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Pepe Escobar: The West is Hell-Bent on Provoking Russia Into Hot War

Pepe Escobar: The West is Hell-Bent on Provoking Russia Into Hot War

A serviceman of the Tsentr Battlegroup of Russian Armed Forces perfects his skills in firing Kornet anti-tank missile system. - Sputnik International, 1920, 30.05.2024
The warning by President Putin could not be starker: “In the event of the use of long-range weapons, the Russian Armed Forces will again have to make decisions about expanding the sanitary zone further (…) Do they want global conflict? It seemed they wanted to negotiate [with us], but we don’t see much desire to do this.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov then came up with the appropriate metaphor to designate NATO’s ramped-up military outbursts: not only NATO is raising the degree of escalation but delving into a warlike “ecstasy”.
It does not get more serious than that. “They”, as Putin alluded to, do seem to want “global conflict”. That’s at the heart of NATO’s new suicidal “ecstasy” strategy.
For all their circumlocutions, NATO Secretary Jens Stoltenberg, French President Emmanuel Macron, and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz have effectively greenlighted Kiev using Western weapons for attacks deep inside the Russian Federation. The alleged debate, still ongoing, is just a “smokescreen” for the real objective: a pretext that could lead to WWIII.
There’s no reason to think Kiev will stick to “limited” strikes against relatively unimportant targets. Instead, it is likely to target critical security infrastructure in hopes of provoking an unrelenting Russian response, which in turn would pave the way for NATO to invoke Article 5 and de facto engage in a Hot War.

Already on the Edge of Doom

The escalation “ecstasy” defined by Peskov went out of control since a – secret – new batch of ATACMS was dispatched to Kiev earlier this year, complemented with longer-range ATACMS. Kiev has been using them for serious hits on Russian air bases and key air defense nodes. These ATACMS fire missiles at Mach 3 speed: a serious challenge even for the best Russian air defense systems.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Britain Ramps up Media War on Russia

Britain Ramps up Media War on Russia 

The British government appears to be more and more aping a Monty Python-type farce with each passing day. Soon the absurd ensemble will be complete if either Boris Johnson or Jeremy Hunt becomes the next prime minister.

This week the mandarins at the Ministry of Funny Walks ruled that two internationally respected Russian news media channels were banned from attending a global conference on “press freedom”.

RT and another Russia-based news outlet Sputnik were refused permission by the British government to participate in the Global Conference for Media Freedom, held in London.

A British Foreign Office spokesperson said: “We have not accredited RT or Sputnik because of their earlier role in spreading disinformation.”

The irony of it. The British government is peddling unsubstantiated accusations (more accurately, ridiculous slander) against Russian media which is then invoked as “justification” for censorship at a much-vaunted international conference supposedly dedicated to freedom of the press. You could hardly make the farce up. It’s a kind of cross between George Orwell and Monty Python.

What the British government is doing is blatantly ramping up the media war against Russia. London is giving a license for further outrageous repression of Russian news media, as well as piling on demonization of Russia as a state.

In the same week it was reported that fellow NATO member Lithuania has blocked the news website of Sputnik in the Baltic country.

Previously, France had banned RT and Sputnik journalists from attending public press conferences held by President Emmanuel Macron. In the US, Sputnik radio stations have been curbed from reaching their American audiences.

Russia’s foreign ministry slammed the British and Lithuanian moves this week as putting unreasonable obstacles on the professional work of Russian news media.

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

Venezuela Launches War Drill To Secure Power Grid

Venezuela Launches War Drill To Secure Power Grid 

Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez announced Wednseday that phase two of the country’s military exercises would begin as early as Friday.

Sputnik said local news reports show large-scale military exercises will start in 24 to 48 hours, will be used to secure the country’s power grids and water supply systems.

“This coming weekend, the military drills dubbed Ana Karina Rote are being resumed at their second stage,” Rodriguez was quoted on the state-run television on Wednseday. The first stage of the drills, dubbed Angostura, was held between February 10 and 15 to practice repelling an American invasion.

The news comes after Venezuela suffered a devastating blackout that left the country paralyzed. The crisis started on March 7 with a system failure at the Guri hydroelectric power plant, which produces 80% of the country’s power.

Earlier this week, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said two people had been detained on suspicion of attempted sabotage of the country’s power system, adding that Washington carried out the attack.

President Maduro said the blackout is an “electric war announced and directed by American imperialism.”

He said electrical systems were targeted by cyber attacks and “infiltrators.” He added that government forces restored power to “many parts” of the country on March 8, but was quickly knocked out again by a new wave of attacks. He noted that “one of the sources of generation that was working perfectly” had been sabotaged and accused “infiltrators of attacking the electric company from the inside.”

In the last 60 to 90 days, Venezuela has faced deep political turmoil. Juan Guaido was elected the head of the opposition-controlled National Assembly in early January, which the Maduro government rejected recognizing since 2016.

