Enough and Not Too Much

Patrick Armstrong
Strategic Culture

Moscow will not engage in an exhausting arms race, and the country’s military spending will gradually decrease as Russia does not seek a role as the “world gendarme,” President Vladimir Putin said. Moscow is not seeking to get involved in a “pointless” new arms race, and will stick to “smart decisions” to strengthen its defensive capabilities, Putin said on Friday during an annual extended meeting of the Defense Ministry board. “Intelligence, brains, discipline and organization” must be the cornerstones of the country’s military doctrine, the Russian leader said. The last thing that Russia needs is an arms race that would “drain” its economy, and Moscow sure does not want that “in any scenario,” Putin pointed out.

– RT, 22 December 2017

It’s easy to forget it today, but the USSR was, in its time, an “exceptionalist” country. It was the world’s first socialist country – the “bright future“; it set an example for all to follow, it was destined by History. It had a mission and was required by History to assist any country that called itself “socialist”. The USSR had bases and interests all over the world. As the 1977 USSR Constitution said:

the Soviet state, a new type of state, the basic instrument for defending the gains of the revolution and for building socialism and communism. Humanity thereby began the epoch-making turn from capitalist to socialism.

A novus ordo seclorum indeed.

Russia, however, is just Russia. There is no feeling in Moscow that Russia must take the lead any place but Russia itself. One of the reasons, indeed, why Putin is always talking about the primacy of the UN, the independence of nation states, the impermissibility to interfere in internal activities – the so-called “Westphalian” position – is that he remembers the exceptionalist past and knows that it led to a dead end. Moscow has no interest in going abroad in search of internationalist causes.

Internationalism/exceptionalism and nationalism: the two have completely different approaches to constructing a military. The first is obsessed with “power projection“, “full spectrum superiority“, it imagines that its hypertrophied interests are challenged all over the planet. Its wants are expensive, indeterminate, unbounded. The other is only concerned with dealing with enemies in its neighbourhood. Its wants are affordable, exact, finite. The exceptionalist/interventionist has everything to defend everywhere; the nationalist has one thing to defend in one place. It is much easier and much cheaper to be a nationalist: the exceptionalist/interventionist USA spends much more than anyone else but always needs more; nationalist Russia can cut its expenditure.

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Don't fall for the ruse - The truth about Iran's nuclear program

James Corbett
Corbett Report

"Be afraid!" say the repeaters of mockingbird media. Afraid of who? Afraid of Iran, of course.

Oh, haven't you heard? The Iranian government's stockpile of enriched uranium is about to surpass 300 kilograms! And Iran's store of heavy water is about to surpass 130 metric tons! Don't you understand? This will exceed the limits on these materials set out in the Iran nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)! And the dastardly Iranian government is not only embarrassed by these actions, but openly taking steps to end (some of) their commitments under the JCPOA!
Sounds chilling, doesn't it? But there's one little disclaimer that seems missing from a lot of the MSM's scaremongering coverage of these developments: None of this has anything to do with an offensive nuclear weapons program.

Confused? Of course you are. The highly-technical details of the 159-page nuclear agreement were never meant to be scrutinized by (much less understood by) the average Joe Sixpack and Jane Soccermom. Words like "enriched" and "highly enriched," "heavy water" and "tritium," "nuclear program" and "nuclear weapons program" are thrown around by the media as if these terms are all the same, even though they describe fundamentally different materials and processes. And the whole point is to make the public afraid of a nuclear weapons program that both US and Israeli intelligence has confirmed doesn't exist.

So what's the real story on the Iran nuclear deal?

Well, as I had cause to point out on The Corbett Report podcast quite recently, defining our terms is the first step toward understanding the world. So let's do some defining.

First, "enrichment." As the World Nuclear Association explains:

Natural uranium contains 0.7% of the U-235 isotope. The remaining 99.3% is mostly the U-238 isotope which does not contribute directly to the fission process (though it does so indirectly by the formation of fissile isotopes of plutonium). Isotope separation is a physical process to concentrate ('enrich') one isotope relative to others. Most reactors are light water reactors (of two types-PWR and BWR) and require uranium to be enriched from 0.7% to 3-5% U-235 in their fuel. This is normal low-enriched uranium (LEU). There is some interest in taking enrichment levels to about 7%, and even close to 20% for certain special power reactor fuels, as high-assay LEU (HALEU).

