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Kiev’s Plan to Store F-16s in NATO States Raises the Risk of World War III
It can’t be ruled out that Zelensky might task one of his pilots with carrying out a mission directly from NATO territory without first stopping at a Kiev-controlled airfield in order to provoke Russia into striking the base from which it departed in self-defense.
Ukrainian Air Force head of aviation Sergey Golubtsov told US state-run Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in an interview over the weekend that Kiev plans to store some of its F-16s in NATO states for reserve and training purposes. While this might sound like a pragmatic policy, particularly since it would deter Russia from destroying its entire fleet since President Putin recently mocked speculation about him plotting to attack NATO as “bullshit”, it actually raises the risk of World War III.
To explain, although US Air Force chief Frank Kendell claimed last summer that the F-16s are “not going to be a game-changer” for Ukraine and Golubtsov himself confirmed in his latest interview that they’re “not a panacea and we do not wear rose-colored glasses”, both downplay the nuclear dimension. President Putin brought it up earlier this spring when he noted that “F-16 aircraft can also carry nuclear weapons, and we will also have to heed this while organising our combat operations.”
The Russian leader also warned that “we would see them as legitimate targets if they operate from the airfields of third countries, no matter where they are located.” Mutual mistrust between Russia and the US is at a record low and continues falling by the week, made all the worse by Ukraine’s recent attack(s) against Russia’s early nuclear warning systems that might have been tacitly approved by America. This comes as the US is playing a dangerous game of nuclear chicken with Russia.
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Kiev’s Plan To Store F-16s In NATO States Raises The Risk Of World War III
It can’t be ruled out that Zelensky might task one of his pilots with carrying out a mission directly from NATO territory without first stopping at a Kiev-controlled airfield in order to provoke Russia into striking the base from which it departed in self-defense.
Ukrainian Air Force head of aviation Sergey Golubtsov told US state-run Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in an interview over the weekend that Kiev plans to store some of its F-16s in NATO states for reserve and training purposes. While this might sound like a pragmatic policy, particularly since it would deter Russia from destroying its entire fleet since President Putin recently mocked speculation about him plotting to attack NATO as “bullshit”, it actually raises the risk of World War III.
To explain, although US Air Force chief Frank Kendell claimed last summer that the F-16s are “not going to be a game-changer” for Ukraine and Golubtsov himself confirmed in his latest interview that they’re “not a panacea and we do not wear rose-colored glasses”, both downplay the nuclear dimension. President Putin brought it up earlier this spring when he noted that “F-16 aircraft can also carry nuclear weapons, and we will also have to heed this while organising our combat operations.”
The Russian leader also warned that “we would see them as legitimate targets if they operate from the airfields of third countries, no matter where they are located.” Mutual mistrust between Russia and the US is at a record high and continues rising by the week, made all the worse by Ukraine’s recent attack(s) against Russia’s early nuclear warning systems that might have been tacitly approved by America. This comes as the US is playing a dangerous game of nuclear chicken with Russia.
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Are France & The UK Plotting A Ukrainian Power Play Right Under Germany’s Nose?
There are indeed plans for a conventional Western intervention in Ukraine despite their leaders’ denials over the past two weeks, but they’ve yet to fully form and their execution can’t be taken for granted, but they also can’t be ruled out either.
The debate that French President Macron provoked over whether NATO should conventionally intervene in Ukraine exposed the existence of two distinct schools of thought on this issue inside of Europe. France, the Baltic States, and Poland appear to be in favor of “non-combat deployments” there for demining and training missions, which could be carried out through a “coalition of the willing”, while the rest of the bloc supports Germany’s stance that this shouldn’t happen under any circumstances.
“Scholz’s Slip Of The Tongue Spilled The Beans On Ukraine’s Worst-Kept Secret”, however, since he inadvertently revealed that there are already British and French troops there helping Ukraine with “target control”. The subsequently leaked Bundeswehr recording about bombing the Crimean Bridge confirmed that the Americans are there too. Nevertheless, what’s being proposed by Paris is a formalization of these deployments along with their gradual expansion in a “non-combat” capacity.
