China furious after US Navy
Navy destroyer passes disputed islands in S. China Sea http://on.rt.com/6urp
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US strategic bombers fly close to Chinese islands, ignore ‘get away’ orders
US strategic bombers fly close to Chinese islands, ignore ‘get away’ orders
Two US B-52 strategic bombers have flown near Chinese artificial islands in the South China Sea, ignoring calls to “get away” from Beijing’s airspace, the Pentagon said, claiming the “routine mission” was in accordance with international treaties.
The Pentagon points out that it regards the flights near the Chinese manmade islands as fully legitimate because from a US point of view, the airspace over the islands is a part of international airspace. The US military spokesman added that the B-52s did not get within 12 miles of the islands.
“We conduct B-52 flights in international airspace in that part of the world all the time,” Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said at a news briefing. “There was one B-52 flight…there was an effort made by Chinese ground controllers to reach out to that aircraft and that aircraft continued its mission unabated. Nothing changed.”
The Chinese military contacted the bombers, urging them to “get away from our islands,” according to a US official who spoke to The Hill.
The overflight took place overnight on November 8-9, another Pentagon spokesman Bill Urban specified, saying there were two bombers conducting a “routine mission”.
The incident comes around two weeks after a serious incident involving the US destroyer USS Lassen, which sailed close to the artificial islands. China was extremely critical of the US Navy’s actions.
War, Repression and International Gangsterism: U.S. State Policy From Benghazi to Baltimore
War, Repression and International Gangsterism: U.S. State Policy From Benghazi to Baltimore
A mere two months after clashes between black youth and police in Baltimore following the murder of Freddie Gray while in police custody, President Obama’s Department of Justice (DOJ) announced the indictment of twenty-four year old Raymon Carter for his alleged involvement in the torching of a CVS pharmacy. The national government’s intervention into the case had an unmistakable message – if you engage in “unauthorized” forms of resistance – in this case, crimes against property – expect to confront the full power of the national government.
U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein made it even clearer: “Anyone in the future who participates in a ‘riot’ should know that police, prosecutors and citizens will track them down and send them to prison.”
This aggressive and speedy move on the part of the DOJ to criminalize poor, black kids in Baltimore differed sharply from the DOJ approach to high government officials, armed servants of the state at the local level and the big banks and investment firms. For the officials involved in torture under the Bush Administration, the financial gangsters who engineered the 2008 economic crisis, and the killer cops across the country who have yet to experience one indictment from Obama’s DOJ after months of “investigations,” DOJ-granted impunity has been the operative principle in practice.
But Obama’s DOJ has not been the only state institution involved in providing cover and impunity for repression and criminality in the service of the capitalist oligarchy.
Impunity for State Terrorism: the Real Story of Benghazi
What might seem oppositional and important in the game of U.S. politics is usually insignificant and diversionary. Hillary Clinton’s appearance before the House Select Committee, ostensibly established to conduct a bi-partisan investigation into the events that led to the death of Christopher Stevens and three other U.S. citizens on September 11, 2012, was a case in point.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
It’s Always the Same War
It’s Always the Same War
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, left, U.N. Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry give a news conference after a meeting in Vienna on Oct 30. (Ronald Zak / AP)
Barack Obama originally ran for president as the anti-war candidate. Now, as his second term winds down, the two George W. Bush/Obama wars are winding up, with a third in Syria. U.S. military forces are deployed elsewhere around the globe, as in drone striking in Yemen and Somalia, adding to the global conflagration. The United States is engaged in endless war.
The crisis of war and the millions fleeing these infernos has reached levels unprecedented since World War II, prompting the United Nations and International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to issue what they called an “unprecedented joint warning” for states to end wars, respect international law and aid the 60 million refugees made homeless from recent conflicts.
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said: “The continuing violence is a clear indication that a political solution to the conflict in Syria is desperately needed. The fighting must stop now. There is no military solution to the crisis, not in Syria or anywhere else. From Afghanistan to the Central African Republic, from Ukraine to Yemen, combatants and those who control them are defying humanity’s most basic rules.”
ICRC President Peter Maurer added: “When humanitarian law and principles are disregarded, when humanitarian needs are trumped by political agendas, when access to the wounded and sick is denied, and when security concerns lead to a suspension of operations, people are abandoned, the notion of protection loses its meaning, and humanity is flouted. We ask that states reaffirm our shared humanity by concrete action and uphold their responsibility to respect and ensure respect for international humanitarian law.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
NATO Looks To Station Thousands Of Troops On Border With Russia
NATO Looks To Station Thousands Of Troops On Border With Russia
Russia’s dramatic intervention in Syria has served to push the conflict in Ukraine (a country that is now partially governedby Star Wars characters) to the back of the world’s collective mind. After all, separatists exchanging fire with government forces and/or far-right “volunteer” battalions every couple of days against a dreary backdrop of rundown Eastern European towns isn’t nearly as exciting as Sukhois dropping bombs on sword-waving desert bandits and so, Ukraine’s crisis has gradually receded into the background.
