Home » Posts tagged 'cold war' (Page 6)

Tag Archives: cold war

Cold War Mentality Belies Fear of Democratic World Order

January 22, 2018

Cold War Mentality Belies Fear of Democratic World Order

This past week saw a spate of international security alarms which underlines the danger of the world stumbling into catastrophic war. Those alarms, which were either false or hyped up, stem from a Cold War mentality.

Such a mentality is not only dangerous, it is also unacceptable in today’s world.

First, we saw the US territory of Hawaii being put on full-scale alert over a supposed incoming ballistic missile. The alarm turned out to be false. There was no such incoming missile, but the entire population on the Pacific island were put through 38 minutes of sheer torment.

A day after that incident, Japan’s air-raid system also put a similar false alert.

In both cases, it was assumed that the non-existent missiles had been fired from North Korea.

Meanwhile in Europe, fighter jets from Belgium, the Netherlands and Britain – all members of the US-led NATO alliance – were scrambled to intercept two Russian warplanes. The Russian Ministry of Defense rejected claims that its aircraft were acting “provocatively”, saying that the pair of Russian Tu-160 bombers had at all times been flying in international airspace on a routine exercise.

The latter type of incident appears to be an increasing occurrence. Over the past two months, British navy frigates have made a point of “escorting” Russian warships navigating “near British territorial waters”. Again, as with the air intercept incident this week, the Russian Ministry said that its warships have at all times adhered to international waters.

It is not Russian aircraft or vessels that are being provocative. It is British and other NATO states who are in effect trying to interdict Russia’s legal right to use international airspace and maritime territory.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The New Cold War in 2018 — A Discussion With Professor Stephen F. Cohen

January 17, 2018

The New Cold War in 2018 — A Discussion With Professor Stephen F. Cohen

A few days ago, we had the opportunity to visit with Professor Stephen F. Cohen. As regular readers know, we’ve been featuring his weekly podcasts with John Batchelor for the past four years so it was a real honor to speak with him directly regarding The New Cold War.

As mentioned at the beginning of this podcast, we are all indebted to John and Steve for their regular, weekly discussions. Their podcasts offer the only fair and balanced coverage of The New Cold War that you will find anywhere in the western media. Rather than a simple regurgitation of the War Party line, John and Steve consider the conflict from the historical perspective of each side. Thus, in listening to them over the past four years, I almost feel as if I have participated in a graduate-level Russian Studies class.

To be certain that this discussion is as widely-heard as possible, I’ve taken the additional step of transcribing portions of the audio. We begin with Professor Cohen providing some historical background regarding Ukraine, Russia and the run-up of this New Cold War.

I’ve been working in print and broadcast about the onset of a new Cold War since late 1990s because I saw the Clinton administration’s intrusive policies and then Yeltsin’s Russia as generating a backlash that would lead the two countries to a replication or continuation of the 45-year cold war that Reagan and Gorbachev and then the first President Bush said they had ended in 1989-1990 and that has unfolded more or less in the worst ways that I worried about. I don’t think anybody would deny that they we’re in a new Cold War.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Missile False Alarm in Hawaii: How Wrong Buttons Can Wreak Havoc

January 14, 2018

Missile False Alarm in Hawaii: How Wrong Buttons Can Wreak Havoc

Should the survival of humanity hinge on bureaucratic protocols?

On Saturday at 8:05 am, residents of Hawaii were terrified by a text message that said a missile was heading their way, and they should “seek shelter immediately.” Helpfully, the message also said, “this is not a drill.” And it wasn’t – it was merely a stomach-clenching error.

A notable thing about Saturday’s mistake is how human it was.

Ten minutes after it was sent, it was canceled, and updates were broadcast over social media saying so. However, it wasn’t until 8:45 that a follow-up text saying it had been a mistake was sent out. In the meantime, according to The New York Times and other reports, more than a few families huddled completely terrified, assuming that they were about to die – or at least that there was nothing to be done about it if they were.

