vehicle along the city streets, making stops at several locations and surveying reconstruction works. It was a defiant signal to Biden that NATO has lost the war.

March 19, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , | Leave a comment

“A Policy Error of Historic Proportions”

1997 letter to President Clinton by US cold warriors who opposed Nato expansion

By John Leake | Courageous Discourse | March 17, 2023

When Dr. McCullough and I started this Substack, we agreed that he would primarily focus on COVID-19 scientific-medical scholarship, and I would investigate how the COVID-19 pandemic response is related to other major public policy issues. Occasionally, some of our readers have exhorted me to “stay in our lane”—that is, to remain focused on matters pertaining to the COVID-19 fiasco.

Because Substack is a free speech platform, and because we welcome critical opinions, I have never felt compelled to respond to these exhortations to “stay in our lane.” To some degree, I consider my critics to have a valid point. As Fitzgerald elegantly put it in The Great Gatsby, “Life is much more successfully looked at from a single window.”

On the other hand, I believe my critics are overlooking a point so obvious that it might as well strike them in the head with a baseball bat—namely, the same corrupt government nincompoops responsible for the COVID-19 fiasco are also responsible for every other catastrophic policy blunder they are currently afflicting on mankind.

For example, let’s take the U.S. government’s catastrophic mismanagement of its relations with Russia for the last thirty years. I have closely observed this disaster in the making since I moved to Vienna, Austria for an academic fellowship in 1996. On the plane to Vienna I read the July 15, 1996 Time Magazine cover story about how secret American advisors helped Boris Yeltsin to win that year’s presidential election.

Even at the time I remember thinking it was a bit presumptuous to think that it was perfectly okay for American agents to meddle in a Russian election, and I wondered how Americans would feel if it were reported that Russian agents had provided clandestine assistance to Bill Clinton in his 1996 presidential campaign against Bob Dole.

I read the Time cover story with keen interest, because for many years I’d been an avid student of 20th century Russian history. Yeltsin’s presidency marked the total triumph of American interests with respect to Russia, which had suffered a decisive loss of the Cold War. As I saw it—living in Austria, whose neutrality the Soviets had recognized and respected since 1955—in 1996 it was up to the Americans to welcome and assist Russia in becoming a partner with the West.

The following year, I read the news of how the Clinton Administration had decided to expand NATO membership to the east, ever closer to Russia’s border, and I wondered about the rationale for doing this. Though I’d never really known what to make of Henry Kissinger, I found his “Balance of Power” thesis compelling.

We humans are constantly making assurances of our good will and altruism, but it’s a rare man or woman indeed who doesn’t press his or her advantage if a disagreement arises. This is why the Soviet Premier Khrushchev refused to tolerate U.S. nuclear missiles in Turkey, and why President Kennedy refused to tolerate Soviet missiles in Cuba.

I therefore believed I understood why 50 major U.S. foreign policy experts—including top cold warriors such as Robert McNamara, Paul Nitze, Richard Pipes, and Stansfield Turner—wrote a letter to President Clinton on June 26, 1997, stating the following:

We, the undersigned, believe that the current U.S.led effort to expand NATO, the focus of the recent Helsinki and Paris Summits, is a policy error of historic proportions. We believe that NATO expansion will decrease allied security and unsettle European stability for the following reasons:

In Russia, NATO expansion, which continues to be opposed across the entire political spectrum, will strengthen the nondemocratic opposition, undercut those who favor reform and cooperation with the West, bring the Russians to question the entire post-Cold War settlement, and galvanize resistance in the Duma to the START II and III treaties; In Europe, NATO expansion will draw a new line of division between the “ins” and the “outs,” foster instability, and ultimately diminish the sense of security of those countries which are not included;

In NATO, expansion, which the Alliance has indicated is open-ended, will inevitably degrade NATO’s ability to carry out its primary mission and will involve U.S. security guarantees to countries with serious border and national minority problems, and unevenly developed systems of democratic government;

In the U.S., NATO expansion will trigger an extended debate over its indeterminate, but certainly high, cost and will call into question the U.S. commitment to the Alliance, traditionally and rightly regarded as a centerpiece of U.S. foreign policy.

Because of these serious objections, and in the absence of any reason for rapid decision, we strongly urge that the NATO expansion process be suspended while alternative actions are pursued. These include:

—opening the economic and political doors of the European Union to Central and Eastern Europe;

—developing an enhanced Partnership for Peace program;

—supporting a cooperative NATO-Russian relationship; and

—continuing the arms reduction and transparency process, particularly with respect to nuclear weapons and materials, the major threat to U.S. security, and with respect to conventional military forces in Europe.

Russia does not now pose a threat to its western neighbors and the nations of Central and Eastern Europe are not in danger. For this reason, and the others cited above, we believe that NATO expansion is neither necessary nor desirable and that this ill-conceived policy can and should be put on hold.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: This post is the first in a series about the war in Ukraine.

March 17, 2023 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

US and its ‘horrible’ leaders are greatest threat to Western civilization – Trump

RT | March 17, 2023

Former US president Donald Trump slammed “globalists” and the American neoconservative establishment in a video posted to his social media accounts on Thursday, declaring that the US and “some of the horrible, USA-hating people that represent us” are the “greatest threat to Western civilization today.”