That said, it’s important to remember that one of the principal reasons for deteriorating relations between Moscow and the West is the conflict in Ukraine.
Indeed, Russian “aggression” in the region has triggered a series of snap drills on NATO’s part, the most amusing of which involved a set of war games centered around the capture of a fictional Ukrainian separatist leader called “Birdman” who lived in a shack in the forest. But all humor aside, NATO has also moved to beef up its capabilities near Russia’s border, as the US prepares to place heavy weapons in Poland and the Pentagon runs simulations to determine who would win a Balkan battle.
Now, with tensions running higher than ever thanks to the escalating situation in the Mid-East, NATO is set to bolster its Eastern flank to guard against what the West imagines is an imminent Russian invasion. Here’s WSJ with more:
NATO countries are discussing increasing the number of troops stationed in members bordering Russia and putting them under formal alliance command, part of a new effort to deter aggression from Moscow, according to diplomats and military officers.Under one plan, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization would have a battalion in Poland and each of the three Baltic states—roughly 800 to 1,000 soldiers in each unit. A more modest version would have a single NATO battalion in the area.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
With US Warships En Route To Islands, China Asks: “What On Earth Makes Them Think We Will Tolerate This?”
With US Warships En Route To Islands, China Asks: “What On Earth Makes Them Think We Will Tolerate This?”
The US is in a tough spot militarily.
In Syria, Russia and Iran have taken advantage of the fact that the plan hatched by the West and its regional allies to destabilize the Assad regime took far too long to develop. The idea was to foment discord and provide covert support for the various armed militias fighting to overthrow the government. But the effort is entering its fifth year and Assad is still there. Not only that, there have been a series of unintended (well, at least we hope they’re unintended) consequences. First, one of the rebel groups the West and its allies supported morphed into an insane band of white basketball shoe-wearing, black flag-waving, sword-wielding desert bandits. Second, the fighting created a horrific refugee crisis that now threatens to destabilize the whole of Europe. Sensing a historic geopolitical opportunity, Moscow and Tehran simply stepped in and outmaneuvered Washington. Now, the US basically has to decide whether it wants to go to war with Russia, because paradropping ammo into the middle of the desert isn’t going to be a viable strategy.
Meanwhile, the US faces another superpower confrontation in the South China Sea.
When Beijing began its land reclamation efforts in the Spratlys, we’re reasonably sure the Pentagon didn’t anticipate the extent to which the effort would quickly become a giant headache for Washington.
As a reminder, it’s not so much the dredging that has Washington’s regional allies in the South Pacific upset. Island building has been done before in the area. Rather, it’s the scope of the project that has everyone unnerved as Beijing has so far constructed over 3,000 acres of new sovereign territory atop which China has built everything from cement factories, to greenhouses, to runways.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Russia Sends Its Only Aircraft Carrier To Syria, Signals It Is Just Getting Started
Russia Sends Its Only Aircraft Carrier To Syria, Signals It Is Just Getting Started
As should be abundantly clear by now, The Kremlin is adopting a “slightly” different strategy when it comes to combatting terror in the Mid-East than that adopted by the US and its Western and regional allies.
The strategy of the US and its allies seems to go something like this: 1) covertly arm and train groups who you know might ultimately become terrorists because arming and training these groups may be a way to destabilize unfriendly regimes, 2) wait for blowback, 3) launch serious effort to combat terror if unfriendly regime has been “successfully” replaced by puppet government, or launch half-hearted effort to combat terror if situation still fluid and regime still clings to power.
Obviously, that strategy is prone to all types of problems, and sensing that the US and its allies might have finally met their foreign policy blunder Waterloo in Syria, Russia decided to call everyone’s bluff by launching a real war on terror. Of course, this war conveniently restores the regime of one of Moscow’s allies, but in the end the result is the same: anyone who is a terrorist and who is also fighting Assad in Syria is in for big trouble because Russia is using this is as an opportunity to reassert itself on the world stage and also to fire up a long-dormant military juggernaut.
Now, on the heels of hundreds of airstrikes accompanied by dramatic video footage as well as cruise missile attacks launched from Russian warships in the Caspian, The Kremlin is sending its lone heavy aircraft carrier into the fight. This is only the ship’s sixth deployment in history.