Note that there is a large difference between low-enriched uranium (less than 20% U-235) used for fuel in nuclear power plants and research reactors, and high-enriched uranium (over 90% U-235) used for nuclear weapons. One guess which kind Iran is producing. That's right: low-enriched uranium! To be precise, 3.67% U-235 enriched uranium, also known as " not even close to being used in a nuclear weapon" enriched uranium. 

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Israel’s Secretive Nuclear Facility Leaking as Watchdog Finds Israel Has Nearly 100 Nukes

 Credit | The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute Yearbook 2019

Whitney Webb
Mint Press News

Israel is one of only five nations in the world that refuse to sign the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, an international treaty aimed at ending the proliferation of nuclear weapons and achieving global nuclear disarmament.

 

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) — an international watchdog organization focusing on conflicts, the arms trade and nuclear proliferation — released a new report on Monday that claimed that Israel has nearly a hundred nuclear warheads, more than previously thought.
 
The SIPRI report described Israel’s nuclear arsenal as follows: 30 gravity bombs capable of delivering nuclear weapons by fighter jets; an additional 50 warheads that can be delivered by land-based ballistic missiles; and an unknown number of nuclear-armed, sea-launched cruise missiles that would grant Israel a sea-based second-strike capability.

In total, the SIPRI report estimated that Israel possesses between 80 and 90 nuclear weapons, an increase over previous years. SIPRI was unable, however, to confirm those estimates with Israel’s government, which has a long-standing policy of refusing to comment on its nuclear weapons program — a policy it describes as “nuclear ambiguity.”

As a result of this “nuclear ambiguity” policy, the actual number of Israeli nuclear weapons is unknown. Some other organizations, such as the U.S.-based Nuclear Threat Initiative, have estimated that Israel has produced enough weapons-grade plutonium to arm between 100 and 200 nuclear warheads. Israel is one of only five nations in the world that refuse to sign the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, an international treaty aimed at ending the proliferation of nuclear weapons and achieving global nuclear disarmament.

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Provocations in the Gulf of Oman: Will John Bolton Get His War on Iran?

Michael Welch, Prof Michel Chossudovsky, Pepe Escobar, and Yves EnglerGlobal Research 

“America’s declared policy should be ending Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution before its 40th anniversary…Recognizing a new Iranian regime in 2019 would reverse the shame of once seeing our diplomats held hostage for 444 days.” – John Bolton (January 15, 2018) [1]

LISTEN TO THE SHOW 




Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

Coincidentally or not, America’s ‘maximum pressure’ campaign against Iran began within a month of John Bolton’s installment as National Security Advisor. On May 8th of 2018, President Donald Trump announced the U.S. was backing out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), otherwise known as the Iran nuclear deal negotiated by the U.S. under President Barrack Obama along with the other permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, Germany and the EU in July of 2015. Consequently, the sanctions imposed on Iran previous to the JCPOA were reinstated, and additional sanctions imposed by the end of the year.

In April of this year, the Trump Administration took the unprecedented step of declaring the Middle East country’s military, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to be a terrorist organization.

Two weeks later, the Trump Administration ended the waivers it had extended to other countries which had to that point allowed them to escape sanctions for purchasing Iranian oil. The aim of this manoeuvre being to strangle the Iranian economy by preventing its ability to profit from the sale of its main source of revenue.

Two weeks after that, Bolton announced the deployment of an aircraft carrier strike group and Air Force Bombers to the Middle East as part of an effort to “send a clear and unmistakable message to the Iranian regime that any attack on United States interests or on those of our allies will be met with unrelenting force.”

The following week, four tankers were attacked in the Persian Gulf. Bolton and Secretary of State Pompeo blamed Iran for the attacks.

America’s choke-hold on Iran’s economy continued to tighten with further sanctions on May 8th of this year, the anniversary of Trump’s JCPOA pull-out.

