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The Increasingly Unhinged Russia Rhetoric Comes From a Long-Standing U.S. Playbook

FOR ASPIRING JOURNALISTS, historians, or politically engaged citizens, there are few more productive uses of one’s time than randomly reading through the newsletters of I.F. Stone, the intrepid and independent journalist of the Cold War era who became, in my view, the nation’s first “blogger” even though he died before the advent of the internet. Frustrated by big media’s oppressive corporatized environment and its pro-government propaganda model, and then ultimately blacklisted from mainstream media outlets for his objections to anti-Russia narratives, Stone created his own bi-monthly newsletter, sustained exclusively by subscriptions, and spent 18 years relentlessly debunking propaganda spewing from the U.S. government and its media partners.

What makes Stone’s body of work so valuable is not its illumination of history but rather its illumination of the present. What’s most striking about his newsletters is how little changes when it comes to U.S. government propaganda and militarism, and the role the U.S. media plays in sustaining it all. Indeed, reading through his reporting, one gets the impression that U.S. politics just endlessly replays the same debates, conflicts, and tactics.

Much of Stone’s writings, particularly throughout the 1950s and into the 1960s, focused on the techniques for keeping Americans in a high state of fear over the Kremlin. One passage, from August 1954, particularly resonates; Stone explained why it’s impossible to stop McCarthyism at home when — for purposes of sustaining U.S. war and militarism — Kremlin leaders are constantly being depicted as gravely threatening and even omnipotent. Other than the change in Moscow’s ideology — a change many of today’s most toxic McCarthyites explicitly deny — Stone’s observations could be written with equal accuracy today.

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

Is Donald Trump a Coward, or Just a Fool?

Is Donald Trump a Coward, or Just a Fool?

Ever since Donald Trump won the U.S. Presidency, the U.S. aristocracy (who control or outright own all of the U.S.-based international corporations and especially the weapons-firms such as Lockheed Martin, whose sales-volumes depend upon increasing the nation’s ‘defense’ spending — and that requires restoring ‘the Cold War’) have been trying to abort his Presidency in any and every way they can. Above all, they have been trying to portray Trump as being secretly a Russian agent, a traitor. On February 14th, they clearly conquered him and brought him fully into line (and not merely partially into line, as before, such as by his abolishing environmental and other regulations that reduce their profits). But did this happen because he is a coward, or instead because he is a fool? How did they conquer him? At the current time, this can be determined only by close examination of the way in which he capitulated. So, the February 14th event will be scrutinized here, in detail:

Trump made unequivocally clear, on February 14th, that the new Cold War between the U.S. and Russia will continue until Russia complies with two conditions that would not only be humiliating to Russia (and to the vast majority of its citizens), but that would also be profoundly immoral. One of these two conditions would actually be impossible, even if it weren’t, in addition, immoral. For Vladimir Putin to agree to either of these two conditions, would not only be a violation of his often-expressed basic viewpoint, but it would also cause the vast majority of Russians to despise him — because they respect him for his consistent advocacy of that very viewpoint. He has never wavered from it. The support of Russians for that viewpoint is virtually universal. (This article will explain the viewpoint.)

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

From New World Order to Hazy Global Disorder

From New World Order to Hazy Global Disorder

From New World Order to Hazy Global Disorder

The Donald Trump administration and the Brexit severance of ties between the United Kingdom and the European Union have, in a matter of a little over a half year, changed the world from a post-Cold War «new world order» based on American supremacy to a global «disorder» of altered alliances on a multipolar geo-political chessboard. In many respects, the new global disorder has also placed in jeopardy various post-World War II contrivances, including NATO, the Organization of American States (OAS), and the Australia-New Zealand-United States (ANZUS) alliance.

Every international relations textbook and playbook can be thrown away with the advent of the new global disorder. Trump has kicked off his foreign policy by introducing an incoherent foreign policy. On one hand, Trump claims he wants to partner with Russia on the war against «radical Islamic terrorism». Yet, Trump has also indicated, through his UN ambassador Nicky Haley and Defense Secretary James Mattis, that he is committed to NATO and wants Russia to withdraw from Crimea. It is well known that the annual National Football League’s Super Bowl coordinates its patriotic military-oriented events with the Pentagon. In recent past years, U.S. troops serving in places like Afghanistan and Iraq were featured during and after the game on the host stadium’s jumbotron television screens.