“These globalists want to squander all of America’s strength, blood and treasure, chasing monsters and phantoms overseas while keeping us distracted from the havoc they’re creating right here at home,” the 2024 presidential candidate explained. “These forces are doing more damage to America than Russia and China could ever have dreamed.”

Trump warned that the Biden administration had brought the world closer to the brink of nuclear catastrophe than ever before by pouring money and weapons into Ukraine. “Every day this proxy battle continues, we risk global war,” he insisted, arguing that a “total cessation of hostilities” should be the “central issue” for the nation.

The next order of business under a second Trump presidency would be a complete overhaul of the State Department, Pentagon, intelligence services, and other key agencies to “fire the Deep Staters and put America first” – followed by “fundamentally reevaluating NATO’s purpose and NATO’s mission.” Trump has long argued for European countries to shoulder more of the costs and responsibilities associated with the military bloc and recently described the Ukraine conflict as a “vital concern for Europe, but not for the United States.”

Trump reassured his supporters that he was ready to dismantle “the entire globalist neocon establishment that is perpetually dragging us into endless wars pretending to fight for freedom and democracy abroad while they turn us into a third world country, and a third world dictatorship, here at home.” While the 45th president did not name any of the globalists or neocons who have placed highly on his enemies list since taking office in 2016, he insisted that he alone knew “exactly what to do to get the job done.”

Trump is polling neck to neck for the Republican nomination with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who has not yet officially declared his 2024 candidacy. DeSantis recently told Fox News host Tucker Carlson that supporting the Ukrainian military was not a “vital interest” of the US. Other presumed Republican candidates, including former UN envoy Nikki Haley and former national security adviser John Bolton, have embraced the Biden administration’s bottomless aid to Kiev.

March 17, 2023 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia, Video | , | Leave a comment

US ‘obviously’ blew up Nord Stream – French politician

RT | March 17, 2023

French political party leader Florian Philippot believes it has long been obvious that the United States was behind last year’s sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines, which were built to deliver Russian natural gas to Western Europe.

“Even before the war in Ukraine, the US for years fought against Nord Stream, it was a permanent part of their policy,” he told RIA Novosti in an interview published on Friday.

“In early February 2022, [US President Joe] Biden said the Americans could make it so that the pipeline was no more. That’s what happened. And it was in the interest of the Americans,” according to Philippot, who heads the right-wing The Patriots party in France.

Last month, veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported that Biden personally ordered the bombing of the pipelines, and that Norway assisted in the sabotage. He cited an unnamed source and supported his case using some of the same arguments as Philippot.

Biden remarked that “there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2” during a joint press conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in early February 2022. Hersh also claimed that Biden allowed US special services to classify the operation in a way that justified not informing the US Congress about it beforehand.

Nord Stream 2 is the name of the second, newer pipeline, which was meant to greatly expand the capacity of the original Nord Stream, but was never operational. Both were disabled by sabotage.

Philippot said he considered US culpability “obvious” even before Hersh’s revelations, but was not sure about Norway’s role. He reasoned that Oslo had a motive since it “competes with Russia in gas trade, and many European nations replaced the Russian gas with Norwegian.” Both the US and Norway have denied any responsibility.

Philippot also urged France to leave NATO, saying the military alliance “needs to be disbanded because it has no reason to exist.”

“We have to stop this agenda of world war against Russia and China, it is absolutely insane,” he told the Russian news outlet, blaming the US for increasing global tensions.

He also called French President Emmanuel Macron a deceitful leader. His government “prioritizes the US, and not its own people,” Philippot stated.

He cited Macron’s decision to send billions of dollars worth of weapons and ammunition to Kiev, even as he is pushing through an unpopular pension reform, claiming a lack of money to fund social programs.

March 17, 2023 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

MQ-9 Drone Incident: Biden’s Dangerous Escalation

By Scott Ritter – Sputnik -16.03.2023

A US surveillance drone crashed off the coast of Crimea after an encounter with a Russian fighter aircraft. What does this incident say about the current state of the war in Ukraine and where Russia and the US might go from here.

In 2015, the United States established a permanent training facility in Yavoriv, western Ukraine, for the express purpose of training Ukrainian soldiers for combat against Russia.
At that time the conflict in Ukraine was an internal affair, pitting the Ukrainian Army against Ukrainians of ethnic-Russian background who had rebelled against a US-backed coup which, in February 2014, saw the constitutionally elected government of President Viktor Yanukovych replaced by a pro-American government.

This new Ukrainian government, hand-picked by the US, was deeply infused with radical ultra-nationalism linked to the ideology of Stepan Bandera and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, or OUN, which fought alongside Nazi Germany during the Second World War and whose members were responsible for the murder of hundreds of thousands of civilians.

Many of the Ukrainians being trained by the US military were affiliated with the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, an organization which many in the US Congress at the time found so odious that the passed an amendment to the defense authorization act prohibiting US taxpayer dollars from being used to train its members.

These restrictions aside, there can be no doubt that the purpose of the US training mission in Ukraine was to prepare the Ukrainian military to go to war against Russia. That the US training not only instructed the Ukrainians troops on modern combined arms maneuver warfare, but also sought to elevate the Ukrainians to the same standard used to train the forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), provided the first inkling that any future conflict between Ukraine and its disenfranchised ethnic Russian population that involved Russia would be far more than a simple confrontation between two regional neighbors, but a larger war between Russia and the US and NATO—the so-called “collective west”, using Ukraine as a proxy.

