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Russia Escalates Military Posture: Deploys Strategic Bombers To Crimea, Launches Massive Drills Across Nation
Russia Escalates Military Posture: Deploys Strategic Bombers To Crimea, Launches Massive Drills Across Nation
All those who were wondering where Putin had “disappeared” to, and spreading rumors whether it was more likely his girlfriend had given birth in Switzerland or aliens had abducted him, will probably be satisfied if he were to promptly disappear once more following news that not only yesterday had he put 40,000 troops on full alert as part of “snap-readiness exercises”, but less than 24 hours followed this up with even more demonstrative military “drills” afterSputnik reported that Russian strategic Tu-22M3 (Backfire) strike bombers have been deployed to the Crimean Peninsula to hold snap combat readiness drills, a source in the Russian Defense Ministry said Tuesday, in addition to further massive troops and equipment deployment tests in the western part of the nation as well as around the Arctic circle.
As a reminder, Crimea was recently in the news following a weekend report citing Putin that he was ready to use nukes to secure the recently repossessed peninsula. So one can perhaps look at this as de-escalation.
“During the snap combat readiness drills by the Armed Forces, strategic Tu-22M3s will be deployed to Crimea,” the source said.
Then, perhaps to counter the build of NATO troops in the Baltics, Russia also deployed fighters and bombers to the country’s western exclave of Kaliningrad for snap combat readiness exercises, a source in the Russian Defense Ministry said Tuesday.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
It’s Time for Angela Merkel to Stand Up
It’s Time for Angela Merkel to Stand Up
I need to start of off the bat with an update to this piece, which I started writing yesterday, since I now know that Angela Merkel actually did invite Alexis Tsipras on Monday. It only took her two months…. But that doesn’t take away anything from my point that Merkel has been sorely lacking and missing, it just goes to prove that point.
And if she doesn’t get her act together very quickly (why not ask Tsipras to be in Berlin tomorrow morning?!), this will, I’ve said it before, go down as her main legacy. She will be known as the person who let Europe slip into war, for no good reason whatsoever. Here’s what I started off with last night (Oz time):
The increasing ugliness of the ‘negotiations’ between the Greek Syriza government and the rest of the eurozone, which is ruled by the German government, needs to be halted and put in reverse. There is an urgent need for a detente, for cooler heads and for trust. And there is only one person who can act to create these things: Angela Merkel. But Merkel is nowhere to be found or seen.
The increasing ugliness of the propaganda war the west is waging against Russia and its president Vladimir Putin, also needs to be halted. There is an even more urgent need there for a detente, for cooler heads and for trust. There is only one person who can act to create these things: Angela Merkel. But Merkel is AWOL.
There are German voices in the Putin case that call for reason and quiet, and that have labeled people like NATO head Stoltenberg, NATO General Breedlove and US State Department ‘Assistant’ Victoria Nuland more or less insane. But Merkel’s voice is not among them, nowhere to be heard.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Estonia Fears Being “Overrun By Russia In Minutes”, Sweden Sends Troops To Baltic Sea Island
Estonia Fears Being “Overrun By Russia In Minutes”, Sweden Sends Troops To Baltic Sea Island
“Gotland is a big worry for us. It could be overrun by Russia in minutes and then all of us would be highly vulnerable to an attack,” warned one politician recently as it appears NATO fear-mongering and Russia sabre-rattling is having a significant effect on many of the Baltic Sea’s border nations. As The FT reports, Sweden will put troops back on the strategic Baltic Sea island of Gotland after a decade-long absence and will also step up military exercises around the island involving the army, navy and air force. “Hunting submarines is a priority area,”Sweden’s defense minister explained, adding that “everything we do is a part of underlining Swedish sovereignty.”
Peter Hultqvist, Sweden’s defence minister, said he would recommend placing a company of about 150 soldiers on Gotland, which lies almost midway between mainland Sweden and Latvia in the middle of the Baltic Sea. Sweden will also step up military exercises around the island involving the army, navy and air force.“Gotland has a strategic location in the Baltic Sea and this is also an indication to the outside world that we recognise that Gotland is very important. Everything we do is a part of underlining Swedish sovereignty,” he told Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Special Report: Is It Time To Prepare For War?
Special Report: Is It Time To Prepare For War?
From my perspective, the made-for-public Western news copy regarding Ukraine and Russia is childishly slanted and one-sided. The level of so-called aggression by Russia cannot even remotely be compared to the United States’ naked aggression against Iraq – a country that had not attacked the US, threatened the US, or had any WMD program (which even if it did, would still have not constituted a legitimate reason for invasion by another nation under existing international law.)
So there’s a heavy dose of “Do as we say, not as we do” when it comes to US pronouncements of ‘unacceptable aggression’ on the part of Russia. Predictably, Russia is less than pleased — as in the way they would be if routinely lectured in the press by Captain Hazelwood on the importance of boating safety.