The 2017 Super Bowl in Houston was different. This year the live shot of U.S. troops with the 3rd Brigade Armored Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, was from a military base in Zagan, Poland. The Pentagon’s psychological operations specialists wanted to convey the message that under Trump, the new U.S. front lines were no longer in Afghanistan and Iraq in a war against Muslim radical insurgents but in Poland with Russia as the new «enemy». The optics simply do not match Trump’s statements about seeking closer ties with Russia.

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

Russia Advising its citizens How to Prepare for Nuclear War Warning US Intends to Attack

russia-wars-of-nuclear-war

Just as Obama keeps ratcheting up the allegations that Russia will hack the elections to ensure Trump wins, in Russia they are warning their citizens that war is coming and it maybe nuclear. They are warning that NATO is retrofitting tactical aircraft for the use of nuclear weapons, “which is sign of preparation for war with Russia”.  A whole website has gone up in Russia dedicated to the World War III and one offering advice and how to prepare.

ABC News is reporting that Russian Television Warns of Nuclear War Amid US Tensions. US mainstream press is not questioning what is going on when we have a President who got the Noble Peace Prize. They are not looking at Obama floating all sorts of stories that a Trump victory will be proof of a Russian cyber attack. The Washington Post pitches the story that Russia wants war. Meanwhile The Daily Mail reports that the Kremlin calls Joe Biden’s threat to ‘cyber strike’ Russia ‘unprecedented’ and pledges to protect itself from the “aggressive, unpredictable United States”. CNN has reported that Russia and the US have moved past a Cold War to unpredictable confrontation.

cuban-missile-crisis

War-Cycle-2014Personally, I was just a kid in 1962. But I remember walking with my friends discussing the Cuban Missile Crisis which last for a 13-day period (October 16–28, 1962). That was the closest we had come to World War III until today. Confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union concerning Soviet ballistic missile deployment in Cuba even mad kids pay attention. Along with being televised worldwide, it was the closest the Cold War came to escalating into a full-scale nuclear war. A 8,6 year plot from that event completed the 51.6 year wave terrifyingly on schedule – 2014.

That is when the new Cold War began with sanctions imposed on Russia. It has not worked and only escalated the entire confrontation. Sorry to say, this is on time.

Four Flash Points That Could Trigger World War III: “We Have Not Been This Close To Nuclear War In A Long Time”

Four Flash Points That Could Trigger World War III: “We Have Not Been This Close To Nuclear War In A Long Time”

nukeattack1

As can readily be seen by the current events, the world has not been this close to a nuclear war and World War 3 in a long time.  There are four major flashpoints right now that could easily escalate and ignite a powder keg, transforming from a regional conflict or conflicts into a world war: Syria, the South China Sea, Ukraine, and North and South Korea.  The “reconstruction” of a Cold War-type faceoff, initiated by the U.S. and NATO building up forces in Eastern Europe and facing off against Russia.

A nuclear war will be initiated by an EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse) detonation over the continental U.S., followed by a nuclear exchange and a war with conventional forces.

As of this writing, the U.S. has “mistakenly” bombed Syrian governmental military forces, causing at least 60 deaths with more than 100 others wounded.  The Russian government is sizzling, especially with the response by (of all people) Samantha Power, U.S. Ambassador to the UN had this to say to the media, as reported by CNN:

“We are investigating the incident.  If we determine that we did indeed strike Syrian military personnel, that was not our intention. And we of course regret the loss of life.”

True humanitarians, all, and especially she, the wife of Cass Sunstein and a true Marxist disciple of the Weather Underground (along with Cass) regrets the loss of life.  The airstrikes occurred just two days before the U.S. and Russia were supposed to have joint airstrikes against ISIS.  As ISIS is a creation of the U.S. State Department and the administration, it seems the U.S. decided to strike their true intended target…the Assad government forces…as it wants to topple Syria, and escalate things with the Russians.

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US Exceptionalism Has No Place in a Multipolar World

US Exceptionalism Has No Place in a Multipolar World

US-RussiaFlyby, photo credit: US NavyWith the end of the Cold War twenty-five years ago, many in the U.S have taken the country’s continued global hegemony for granted. However, this state of affairs is increasingly being challenged by both Russia and China, exemplified by their aerial flybys and interceptions of the US military within their respective regions.

Moscow is the Heart

“If St. Petersburg is Russia’s head, and Kiev its legs, then Moscow is its heart.” These words were spoken by Napoleon when explaining the need for France to capture Moscow in order to bring the entire Russian Empire into submission. More generally, he was commenting on the necessity of defeating Russia, first and foremost, in order to truly secure French dominion within Europe.