This reality was amplified further with the provision by the US and NATO of advanced anti-tank missile systems and other lethal military assistance.

Even before Russia initiated the Special Military Operation, in February 2022, the United States, the United Kingdom, and NATO began a program of intelligence sharing with the Ukrainian armed forces at the highest levels. Once the Russian troops moved across the border, the nature of this intelligence relationship shifted away from providing indications and warning of an impending attack, to the provision of operational and tactical intelligence about Russian military disposition, capabilities, and intent that was used by Ukraine to target Russian forces.

While the US and its NATO allies are understandably reticent about the nature of this intelligence, and the sources from which it is derived, over time it has become clear that every available intelligence collection platform is being used to gather relevant data about Russian military operations in support of the Special Military Operation.
It is also clear that this intelligence is used by joint operational planning cells comprised of US/NATO/Ukrainian forces to develop targets in real time, which are then transmitted to Ukrainian forces.

One of the more ubiquitous intelligence resources employed by the US in support of Ukraine is the MQ-9 Reaper. The MQ-9 is a large a large unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) operated by the Air Force. It is remotely operated by a two-person team from a ground control station that is connected to the MQ-9 using satellite equipment. The team includes a qualified pilot who is responsible for flying the aircraft and an enlisted aircrew member who is charged with operating any onboard sensors or weapons the MQ-9 might be carrying.

The MQ-9 has a wingspan of 66 feet, is 36 feet long, 12 feet high, and weighs approximately 4,900 pounds. It is capable of flying at altitudes as high as 50,000 feet and has a range of some 1,400 miles. It can carry a wide variety of weapons and intelligence collection pods. Each MQ-9 costs about $32 million. The MQ-9 Reapers operating over the Black Sea are flown out of a Romanian Air Force base in Campia Turzii by members of the US Air Force’ Detachment 1, 31st Expeditionary Operations Group.

On March 14, 2023, an MQ-9 Reaper operating out of Campia Turzii was flying in international airspace over the Black Sea, west of Crimea. This was a standard flight profile for the MQ-9 Reaper, one that had the Russians concerned, given its proximity to sensitive Russian military installations.

Ukraine had a history of launching operations against Russian forces in Crimea using aerial and underwater drones, and the potential for intelligence collected by the MQ-9 Reaper being used in support of such attacks was very real. For this purpose, the Russian military had declared certain areas off the coast of Crimea as being off limits.

The US, however, does not recognize Russia’s claim to Crimea, or for that matter the four new territories of Kherson, Zaporozhye, Donetsk and Lugansk, that joined the federation following referendums held in September 2022 and, as such, does not recognize any claim regarding the establishment of no-fly zones by Russia in support of its ongoing military operations against Ukraine. The decision to fly the MQ-9 Reaper was made knowing Russia would object, or worse.

Indeed, Russia dispatched a pair of Su-27 fighter aircraft to intercept the MQ-9 Reaper. After making 19 passes at the Reaper, the Su-27’s conducted what can only be described as aggressive maneuvering designed to either compel the MQ-9 Reaper to depart the area, or else bring it down. After one particular incident, which may or may not have involved one or more Su-27 aircraft dumping fuel onto the Reaper, the MQ-9 lost control and crashed into international waters off the coast of Crimea.

It is believed that Russian forces dispatched from Crimea recovered most, if not all, the wreckage, including the top-secret intelligence pod that had been mounted under the left wing of the aircraft. If this is the case, critical US intelligence collection capabilities would have been compromised, allowing Russia to better protect itself from sensors like the one carried onboard the downed MQ-9 Reaper aircraft.

While the US State Department has declared that the US will continue to fly missions in international airspace, the Commander of US forces in Europe, General Christopher Cavoli has ordered all MQ-9 Reaper operations to be halted pending a review of the incident and a decision on how best to proceed.

The fact that the US is using the MQ-9 Reaper to fly in direct support of Ukrainian military forces make the aircraft a direct participant in the conflict, and as such a legitimate target for Russia. Russia’s decision not to shoot the MQ-9 down, but rather provide multiple opportunities for the US aircraft to disengage and leave the contested airspace, is indicative of Russia’s desire to avoid unnecessary escalation of the conflict, especially one that could have US and Russian forces engaged in direct combat.

One of the options that the US could consider would be to fly the MQ-9 with a US fighter escort. But this would be contested by Russia, leading to the possibility of a dogfight that could result in casualties on both sides, and the probability of escalation. At the end of the day, the US will probably seek to fly an MQ-9 Reaper on a course that comes close to, but does not violate, a declared Russian no-fly zone, after which MQ-9 Reaper flights along the Crimean coast will probably be discontinued.

There are other ways to collect the intelligence that the MQ-9 Reaper gathers which do not put US military assets at risk, and which do not provide the possibility of military escalation between the US and Russia.

Such a decision would be a sharp departure from the confrontational stance taken to date by the US when it comes to intelligence collection targeting Russia. However, the devolving military situation in Ukraine, with the Ukrainian military facing a decisive defeat in Bakhmut and in general, alters the risk-gain analysis that accompanies the decision to fly missions such as the one that resulted in the downed MQ-9 aircraft. With little chance of a Ukrainian victory in sight, the US will be looking for ways to deescalate, rather than escalate, its involvement in the Ukrainian conflict.