Despite Western claims, it is highly unlikely Russia has yet moved heavy equipment and troop concentrations across the Ukraine border — because if they had, you’d for sure have seen pictures. Endless pictures of those troops and equipment on TV, morning, noon and night. You haven’t seen any pictures, so none likely exist, which means no Russian army troops or military armaments are yet in Ukraine.
But that has not stopped the US and NATO from accusing Russia of exactly those transgressions in nearly every single announcement and press release.
The latest hawkish salvo by General Breedlove was so over-the-top that Germany expressed public alarm:
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Germany Has Had Enough With US Neocons: Berlin “Stunned” At US Desire For War In Ukraine
Germany Has Had Enough With US Neocons: Berlin “Stunned” At US Desire For War In Ukraine
While Russia’s envoy to NATO notes that statements by the deputy head of NATO testify to the fact that the leaders of the bloc want to intervene in Russia’s internal politics, and are “dreaming of Russian Maidan,” Washington has a bigger problem… Germany. As Der Spiegel reports, while US President Obama ‘supports’ Chancellor Merkel’s efforts at finding a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine crisis, hawks in Washington seem determined to torpedo Berlin’s approach. And NATO’s top commander in Europe hasn’t been helping either with sources in the Chancellery have referred to Breedlove’s comments as “dangerous propaganda.”
This is the view of Russia’s permanent envoy to NATO:
“The speech in Riga demonstrates the concern about Russia’s democracy and internal policy. At last, now we know that NATO has a dream, and this dream is a Maidan in Russia,” Aleksandr Grushko said in comment that was tweeted through the Russian representation office in the alliance.Grushko referred to the words of NATO’s deputy secretary general, Alexander Vershbow, who had told a conference in the Latvian capital Riga that President Vladimir Putin’s “aim seems to be to turn Ukraine into a failed state and to suppress and discredit alternative voices in Russia, so as to prevent a Russian ‘Maidan.'” Both officials used the Ukrainian word ‘Maidan’ to describe a string of protest actions that eventually turned into mass unrest and the ousting of the legally elected president and parliament.
And as Der Spiegel reports, The Germans are not happy.
Breedlove’s Bellicosity: Berlin Alarmed by Aggressive NATO Stance on Ukraine
US President Obama supports Chancellor Merkel’s efforts at finding a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine crisis. But hawks in Washington seem determined to torpedo Berlin’s approach. And NATO’s top commander in Europe hasn’t been helping either.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Europe, The Morally Bankrupt Union
Europe, The Morally Bankrupt Union
The European Union is busy accomplishing something truly extraordinary: it is fast becoming such a spectacular failure that people don’t even recognize it as one. People have no idea, they just think: this can’t possibly be true, and they continue with their day. They should think again. Because the Grand European Failure is bound to lead to real life consequences soon, and they’ll be devastating. The union that was supposed to put an end to all fighting across the continent, is about to be the fuse that sets off a range of battles.
To its east, the EU is involved in a braindead attempt at further expansion – it has only one idea when it comes to size: bigger is always better -, an attempt that is proving to be such a disaster that heads will roll in the Brussels corridors no matter what. Europe has joined the US and NATO very enthusiastically in creating not just a failed state, but a veritable imitation of Hiroshima, in Ukraine, right on its own borders. The consequences of this will haunt the EU (or if it doesn’t last, which is highly plausible, its former members) not just for weeks or months or years, but for many decades.
The carefully re-crafted relationship with Russia, which took 25 years to build, was destroyed again in hardly over a year, something for which Angela Merkel deserves so much blame it may well end up being her main political legacy. Vladimir Putin, and Russia as a nation, will not easily forget the humiliation the west has thrown at them, the accusations, the innuendo, the attempts to draw them into a war they never wanted and in which they see no advantage for any party involved.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Monetary System, World Order We’ve Had Since 1940’s Are Collapsing: Richard Maybury
Monetary System, World Order We’ve Had Since 1940’s Are Collapsing: Richard Maybury
Richard Maybury has been predicting ‘black swan’ events in his newsletter Early Warning Report for the last two decades.
In a recent conversation, he put his finger on something happening around the world. He sees a growing anxiety about global events – “everybody knows there’s something seriously wrong but they don’t know what is really happening,” he said.
A reckoning with policies that have been in place since the 1940’s is taking place, according to Richard. The fallout, he says, has implications for currencies, the military hegemony of the US, and political stability around the world.
US Hegemony Since the 1940’s
“The United Nations, NATO, the Bretton Woods monetary system, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund were all created in the 1940s according to blueprints that were approved in Washington,” Richard explains.
And this ‘world order’ may be coming to an end, he believes: “It’s the collapse of that structure that was built in the 1940s that is behind all of these problems that are popping up in financial markets and economies around the world” (we published a report recently on why many indicators undermine the ‘recovery’ thesis. Download here).