Nobody should be fooled into thinking that France and the other four that appear to be in favor of this scenario are solely interested in demining and training missions. Rather, their intent seems to be to prepare these on-the-ground forces for surging eastward in the event that the worst-case scenario from Kiev’s perspective materializes whereby the frontline collapses and Russia starts steamrolling westward. These NATO members would then try to draw a red line in the sand as far as possible to save Ukraine.
Germany’s approach is altogether different in that it prefers to formally stay out of the fray in order to focus on building “Fortress Europe”…
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Iran-Saudi Rapprochement Will Deal A Deathblow To The Dollar
Jacob Lawrence Struggle: From the History of the American People, Panel 8 1954
The bloc’s de facto Saudi leader has been prioritizing a comprehensive economic reform policy known as “Vision 2030” that was introduced by Crown Prince and first-ever Prime Minister Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS) upon his rise to power in 2015. It regrettably stumbled as a result of the disastrous Yemeni War that he’s been waging since that same year, but everything is now back on track and more promising than ever after securing $50 billion worth of investments from China last December.
The People’s Republic regards Vision 2030 as complementary to its Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) due to MBS’ focus on real-sector investments for preemptively diversifying the Saudi economy away from its presently disproportionate dependence on oil exports. His country’s location at the crossroads of Afro-Eurasia also makes investments there extremely attractive from the perspective of China’s logistical interests, hence its massive commitment to his comprehensive economic reform policy.
Without last week’s Beijing-brokered deal, China would have had to rely on maritime routes under the control of the powerful US Navy to facilitate the forthcoming explosion in bilateral real-sector trade, but now everything can be conducted much more securely via the Iranian-transiting CCAWAEC. Looking forward, there’s also a theoretical possibility of Chinese energy investments in Iran connecting the Gulf to Central Asia and thenceforth to the People’s Republic, thus fully securing its strategic interests.
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Dangerous Crossroads: NATO’s Attempted Infringement of Russia’s Airspace and Maritime Borders
Recent attempted infringements of Russia’s airspace and maritime borders by NATO are very dangerous instances of de-facto brinksmanship intended to provoke the Eurasian Great Power into reacting in a way that could then be manipulated as the “plausible pretext” for imposing further pressure upon it.
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It seems like almost every week that Russian media reports on NATO’s attempted infringement of Russian airspace and maritime borders, but two ultra-dangerous developments occurred over the past week which signify that this trend will intensify. The Russian Navy threatened to ram the USS John McCain after it aggressively passed into the country’s territorial waters near Peter the Great Bay off Vladivostok, after which it thankfully reversed its course. The second incident involved the US launching rockets into the Black Sea from Romania that are capable of reaching Crimea in a wartime scenario. These two events deserve to be discussed more in detail because of their significance to NATO’s grand strategy.
The transatlantic alliance intends to provoke the Eurasian Great Power into reacting in a way that could then be manipulated as the “plausible pretext” for imposing further pressure upon it. It amounts to de-facto brinksmanship and is therefore incredibly dangerous since both parties are nuclear powers. Furthermore, it’s the definition of unprovoked aggression since Russia doesn’t partake in symmetrical provocations against NATO. If anything, every time that it’s been dishonestly accused of such was just the country carrying out military exercises within its own borders which just so happen to abut several NATO states after the bloc extended its frontiers eastward following the end of the Old Cold War.
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The US’ War Against Iran & Venezuela’s “Deep States” Is Going Public
The US’ War Against Iran & Venezuela’s “Deep States” Is Going Public
The US’ desire to dismantle the network of Iranian influence in Latin America and specifically in Venezuela speaks to its commitment to counter the regional sway of its rivals’ “deep states”, though it’s hitherto unprecedented for any country to make such a crusade public since the end of the Old Cold War, let alone clothe it in “anti-terrorist” and “anti-criminal” rhetoric.
US Secretary of State Pompeo recently reiterated his rhetoric that Iran is a “global threat”, this time basing it on his claims that the country’s network of influence in Latin America is supporting “transnational crime” and “terrorism”. This comes shortly after Washington designated the IRGC as a “terrorist” organization and approximately half a year since the Justice Department began investigating Iranian ally Hezbollah’s alleged links to drug cartels as a follow-up to the scandalous Obama-era “Operation Cassandra“. Taken together, it’s clear that the US desires to dismantle Iran and Venezuela’s supposedly interconnected influence networks in Latin America as the next step in fortifying “Fortress America“, and while “deep state” wars such as this one have been going on for decades, it’s hitherto unprecedented for any country to make such a crusade public since the end of the Old Cold War when the US used to make similar claims about the USSR and its communist proxies.