Here’s more from Flashnord (Google translated):
Heavy aircraft carrier (heavy aircraft), “Admiral Kuznetsov” is Russia’s only aircraft carrier, the weekend will go from Murmansk to the shores of Syria, said FlashNord source in the Northern Fleet command.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
What Eisenhower REALLY Said About the “Military Industrial Complex”
What Eisenhower REALLY Said About the “Military Industrial Complex”
Well, it turns out that he was really warning about the “military-industrial-congressional” complex.
42-year CIA veteran Milton Goodman explains:
In the spring of 1961, I was part of a small group of undergraduates who met with the president’s brother, Milton Eisenhower, who was then president of Johns Hopkins University. Milton Eisenhower and a Johns Hopkins professor of political science, Malcolm Moos, played major roles in the drafting and editing of the farewell speech of January 1961.
The actual drafter of the speech, Ralph E. Williams, relied on guidance from Professor Moos. Milton Eisenhower explained that one of the drafts of the speech referred to the “military-industrial-Congressional complex” and said that the president himself inserted the reference to the role of the Congress, an element that did not appear in the delivery of the farewell address.
When the president’s brother asked about the dropped reference to Congress, the president replied: “It was more than enough to take on the military and private industry. I couldn’t take on the Congress as well.”
And see this:
Indeed, Congress members – part of the fatcat club which makes money hand over fist from war – are heavily invested in the war industry, and routinely trade on inside information … perhaps even including planned military actions.
How Saudi Arabia, and a $15B armoured vehicle deal, became an election issue
Government says contract will create and sustain 3,000 jobs
Niqabs, the economy, national unity — all issues that predictably came up in Thursday night’s French-language debate.
But few had forecast that Canada’s relations with Saudi Arabia, and specifically, a multibillion-dollar contract to sell armoured vehicles to the country, would erupt as an issue. It made for one of the more interesting exchanges of the night, and a reprieve for debate watchers tiring of the party leaders covering the same old ground.
- French-language debate triggers hot exchanges on niqab, economy, national unity
- Raif Badawi prison sentence, lashes upheld by Saudi court
- Raif Badawi: What he has in common with Jason Kenney
- General Dynamics Canada wins $10B deal with Saudi Arabia
- Why Canada stays friends with Saudi Arabia
The issue of whether Canada should be involved in such a deal with a country with a poor human rights record carried forward Friday. Conservative Leader Stephen Harper, as he did the night before, defended the $15-billion deal that Canada helped secure last year, under which the London, Ont.-based manufacturer General Dynamics Land Systems will sell armoured vehicles to Saudi Arabia.
At a campaign stop in Rivière-du-Loup, Que., Harper was asked whether he was putting Canadian jobs ahead of human rights concerns.
“As I’ve said in the debate, it’s frankly all of our partners and allies who were pursuing that contract, not just Canada. So this is a deal frankly with a country, and notwithstanding its human rights violations, which are significant, this is a contract with a country that is an ally in the fighting against the Islamic State. A contract that any one of our allies would have signed,” he said.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
US Warns Of “Unprecedented” Russian Military Buildup In Syria: “It’s Starting To Look Like Crimea”
US Warns Of “Unprecedented” Russian Military Buildup In Syria: “It’s Starting To Look Like Crimea”
On Wednesday, we brought you an in-depth look at the latest from Syria where Russia is apparently in a mad dash to send reinforcements to Assad and his depleted army at Latakia (or at least that’s the narrative being pushed rather hard by Western media).
Meanwhile, France and Britain have apparently decided that the best way to stem the flow of refugees to Western Europe is to bomb the country from which the refugees are fleeing, which means that in relatively short order, the skies above Syria will be filled with French, British, American, Turkish, and Russian jets, a situation which quite clearly has the potential to cause an “accident.”
With the war drums now beating loudly, the media is keen on documenting anything that even sounds like it might be incremental which, in combination with the fact that situation on the ground truly is rather fluid, means we get more color on the situation with each passing hour. Case in point, from Reuters:
Russian forces have begun participating in military operations in Syria in support of government troops, three Lebanese sources familiar with the political and military situation there said on Wednesday.The sources, speaking to Reuters on condition they not be identified, gave the most forthright account yet from the region of what the United States fears is a deepening Russian military role in Syria’s civil war, though one of the Lebanese sources said the number of Russians involved so far was small.
And here’s more from the Kremlin, where spokeswoman Maria Zakharova offered a damning (not to mention amusingly accurate) indictment of how Washington has sought to characterize Moscow’s relationship with Damascus:
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Myth of a Russian ‘Threat’
The Myth of a Russian ‘Threat’
Not a week goes by without the Pentagon carping about an ominous Russian “threat”.