Geopolitical Fallout
Everyone knows that tensions between the US and the Middle East are at all-time highs but Richard also believes the US is facing an untenable situation in its attitude to China. The US has the same approach of policing East Asia, in particular the Sea of China, as it did during the 1940’s, but things have changed, and the US is no longer the overwhelming power that it used to be, when most of Asia was under-developed relative to the West.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Crazed Washington Drives the World to the Final War
Crazed Washington Drives the World to the Final War
John Pilger is the kind of well-informed, hard-hitting journalist with gobs of integrity that no longer exists in the Western mainstream media. He has the most distinguished career of all in the business.
In the article below he brings stunning information to one of my own themes–the creation by Washington and its NATO vassals of an artificial reality consisting entirely of propaganda into which Washington has placed the entire Western world and all outside who inspire to be part of it. Westerners live in The Matrix, and the presstitutes keep them there. The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, NPR, and the TV channels perform as agents (as in the Matrix film) actively suppressing any glimmer of factual reality.
Western people have no comprehension of the real reasons for Washington’s murderous interventions in Yugoslavia, Middle East, Afghanistan, Libya, Ukraine, Indonesia, or Latin America. The most transparent lies are fed to people too ignorant to recognize the lies. The lies have cost huge numbers of deaths and injuries and are leading directly to war with Russia and China.
It is probably too late to stop this war. The war is inevitable because Washington’s doctrine of world hegemony does not permit the existence of other strong countries with independent foreign policies. Unless the House-of-Card US economy collapses, the only way Russia and China can avoid war is to accept Washington’s overlordship.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Despite Russian Warnings, US Will Deploy A Battalion To Ukraine By The End Of The Week
Despite Russian Warnings, US Will Deploy A Battalion To Ukraine By The End Of The Week
“Before this week is up, we’ll be deploying a battalion… to the Ukraine to train Ukrainian forces for the fight that’s taking place,” stated US 173rd Airborne Brigade Commander Colonel Michael Foster said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC on Monday. Despite earlier warnings from Russia (and claims that NATO had not agreed to any such foreign ‘boots on the ground’ action’), Sputnik News reports, Foster added, “what we’ve got laid out issix United States companies that will be training six Ukrainian companies throughout the summer.”
This comes a week after PM David Cameron confirmed Britain will be sending 75 military personnel to help combat Russian military aggression.
Despite earlier reports from Russia’s NATO envoy that, as TASS reports,
NATO has taken no decisions on sending British or any other instructors to Ukraine, Russia’s Ambassador to the North Atlantic Alliance Alexander Grushko said on Monday.“NATO has taken no decisions on sending instructors,” he told the Rossiya 24 television channel. “NATO is implementing the decisions that were taken at the political level at the Wales summit in September 2014.”
Moscow will take all measures, including military-technical, to neutralize possible threat from NATO presence in Ukraine, he added.
It seems it is happening, as Sputnik News reports,
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Russia Warns NATO: Any Threat In Ukraine Will See Military Response
Russia Warns NATO: Any Threat In Ukraine Will See Military Response
As Russia announces the expansion of its Navy by 50 vessels this year, including two new nuclear-powered submarines and an aircraft carrier, it appears NATO’s sabre-rattling has drawn a response/threat/warning. Following British plans to send military ‘advisers’ into Ukraine (which NATO has stated are not confirmed), TASS reports, Russia’s NATO envoy, Alexander Grushko, warns Russia will take all measures against possible NATO threat in Ukraine, adding that Russia’s response may include military measures.
NATO has taken no decisions on sending British or any other instructors to Ukraine, Russia’s Ambassador to the North Atlantic Alliance Alexander Grushko said on Monday.“NATO has taken no decisions on sending instructors,” he told the Rossiya 24 television channel. “NATO is implementing the decisions that were taken at the political level at the Wales summit in September 2014.”
Moscow will take all measures, including military-technical, to neutralize possible threat from NATO presence in Ukraine, he added.
* * *
And this is happening as Russia dramatically expands its military forces. As The Moscow Times reports,
The Russian navy will receive 50 vessels of various sizes and classes this year, navy Chief Admiral Viktor Chirkov was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency on Monday.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
10 Reasons Washington Has War Fever
10 Reasons Washington Has War Fever
“War is merely the continuation of policy by other means.” – Carl von Clausewitz
The political elites, Federal Reserve and special interests that really run the show hiding behind Congress and the president of either party in America’s closed two-party monopoly seem to be running scared in many regards. They rightly have many fears for their political future as well as the profits and survival of the major international corporations and banking interests that support the current political leadership and regime. Never has our nation, corporations and wealthy top 1% faced so many new threats to their efforts to grow their power and wealth around the world. Although there is enough blame and mistakes to go around, many of these threats can not really be blamed on our political or financial leaders but rather result from changes in the fast-paced world we live in today. Conspiracy theorists prefer to see the world in black and white with no gray areas and keep it simple by criticizing secret groups or powerful interests for every problem but I believe the real situation is far more complicated. But everyone should realize the free America we grew up in has been long dead and buried with only the institutions and slogans remaining to lull the dumbed down public into apathy and acceptance. Our leaders are not omnipotent and certainly do not have all the answers and I suggest they have few answers and are actually making everything up as they go along, hence why I fear they will ultimately choose war as a solution to their problems.