Whether or not the MQ-9 Reaper incident will result in a top-down review of incidents of this nature, for example prompting the Biden administration to reflect on the apparent hypocrisy of the US approach toward responding to the Chinese balloon “threat”, namely by shooting the balloon down, while condemning the more restrained approach taken by Russia in responding to a genuine military threat on its borders in an active warzone, is yet to be seen. Such an abut-face would be unlikely, given the current political climate, where Russophobia runs rampant.

The fact remains that as long as the US is engaged in the implementation of a wartime policy that seeks the strategic defeat of Russia, the possibility for rational, logic-based policy formulation and implementation on the part of the US is almost nil.

The shortest path for the normalization of US-Russian relations lays in a decisive victory being achieved by Russia over Ukraine and the collective west in the shortest time possible. Such an outcome would force the US and its NATO allies to reexamine their approach toward Russia based upon the new realities that would accrue from such an outcome.

March 16, 2023 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Germans’ Support for Kiev May Wane Amid ‘Contrived’ Nord Stream Reports, Ex-US Official Says

Sputnik – 15.03.2023

Chancellor Olaf Scholz may fail to maintain public support in Germany for arming Kiev amid hardly credible reports blaming Ukraine for the Nord Stream attack, former Pentagon analyst Karen Kwiatkowski told Sputnik.

In early February, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh reported that US navy divers planted explosives on the Nord Stream pipelines. Just a few days after Scholz held talks with President Joe Biden at the White House on March 3, American and German media reports surfaced placing the blame for the attack on a pro-Ukraine group.

In an interview aired earlier on Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin called the version of the involvement of Ukrainian activists in the explosion at Nord Stream “complete nonsense.” Putin told the Rossiya 1 broadcaster that the explosion was carried out by specialists supported by all the might of a state with certain technologies.

Kwiatkowski suggested Germans opposed to continued war aid could use the stories to blame Ukraine for Germany’s economic challenges, or they could use the “contrived” story as another example of US and NATO lies.

“Overall, the ‘story’ is an insult to the intelligence of the average German, and as such it will both weaken German support for [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky, and increasingly show German voters that Scholz himself is a tool of Washington, DC, putting US desires for war on the continent above the needs and the sovereignty of actual Germans,” Kwiatkowski said.

“That support has been declining due to cost, economic turmoil in Germany, and the pressure and stress of hosting and supporting over a million Ukrainians, most of whom intend to stay there.”

The amateur statesmen and spymasters in Washington, Kwiatkowski added, barely conceived of this story in time for Scholz’s visit, she said.

“And it appears they may have needed the German Chancellor’s advice and consent, before providing the unsubstantiated and vague storyline to friendly media,” the former Pentagon analyst said.

If the report itself were more believable, Kwiatkowski explained, or was accompanied by arrests, actual evidence and data, it perhaps would not be as damaging.

Kwiatkowski said it is unlikely that German intelligence has not known the basic facts of the pipeline attacks for many months, but until Hersh’s reporting Scholz and his party could simply remain silent, “as they did.”

The pipeline sabotage was an act of war by the United States, Kwiatkowski argued, as documented by Hersh, but it remains to be seen whether this was an act of war against Russia, against Germany, “or horrifyingly, both.”

“It is most certainly a ploy to shift the focus, because if an act of war were to be committed by the dominant NATO member against the next strongest NATO member, the entire NATO construct would collapse,” she added. “This possibility must not only be denied, it must be suppressed and eliminated.”

Former CIA station chief and analyst Phil Giraldi told Sputnik the new reports do not seem credible versus what Hersh revealed from sources involved in the actual destruction of Nord Stream. He also said the timing of the new narrative is suspicious coming after the “nothing-happened” meeting between Biden and Scholz.

Eurasia Group Vice President Earl Rasmussen said the stories emerging in the wake of Scholz’s visit to Washington are obviously no coincidence and the entire embarrassing affair will diminish Germany’s respect world-wide.

March 15, 2023 Posted by | Economics, Fake News, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Russia’s hypersonic response to latest NATO and Kiev regime escalation

By Drago Bosnic – March 14, 2023

In the last several days, multiple sources have published information regarding the Kiev regime’s usage of a number of NATO weapons and munitions, including the JDAM (Joint Direct Attack Munition) bombs. JDAMs are standard unguided freefall/gravity bombs (so-called “dumb bombs”) equipped with a guidance kit that converts them into all-weather PGMs (precision-guided munitions). Guided by an integrated inertial guidance system combined with a GPS receiver, JDAMs have a declared range of up to 30 km, although this has been extended with newer versions, such as the JDAM-ER (up to 70 km). Precisely this type was given to the Neo-Nazi junta in recent weeks, according to the US Air Force Europe (USAFE) command.

According to The War Zone, USAF General James Hecker, head of USAFE, as well as NATO’s Allied Air Command and US Air Forces Africa (AFAFRICA), confirmed this during last week’s media roundtable.

“Recently, we’ve just gotten some precision munitions [to Ukraine] that had some extended range and go a little bit further than the gravity drop bomb and has precision [guidance],” Hecker said, adding: “That’s a recent capability that we were able to give them probably in the last three weeks.”