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

Wag the Dog… British Media Watchdog Accuses Russia of Bias

Wag the Dog... British Media Watchdog Accuses Russia of Bias

Wag the Dog… British Media Watchdog Accuses Russia of Bias

Irony is dead when British state media controllers accuse Russian news outlets RT and Sputnik of “imbalance” over their reporting on the Skripal alleged poisoning affair.

In the past week, Ofcom, the British media watchdog, condemned seven programs aired during March and April this year following the apparent poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal in Salisbury. The Russian outlets may be fined or denied future broadcasting rights in Britain. The latter suggests what the real, ulterior agenda is all about.

It remains a mystery as to what happened exactly to Skripal and his daughter when they reportedly fell ill on March 4 in the famous south of England cathedral town. Neither Sergei nor Julia have been seen in public since, apart from a brief and carefully controlled interview given by Julia to Reuters a few months ago, apparently having recovered from her stricken condition. Russian consular services have been denied access to Julia by the British authorities, despite her being a Russian citizen.

The murkiness of the affair, the flagrant obfuscation by the British authorities and their violation of diplomatic norms speaks of a British state intrigue aimed at provoking international recriminations against Russia. Such is the outrageous apparent skullduggery by the British state, it is arguably very appropriate therefore for critical media coverage of the incident and the subsequent prevarication by London.

However, in a staggering inversion of reality, British media regulators complain that Russian news outlets have broken “impartiality rules” in their reporting on what is a bizarre de facto disappearance of a Russian citizen and her father while in the custody of British authorities. The protagonists are off-limits from criticism; their ropey claims must be treated as the sane version of events.

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

‘We Can’t Continue to Run the World’: Ron Paul’s EXCLUSIVE Interview for Sputnik

Former Texas Congressman and leading libertarian thinker Dr. Ron Paul has shared his views on President Trump’s job as president after his first year in office, the situation in Syria and the renewed debate on gun control in the wake of the Florida school shooting.

Trump’s Year in Office

Sputnik: Donald Trump has been in office for over a year. What is your general assessment of his job as president?

Ron Paul: Mediocre; probably not worse than the other options. But I don’t think presidents really have much control. I think the deep state – the people behind the scenes and the shadow government, who control the monetary system, who control our foreign policy and the welfare state, and are connected to the media and the military-industrial complex. – I don’t think the presidency is as important as it’s made out to be. But everybody talks about it; it’s a political thing, and they keep churning the issue and directing everybody to ask ‘is Trump a good guy or a bad guy, and are we going to impeach him or what’s going to happen’, rather than [asking] what kind of philosophy do we have: why do we have this philosophy of welfare-warfare, spend money, run up debt and let the central bank print all that money.

They don’t even talk about it; the major parties, including Trump, they sign even more controls on us when it comes to FISA courts and spying on us. In spite of the fact that government officials like the FBI and others actually spy on our own president, he supports this; he passes and signs bills on that. So that really raises questions about ‘does the president really have much to say’, and I think he has much less to say than a lot of people believe….click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Moscow Warns It May “Restrict” U.S. Media Operations In Russia 

Moscow Warns It May “Restrict” U.S. Media Operations In Russia 

With relations between the US and Russia souring to the point where media outlets such as RT and Sputnik appear on the path to being effectively banned, the Russian foreign ministry said that it is within Russia’s rights to restrict the operations of U.S. media organizations in Russia in retaliation for what Moscow calls U.S. pressure on a Kremlin-backed TV station.

According to Reuters, Russian officials have accused Washington of putting unwarranted pressure on the U.S. operations of RT, a Kremlin-funded broadcaster accused by some in Washington of interfering in domestic U.S. politics, which it denies. Foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the full weight of the U.S. authorities was being brought to bear against RT’s operations in the United States, and that Moscow had the right to respond.

“We have never used Russian law in relation to foreign correspondents as a lever of pressure, or censorship, or some kind of political influence, never,” Zakharova said in an interview with Russia’s NTV broadcaster. “But this is a particular case…”

She cited a 1991 Russian law which, she said, stated that if a Russian media outlet is subject to restrictions in a foreign country, then Moscow has the right to impose proportionate restrictions on media outlets from that country operating inside Russia. “Correspondingly, everything that Russian journalists and the RT station are subject to on U.S. soil, after we qualified it as restriction of their activities, we can apply similar measures to American journalists, American media here, on Russian territory,” Zakharova said.

She did not identify any specific U.S. media outlets that would be targeted. She said it made no difference from the Russian government’s point of view if those outlets were backed by the U.S. state, or privately-funded.

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

State-Sponsored Intimidation, Or When FARA Goes Too Far

State-Sponsored Intimidation, Or When FARA Goes Too Far

The US government is blatantly violating the most basic tenets of its purportedly “sacred” ideology of “human rights” and “free speech” by egregiously overstepping the bounds of FARA to engage in the same type of state-sponsored intimidation that it regularly accuses its geopolitical opponents of for far less.

