6 January 2018. Statista Infographic. Global Nuclear Arsenal on 17 February 2017

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Both the Trumpkin Munchkins and the Clintonista Stepford Wives are raising a holy stink about the DPRK’s nuclear capability. Earth to neoliberal scumtickets:

The DPRK doesn’t have a significant nuclear capability. It doesn’t even have a minor nuclear capability. It has produced material for warheads, but intel proves that they don’t have enough for more than 10-20 low-yield weapons. It hasn’t produced a survivable re-entry vehicle for a tactical missile, let alone a MRBM or ICBM.

That is, Trump’s histrionics are nothing more but him taking out his gazoo and claiming, “My dick is bigger than your dick is!” The Clintonista clucking on the issue amounts to the same juvenile thing.  By the way… do note that the USA isn’t numero uno on this chart… Russia is. Hmm… Russia DOES have the DPRK’s back. The truth is an interesting thing, isn’t it?

BMD

Lavrov Sez Syria’s Offer to Join Chemical Weapons Convention Makes American Strike Redundant

Will the real John Kerry please stand up (shades of To Tell the Truth)? Was the antiwar John Kerry of 1971 pictured above the true inner man, or, is the warmongering John Kerry of today the real deal? Perspirin’ minds wanna know…

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On Thursday, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Syria’s decision to join the Chemical Weapons Convention makes the planned American military strike on Syria redundant. Ahead of talks with US Secretary of State John Kerry in Genève, he said, “We presume that a solution to this problem makes any strike on Syria redundant. I’m convinced that our American partners, as President Obama said, definitely prefer a peaceful solution to Syria’s chemical weapons issue”. He warned against protracting Syria’s accession to the convention.

Kerry said that Damascus had 10 days to submit all required documents, adding that there was “nothing standard” about a 30-day lead time requested by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whom the USA accuses of using chemical weapons. Kerry went on to doubt the Syrian government’s readiness to give up its chemical weapons stockpile, saying, “The words of the Syrian régime, in our judgment, are simply not enough, which is why we’ve come here in order to work with the Russians. President Obama made clear that should diplomacy fail, force might be necessary. Expectations are high. … This isn’t a game; it has to be real. It has to be comprehensive. It has to be verifiable. It has to be credible. It has to be timely and implemented in a timely fashion, and, finally, there ought to be consequences if it doesn’t take place”. Talks between top Russian and US diplomats have begun in Genève. Lavrov said that the talks should give an additional boost to preparations for an international conference on Syrian reconciliation in Genève. During his Genève visit, Lavrov also plans to meet with UN and Arab League Special Envoy to Syria Lakhdar Brahimi.

12 September 2013

RIA-Novosti

http://www.en.rian.ru/world/20130912/183390776/Syrias-Bid-to-Join-UN-Treaty-Makes-US-Strike-Redundant–Lavrov.html

Editor’s Note:

The more that this plays out, the more that I agree with a Russian correspondent who told me, “This is nothing but political kabuki; it’s diplomatic shadowboxing”. Firstly, John Kerry has a credibility deficit as bad as Hilary Clinton’s… it’s why he lost the 2004 election. He’s a man of flexible convictions, as the old Tom Lehrer song had it:

A man whose allegiance
Is ruled by expedience.
Call him a Nazi, he won’t even frown.
“Ha, Nazi Schmazi,” says Wernher von Braun.

Don’t say that he’s hypocritical,
Say rather that he’s apolitical.

“Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?
That’s not my department”, says Wernher von Braun.

In the 1970s, John Kerry was an antiwar activist… now, he’s a warmonger. What happened? It’s simple… John Kerry’s the sort who’s moved by crass ambition… his hunger for power overrides his moral compass. John Kerry is playing his role as the “bad cop”… Sergei Lavrov and VVP are the “good cops”. Did Barack Obama ever intend to use force? Maybe not… it could’ve been an Inside the Beltway manoeuvre to see who’s naughty and who’s nice. The rightwing punditry fell for it all… their hatred of Obama blinds them. Just you watch… Syria’s going to sign the Convention… the UN will say that it solves the chemical weapons problem… and the US Congress won’t vote on the matter. Kerry will expostulate, but no one will pay him any mind… after all, he’s a peacenik turned war-lover, and that’s worse than changing political parties… the second might be forgiven, but the forst betrays a major character flaw of major proportions. Expect more Sturm und Drang… it’ll signify nothing.