The exact type of the JDAM-ER provided to the Kiev regime is not entirely clear, although General Hecker himself used the designation GBU-62. The original weapon is used exclusively in naval warfare, but this one seems to have been modified for use against ground targets. And while it’s not entirely clear what platform the Neo-Nazi junta forces are using to deploy these weapons, General Hecker hinted that they were most likely integrated on existing Soviet-era jets in the same way as the US-made AGM-88 HARM (High-speed Anti-Radiation Missiles). Since last year, HARMs have been used by the Kiev regime forces’ MiG-29 and Su-27 fighter jets to target Russian air defenses. It’s very likely that this is the case, although it’s not impossible that the Su-24 and even Su-25 jets could be used for this purpose.

Local sources have reported the use of JDAMs on March 10, specifically in the vicinity of Bakhmut (Artyomovsk). It should be noted that such weapons require extensive ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) assets, which the Kiev regime simply doesn’t have. This only leaves NATO as the side directly providing targeting data. And while this is nothing new, as the United States and its NATO vassals have been doing this for over a year now, it does represent a new level of escalation, prompting Russia’s express response. According to the latest battlefield reports, Moscow responded with its own PGMs, specifically smart bombs used by the now legendary Su-57, as well as mass usage of air-launched hypersonic weapons.

The Kiev regime troops tasked with air defense recently reported that the Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS) used at least six 9-A-7660 “Kinzhal” air-launched hypersonic missiles at once, complaining that they have no means of intercepting such weapons. Deployed since at least 2017 and used by modified MiG-31K/I superfast interceptors and Tu-22M3 long-range bombers/missile carriers, “Kinzhals” are some of the most advanced weapons in the history of warfare, being capable of not just using standard and thermonuclear warheads, but also their sheer speed and the resulting kinetic energy to neutralize targets of both tactical and strategic importance. Not even NATO itself has any means of intercepting such weapons, while it is yet to deploy anything remotely similar.

The Russian military previously announced that the scale of production of the hypersonic missile is being streamlined and expanded significantly, most likely by using the same production lines for the ground-launched “Iskander” hypersonic missile with which it has a high commonality in terms of design. The weapon has been used at least since March 18, 2022, when it obliterated Neo-Nazi junta facilities near the Polish border. And while it can certainly be considered an “overkill” against the Kiev regime forces, launching up to six “Kinzhals” at once is most likely a clear message to the increasingly aggressive US-led political West. This possibility is further reinforced by reports from certain DPR sources which are claiming that a command center packed with NATO personnel was one of the targets for the hypersonic weapon.

In addition, the Su-57 was also confirmed to be using new types of PGMs specifically designed for the stealth jet. The weapon in question is a derivative of the Kh-38M air-to-ground missile. On March 12, various local Ukrainian sources shared footage showing the remains of what appears to be the “Grom” (“Thunder” in Russian) PGM. The Tactical Missiles Corporation (KTRV) developed two versions of the weapon. The first (“Grom-1”) is a tactical cruise missile with a range of 120 km. The second version, dubbed “Grom-2”, had its engine removed and additional explosive payload added instead, turning it into a high-precision glide bomb. Its range is up to 50 kilometers. In addition to key battlefield advantages, both weapons can also be considered a clear message to NATO, whose massive mainstream propaganda machine has been insisting for over a year that Russia is both running out of weapons and unable to produce advanced PGMs.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

March 14, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

The Washington scenario in phase two is to fight Russia to the last European

By Gilbert Doctorow | March 12, 2023

My latest essay on the wrongheadedness of Belgian and French labor leaders fiddling while Rome burns elicited a number of Contact messages that are too important to keep to myself. What is at issue is how we read the scenario for the further course of the ongoing war in and over Ukraine: will it go on for years at the present level of intensity or is some devastating escalation to be feared in the coming months when the long-promised Ukrainian counter-offensive gets under way.

Allow me to say up front that no one knows for sure. But some observers point to schisms within the Washington establishment, in particular within the State Department, over how determined Russia is to react to violation of its red lines.

One can blame Vladimir Putin all one wishes for the restraint in prosecuting this war that is misinterpreted as cowardice or indecisiveness in the halls of power in Washington. Assigning blame for the misreading of Russia’s intentions changes nothing. The result is that the more hawkish side of the Washington establishment is urging upon the President measures that risk the onset of a full-blown war between Russia and the European powers in the immediate future.

I say “European powers” rather than NATO, because nearly all commentators agree that the U.S. has no intention of putting its own soldiers and homeland at risk when it can play with self-sacrificing proxies. The incredible acceptance of such rules by European leaders has been demonstrated manifestly by German Chancellor Schulz’s silence over the U.S. planned and executed destruction of the Nord Stream II pipelines.

Stage one of the Ukraine war as scripted by the USA was to fight against Russia to the last Ukrainian. Stage two is to fight against Russia to the last European.

In the past few weeks, the USA has delivered to Bremerhaven in Germany and to Gdansk in Poland vast quantities of military hardware that is not going to Kiev but is being prepared for a war with Russia to be fought by either of those states with or without NATO backing. A week ago, one of the US “Doomsday Planes” that coordinate action in a nuclear war came to Europe via Iceland. Smart observers noted this could be an exercise to prepare nuclear attacks on Russia using warheads and delivery systems already on European soil.