An Infamous Error

Hawaii, which is 2,400 miles from California and 4,600 miles from North Korea, is a lot closer to a potentially hot sequel to the Cold War than the rest of us and is understandably tenser, even without this kind of morning. Last year, they started monthly bomb drills thanks to the ongoing battle between President Trump and Kim Jong-Un.

The error was the fault of a still unnamed employee of Hawaii’s state version of FEMA – The Hawaii Emergency Management Agency. According to the BBC:

“State Governor David Ige apologised and said it was caused by an employee pressing the wrong button.”

And though this might end up a valuable push towards fixing a rickety system that managed to incorrectly inform people that they should duck and cover, but not officially say “hang on, not really” for more than half an hour, it is a truly unforgivable error.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How the US Swindled Russia in the Early 1990s

December 20, 2017

How the US Swindled Russia in the Early 1990s

Due to a historic data-dump on December 10th, the biggest swindle that occurred in the 20th Century (or perhaps ever) is now proven as a historical fact; and this swindle was done by the US Government, against the Government and people of Russia, and it continues today and keeps getting worse under every US President. It was secretly started by US President George Herbert Walker Bush on the night of 24 February 1990; and, unless it becomes publicly recognized and repudiated so that it can stop, a nuclear war between the US and all of NATO on one side, versus Russia on the other, is inevitable unless Russia capitulates before then, which would be vastly less likely than such a world-ending nuclear war now is.

This swindle has finally been displayed beyond question, by this, the first-ever complete release of the evidence. It demonstrates beyond any reasonable doubt (as you’ll verify yourself from the evidence here), that US President G.H.W. Bush (and his team) lied through their teeth to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev (and his team) to end the Cold War on Russia’s side, when the US team were secretly determined never to end it on the US-and-NATO side until Russia itself is conquered. And this swindle continues today, and keeps getting worse and worse for Russians.

Until now, apologists for the US-Government side have been able to get away with various lies about these lies, such as that there weren’t any, and that Gorbachev didn’t really think that the NATO issue was terribly important for Russia’s future national security anyway, and that the only limitation upon NATO’s future expansion that was discussed during the negotiations to end the Cold War concerned NATO not expanding itself eastward (i.e., closer to Russia) within Germany, not going beyond the then-existing dividing-line between West and East Germany — that no restriction against other east-bloc (Soviet-allied) nations ever being admitted into NATO was discussed, at all.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

‘Sorry Chump. You Didn’t Have it in Writing’

December 18, 2017

`SORRY CHUMP. YOU DIDN’T HAVE IT IN WRITING’

At a time when the United States is convulsed by anti-Russian hysteria and demonization of Vladimir Putin, a trove of recently declassified Cold War documents reveals the astounding extent of the lies, duplicity and double-dealing engaged in by the western powers with the collapsing Soviet Union in 1990.

I was covering Moscow in those days and met some of the key players in this sordid drama. Ever since, I’ve been writing that the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Foreign Minister, Eduard Shevardnadze, were shamelessly lied to and deceived by the United States, Britain, and their appendage, NATO.

All the western powers promised Gorbachev and Shevardnadze that NATO would not expand eastward by ‘one inch’ if Moscow would pull the Red Army out of East Germany and allow it to peacefully reunify with West Germany. This was a titanic concession by Gorbachev: it led to a failed coup against him in 1991 by Communist hardliners.

The documents released by George Washington University in Washington DC, which I attended for a semester, make sickening reading (see them online). All western powers and statesmen assured the Russians that NATO would not take advantage of the Soviet retreat and that a new era of amity and cooperation would dawn in post-Cold War Europe. US Secretary of State Jim Baker offered ‘ironclad guarantees’ there would be no NATO expansion. Lies, all lies.

Gorbachev was a humanist, a very decent, intelligent man who believed he could end the Cold War and nuclear arms race. He ordered the Red Army back from Eastern Europe. I was in Wunsdorf, East Germany, HQ of the Group of Soviet Forces, Germany, and at Stasi secret police HQ in East Berlin right after the pullout order was given. The Soviets withdrew their 338,000 troops and 4,200 tanks and sent them home at lightening speed.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Cold War Number One: 70 Years of Daily National Stupidity; Cold War Number Two: Still in Its Youth, But Just as Stupid

December 7, 2017

Cold War Number One: 70 Years of Daily National Stupidity; Cold War Number Two: Still in Its Youth, But Just as Stupid

Photo by Nathaniel St. Clair

“He said he absolutely did not meddle in our election. He did not do what they are saying he did.”