Break out a cold one… it looks like this one is going to fizzle out. Kerry is the most unconvincing sort out there, isn’t he? Kerry and Romney make good companions… both were so amoral and grasping that they handed the election to their opponents. Didn’t they ever hear of sic transit gloria mundi?

BMD

Putin Uses New York Times Op-Ed to Warn USA Against Syria Strike

CNN Whitewashing Bahrain Dictatorship

Carlos Latuff

2012

CNN is doing it again… it REFUSES to report the enormities committed by the Syrian opposition against Christians, Shiites, and Alawis… none dare call it EVIL…

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President Vladimir Putin warned in an op-ed that he wrote for the New York Times that a potential American strike on Syria is fraught with dangerous consequences. Currently, Washington is contemplating a strike on Syria as retaliation for a deadly 21 August chemical weapons attack in a Damascus suburb, which it attributed to the régime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The Syrian government blamed the attack on rebel forces; Russia tentatively backed its long-time ally, whilst calling for further investigation.

Putin said in his op-ed, entitled A Plea for Caution from Russia, posted on the NYT’s website Wednesday, “Recent events surrounding Syria prompted me to speak directly to the American people and their political leaders. It’s important to do so at a time of insufficient communication between our societies. A potential strike by the USA against Syria, despite strong opposition from many countries and major political and religious leaders, including the pope, would result in more innocent victims and escalation, potentially spreading the conflict far beyond Syria’s borders. A strike would increase violence and unleash a new wave of terrorism. It could undermine multilateral efforts to resolve the Iranian nuclear problem and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and further destabilise the Middle East and North Africa. It could throw the entire system of international law and order out of balance”.

Putin reiterated Russia’s position that we should resolve the Syrian civil war by peaceful means, saying, “From the outset, Russia advocated peaceful dialogue enabling Syrians to develop a compromise plan for their own future. We aren’t protecting the Syrian government, but international law. We need to use the UN Security Council and believe that preserving law and order in today’s complex and turbulent world is one of the few ways to keep international relations from sliding into chaos”. He emphasised that international law only permits use of force “in self-defence or by the decision of the Security Council”, adding that all other ways are “unacceptable under the UN Charter and would constitute an act of aggression”.

Putin noted, “no one doubts that poison gas was used in Syria. The gas was used not by the Syrian Army, but by opposition forces, to provoke intervention by their powerful foreign patrons, who would side with the fundamentalists”. On Tuesday, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said that his country was ready to give up chemical weapons and join an international convention banning them.  On Thursday, US Secretary of State John Kerry will meet with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Genève for hastily-organised talks on a Russian plan to prevent an American attack on Syria by placing the war-torn country’s chemical weapons under international control.  Speaking on the al-Mayadeen pan-Arabist television channel, Aleksandr Zasypkin, the Russian Ambassador to Lebanon, said Moscow handed over to the UN Security Council evidence that rebel forces used chemical weapons in Syria.

Putin voiced concern that “military intervention in internal conflicts in foreign countries has become commonplace for the USA”. He expressed doubt that it could be in America’s long-term interest and added that many people worldwide “increasingly see America not as a model of democracy but as relying solely on brute force”. Putin noted that his working and personal relationship with US President Barack Obama was “marked by growing trust”, he said, “I welcome the president’s interest in continuing the dialogue with Russia on Syria”. Putin said that he and Obama “must work together to keep this hope alive. If we can avoid force against Syria, this would improve the atmosphere in international affairs and strengthen mutual trust. It’d be our shared success and open the door to cooperation on other critical issues”.

12 September 2013

RIA-Novosti

http://www.en.rian.ru/politics/20130912/183372698/Putin-Warns-US-Against-Potential-Syria-Strike.html

Editor’s Note:

One must note that since 1991 the American Right, in particular, along with so-called Humanitarian Interventionists (an oxymoronic and evil construction if there ever was such), has advocated the first use of force in all situations where the USA is stymied, as they believe that the USA is the “sole superpower”. Today, that becomes more suspect for two reasons. Firstly, Russia and China are in close alliance due to American aggression and self-righteousness. That is, the two most powerful states on the Eurasian World Island are now in concert due to American stupidity, hubris, and self-centredness. That’s why you hear so much hate against these countries spewed in the Western media (especially by conscienceless filth like Christiane Amanpour, who attacks VVP whilst whitewashing the massacre of Syrian Christians by the Syrian rebels). Note well that the first casualty of American aggression was the death of the Sino-American rapprochement brought about by Richard Nixon.

