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On occasion, a reader will ask if I can give readers some good news. The answer is, “Not unless I lie to you like ‘your’ government and the mainstream media do”. If you want faked “good news”, you need to retreat into The Matrix. In exchange for less stress and worry, they’ll lead you unknowingly into financial ruin and nuclear Armageddon. If you want forewarning, to possibly prepare yourself for what “your” government is bringing you, and have some small chance of redirecting the course of events, read and support this site. It’s your site. I already know these things. I write for you.
The neoconservatives, a small group of warmongers strongly allied with the military/industrial complex and Israel, gave us Grenada and the Contra affair in Nicaragua. President Reagan fired them and prosecuted them, but Reagan’s successor, George H W Bush, later pardoned them. Ensconced in think-tanks, protected by Israeli and military/security complex money, the neocons re-emerged in the Clinton administration, where they engineered the breakup of Yugoslavia, the war against Serbia, and expanding NATO to Russia’s borders.
Neocons dominated the George W Bush régime. They controlled the Pentagon, the National Security Council, the Office of the Vice President, and much else. Neocons gave us 9/11 and its coverup, the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the beginning of the destabilisation of Pakistan and Yemen, the US Africa Command, Georgia’s invasion of South Ossetia, the demise of the anti-ABM Treaty, unconstitutional and illegal spying on American citizens without warrants, loss of constitutional protections, torture, and the unaccountability of the executive branch to law, Congress, and the judiciary. In short, the neocons laid the foundation for dictatorship and for World War III. The Obama régime held no one accountable for the crimes of the Bush régime, thus creating the precedent that the executive branch is above the law. Instead, the Obama régime prosecuted whistle-blowers who told the truth about government crimes.
Neocons remain very influential in the Obama régime. As examples, Obama appointed neocon Susan Rice as his National Security Advisor. Obama appointed neocon Samantha Power as American Ambassador to the United Nations. Obama appointed neocon Victoria Nuland as Assistant Secretary of State. Nuland’s office, working with the CIA and Washington-financed NGOs, organised the American coup in Ukraine. Neoconservatism is the only extant political ideology. The ideology is “America über alles”. Neocons believe that History chose the USA to exercise hegemony over the world, thereby making the USA “exceptional” and “indispensable”. Obama himself declared as much. This ideology gives neocons tremendous confidence and drive, just as Karl Marx’s conclusion that history chose the workers to be the ruling class gave early communists confidence and drive. This confidence and drive makes the neocons reckless.
To advance their agenda, neocons propagandise the populations of the USA and Washington’s vassal states. The presstitutes deliver the neocons’ lies to the unsuspecting public… Russia invaded and annexed Ukrainian provinces; Putin intends to reconstitute the Soviet Empire; Russia is a gangster state without democracy; Russia is a threat to the Baltics, Poland, and all of Europe, necessitating an American/NATO military buildup on Russia’s borders; we must militarily contain China, a Russian ally, with new American naval and air bases surrounding China and controlling Chinese sea lanes. The neocons and President Obama made it completely clear that the USA won’t accept Russia and China as sovereign countries with economic and foreign policies independent of the interests of Washington. Russia and China are acceptable only as vassal states, like the UK, Europe, Japan, Canada, and Australia. Clearly, the neoconservative formula is a formula for the final war.
A handful of evil men and women ensconced in positions of power in Washington endanger all of humanity.
Anti-Russian propaganda has gone into high gear. Putin is the “new Hitler”. Daniel Zubov reports on a joint conference held by three American think-tanks. The conference blamed Russia for the failures of Washington’s foreign policy. Read this to see how neocons operate to control the explanations. Even Henry Kissinger is under attack for stating the obvious truth that Russia has a legitimate interest in the Ukraine, a land long part of Russia and in Russia’s legitimate sphere of influence. Since the Clinton régime, Washington has acted against Russian interests. In his forthcoming book, The Globalization of War: America’s Long War against Humanity, Professor Michel Chossudovsky presents a realistic appraisal of how close Washington brought the world to its demise in nuclear war. This passage is from the Preface:
The “globalisation of war” is a hegemonic project. The USA undertakes major military and covert intelligence operations simultaneously in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia, and the Far East. The American military agenda combines both major theatre operations as well as covert actions geared towards destabilising sovereign states. A global military agenda coördinates the actions undertaken by the Western military alliance (USA/NATO/Israel) in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Palestine, the Ukraine, Syria, and Iraq at the highest levels of the military hierarchy. We aren’t dealing with piecemeal military and intelligence operations. Israeli forces undertook the July-August 2014 attack on Gaza in close consultation with the USA and NATO. In turn, the actions in the Ukraine and their timing coincided with the onslaught of the attack on Gaza.