So Dempsey admits he does not know what he’s talking about. What he seems to know is that Russia is a “threat” anyway — in space, cyber space, ground-based cruise missiles, submarines.
And most of all, a threat to NATO; “One of the things that Russia does seem to do is either discredit, or even more ominously, create the conditions for the failure of NATO.”
So Russia “does seem” to discredit an already self-discredited NATO. That’s not much of a “threat”.
All these rhetorical games take place while NATO “does seem” to get ready for a direct confrontation with Russia. And make no mistake; Moscow does view NATO’s belligerence as a real threat.
It’s PGS vs. S-500
The “threat” surge happens just as US Think Tankland recharges the notion of containment of Russia. Notorious CIA front Stratfor has peddled a propaganda piece praising Cold War mastermind George Kennan as the author of the “containment of Russia” policy.
The US intel apparatus don’t do irony; before he died, Kennan said it was now the US that had to be contained, not Russia.
Containment of Russia – via the expansion of the EU and NATO — has always been a work in progress because the geopolitical imperative has always been the same; as Dr. Zbigniew “The Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski never tired of stressing, it was always about preventing the – threatening — emergence of a Eurasian power capable of challenging the US.
Read more: http://sputniknews.com/columnists/20150825/1026161727/myth-of-russian-threat.html#ixzz3kaTYeiEE
Ron Paul and Lost Lessons of War
Ron Paul and Lost Lessons of War
Former U.S. Rep. Ron Paul lays out a national security strategy for the United States in his book,Swords into Plowshares, which Carl von Clausewitz , the author of On War, would have approved. Clausewitz, a Prussian general in the early Nineteenth Century, is considered perhaps the West’s most insightful strategist, and On War is his classic work on the inter-relationship between politics and war.
A close reading of On War reveals a book far more on the strategy of statecraft, that is Grand Strategy, than it is on the mere strategy of warfare. Unfortunately, very few readers have understood that. Indeed, Clausewitz’s target audience may have been principally civilian policy makers with his view that the political perspective must remain dominant over the military point of view in the conduct of war.
Whether or not Ron Paul ever read Clausewitz, Swords into Plowshare restores a proper understanding of statecraft as Clausewitz understood it and today’s American leaders fail to.
Helmuth von Moltke, who became Chief of the Prussian General Staff in 1857, almost immediately misappropriated and reinterpreted On War for his own militaristic purposes. (Clausewitz died in 1831.) Moltke was followed in this in 1883, when Prussian General Count Colmar von der Goltz, later known as the Butcher of Belgium in World War I, while paying homage to Clausewitz, wrote The Nation in Arms, a revision of Clausewitz’s On War and its complete opposite.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
10 Disturbing Facts Most Americans Are Too Fearful To Face
10 Disturbing Facts Most Americans Are Too Fearful To Face
Sometimes you have to put out information in hopes that those who haven’t heard this will at least absorb a fraction of it. If you haven’t heard this and you absorb just one of these random points, I believe that may be enough to cause a major paradigm shift in your life or in the life of someone you know. Here are 10 random, mostly recent but some archival information that is factual and verifiable for anyone willing to look it up.
1. Genetically Modified Foods are illegal in many countries for health and medical reasons all the while the U.S. passes laws making GMO labeling illegal.
You may be thinking, say what? That’s right. U.S. citizens are being propagandized daily and are being practically forced to blindly consume GMOs while countries like Austria, Bulgaria, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Japan, Luxembourg, Madeira, New Zealand, Peru, Australia, Russia, France and Switzerland all have booted Monsanto and their GMO crops from their countries. That’s like being booted out of a town for being a rapist and child molester only to have that same person settle into the next town over and become a grade school teacher or pastor. Now imagine the citizens of that other town having a law forced on them that says rapists and child molesters must be allowed to teach little kids and run churches. That’s what we’re talking about here.
While humanity in other countries wakes up fully to the dangers of GMO foods, Monsanto and other GMO food producers are having a feast in the U.S. buying out politicians, distorting news, research and evidence that proves GMO foods are directly linked to cancer. Like a scene from a bad movie, only it’s not a movie. Actually it’s YOUR life if you are in the United States dealing with this nightmare.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Washington Post Reporter Charged with “Trespassing” in Ferguson, Missouri as the “War on Journalism” Continues
Washington Post Reporter Charged with “Trespassing” in Ferguson, Missouri as the “War on Journalism” Continues
A year ago, Washington Post reporter Wesley Lowery, was arrested in a McDonald’s in Ferguson Missouri. The fast-food establishment had been used as a staging area for several reporters, including theHuffington Post’s Ryan Rilley, who was also arrested. Here’s last year’s video clip of Mr. Lowery being harassed by a paramilitary police officer.