Let us remember that Victoria Nuland remains the most important personality in the State Department, head and shoulders above her nominal boss, Blinken. This is the lady who famously, while planning the coup d’etat of February 2014 that overthrew Ukrainian President Yanukovich, was recorded as telling the then U.S. ambassador to Kiev “fuck the EU.” Well, according to information in the public domain that is exactly what she is cooking up today and we, Europeans, are in the soup.

Nuland is said to be the loudest mouth calling for provision to Kiev of long range precision missiles for a summer attack on Crimea which will surely elicit a game-changing level of violence in the response from Russia, possibly entailing strikes against the logistical centers in Poland, Romania and Germany which are delivering the new weapons systems to Ukraine. There are ways this can happen which will make invocation of NATO’s ‘one for all and all for one’ Article 5 problematic.

This is not to say that the United States is not at the same time preparing a back-up scenario in case the Russians go for the principal villain and not for the European implementers. In the past week, a nuclear capable B-52 bomber of the U.S. Air Force is said to have been rehearsing an attack on St Petersburg.

In conclusion, I ask those of my European readers who are leaders in financial institutions, in wealth management, in manufacturing industry, in global shipping, in universities and in widely respected think tanks (from my LinkedIn account I know that some of you are daily followers of these essays), I ask you to use your voices, in public and in private to save Europe from the disaster that may befall us in a matter of months. Salvation will come only when several more European heads of state join Viktor Orban in voting against further arms to Kiev and for an immediate cease-fire. What we need now is definitive peace negotiations between Moscow and Kiev based on the principle of a neutral Ukraine.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2023

March 12, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Empire of Lies Strikes Back… Extraordinary Cover-Up of Nord Stream Terrorism

Strategic Culture Foundation | March 10, 2023

The New York Times and other Western news media ran with clumsy and blatantly diversionary claims this week, which in the end only serve to draw even more attention to the guilt of the United States in blowing up the Nord Stream gas pipelines.

Not only is the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden even more indictable over the criminal act; the absurd cover-up attempt this week exposes the Western media as nothing but a ministry of propaganda masquerading as journalism.

Four weeks ago, the eminent independent American journalist, Seymour Hersh, published a blockbuster investigative report that revealed how President Biden and senior White House staff ordered the explosive detonation of the natural gas pipelines connecting Russia to the European Union via the Baltic Sea and Germany. The legendary Hersh has an impeccable record of groundbreaking stories, from the My Lai massacre committed by U.S. troops in Vietnam in 1968 to the Abu Ghraib prison torture in Iraq under American occupation to the operation of ratlines to funnel weapons and mercenaries from Libya to Syria to fight Washington’s proxy war for regime change in Damascus.

In his seminal report on the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines, Hersh relied on insider Washington sources. He published claims that the United States carried out the covert operation using a team of U.S. Navy divers under the cover of NATO war maneuvers known as BALTOPS 22 last summer. Explosives were planted on the seabed during the exercises held in June 2022 and then later detonated on September 26 with the help of Norwegian military aircraft.

The convincing aspect of Hersh’s report was not just the credible detail of the operation, but that it confirmed what many independent observers had already concluded from strong circumstantial evidence about who had the motive and means to conduct the sabotage. Readers are referred to a recent editorial by Strategic Culture Foundation which compiles the background of why the United States is deemed to be the culprit.

Now here is a curious thing. While Hersh’s report provoked shockwaves around the world, Western governments and the mainstream media chose to ignore his report. In a weird parallel universe sort of way, they pretended that Hersh’s resounding revelations did not exist.

One would think that given Hersh’s reputation for world-news-breaking scoops, and given that his latest report revealed a rock-solid plausible account of how a major civilian infrastructure project was sabotaged, and further given that the implication of this report was the inculpation of the United States and its president and his senior staff in ordering an act of terrorism – one would think that, maybe, just maybe, the Western media would be obliged to give some reportage on that matter. No, far from it, they unanimously kept schtum. In a way that is quite shocking and a travesty.

The charade of silence was maintained for a month until this week when the New York Times published a report claiming an alternative explanation for the Nord Stream explosions. As if on cue, there then followed a rash of other Western media reports regurgitating or spinning the same story.

Laughably, the New York Times claimed its report was “the first significant known lead about who was responsible for the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines”. This after a month of pointedly ignoring and effectively censoring from the public any knowledge of the spellbinding Hersh article.

The thrust of this week’s “reports” (if they could be called that) are that the sabotage was carried out by “pro-Ukrainian groups” which may have involved Ukrainian or Russian nationals. The source of the claims was anonymous US officials citing purported “new intelligence”. It was also claimed that a private yacht owned by Ukrainians was used and that the CIA had tipped off German intelligence about the impending attack months before it happened.

The information reported is so vague as to be impossible to verify, or frankly to even merit credibility. We are led to believe that a sophisticated, highly technical military operation on the Baltic seabed was somehow carried off by a group of unknown paramilitaries. The New York Times and other Western media outlets published stories that on their face are outlandish. This is gutter press stuff.

Furthermore, from the way the reports are formulated it is obvious that they are meant to serve as a rebuttal to the Hersh report without actually properly acknowledging the Hersh report. Thus, the United States denies any involvement in a criminal act that it barely refuses to acknowledge. This double-think is itself indicative of guilt in the Empire of Lies.