In turn, military undertakings are closely coördinated with a process of economic warfare that consists in not only imposing sanctions on sovereign countries, but also in deliberate acts of destabilisation of financial and currency markets, to undermine their enemies’ national economies. The USA and its allies launched a military adventure that threatens the future of humanity. As we go to press, American and NATO forces gather in Eastern Europe. American military intervention under a humanitarian mandate is proceeding in sub-Saharan Africa. The USA and its allies are threatening China under President Obama’s “Pivot to Asia”. In turn, they conduct military manoeuvres at Russia’s doorstep, which could lead to escalation. The American airstrikes initiated in September 2014 against Iraq and Syria under the pretext of going after the Islamic State are part of a scenario of military escalation extending from North Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean to Central and South Asia. The Western military alliance is in an advanced state of readiness… so is Russia.
As I’ve often remarked, Americans are an insouciant people. They’re simply unaware. Suppose they were aware, suppose that the entire population understood the peril, could we do anything, or have insouciant Americans fallen under the control of the police state that Washington created? I don’t think there’s much hope from the American people. The American people can’t tell genuine from fake leadership, and the ruling private élites won’t permit real leaders to emerge. Moreover, there’s no organised movement in opposition to the neocons.
The hope comes from outside the political system. The hope is that the House of Cards and rigged markets erected by policymakers for the benefit of the One Percent collapses. David Stockman regards this outcome as a highly likely one. The collapse that Stockman sees as being on its way is the same collapse about which I’ve warned. Moreover, the number of Black Swans that can originate collapse are even more numerous than the ones Stockman correctly identifies. Some financial organisations worry about a lack of liquidity in the fixed income (bonds) and derivatives markets. Barbara Novack, co-chairman of Black Rock, is lobbying hard for a derivatives bailout mechanism. David Stockman’s article is important. Read it until you understand it, and you’ll know more than most everyone.
Many will ask, “If the wealth of the One Percent is vulnerable to economic collapse, will war be initiated to protect this wealth and to blame the Russians or Chinese for the hardships that engulf the American population?“ My answer is that the kind of collapse that I expect, and that David Stockman and no doubt others expect, presents government with such social, political, and economic insecurity that organising for a major war would be impossible. Whereas the political impotence of the American people and the vassalage of the Western World impose no constraints on Washington, economic collapse would bring revolutions and the demise of the existing order. As hard as collapse would make it for people to survive, the chances for survival are higher than they’d be in a nuclear war.
12 December 2014
Paul Craig Roberts
Paul Craig Roberts: Institute for Political Economy
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2014/12/12/brink-war-economic-collapse-paul-craig-roberts/
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Editor:
The Pentagon plans to have forces for one major and one minor conflict at any given time. In other words, the USA is already overextended. Don’t attend to asshats like Stratfor… they aren’t an intelligence agency; they’re a commercial operation selling a product. Granted, it’s intellectual, not physical… but it’s no different from selling soap flakes or Big Macs. “Shadow CIA”… what a laugh! It lacks the technical means and HUMINT to be a serious intel player (it does tell you about depth of vacuity of Barron’s… they take these poseurs seriously).
The USA doesn’t have “overwhelming conventional force”. If it did, it would’ve invaded Syria, let alone Iran, Russia, and China. The US Army has 1.1 million troops in active and reserve components for all theatres and domestic use. Iran has 1.2 million active and reserve ground troops. China has 1.6 million active ground troops. Russia has 400,000 active troops in the army, not including internal/border troops and an unspecified number of reservists. In short, the US Army doesn’t have “overwhelming superiority”. Indeed, its probable opponents outnumber it almost three-to-one. THIS is why the neocons haven’t launched war against these three countries… the USA lacks the means, both financial and military to do so. That’s not even taking into account that the supplyheads in CONUS are thousands of kilometres away from any possible war-zone, which means that the USA has to send supplies to the deployed forces via an expensive and long logistics chain. Its opponents would be on home turf, simplifying their logistical situation. The Loss of Strength Gradient would kick in… the farther away the target of aggression, the less strength that’s available on the ground. That’s inexorable.