Evidently, the US isn’t shy about ushering in a new era of “deep state” wars whereby Great Powers such as itself (which is presently the leading one in the world) openly work to thwart the networks of influence established by its regional rivals’ on the grounds that the military-intelligence wings of their “deep states” are engaged in “criminal” and “terrorist” activities that threaten the world at large.
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Is China Really More “Dystopian” Than The UK?
Is China Really More “Dystopian” Than The UK?
RT reported that the UK’s so-called “National Data Analytics Solution” will see an algorithm process whichever of 30 separate data points have been recorded about a person in local and national police databases in order to predict which members of the population are most likely to commit a crime or be victimized by one, after which the state will dispatch local health and social workers to offer “counseling” to them in an attempt to prevent the computer’s envisioned scenario from transpiring. This program is being likened to the 2002 film “Minority Report” and carries with it a vibe of China’s controversial “social credit” system, albeit without any “rewards” being offered for law-abiding behavior. In fact, one can actually make the claim that instead of the UK copying China to a degree, it was actually China that learned from the UK seeing as how the island nation’s mass surveillance system used to be far ahead of the communist nation’s one.
The problem with “pre-crime” technology, however, is that it straddles the fine line between security and liberty in what is supposed to be a “democracy”, therefore making it uncomfortably out of place in the UK while being much more natural to implement in centrally controlled societies like China’s. While the European country insincerely pretends to be a “democracy” in the Western sense of how this system is commonly assumed to function, the East Asian one makes no such pretenses and is proud of having a different organizational model, which should be doubly disturbing for any British citizen because it means that their “democratically elected government” is actually less forthcoming about its nationwide surveillance strategy than comparatively more centralized China’s is. No value judgement is being made about either country’s governing system, but the purpose of this comparison is to point out the surprising similarities between the two that are usually lost on most observers.
The UK Government Is Banning The “Fake News” Label To Facilitate Censorship
The UK Government Is Banning The “Fake News” Label To Facilitate Censorship
The UK is banning the term “fake news” in official documents.
The motivation behind this move is that the government thinks that the word is too broad and is urging people to employ more specific phrases such as “disinformation” and “misinformation” instead. This isn’t just due to some bureaucrats’ personal preferences, however, but because the state plans to more effectively wage information warfare and defend itself from the same, which is why it needs to be as precise as possible when it comes to tackling these tasks. The two suggested replacement terms practically mean the same thing though with the important difference being that disinformation is deliberately false while misinformation is unintentionally so, but both work to sow discord and division in societies and are much more easily weaponizable in today’s interconnected age.
One of the most important functions of any intelligence agency is to determine the intent of their targets or whoever pops up on their radar, whether they’re an internal actor or an external one. In the context of fighting “fake news”, the UK is trying to improve the operational efficiency of its analysts by forcing them to discern between disinformation and misinformation instead of just lumping together whatever politically relevant narratives that they come across as “fake news” for convenience’s sake. There’s a big difference between a fabricated news story, an analysis that deceives its intended audience through the omission of key facts, and a poorly written op-ed that inadvertently confuses people more than it conveys whatever it is that the author wants to opine about.
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NATO’s Manipulation Of The Macedonian Vote Exposes Its Modus Operandi
NATO’s Manipulation Of The Macedonian Vote Exposes Its Modus Operandi
Nearly two-thirds of Macedonian voters boycotted the faux referendum for changing their country’s constitutional name and facilitating its entry into NATO, yet the vehemence with which the bloc is still trying to get them to join exposes its Hybrid War and anti-democratic modus operandi.
NATO membership used to be motivated by a shared fear, however exploited, of a so-called “Soviet/communist threat” which made joining the military bloc a seemingly “natural” decision for the countries that did so during the Old Cold War. The US certainly pressured many of them behind the scenes, however, and it also exploited their membership for clandestine purposes such as embedding Gladio squads into their societies. The Soviet dissolution of 1991 removed the very reason for NATO’s existence, yet the organization survived and has been progressively reinventing itself throughout the subsequent two and a half decades.