– President Trump, re Vladimir Putin after their meeting in Vietnam.

Putin later added that he knew “absolutely nothing” about Russian contacts with Trump campaign officials. “They can do what they want, looking for some sensation. But there are no sensations.”

Numerous US intelligence agencies have said otherwise. Former Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, responded to Trump’s remarks by declaring: “The president was given clear and indisputable evidence that Russia interfered in the election.”

As we’ll see below, there isn’t too much of the “clear and indisputable” stuff. And this of course is the same James Clapper who made an admittedly false statement to Congress in March 2013, when he responded, “No, sir” and “not wittingly” to a question about whether the National Security Agency was collecting “any type of data at all” on millions of Americans. Lies don’t usually come in any size larger than that.

Virtually every member of Congress who has publicly stated a position on the issue has criticized Russia for interfering in the 2016 American presidential election. And it would be very difficult to find a member of the mainstream media which has questioned this thesis.

What is the poor consumer of news to make of these gross contradictions? Here are some things to keep in mind:

How do we know that the tweets and advertisements “sent by Russians” -– those presented as attempts to sway the vote -– were actually sent by Russians? The Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), composed of National Security Agency and CIA veterans, recently declared that the CIA knows how to disguise the origin of emails and tweets.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Stumbling Blindly into Cold War Two

November 17, 2017

Stumbling Blindly into Cold War Two

As the U.S. and its Western allies lurch into a new and dangerous confrontation with Russia, the different sides don’t even have a thorough understanding of the history behind the tensions, warns Alice Slater.

NATO’s recent provocative decision to build up its military forces across Europe — by sending four new multinational battalions to Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Poland — comes at a time of great turmoil and intense questioning of global security with new forces for both good and evil straining to make their mark on the course of history.

A nuclear test detonation carried out in Nevada on April 18, 1953.

This weekend, at the Vatican, Pope Francis held an international conference to follow up on the recently negotiated treaty to prohibit the possession, use, or threat of use of nuclear weapons leading to their complete elimination which was negotiated in the United Nations General Assembly this summer by 122 nations, although none of the nine nuclear weapons states participated.

Honored at the conference were members of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which worked with friendly governments to hold nuclear weapons unlawful, and has recently been awarded the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize for its successful efforts.

The Pope issued a statement that the doctrine of nuclear deterrence in which countries threaten to wreak catastrophic nuclear devastation on their opponents should they be attacked with nuclear bombs has become ineffective against Twenty-first Century threats like terrorism asymmetrical conflicts, environmental problems and poverty. While the church once held that such an insane policy could be moral and lawful, it no longer views it as such. And there are plans for the church to examine the so-called theory of “just war” with an eye to prohibiting the very morality and legality of war itself.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Make No Mistake: “Tensions Are Heating Up” With North Korea

November 5, 2017

Make No Mistake: “Tensions Are Heating Up” With North Korea

kimjongunwar

Unprecedented actions occurred over the last two weeks as the tensions between the United States and North Korea remain at an all-time high. The North Koreans (as reported by Reuters and AP news) have been conducting mass evacuation drills for cities and towns. These drills have been augmented with “blackout” drills, where lights are either cut or masked in homes and businesses to make them less readily visible.

U.S. Secretary of defense Mattis has announced that President Trump (who travels with the “football,” the apparatus with the nuclear launch codes) will not be limited by Congress and will act on his (the President’s) executive authority to conduct a first-strike against North Korea. Mattis went on to say that such would occur if North Korea had either launched, or if a launch was imminent against the U.S. Although these statements were not ambiguous, the latter is certainly subjective: after a nuclear war or strike, how would it be verified that a launch by North Korea had been imminent?