The only obvious superiority that the USA has is naval supremacy. All of its major conflicts since 1945 have been where it could deploy aircraft carrier groups off the enemy coast… except for Afghanistan. Note well that the Afghan War is going very poorly, indeed, no doubt because of that lack. In Korea, in Vietnam, in Panama, in Grenada, in Iraq (both 1990 and 2003), in Serbia, and in Libya, the US Navy was able to deploy aircraft carrier groups off the coast of the putative enemy. It’s impractical to deploy carriers in the Black Sea… ergo, the main advantage of the USA is knackered and kaput in any possible war in the Ukraine. Many targets in China and Iran are out of the combat radius of armed carrier aircraft. This is even truer of Russia. Carriers can’t operate in Northern waters or the Baltic, as well the Black Sea, and most sensitive Russian defence installations and industrial complexes are far beyond the radius of American carrier aircraft.
In short, the USA is a Gummi Löwe (Rubber Lion)… it no longer has the financial, human, military, or industrial base to wage a long and sustained conventional conflict. Don’t forget, the main cause of the 2008 meltdown was the unfunded warmaking of the Bush cabal. G W Bush recklessly gave away the store to the Affluent Effluent… and waged war at the same time. You do NOT cut taxes and wage war at the same time. That is proof that the Republican Party is the STUPID PARTY. Here’s the scary part… only one country in the world has used nuclear weapons in anger. What would the USA do if faced with a conventional loss (which is what would happen in any possible war in China, Russia, or Iran)? Need I continue?
The USA hasn’t faced a peer opponent since the Korean War (when it faced the VVS and PLA). That means that no one in the American forces has experience of fighting an opponent that has a serious chance of defeating the American forces. Do remember how the PLA humbled MacArthur and how the VVS drove the USAF B-29s out of the daylight skies. The neocons want to attack the same opponents who did well the last time that they faced Americans… fancy that. It doesn’t speak highly of Marco Rubio, Mittens Romney, Ted Cruz, et al, does it?
Think on that.
BMD
Voices from Russia 
Russia Officially Gives Up Any Pretence of “Dialogue” with the Anglo Empire
Tags: civil unrest, diplomacy, diplomatic relations, political commentary, politics, Russia, Russian, Russian culture, Russian diplomacy, Ukrainian Civil War, United States, USA, Vladimir Putin, war and conflict
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The full address of President Putin to the Federal Assembly is now available online. Since this is a very long text, I won’t re-post it here. What I propose to do here is to bring to your attention four verbatim excerpts from his speech with some key segments in bold type. Most of the speech was on economic and internal matters, but I think that these four points and, especially, the expressions chosen by Putin really “tell the story” of the Kremlin’s position vis-à-vis the West nowadays.
In my opinion, what we’re seeing is a big “coming out”. For a variety of reasons, Putin and Foreign Minister Lavrov chose not to say this kind of thing in the past, but for several months, we’ve seen a sense of utter disgust manifest itself more and more openly from Russia. Today, it finally truly came out in the open. It’s painfully clear that Russia considers the USA an arrogant bully that Russia can stop and that Russia considers the regimes in power in the EU as voiceless colonies. Equally clear is the fact that Russians are fed up with trying to plead or reason with anybody in the West. The Americans are too arrogant, the Europeans too spineless. Unlike the Americans, Russians always talk to their enemies and some form of “talking” with the West will continue. However, it’s rather obvious that the Kremlin has given up any hope of achieving anything through any kind of dialogue. From now on, Russia will mostly rely on unilateral actions. Since Russians never threaten, these actions will always come as a shock and a surprise to the Western plutocracies.
I’ve said this many times… the Anglo Empire has launched a real war against Russia, one in which military forces are less important than the informational war, but a real war nonetheless. What the Empire probably didn’t realise, is that this wouldn’t be a short war, but a long one. Whilst the Empire has already used most of its weapons, the Russians have just begun their defensive operations. This will be a long war, and it’ll only end when one of the two sides basically breaks down and collapses. On 1 March of this year, I wrote a piece entitled Obama just made things much, much worse in the Ukraine…now, Russia is ready for war. Russia didn’t want that war; it was imposed on her at a time when Russia wasn’t ready. Nevertheless, today, Putin informed us all that Russia refuses to submit, that she accepts the challenge, and that she’ll prevail.
4 December 2014
The Vineyard of the Saker
http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.com.br/2014/12/disgusted-russia-officially-gives-up.html