The problem for the Western propaganda peddlers – besides sheer implausibility – is the further burden of having to provide an alibi for the Kiev regime. The U.S. and its NATO allies need to distract from Washington as the obvious author of the crime, but they also cannot afford to implicate the Kiev regime because that could inflame European and American public antipathy towards the NATO-sponsored junta. This is why the New York Times & Co appear to be involved in a tortuous balancing act of blaming Ukrainian militants for the Nord Stream blasts but also claiming that these intrepid militants managed to do so without the knowledge of President Vladimir Zelensky and his cabal. Which again makes the narrative doubly ridiculous.

There is also an important element of timing to all these Western media shenanigans. Last week, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was hosted in the White House by Joe Biden on March 3 in what was a bizarrely private meeting. Their conversations behind closed doors were not disclosed. Both leaders stonewalled reporters about their discussions. It can be fairly speculated that Scholz was pleading with Biden for some political cover because of the mounting anger among the German public about the economic consequences of America’s policy over Ukraine and Russia. Germany’s industry and export-led economy have been ravaged by the loss of Russia’s traditional natural gas supply. Scholz and his government are seen to be behaving treacherously by going along with what appears to be American vandalism of the German economy. For the Hersh report to go unanswered is causing massive public pressure on the Berlin government. Hence this week, we saw attempts to divert public attention with a concerted Western media campaign about who supposedly blew up Nord Stream. The aim is to absolve Washington and its lackeys in Berlin.

Another timing issue was the sudden appearance of Ukrainian and Russian fascist commandoes who carried out the terrorist attack in Russia’s Bryansk region on March 2 last week. Two adults were killed and a young boy was badly injured in what was a gratuitous atrocity that made international headlines. That daring raid, however, brought to public attention the existence of pro-Ukrainian militants who appear to act as lone wolves in international operations. This is the very kind of profile that the New York Times and other Western media outfits attributed to the Nord Stream sabotage. That begs the reasonable question: was the Bryansk terror attack enabled by Western military intelligence handlers in order to promote the subsequent media disinformation effort concerning the Nord Stream pipelines?

Let’s cut to the chase. The Western media disinformation campaign is a crude joke. It can’t distract from the glaring facts that the United States and its NATO allies carried out an act of international terrorism against European companies and governments, and an act of war against Russia as the main owner of the 1,200-kilometer Nord Stream pipelines worth at least $20 billion to construct. That criminal act was plausibly ordered by an American president and his White House aides. The geopolitical motives are overwhelming as are the self-indicting admissions by Biden and his aides before and after the odious event.

The cack-handed attempts this week to cover up by the Western media only serve to further incriminate the United States and its NATO crime partners. In addition, the Western media are exposed more than ever as being complicit in propagandizing war crimes. The New York Times and other Western news outlets pompously claim to be pinnacles of journalism and defenders of public interest and democracy. They are nothing but the propaganda ministry for Washington – the Empire of Lies.

March 11, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

Kosovo wants NATO-Serbia war – Belgrade

RT | March 11, 2023

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has accused the ethnic Albanian authorities in the breakaway province of Kosovo of attempting to provoke a war in which NATO would once again take their side.

“They want to drag Serbia into a conflict with NATO. Kurti wants to be like [Vladimir] Zelensky, and I would be some kind of [Vladimir] Putin,” Vucic said on Friday, referring to Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti and the presidents of Ukraine and Russia.

“It’s what they’re after, what they’ve been doing all along. And in this, they have the support of a significant part of the international community, because [Kosovo] is their child,” he added.

Vucic was commenting on the recent arrest of an ethnic Serb on charges of “war crimes” dating back to the 1998-99 conflict, which ended with NATO bombing Serbia on behalf of ethnic Albanian separatists. The provisional government in Pristina declared independence in 2008, with Western support, which Belgrade has refused to recognize.

“They don’t want normalization, they want to humiliate Serbia,” argued Vucic. “But I’m telling you, that won’t happen. There will be no humiliation, no capitulation.”

The proposal for “normalization of relations” between Pristina and Belgrade, made public last month by the EU, amounts to a de facto recognition of the breakaway province, which would have the right to join NATO, the EU, and the UN. Vucic insists he did not sign anything and will never agree to those terms.

“We are preparing for talks on Monday or Tuesday,” he said, referring to the EU-sponsored talks in neighboring North Macedonia. “But it’s not clear to me why. They said they wouldn’t agree to a deal. Well, why are you coming then? For us to recognize Kosovo?”

Vucic insists that before anything else can happen, the EU needs to enforce the 2013 Brussels Agreement, which among other things envisioned political autonomy for ethnic Serbs in the province. The ethnic Albanian authorities have refused to implement that part of the deal for ten years now, insisting it clashes with the ‘constitution’ of Kosovo. Neither the EU nor the US has done anything to influence Pristina to change its mind, Vucic noted.

Instead, the EU has just granted Kosovo visa-free travel to the bloc, while threatening an economic boycott against Serbia unless it joins the Western sanctions against Russia.

March 11, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Illegal Occupation, Progressive Hypocrite, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

Russia Called The US Out For Double Standards Towards Georgia-Moldova & Bosnia-Serbia

By Andrew Korybko | March 11, 2023

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov remarked that the US hypocritically wants regime change in comparatively neutral Georgia while opposing it in Western-aligned Moldova, after which his spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that it supports Bosnia’s territorial integrity but violates Serbia’s. Calling that declining unipolar hegemon out for its double standards towards these two pairs of countries in similar situations is meant to raise wider awareness of the US’ self-interested policies.