A new Cold War has taken shape and materialized over the course of the past several years. The Mainstream Media (MSM) is quick to “paint” one side as the “hero/good guy” and the other as the “villain.” In this case the villain in journalistic obfuscation (the piece is “journalistic” and not objective journalism) is the The Sun. Here are two excerpts. You make the call, with the underlined words being the “sticking point”:

“President Donald Trump sent a nuclear-capable B-2 stealth bomber from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri on a long-range mission to the Pacific this weekend.”

Here’s number two:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

You Against the Government’s Tools

November 2, 2017

You Against the Government’s Tools

Julian Assange calls the events in Catalonia an “internet war.” The Spanish government has raided Catalonian government offices, arrested government officials, frozen telecommunications links, and censored hundreds of internet sites. The government has refused to accept that secession is happening, and that the people of Catalonia are tired of Spain’s reckless abuse of their tax dollars. Catalans contribute 21 percent of the country tax revenues, but don’t receive their fair share of government services. So in order to stop the bleeding of their tax dollars, they have taken the bold step of secession from Spain. Other parts of the world, such as China and Venezuela, have also faced oppressive government internet restrictions and similar retaliations for voicing opposition to government bureaucrats.

This internet war has grown in many of these non-English countries to an unlimited extent because most computer programming languages are English-based. For many non-native English speakers, learning computer programming and implementing the tools to navigate around oppressive government restrictions is almost an impossible task. This emboldens these countries’ public officials to continue to legislate more restrictive laws to a populace that isn’t equipped to navigate around those laws.

The following is a computer program written in Java, one of the most commonly used languages:

public class CallingMethodsInSameClass

{

public static void main(String[] args) {

printOne();

printTwo();

}

public static void printOne() {

System.out.println(“Hello World”);

}

public static void printTwo() {

printOne();

For most native English speakers, you might not understand the words in context, but you will be able to recognize every word used. However, a native Spanish speaker wouldn’t recognize the language and wouldn’t be able to use these codes without learning the English language to some degree.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Does Russia Produce ‘Fake News’? Or Does America? Or Both?

October 30, 2017

Does Russia Produce ‘Fake News’? Or Does America? Or Both?

The biggest difference between American and Russian news-reporting has been a simple factual issue between the two sides, on what incident started the ‘New Cold War’ between the U.S. and Russia. (The original Cold War was between the U.S. and the Soviet Union and had an ideological, capitalist-versus-communist, alleged basis, but this one doesn’t — so, it’s not really a ‘New Cold War’; it is quite different, but it might be even more deadly.)

The U.S. and its allies say that what started it was in March 2014 when “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine” and “the invasion of Crimea” and Russia’s “conquest of land” by means of that “invasion,” sparked America’s sanctions against Russia and NATO’s military buildup along Russia’s borders; but Russia says that what started it was in February 2014 when Ukraine was victimized, as Russian Television reported it, on 13 March 2014, by:

an armed coup. The Maidan do not appoint these people; rather, it’s the US that does it. It’s enough to look at the newly appointed officials: Parubiy, Gvozd, Nalyvaichenko are all people who followed somebody else’s orders, the orders of the US, not even Europe. They are directly linked to the American intelligence.

In the American account, Ukrainian democracy started when the democratically elected President of Ukraine was overthrown in February 2014; in the Russian account, Ukrainian democracy ended when the democratically elected President of Ukraine was overthrown in February 2014, and only after (and in response to) that, did two regions (Crimea and Donbass, both of which had voted more than 75% for that man) break away from, and refuse to be governed by, the newly installed Ukrainian Government, which was now being imposed upon them.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

US Prepares For War: Steps Taken To Put Nuclear Bombers on 24-Hour Alert Status

October 23, 2017

US Prepares For War: Steps Taken To Put Nuclear Bombers on 24-Hour Alert Status

b52

The United States Air Force is preparing to put nuclear-armed bombers back on 24-hour ready alert, a status not seen since the Cold War ended back in 1991. The Air Force is said to face this decision due to a changing geopolitical environment.