Recently, a Russian warplane “buzzed” the USS Donald Cook while the ship was performing maneuvers in the Baltic Sea. This incident occurred as the U.S. is looking to increase its material presence in eastern Europe in order to reassure nervous NATO allies in the wake of the Ukraine Crisis. As US­-Russian relations continue to deteriorate, the U.S. will most likely face increasing pressure from NATO allies, most notably Poland and the Baltic states, to adopt an even harsher stance towards Russia.

‘She Will Shake the World’

“Let China sleep, for when the Dragon awakes, she will shake the world.” These words were also supposedly spoken by Napoleon and reference his belief that China’s eventual ascension will impact not only Europe, but the entire world. Even in Napoleon’s own time, before the eventual onset of the Opium Wars, this was self­-evident.

China, meanwhile, has recently intercepted a US reconnaissance aircraft operating in the South China Sea. Although its relations with the U.S. are not nearly as hostile as US-­Russia relations, China has come under increasing international criticism for its artificial island construction and overall territorial claims in the region with respect to its neighbors.

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Russia to form 3 new divisions to counter NATO buildup

Russia to form 3 new divisions to counter NATO buildup

Russia is to deploy two new divisions in the west and one in the south to counterbalance NATO’s increased military presence near Russian borders, Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu announced.
“The Defense Ministry is taking a number of measures to respond to the NATO military buildup at the Russian border,” Shoigu said on Wednesday. “Before the year’s end two new divisions will be formed in the Western Military District and one in the Southern Military District.”


Spring is comnig! Estonia expects 1,500 NATO troops for major Spring Storm drillshttp://on.rt.com/7bk9 

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“This Is Catastrophic” – Thousands Of Gallons Of Radioactive Waste Leak At Nuclear Site

“This Is Catastrophic” – Thousands Of Gallons Of Radioactive Waste Leak At Nuclear Site

The ongoing radioactive leak problems at the Hanford Site, a nuclear storage tank in Washington State, are nothing new.

We first wrote about the ongoing radioative leakage at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, created as part of the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb, in 2013.

As a reminder, during the Cold War, the project was expanded to include nine nuclear reactors and five large plutonium processing complexes, which produced plutonium for most of the 60,000 weapons in the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Alas, the site has been leaking ever since, as many of the early safety procedures and waste disposal practices were inadequate and Hanford’s operations released significant amounts of radioactive materials into the air and the neighboring Columbia River.

Hanford’s weapons production reactors were decommissioned at the end of the Cold War, but the decades of manufacturing left behind 53 million US gallons of high-level radioactive waste, an additional 25 million cubic feet of solid radioactive waste, 200 square miles of contaminated groundwater beneath the site and occasional discoveries of undocumented contaminations.

The Hanford site represents two-thirds of the nation’s high-level radioactive waste by volume. Today, Hanford is the most contaminated nuclear site in the United States and is the focus of the nation’s largest environmental cleanup. The government spends $2 billion each year on Hanford cleanup — one-third of its entire budget for nuclear cleanup nationally. The cleanup is expected to last decades.

However, as Krugman would say, the government was not spending nearly enough, and after a major documented leak in 2013, over the weekend, thousands of gallons of radioactive waste are estimated to have leaked from the Site once again, triggering an alarm and causing one former worker to label it as “catastrophic.”

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

The History of Hollywood: Propaganda for White Supremacy at Home and US Militarism Abroad

The History of Hollywood: Propaganda for White Supremacy at Home and US Militarism Abroad

turtix | Shutterstock.com

For more than a century American film has been one of the most important apparatus used for perpetuating American white supremacy and justifying American military adventures.

Racism in film and white supremacy are so intricately interwoven into the fabric of America that they have become virtually undetectable, much like carbon monoxide, until the deadly damage has occurred. Film is a reflection of society and society in turn is influenced by film.

Ever since the Lumiere brothers first developed film in 1896, it has been an astoundingly effective racial propaganda tool. As the first universal mass medium it efficiently utilized high drama through the fixation of emotional sequences. Put simply, effective propaganda starts precisely where critical thinking ends.

To create drama, particularly in action and war movies, Hollywood needs bad guys, and through the consistent use of racial stereotypes these enemies have included the Vietnamese during the Vietnam war, the Russians throughout the Cold War, Muslims during the ongoing War on Terror and the Japanese after Pearl Harbor.

In American film and media, during the “Yellow peril” the widespread image of the Japanese as sub-human created an emotional context which formed a justification for the nuclear bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki that instantly slaughtered 140,000 innocent people, as well as the establishment of concentration camps for Japanese-Americans on US soil.

The first group in Hollywood history to have been depicted as dangerous savages is Native Americans.