Secondly, the USA believed its own propaganda. Washington really and truly believed that American power had no limits… that it could intervene wherever it wanted and do whatever it wanted to anyone, everywhere on the globe. Besides that, Americans as a society are juveniles… they require constant adulation or they turn peevish and cruel. Look at Guantánamo… the USA holds people in indefinite detention in contravention of all their laws and pretensions, that is, it holds political prisoners under conditions not even seen in the GULag. You see, if you were in the GULag, at least, you had a definite sentence; it was part of a judicial process. At Guantánamo, there are no such niceties. It’s simply that America doesn’t like you and that you’ll lose your freedom consequently. In any case, American aggression over the past twenty years emptied the Treasury; it led directly to the Bush Meltdown (along with his munificent tax cuts to his rich pals). There ain’t no more juice in the jug… wars are expensive, and wartime is a stupid time to enact tax cuts.

In short, the USA isn’t going to strike Syria. The present political kabuki is for the benefit of the Saudi and Israel Lobbies. Barack Obama isn’t stupid like George Bush, John McCain, Sarah Palin, or Willard Romney. Powerful interest groups call for intervention in Syria… and Obama can’t go against them publicly. It would’ve been worse with McCain or Romney… both are pugnacious ignoramuses. Actually, I think that Obama and Putin orchestrated this at the G20 meeting. Obama doesn’t need new war and the country doesn’t need more military spending… Putin is his figleaf. Watch for a compromise to come out of Genève… remember, the age of untrammelled American aggression died in 2008 with their defeat in South Ossetia… it was a “Bridge Too Far”. The American people have had enough of “glory” in foreign parts.

For Orthodox people, do notice who’ve supported the warmongers. For the konvertsy, this is a “put up or shut up” moment. They’ve always supported the Looney Right; they’ve always bought into the lunatic “City on a Hill” pabulum spouted by Slobberin’ Ronnie and his ilk. Any road, they should stand with the rest of us in supporting Syria, or, they should leave us (it’d be their first honest act in their lifetimes). I’ve had enough of their hubristic posturing… I’m not alone in that. The Orthosphere is a reality… Orthodoxy isn’t just a religion… it’s a little bit more, as all REAL Orthodox know. We’re NOT Westerners… we’re Orthodox who live in the West (not the same thing… our ethos comes from the Orthosphere, not from the West). The konvertsy must internalise this or leave. It’s quite that simple.

Remember Ma’loula… may my right hand wither if we don’t…

BMD

Hundreds Protest in Washington Against American Strike on Syria

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On Saturday, hundreds of Americans, including many with Syrian and Middle Eastern roots, marched from the White House to Capitol Hill to protest US President Barack Obama’s push for a military strike on Syria. Amal Esmail, who moved to the USA seven years ago from Syria and recently became a US citizen, told RIA-Novosti just before she addressed the protesters outside the White House, “We’re here to say ‘no war’ because war is destruction, war is more blood, and we’re tired of war”. Esmail and around 500 other protesters, some of whom travelled to Washington from other parts of the East Coast, set off for the US Capitol just hours after Obama used his weekly address to the American people to plead his case for limited military action against Syria in response to what he called “the worst chemical weapons attack of the 21st century”.

Obama said, “We can’t ignore chemical weapons attacks like this one… even if they happen halfway around the world”, in reference to an alleged chemical weapons attack last month outside Damascus that Washington blames on the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The USA claims that more than 1,400 civilians died in the 21 August attack, including 426 children. Obama is pushing for a punitive military strike against Syrian targets in response, a plan that hasn’t only sparked protests in the USA, but it’s also sharply divided Washington and Moscow. On Friday, President Vladimir Putin at the end of the G20 Summit in St Petersburg that he remains opposed to military intervention in the crisis without the support of the UN Security Council, and he repeated his belief that the apparent chemical weapons attacks in Syria were planned provocations.