It isn’t just North Korea’s rapidly advancing nuclear arsenal that has the Air Force planning to “fire up” the long-dormant concrete pads at the ends of this base’s 11,000-foot runway. Those pads are dubbed the “Christmas tree” for their angular markings and will probably soon once again find several B-52s parked on them, laden with nuclear weapons and ready to take off at a moment’s notice partly because of the heightened rhetoric between Washington and Pyongyang. But the military is also concerned about Russia’s increasingly potent and active armed forces, according to Defense One.

The long-range bomber can also unleash both nuclear and precision-guided conventional ordnance, but the military insists this is for preparations only. “This is yet one more step in ensuring that we’re prepared,” said General David Goldfein, Air Force chief of staff, in an interview during his six-day tour of Barksdale and other U.S. Air Force bases that support the nuclear mission. “I look at it more as not planning for any specific event, but more for the reality of the global situation we find ourselves in and how we ensure we’re prepared going forward.” Goldfein and other senior defense officials wanted it stressed to the public that the alert order had not been given just yet, but the preparations were already underway in anticipation that it will come.

Goldfein also noted that in a world where “we’ve got folks that are talking openly about [the] use of nuclear weapons,” it’s important to remain alert and think of new ways to be prepared.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Unraveling of American/Russian Relations

October 15, 2017

The Unraveling of American/Russian Relations

Dear Readers: I agree that the official Las Vegas story seems to be unraveling. A public mass shooting should be transparent, not opaque. I think we explored the story long enough to discover that without knowing the facts, we cannot arrive at an explanation with confidence.

It is time to move on to another unraveling—that of US/Russian relations. This unraveling is far more serious as it threatens life on earth. I have warned of the consequences of Washington threatening Russia’s security by breaking agreement after agreement, by placing missile bases on Russia’s borders, by orchestrating anti-Russian coups in former Soviet provinces, and by a continuing volley of false accusations against Russia. There is no act more reckless and irresponsible than to make one nuclear power fear nuclear attack from another.

Alert observers have become aware of the mounting danger. Canadian professor Michel Chossudovsky writes that Washington has taken nuclear war from a hypothetical scenario to a real danger that threatens the future of humanity. https://www.globalresearch.ca/towards-a-world-war-iii-scenario-breaking-the-big-lie/5348384

Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet leader who worked with President Ronald Reagan to end the Cold War and the threat of nuclear Armageddon, has appealed to President Trump and President Putin to hold a summit meeting and bring an end to the rising tensions. Gorbachev wrote in the Washington Post that “it is far from normal that the presidents of major nuclear powers meet merely on the margins of international gatherings.” This is especially the case as “relations between the two nations are in a severe crisis.” http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/48004.htm

Gorbachev’s warning could be an understatement. Last March, General Viktor Poznikhir, the deputy commander of the Russian military’s Operation Command expressed concern that Washington could be preparing a surprise nuclear attack on Russia. See https://dninews.com/article/moscow-us-missile-systems-europe-may-lead-sudden-nuclear-attack-russia and http://www.newsweek.com/russia-us-global-missile-defense-lead-nuclear-war-europe-591244 and https://www.yahoo.com/news/russian-officials-u-global-missile-192829855.html

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

William Perry Interview: Former Defense Secretary Who Negotiated With N. Korea Warns Civilization Is at Risk

September 3, 2017

William Perry Interview: Former Defense Secretary Who Negotiated With N. Korea Warns Civilization Is at Risk

William Perry in 2015. (DoD / Glenn Fawcett)

William Perry has had a long career in government, serving in the Pentagon under Presidents Carter and Reagan before becoming President Clinton’s secretary of defense in 1994.

“We stand today, I believe, in greater danger of nuclear catastrophe than we faced during the Cold War,” Perry tells host and Truthdig Editor in Chief Robert Scheer in this week’s episode of KCRW’s “Scheer Intelligence.” This interview was conducted Aug. 9, the 72nd anniversary of the U.S. nuclear attack on Nagasaki.

Since his time in the Pentagon, Perry has founded the William J. Perry Project, which aims to educate the public about the dangers of nuclear weapons. He has also written a book, “My Journey at the Nuclear Brink.”