Although the men were later released without charges, a year later, they are being charged with “trespassing” by St. Louis County. TheWashington Post reports:
A Washington Post reporter who was arrested at a restaurant last year while reporting on protests in Ferguson, Mo., has been charged in St. Louis County with trespassing and interfering with a police officer and ordered to appear in court.
Wesley Lowery, a reporter on The Post’s national desk, was detained in a McDonald’s while he was in Missouri covering demonstrations sparked by a white police officer fatally shooting an unarmed black 18-year-old.
“Charging a reporter with trespassing and interfering with a police officer when he was just doing his job is outrageous,” Martin Baron, executive editor of The Post, said in a statement Monday. “You’d have thought law enforcement authorities would have come to their senses about this incident. Wes Lowery should never have been arrested in the first place. That was an abuse of police authority.
According to the summons, Lowery is being charged with trespassing on private property despite being asked to leave. He is also charged with interfering with a police officer’s performance of his duties because, the summons alleges, he failed to comply with “
These counts carry a possible fine of $1,000 and up to a year in a county jail, according to the St. Louis County municipal code.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The New York Times Warns About the Pentagon Labeling Journalists “Unprivileged Belligerents”
The New York Times Warns About the Pentagon Labeling Journalists “Unprivileged Belligerents”
This post is a follow up to a piece I published in June titled: New Thousand Page Pentagon War Manual Potentially Lumps Journalists in with “Unprivileged Belligerents.” Here’s an excerpt:
A 1,176 page Pentagon war manual was recently released that hasn’t received the attention it deserves. The book of combat instructions, titled “Department of Defense Law of War Manual,” apparently covers rules of war for all branches of the U.S. military.
One passage in particular is generating controversy, where journalists seem to be thrown into a convoluted and opaque category, in which they could be seen as “unprivileged belligerents” as opposed to civilians. Naturally, this has sparked concern that journalists the U.S. government doesn’t like could be lumped into the “unprivileged belligerents” category and subsequently murdered at will.
Now the New York Times is concerned as well, and rightfully so. In an Op-ed today, the paper explains that:
The Defense Department earlier this summer released a comprehensive manual outlining its interpretation of the law of war. The 1,176-page document, the first of its kind, includes guidelines on the treatment of journalists covering armed conflicts that would make their work more dangerous, cumbersome and subject to censorship. Those should be repealed immediately.
Journalists, the manual says, are generally regarded as civilians, but may in some instances be deemed “unprivileged belligerents,” a legal term that applies to fighters that are afforded fewer protections than the declared combatants in a war. In some instances, the document says, “the relaying of information (such as providing information of immediate use in combat operations) could constitute taking a direct part in hostilities.”
The manual warns that “Reporting on military operations can be very similar to collecting intelligence or even spying,” so it calls on journalists to “act openly and with the permission of relevant authorities.” It says that governments “may need to censor journalists’ work or take other security measures so that journalists do not reveal sensitive information to the enemy.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Ron Paul: “All Wars Paid For Through Debasing the Currency”
Ron Paul: “All Wars Paid For Through Debasing the Currency”
And at some point, all empires crumble on their own excess, stretched to the breaking point by over-extending a military industrial complex with sophisticated equipment, hundreds of bases in as many countries, and never-ending wars that wrack up mind boggling levels of debt. This cost has been magnified by the relationship it shares with the money system, who have common owners and shareholders behind the scenes.
As the hidden costs of war and the enormity of the black budget swell to record levels, the true total of its price comes in the form of the distortion it has caused in other dimensions of life; the numbers have been so thoroughly fudged for so long now, as Wall Street banks offset laundering activities and indulge in derivatives and quasi-official market rigging, the Federal Reserve policy holds the noble lie together.
Ron Paul told RT:
Seen from the proper angle, the dollar is revealed to be a paper thin instrument of warfare, a ripple effect on the people, a twisted illusion, a weaponized money now engaged in a covert economic warfare that threatens their very livelihood.
The former Congressman and presidential candidate explained:
Almost all wars have been paid for through inflation… the practice always ends badly as currency becomes debased leading to upward pressure on prices.
“Almost all wars, in a hundred years or so, have been paid for through inflation, that is debasing the currency,” he said, adding that this has been going on “for hundreds, if not thousands of years.”
“I don’t know if we ever had a war paid though tax payers. The only thing where they must have been literally paid for, was when they depended on the looting. They would go in and take over a country, and they would loot and take their gold, and they would pay for the war.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