The gross misrepresentation of Native Americans has been a longstanding problem for American film makers ever since the rise of 19th-century Western frontier literature, which portrayed pioneers as struggling with restless natives, without acknowledging the genocide committed by white men.

Despite vast evidence of Native American technological advances and complex civilization, Hollywood films depict native culture as a “blanket ethnicity,” thereby pigeonholing the various groups and cultures into one group defined by stereotypical tropes.

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There Is No Freedom Without Truth

There Is No Freedom Without Truth

“This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military–industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together.” — President Dwight D. Eisenhower

Dwight D. Eisenhower was a five-star general in charge of the Normandy Invasion and a popular two-term President of the United States. Today he would be called a “conspiracy theorist.”

Were Ike to be issuing his warning from the White House today, conservative Republicans like Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Marco Rubio (R-FL) would be screaming at Ike for impugning the motives of “the patriotic industry that protects our freedom.”

Neoconservatives such as William Kristol would be demanding to know why President Eisenhower was issuing warnings about our own military-industrial complex instead of warning about the threat presented by the Soviet military.

The presstitute media would be implying that Ike was going a bit senile in his old age, a tactic the presstitutes used against President Reagan as he struggled to end stagflation and the Cold War.

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Financial collapse leads to war

Financial collapse leads to war

[This is a rerun from March of last year, whose time has finally come. With the new year, a sea change seems to have occurred in the financial markets: instead of “melting up,” the way they used to, they have started “melting down.” My original prediction is that this will lead to more armed conflict. Let’s see if I was right.]

Scanning the headlines in the western mainstream press, and then peering behind the one-way mirror to compare that to the actual goings-on, one can’t but get the impression that America’s propagandists, and all those who follow in their wake, are struggling with all their might to concoct rationales for military action of one sort or another, be it supplying weapons to the largely defunct Ukrainian military, or staging parades of US military hardware and troops in the almost completely Russian town of Narva, in Estonia, a few hundred meters away from the Russian border, or putting US “advisers” in harm’s way in parts of Iraq mostly controlled by Islamic militants.

The strenuous efforts to whip up Cold War-like hysteria in the face of an otherwise preoccupied and essentially passive Russia seems out of all proportion to the actual military threat Russia poses. (Yes, volunteers and ammo do filter into Ukraine across the Russian border, but that’s about it.) Further south, the efforts to topple the government of Syria by aiding and arming Islamist radicals seem to be backfiring nicely. But that’s the pattern, isn’t it? What US military involvement in recent memory hasn’t resulted in a fiasco? Maybe failure is not just an option, but more of a requirement?

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Slouching Toward Global Disaster

Slouching Toward Global Disaster

Syrian-warplane

There are many disturbing signs that the West is creating conditions in the Middle East and Asia that could produce a wider war, most likely a new Cold War, containing, as well, menacing risks of World War III. The reckless confrontation with Russia along its borders, reinforced by provocative weapons deployments in several NATO countries and the promotion of governing regimes hostile to Russia in such countries as Ukraine and Georgia seems to exhibit Cold War nostalgia, and is certainly not the way to preserve peace.

Add to this the increasingly belligerent approach recently taken by the United States naval officers and defense officials to China with respect to island disputes and navigational rights in the South China Seas. Such posturing has all the ingredients needed for intensifying international conflict, giving a militarist signature to Obama’s ‘pivot to Asia.’

These developments are happening during the supposedly conflict averse Obama presidency. Looking ahead to new leadership, even the most optimistic scenario that brings Hillary Clinton to the White House is sure to make these pre-war drum beats even louder.

From a more detached perspective it is fair to observe that Obama seems rather peace-oriented only because American political leaders and the Beltway/media mainstream have become so accustomed to relying on military solutions whether successful or not, whether dangerous and wasteful or not, that is, only by comparison with more hawkish alternatives.

The current paranoid political atmosphere in the United States is a further relevant concern, calling for police state governmental authority at home, increased weapons budgets, and the continuing militarization of policing and law enforcement.

Such moves encourage an even more militaristic approach to foreign challenges that seem aimed at American and Israeli interests by ISIS, Iran, and China. Where this kind of war-mongering will lead is unknowable, but what is frighteningly clear is that this dangerous geopolitical bravado is likely to become even more strident as the 2016 campaign unfolds to choose the next American president.