At this point in time, it still functions as an anti-Russian alliance after the recent Western-initiated provocations of the New Cold War, but it’s also taken on so-called “anti-terrorist” functions by becoming what de-facto amounts to a recruitment center for American-backed mercenaries. Tiny European states that would otherwise have no interests in far-away battlefields such as Afghanistan have contributed a comparatively significant amount of their troops to this and other conflicts in order to advance America’s grand strategic interests, the success of which they’re told they also have a stake in.
The interim period between the Old and New Cold Wars from the 1990s until the early 2010s was marked by the rapid expansion of NATO eastward towards Russia’s borders as the bloc sought to partially rebrand itself as an “unquestionable” “rite of passage” for the EU-aspiring former communist countries of the former Warsaw Treaty
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Chinese Influence Ops In The US Are Blowback From Decades Of CIA Ops Elsewhere
Chinese Influence Ops In The US Are Blowback From Decades Of CIA Ops Elsewhere
The United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission alleged that Beijing is running a massive influence operation inside of America’s institutions.
The recently released report raises the alarm about what its authors claim are China’s clandestine efforts “to outsource its messaging in part because it believes foreigners are more likely to accept propaganda if it appears to come from non-Chinese sources”, which has supposedly taken the form of an extensive campaign to, as Josh Rogin from the Washington Post puts in the passage that he’s cited in, “influence the influencers” and “get Americans to carry [China’s] message to other Americans”. Some of the mentioned examples include its purported financing of various Beltway think tanks and also the creation of socio-cultural NGOs that are accused of being intelligence fronts.
Although not openly stated, it’s strongly alluded that China is partaking in a so-called “long march through the institutions” in order to change American policies and perceptions from within. This notion was infamously abused during the McCarthyite witch hunts when the US “deep state” publicly purged a rival faction and its suspected civil society supporters on the basis that they were treasonously plotting to undermine the country. Something similar might be happening nowadays as well if the Trump Administration uses the commission’s findings to take action against its institutional foes and simultaneously send a signal to Beijing during the ongoing so-called “trade war”.
Even in the event that the accusations levelled against the People’s Republic are true, whether in whole or in part, it wouldn’t really be anything groundbreaking because the US has been practicing these sorts of influence operations against other countries for decades now.
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The Macedonian “Name Deal” Is A Dystopian Nightmare Of Totalitarian Control
The Macedonian “Name Deal” Is A Dystopian Nightmare Of Totalitarian Control
Marketed as a long-awaited diplomatic breakthrough to a supposedly irreconcilable identity issue, the “name deal” represents nothing less than the full and total capitulation of the post-“constitutional coup” Macedonian authorities to their Greek neighbors with implications that stretch far and beyond simply fast tracking Skopje’s subsequent membership to the EU and NATO. Regardless of how one might personally feel about the finer details of this dispute, it’s undeniable that the “resolution” being presented in the agreement is really just a thinly veiled cover for implementing a new type of post-modern control, one which will basically turn the Republic of Macedonia into a Greek puppet state whose people will continue to undergo socio-political experiments prior to having the “perfected” form of this model rolled out all across the EU.
To explain, the various “joint” structures that are created by this document will enable Greece to determine what Macedonian schoolchildren learn by granting Athens the power to censor their textbooks and affiliated materials. Furthermore, undefined “politically incorrect” concepts and so-called “propaganda” that vaguely allude to what the document describes as being “likely to incite violence, hatred, or hostility” through the purported promotion of “chauvinism, hostility, irredentism and revisionism” are banned, with the Macedonian authorities being obligated to prosecute any person or organization that Greece accuses of violating these terms. Not only that, but the Macedonian government officially agrees to consider the Greek-controlled region of Macedonia as constituting “Hellenic civilization, history, culture, and heritage…from antiquity to present day.”
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The Babchenko False Flag Exposed The Deep State-Journalist Nexus
The Babchenko False Flag Exposed The Deep State-Journalist Nexus
Self-exiled Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko’s false flag “assassination” in Kiev is one of the most scandalous media stunts in recent memory.