Perry and Scheer discuss how the expansion of NATO in the 1990s factors into the rising tensions between the U.S. and Russia. Perry calls this expansion “the first step” in escalating tensions. The “second step,” he says, was “installing ballistic missile defense systems in Eastern Europe.”

“Our response to Russia on the objections to these various actions we were taking basically was, ‘What can you do about it? You’re an insignificant power today,’ ” Perry says. “The reason Putin is so popular today is that he has taken actions that, in [Russians’] view, allow Russia to stand as a great power and overcome this humiliating position they were in … so we stand today in a position of hostility between the United States and Russia, comparable to where we stood in the Cold War. In the meantime, we still have many thousands of nuclear weapons.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Inflating the Russian Threat

August 29, 2017

Inflating the Russian Threat

Exclusive: The U.S. mainstream media, led by The New York Times, has behaved as classic propagandists, hyping a Russian military “threat” and promoting a new Cold War hysteria, as Jonathan Marshall describes.

Readers of the New York Times have more to sweat about than hot summer weather in the Big Apple. The paper’s chief military correspondent, Michael Gordon — co-author of the infamous 2002 story about Saddam Hussein’s “quest for A-bomb parts” — has all but warned that war in Europe could break out at any minute with the mighty Russian army.

New York Times building in New York City. (Photo from Wikipedia)

“Russia is preparing to send as many as 100,000 troops to the eastern edge of NATO territory at the end of the summer,” he reported last month with Eric Schmitt. Sounding like speechwriters for Sen. John McCain, they called the long-planned military exercises with Belarus — known as “Zapad” (Russian for “west”) — “one of the biggest steps yet in the military buildup undertaken by President Vladimir V. Putin and an exercise in intimidation that recalls the most ominous days of the Cold War.”

Gordon and Schmitt added that this latest and greatest example of “Mr. Putin’s saber-rattling,” represents “the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union that so much offensive power has been concentrated in a single command.”

Many other Western news organizations have echoed this story, albeit with less alarmist rhetoric. NBC News warned that “another military challenge may be on the horizon” as “thousands of Russian troops and tanks are preparing to take part in what may be the country’s largest military exercise since the Cold War.”

Reciting the same talking points almost verbatim, the London Guardian reported days ago that “Russia is preparing to mount what could be one of its biggest military exercises since the Cold War.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The NYT’s Grim Depiction of Russian Life

August 8, 2017

The NYT’s Grim Depiction of Russian Life

As a top propaganda outlet pushing the New Cold War, The New York Times paints life in Russia in the darkest hues, but this one-sided depiction misses the reality of the increasingly vibrant country that Gilbert Doctorow sees.

Our five-week stay at our home in the Russian countryside was approaching its conclusion when I got an email from a friend in France asking me to comment on an article in The New York Times entitled “Russia’s Villages, and Their Way of Life, Are ‘Melting Away’.”

New York Times building in New York City. (Photo from Wikipedia)

The article surely met the expectations of its editors by painting a grim picture of decline and fall of the Russian countryside in line with what the author sees as very unfavorable demographic trends in the Russian Federation as a whole. The fact that his own statistics do not justify the generalization (a net population loss of a few thousand deaths over live births in 2016 for a population of 146 million) does not get in the way of the paint-by-color canvas. Nor does the author explain why what he has observed in a village off the beaten track in Northwest Russia, in precisely the still poor region of Pskov, gives an accurate account of country life across the vast territory of Russia, the world’s largest nation-state.

As the author notes, the main source of income from the land of the town he visited was – in the past – linen. That cultivation turned unprofitable and was discontinued. Consequently, the able-bodied part of the population has been looking for employment and making their lives elsewhere (a process internal migration common all over the world, including the United States).

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Tag Archives: cold war

Content

Post categories

Economic Links

Energy/Resource Links

Environmental Links

Geopolitical Links

Liberty Links

News Links

Other Links

Survival Skills

Post Archives by Category

Post navigation

Latest Posts