– See more at: http://www.thedailybell.com/editorials/36116/Ron-Holland-10-Reasons-Washington-Has-War-Fever/#sthash.L1on7Qbg.dpuf
When Centralization Scales Beyond Our Control
When Centralization Scales Beyond Our Control
In an article about NATO exercises in Estonia, just 300 yards from the Russian border, Daniel McAdams at the Ron Paul Institute makes a point that I want to use to make a much broader point. Not the provide answers, though, just to provide questions. McAdams quotes the Guardian review of a book by George Sakwa:
Russian military plane over international waters 25 miles from the UK coast is “real and present danger” to NATO. Yet… Yet yesterday US combat vehicles conducted a military parade and show of military force in Estonia just 300 yards – yards! – from the Russian border. That is just over 60 miles from downtown St. Petersburg. This is not a provocation, we are to believe. This is not a “real and present danger” to Russia. NATO is exempt from the rules it imposes on its enemies. In the Guardian’s review of a new book by Politics professor George Sakwa, the current fallout from a near quarter century of post-Cold War NATO policies is perfectly captured:
The hawks in the Clinton administration ignored all this, Bush abandoned the anti-ballistic missile treaty and put rockets close to Russia’s borders, and now a decade later, after Russia’s angry reaction to provocations in Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine today, we have what Sakwa rightly calls a “fateful geographical paradox: that NATO exists to manage the risks created by its existence”.
That line bears repeating: “NATO exists to manage the risks created by its existence.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
NATO’s Russia Border Games
NATO’s Russia Border Games
When a Russian bomber flew over international waters some 25 miles off the southwest tip of England last week, UK Defense Secretary Michael Falloncalled Russia “a real and present danger.” The UK government scrambled jet fighters to meet the Russian aircraft as a show of force.
Said Secretary Fallon of the incident, “NATO has to be ready for any kind of aggression from Russia, whatever form it takes.” He added that, “NATO is getting ready,” warning particularly that Russia may soon move to invade the Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
Reading the feverish Twitter feed of NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe, Gen. Phil Breedlove, one would get the impression that NATO is already at war with Russia. Fighter jets sit menacingly atop aircraft carriers as the General beams about NATO member countries’ commitment to contribute to the fight.
The message is clear: Russia is about to attack! NATO has, for no understandable reason, found itself in Russia’s crosshairs. NATO cannot figure out how it is that Russia could possibly feel threatened by its actions, which, unlike Russia’s are not in the slightest provocative.
Russian military plane over international waters 25 miles from the UK coast is “real and present danger” to NATO. Yet…
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Is the US Overplaying Its Energy Hand?
Is the US Overplaying Its Energy Hand?
In the grand poker game of geopolitics, energy is often the wild card. That’s why the Middle East is such a mess: Great Powers (first Britain, more recently the United States) have been installing, propping up, toppling, threatening, or bribing regimes in that region — almost always to the detriment of indigenous populations — ever since the first oil discovery there prior to World War I.
Oil and natural gas interests are clearly implicated in current turmoil in or around Libya, Iraq, Syria, and Iran—and also Ukraine. In each instance it requires some historical context to understand the peculiarities of the situation; let’s focus for a moment on the last of these countries.
Ukraine has long been a transit route for Russian gas destined for Europe. The fact that Russia is an energy superpower is frustrating to Anglo-American geopolitical strategists, who see Eurasia as the key square on the “grand chessboard” (to use Zbigniew Brzezinski’s phrase) for maintaining global dominance. Hence their strategy of hemming Russia’s western flank with NATO bases, and their more recent tactic of subverting the constitutional (although thoroughly corrupt) Ukrainian government of Viktor Yanukovych (via injections of CIA cash to foment violent demonstrations) and immediately legitimizing the coup that overthrew him. Washington evidently would like either to control or to destabilize and weaken Russia; this, after all, is the way the West has dealt for decades with energy exporters in the Middle East. If Moscow won’t be the next Riyadh or Kuwait City, then let it become the next Tehran. This strategy makes many people in Europe nervous: they don’t much like dependency on Russia for energy imports, but they positively dread the prospect of being somehow cut off from needed supplies of natural gas.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