Most people are already aware of his dramatic stunt in appearing at a live press conference about his reported “killing” and then admitting that the whole thing was staged in order to capture what he claimed were his Russian-backed wannabe assassins, but many have yet to realize the larger implications of what just happened. A lot of commentary has since been made about how irresponsible it was of Ukraine to carry out this false flag incident in tricking the world for the sake of smearing Russia’s reputation right before the World Cup, with the revelation that this was 100% fake news being used to cast even more suspicion on the Mainstream Media – and especially those that are operating within Ukraine – than ever before.
Relatedly, it reinforces claims that the White Helmets’ famous videos of dead children in Syria were also faked like how independent journalist Vanessa Beeley proved through her extensive investigative reporting in the country over the years, to say nothing of renewing doubts over the official narrative about the Skripals. In hindsight, this self-admitted false flag provocation retroactively adds credence to the argument that these two aforementioned high-profile examples were also staged as well, though there’s also another angle to all of this that hasn’t been given the attention that it deserves, and that’s the cooperation between journalists and the “deep state”.
By now it’s taken for granted that some journalists clandestinely cooperate, and even coordinate their activities, with their de-facto handlers from the permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies after witnessing how the media waged its infowar against Trump over the past 3 years, but Babchenko’s false flag “assassination” introduced a new dimension into all of this.
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Pakistan And America Are In The Throes Of A Serious Diplomatic Crisis
Pakistan And America Are In The Throes Of A Serious Diplomatic Crisis
The steady deterioration of relations between these two erstwhile long-time allies is continuing with the latest political crisis between them that was sparked by the US’ decision to limit the distance that Pakistani diplomats in DC could travel outside the city. Islamabad imposed reciprocal measures against American diplomats located anywhere in the country, and the situation has since remained frozen, but is nowhere near resolved. While American-Pakistani relations have been worsening for the past couple of years now and especially since Trump’s aggressive New Year’s tweet against the country, they hit a low point when an American military attaché who had hit and killed a motorcyclist was originally forbidden from leaving the country aboard a US military plane that had come to retrieve him last week. A Pakistani court had ruled that he didn’t have full diplomatic immunity but he nevertheless left the country on Monday under unclear circumstances.
It was presumably the legal actions initially pursued against this diplomat that infuriated the US to the point of wanting to humiliate all Pakistani diplomats in the American capital through the imposition of new travel restrictions, but Islamabad had a good reason for broadening its own reciprocal decree to include all American diplomats anywhere in the country. It was reported at the end of last month that the CIA failed in its secret plan to stage a jailbreak to free its local agent who was accused of cooperating with American intelligence in its quest to kill Bin Laden, and it’s well-known that US diplomats sometimes clandestinely go beyond their official duties in running spies inside their host nation. That’s probably what the Pakistanis are worried about after the news broke that the CIA was trying to organize a jailbreak, one which probably would have been violent and likely resulted in the deaths of some prison guards.
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Is Saudi Arabia’s Grand Strategy Shifting?
Is Saudi Arabia’s Grand Strategy Shifting?
Even in this era of global paradigmatic changes, Saudi Arabia’s shifting grand strategy is perhaps one of the most surprising developments to occur thus far, but the fast-moving Russian-Saudi rapprochement is likely to provoke an Iranian “zero-sum” reaction which could complicate Moscow’s multipolar efforts in managing the “New Middle East”.
Most observers were taken aback by what to many seemed to be the inexplicable visit of Saudi King Salman to Moscow this week, wondering how and why the two long-standing Great Power rivals were able to get so close to one another in such a short period of time – and apparently without much public fanfare, too – in making this historic event possible. The usual Alt-Media demagogues decried this as a sellout of Russia’s fundamental national interests, with the most extreme pundit-provocateurs even ranting that it amounts to President Putin siding with “terrorists” such as Daesh and Al Qaeda, especially in light of Moscow’s decision to sell the much-vaunted S-400 anti-air missile systems to Riyadh and even set up a Kalashnikov production plant in the Kingdom.
Had the Saudi Arabia of 2017 been the same country as it was half a decade ago, or even last year for that matter as some could argue, then there might be some rhetorical substance to this outlandish claim no matter how false it would still be, but what most people don’t realize is that Saudi Arabia is in the process of comprehensive changes to its foreign and domestic policies, and that there’s a very high likelihood that it will moderate its traditional behavior in becoming a more responsible actor in international (and especially regional) affairs.
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