Esmail and many of the other protesters in Washington on Saturday shared Putin’s doubts about who carried out the attacks. She said, “Do you think Assad is stupid enough to do this? I don’t”. She asked US citizens and the US government to “stop supporting this ‘opposition’ because they’re using your weapons to kill us”. The large Syrian flag that Salam Sunna carried as she marched through Washington fluttered gently in the almost windless air on the hot late summer’s day. Sunna, who’s from Jordan, a Syrian neighbour that’s taken in hundreds of thousands of the some 2 million refugees who’ve fled Syria, expressed scepticism at the US government’s justification for launching an attack on Syria. Sunna, whose first name means “peace”, said to RIA-Novosti as the protesters passed by the National Archives, “I think it’s all fabricated. I honestly don’t think Assad used chemical weapons against his own people. They just want to take us to war”.

As the march neared the Capitol, 8-year-old Eden Foley stopped for a drink of water. Foley was on her third march to protest proposed military action against Syria, but she told us that she’d never walked two miles (3.2 kilometres) before. Several smaller protests occurred in cities around the USA and on Capitol Hill since Obama announced last week that the USA would take military action against Syria. However, Saturday’s march in Washington and in a dozen other American cities… from Albuquerque NM to Youngstown OH… brought out larger numbers of demonstrators than previous protests. In Washington, the protesters chanted slogans against endless war and carried yellow signs urging Congress to vote against military strikes on Syria when it reconvenes next week.

Obama acknowledged in his weekly address that Americans are “weary after a decade of war, even as the war in Iraq has ended, and the war in Afghanistan is winding down”, and he repeated a pledge that there would be no American boots on the ground in Syria. Nevertheless, he continued, “We’re the USA. We can’t turn a blind eye to images like the ones we’ve seen out of Syria”. As the protestors turned the corner to go the Capitol, Syrian-American Nora Ismail, whose family comes from Aleppo and Damascus, cautioned that horrific as the pictures out of Syria might be, “Bombing Syria is certainly not the answer. Everyone says, ‘Oh, you’ve seen those photos of dead children, it’s so horrifying’, but I guarantee you that if we intervene in Syria, we’re going to have thousands more of those pictures”.

7 September 2013

Karin Zeitvogel

RIA-Novosti

http://en.ria.ru/world/20130908/183263885/Hundreds-Protest-in-Washington-Against-US-Strike-on-Syria.html

Editor’s Note:

Isn’t anyone thinking of the poor knackered soldiers’? They’ve been on deployment after deployment, due to the crank military doctrine of the USA. Since the Vietnam War, the US forces dropped conscription, not because it couldn’t work, but because it was politically “costly” if the establishment decided upon war. Such a system works only if military interventions are short time-wise and short on fighting. It appeared to work in Yugoslavia (yet, there are still occupation forces in Kosovo)… it certainly didn’t work in Iraq and Libya (although the Inside the Beltway spin doctors were busy made it look otherwise)… and it’s failing in Afghanistan, too.

The soldiers are wrung out and war-weary… that’s the long and the short of it. That doesn’t bother John Boehner, John Kerry, John McCain, and Barack Obama. Besides which, the till is empty due to Bush’s endless wars, his profligate tax giveaways to the Affluent Effluent, and to Republican opposition to serious taxation on corporations and the rich to pay down the debt. We have an economy that hasn’t recovered from Bush’s Meltdown… and all those who preached “Free Markets” mewled, “We’re too big to fail”.

The defence of the American heartland (and, indeed, of the entire Anglosphere) depends on control of the sea lanes… not on pointless land wars on the Eurasian mainland. All money spent on such conflicts is money thrown down the toilet… but it does enrich the Affluent Effluent! That doesn’t even take into account the most grievous cost of all… the American kids who die on blood-soaked foreign fields so the McMansion dwellers can play golf at the country club and pay their wetback nannies and gardeners. Richard Cheney, Willard Romney, and Paul Ryan all refused to serve… yet, all of them screamed for war. I think something’s wrong in that.

Do think hard on it… just because someone wraps themselves up in the flag and calls themselves a “patriot”, doesn’t mean that they are one. Ponder that…

BMD