Yahoo broke the story earlier on Monday that the FBI questioned former Sputnik employee Andrew Feinburg following his public complaints to the media about how the company is supposedly being run, and this reportedly came after another former employee, Joseph John Fionda, allegedly contacted the FBI on his own initiative to share “a big packet” of information accusing Sputnik of breaking the law. The legislation at the center of this scandal is the “Foreign Agents Registration Act” (FARA), a 1938 law originally passed to expose Nazi influence operations inside of the US. It’s since been used for registering anyone who works as a “foreign agent”, which stereotypically refers to Congressional lobbyists hired by foreign governments but is nowadays being proposed by some US voices to apply to Sputnik and RT as well.

The basis for this move is that both companies are publicly funded by the Russian government, and that this therefore supposedly makes them “propaganda” because it’s assumed by the American authorities that all of their employees lack “editorial independence” from the Kremlin. As could have been expected, the same forces pushing for Sputnik and RT to register as “foreign agents” under FARA aren’t interested in equally applying these expanded “standards” to other publicly financed international media outlets such as Al Jazeera and the BBC.

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

Obama’s Trade Deal Will Bankrupt Canada’s Farming Industry “Overnight”, Expert Says

Obama’s Trade Deal Will Bankrupt Canada’s Farming Industry “Overnight”, Expert Says

Earlier this month, in “Forget China: This Extremely “Developed” Country Just Suffered Its Biggest Money Outflow Ever,” we took a close look at Canada, where slumping crude prices are beginning to take a serious toll. As we noted, citing BofAML, Canada’s basic balance – a combination of the capital and the current account: a measure of national accounts that spans everything from trade to financial-market flows – swung from a surplus of 4.2% of GDP to a deficit of 7.9% in the 12 months ending in June. That’s the fastest one-year deterioration among 10 major developed nations.

Citing Sharma’s data Bloomberg wrote that “money is flooding out of Canada at the fastest pace in the developed world as the nation’s decade-long oil boom comes to an end and little else looks ready to take the industry’s place as an economic driver.” In fact, based on the chart below, the outflow is the fastest on record.

Well now, on the heels of the Obama administration’s rejection of the “dangerous” Keystone Pipeline (which comes as oil tankers continue to derail across the country), some critics say The White House’s controversial new trade deal could end up costing beleaguered Canada massive job along with the “overnight” collapse of their agriculture industry. Here’s more, from Sputnik:

There are also major concerns over the effects the trade deal will have on Canadian agriculture industries.

Dr Sylvain Charlebois, professor of distribution and food policy at the University of Guelph’s Food Institute in Canada, told Sputnik there were many unanswered questions in the deal.

“I think overall, reading the deal, there are some very strong elements to support Canada’s membership into this partnership. However, there are a lot of unknowns unfortunately, particularly in the area of agriculture.”

Dr Charlebois said that Canada’s protectionist supply management scheme, which works to protect local industries, would be thrown out under the TPP, with concerns over how this would impact local producers.

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

 

Saudi Arabia, Israel, Egypt ‘Knocking on Putin’s Door,’ Not Obama’s

After the fatal terrorist shootings at an historic black church in South Carolina, President Barack Obama again cited lax gun laws as contributing to this type of mass violence.

Saudi Arabia, Israel, Egypt ‘Knocking on Putin’s Door,’ Not Obama’s

Some of the US’s major allies appear more and more convinced that Barack Obama is losing his political influence on the Syrian conflict and the fight against the self-proclaimed Islamic State terror group, according an analysis in the US media.

Key US partners are increasingly fixing their eyes on Moscow rather than Washington, writes Dan de Luce, a columnist for Foreign Policy.

According to de Luce, the recent visit of Saudi Arabia’s defense minister Mohammed bin Salman to the Russian city of Sochi showcases on the one hand to what extent the “power dynamics” in the Middle East has changed, and on the other — that, in US allies’ eyes, President Putin is close to taking Barack Obama’s place of “regional kingmaker.” The author pointed out that high-profile representatives of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries are now “knocking on Putin’s door instead of that of the Oval Office.”The visit of the Saudi minister, de Luce noted, suggests Riyadh is looking into the opportunity of an agreement under which Syrian president Bashar al-Assad would stay in power for a longer period of time in exchange for the creation of Russian-Saudi joint forces in the fight against IS.

“If the Saudi visit was coordinated with the US, that would be one thing, but if it wasn’t, it was the Saudis again saying to us, ‘You’re irrelevant,’” FP quoted former US ambassador to Syria Ryan Crocker as saying.

The US’ key allies, alarmed by the recent Iran nuclear agreement between Tehran and the P5+1 powers, seem to be arriving at the conclusion that Obama is losing his significance and influence in terms of the Syrian war and fight with IS.Read more: http://sputniknews.com/politics/20151018/1028689293/Saudi-Arabia-Israel-Egypt-Knocking-Putins-Door.html#ixzz3oy4O1EN8

 

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