Its infamous “rules-based order” has nothing to do with the UN Charter like its proponents falsely claim and everything to do with the arbitrary implementation of selective standards designed to advance the US’ zero-sum interests. In the first pair of Georgia and Moldova, both are experiencing very intense protests at the moment, but the former are Western-backed and designed to pressure Russia while the second are purely indigenous and designed to restore this country’s neutrality in the New Cold War.

As for the second pair of Bosnia and Serbia, the US has feigned worry that the former’s Serb region might separate from the federation that it was forced into in 1994 while doing everything in its power to support the separatist claims of the latter’s Autonomous Province of Kosovo & Metohija. In this example, the double standards are applied because retaining Bosnian “unity” is integral to upholding Western hegemony in the Balkans, the outcome of which is further advanced by splitting Serbia.

Pointing out the US’ hypocritical approach towards each pair of countries, which is objectively existing and easily verifiable, discredits its soft power by exposing just how unprincipled its foreign policy truly is. The only constant is that it always aims to advance US zero-sum interests as was previously explained, to which end it’ll employ whichever double standards are necessary. Morals, ethics, international law, and principles will never stand in the way of the US maximizing its power.

Awareness of this “politically incorrect” reality in turn extends credence to what Russia has always claimed since the onset of its special operation last year, namely that it was forced to resort to military means for defending its national security red lines in Ukraine after NATO clandestinely crossed them. For whatever the most gung-ho Western readers might think about the preceding explanation, there’s no denying that the Kremlin has retained narrative consistency over the years compared to the US.

Moscow began warning about NATO’s eastward expansion earlier this century, most famously during President Putin’s keynote speech at the Munich Security Conference in 2007. By contrast, Washington gaslit by claiming that there’s no credible reason for that country to be concerned by this, yet at the same time also alleging that Russia’s military presence in the former Soviet Republics of Georgia and Moldova that was agreed to per deals for ending their civil wars destabilizes their respective regions.

It was always the US and not Russia that obstructed peace efforts in those two countries unlike what the Mainstream Media claimed, all with a view towards indefinitely perpetuating their “frozen conflicts” in order to more effectively divide-and-rule them. Instead of encouraging their Western-aligned authorities to pragmatically compromise with their ethnic rebels, Washington fully supported their absolutist demands that made a political solution impossible.

The same modus operandi was at play when it came to the Minsk Accords that were agreed to for ending the then-Ukrainian Civil War. It’s now known from former German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s own admission as well as that of her French and Ukrainian counterparts that these were just a ruse for duping President Putin so as to buy time ahead of a final NATO-backed offensive against Donbass. The US’ track record is thus indisputably one of double standards, warmongering, and dividing-and-ruling.

Observers therefore shouldn’t be surprised that it’s applying the exact same approach towards Georgia-Moldova and Bosnia-Serbia with regards to their protests and separatist problems respectively. The US will always promulgate the policy that stands the greatest chance of most effectively advancing its zero-sum interests irrespective of whatever stance it previously practiced towards a prior analogous situation. The pursuit of power, not political consistency, is the only constant in US policymaking.

March 11, 2023 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite | , | Leave a comment

Lavrov Warns West If Nord Stream Probe Blocked, Response Will Follow

Sputnik – 10.03.2023

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov cautioned on Friday that if the Nord Stream investigation gets stonewalled, then Moscow will contemplate how to respond to the West for its direct attack on Russian property.

“This gross terrorist attack will not remain uninvestigated. If an investigation — an objective, impartial, which will be transparent, of course — is blocked, we will think about how to respond to the West on this direct attack, a direct attack on our property,” Lavrov said.

Earlier in the day, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov vowed that Moscow won’t let the international investigation into the Nord Stream sabotage be swept under the rug, and the US must stop undermining the probe.

“The road taken here is to cover this all up. But we will not allow what is happening to be swept under the rug, we call on the United States and its European satellites to stop sabotaging what is overdue, namely the launch of an independent international investigation of this event,” Ryabkov insisted.

Ryabkov added that the responsibility for the Nord Stream blasts lies squarely with the United States and castigated the media leaks as a ploy to put the probe on the wrong track.

On March 7, US media reported, citing US officials, that new intelligence suggested involvement of a “pro-Ukrainian group” in the Nord Stream incidents. At the same time, US officials reportedly said there was no proof of the Ukrainian leadership being involved in the operation.

The Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines, built to deliver gas under the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany, have been out of action since they were hit by explosions last September. Nord Stream’s operator, Nord Stream AG, said that the damage was unprecedented and it was impossible to estimate the time repairs might take.

Russia deems the explosions of the two pipelines to be an act of international terrorism. There are no official results of the investigation yet, but Pulitzer Prize-winning US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published a bombshell report in February 2023 saying that US Navy divers, operating under the cover of NATO’s BALTOPS 22 exercise last summer, planted remotely triggered explosives which Norway activated a few months later. The report added that US President Joe Biden had decided to sabotage the Nord Stream pipelines after more than nine months of secret discussions with his national security team.

March 10, 2023 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism | , , | Leave a comment