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NATO: Seeking Russia’s Destruction Since 1949

NATO: Seeking Russia’s Destruction Since 1949

In 1990, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, U.S. president George H. W. Bush through his secretary of state James Baker promised Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev that in exchange for Soviet cooperation on German reunification, the Cold War era NATO alliance would not expand “one inch” eastwards towards Russia. Baker told Gorbachev: “Look, if you remove your [300,000] troops [from east Germany] and allow unification of Germany in NATO, NATO will not expand one inch to the east.”

In the following year, the USSR officially dissolved itself. Its own defensive military alliance (commonly known as the Warsaw Pact) had already shut down. The Cold War was over.

So why hasn’t NATO also dissolved, but instead expanded relentlessly, surrounding European Russia? Why isn’t this a central question for discussion and debate in this country?

NATO: A Cold War Anti-Russian Alliance 

Some challenge the claim that Bush’s pledge was ever given, although Baker repeated it publicly in Russia. Or they argue that it was never put in writing, hence legally inconsequential. Or they argue that any promise made to the leadership of the Soviet Union, which went out of existence in 1991, is inapplicable to subsequent U.S.-Russian relations. But it’s clear that the U.S. has, to the consternation of the Russian leadership, sustained a posture of confrontation with its Cold War foe principally taking the form of NATO expansion. This expansion hardly receives comment in the U.S. mass media, which treats the entry of a new nation into NATO much as it does the admission of a new state into the UN—as though this was altogether natural and unproblematic.

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Christmas 2015—–Why There Is No Peace On Earth

Christmas 2015—–Why There Is No Peace On Earth

After the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989 and the death of the Soviet Union was confirmed two years later when Boris Yeltsin courageously stood down the red army tanks in front of Moscow’s White House, a dark era in human history came to an end.

The world had descended into what had been a 77-year global war, incepting with the mobilization of the armies of old Europe in August 1914. If you want to count bodies, 150 million were killed by all the depredations which germinated in the Great War, its foolish aftermath at Versailles, and the march of history into the world war and cold war which followed inexorably thereupon.

To wit, upwards of 8% of the human race was wiped-out during that span. The toll encompassed the madness of trench warfare during 1914-1918; the murderous regimes of Soviet and Nazi totalitarianism that rose from the ashes of the Great War and Versailles; and then the carnage of WWII and all the lesser (unnecessary) wars and invasions of the Cold War including Korea and Vietnam.

I have elaborated more fully on this proposition in The Epochal Consequences Of Woodrow Wilson’s War, but the seminal point cannot be gainsaid. The end of the cold war meant world peace was finally at hand, yet 25 years later there is still no peace because Imperial Washington confounds it.

In fact, the War Party entrenched in the nation’s capital is dedicated to economic interests and ideological perversions that guarantee perpetual war; they ensure endless waste on armaments and the inestimable death and human suffering that stems from 21st century high tech warfare and the terrorist blowback it inherently generates among those upon which the War Party inflicts its violent hegemony.

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US aimed to nuke civilian populations in enemy cities during Cold War – declassified document

US aimed to nuke civilian populations in enemy cities during Cold War – declassified document

© Airman John Parie
A newly released Cold War-era list of nuclear targets shows the US planned to inflict “systematic destruction” on enemy cities and target the “population” of those areas. It is the most comprehensive Cold War nuclear target list to become declassified.

The Strategic Air Command (SAC) Atomic Weapons Requirements Study for 1959, produced in June 1956, was published by the National Security Archive on Tuesday.

Totaling almost 800 pages, the document details targets in over 1,200 cities, including Moscow, Beijing, and Warsaw. The list for each city contains details on targeting the population, along with industrial and infrastructural targets.

Moscow and Leningrad were marked as priority one and two, respectively. Moscow had 179 Designated Ground Zeros (DGZs), while Leningrad had 145, in addition to “population” targets. In both cities, the list identified air power installations such as Soviet Air Force command centers, which the US would have demolished with thermonuclear weapons early in the war.

The document also includes lists of more than 1,100 airfields in the Soviet bloc, with a priority number assigned to each base. The Soviet bomber force was the highest priority for nuclear testing, and the list labels Bykhov and Orsha airfields, both located in Belorussia, as priority one and two, respectively. Medium-range Badger (TU-16) bombers, which would have posed a threat to the US and NATO allies, were present at both bases.

Soviet airfields were to be targeted with bombs ranging from 1.7 to 9 megatons, which were capable of inflicting heavy damage. The US also hailed the necessity of a 60-megaton bomb (4,000 times larger than the Hiroshima bomb’s 15 kilotons), which was capable of delivering “significant results” in the event of war with the Soviet bloc.

The National Security Archive, based at George Washington University, obtained the nuclear target list through the Mandatory Declassification Review (MDR) process.

Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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