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See also: Gulf of Oman: Unconvinced EU foreign ministers call for independent investigation after US claim Iran is behind tanker attack

Leaked Pentagon Plan Calls For 120,000 Troops To Counter Iran

ZeroHedge

As Michael Pompeo travels to Brussels to discuss the Iranian threat amid a flare-up in tensions that has brought the US to the brink of an armed conflict, the New York Times has published details from a confidential military plan presented to top national security officials that envisions sending as many as 120,000 troops to the Middle East should Iran attack American forces or start ramping up work on nuclear weapons (something it has promised to do if its European partners don't meet their commitments under the Iran deal).

Though the revised plan - it had been modified to incorporate suggestions from John Bolton - doesn't include plans for a land invasion, it does reflect "the influence of Mr. Bolton, one of the administration's most virulent Iran hawks, whose push for confrontation with Tehran was ignored more than a decade ago by President George W Bush."

It's unclear whether Trump himself has seen, or been briefed on, the plan. Asked about it, Trump said "we'll see what happens with Iran. If they do anything, it would be a very bad mistake."

Here are a few key details from the plan according to more than a half-dozen senior administration officials who spoke with the NYT:

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How The U.S. Is Pressing Iran To Breach The Nuclear Deal

Moon Of Alabama

363 days ago the U.S. left the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the 'nuclear deal' with Iran, and reintroduced sanctions against trade with Iran.

When the U.S. reintroduced sanctions on Iran it provided sanction 'wavers' for some customers of Iranian oil. Two weeks ago the extremists in the Trump administration won out and the those waivers were eliminated. Some of Iran's customers, Iraq, Turkey and China, will continue to buy Iranian oil and will face U.S. sanctions.

The declared aim of the Trump administration's 'maximum pressure campaign' is to bring all trade with Iran to zero and the country to its knees.

On Wednesday May 8, one years after the U.S. breached the deal, it will announce additional sanctions against the country:

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that new sanctions would target petrochemical sales. I'm told the administration will likely impose those sanctions soon, but the new sanctions planned for this week will target a different sector of the Iranian economy.

The only European response to the new announcements was a lame statement. The EU should fight for the JCPOA deal as it is in its interest. But instead it is slow-walking its badly designed INSTEX mechanism that would allow for sanction free trade with Iran.

Iran will use the anniversary of the U.S. breach of the deal to announce that it will no longer stick to some of the restrictions of the JCPOA.

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Shipyard Evacuated After Bomb Reportedly Discovered Aboard Nuclear Submarine

Zero Hedge

Staff at Barrow's shipyard in Devonshire have been evacuated following reports that a bomb has been found aboard a nuclear submarine, according to local press reports.

An employee said staff in the Devonshire Dock Hall complex had been told about an anonymous tip that there was a bomb aboard one of the Astute class vessels at the shipyard.

A spokesman for BAE systems, the British defense firm that runs the yard, confirmed that there is an "ongoing incident" at the yard.

"We can confirm there is an ongoing incident at our Barrow site and we are liaising with Cumbria Police who are carrying out an investigation. As a precaution the Devonshire Dock Complex has been closed. Staff, contractors and local residents are being kept informed."

Police said they have arrived to assist BAE staff, and although an ambulance was called to the scene, there have been no reports of injuries.

Putin Formally Suspends Russian Participation In INF Treaty, Notifies Washington

Zero Hedge

Russia has formally pulled out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) after previously signalling that it would take this historic step after the White House announced last month that the US would suspend all obligations under the treaty. President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on Monday formally enacting and finalizing Russia’s suspension of the INF Treaty, which was set to expire in less than six months and subject of heightened tensions after both sides have repeatedly accused the other of having been in violation of its terms for years.

The success of the Reagan-era agreement was felt primarily in that it resulted in the enduring demilitarization on the European continent in the final years of the Cold War. But Russia now worries Washington could station ballistic missiles in Europe now that the deal has collapsed. According the text of the new decree published by the Kremlin on Monday, the INF could potentially be revived in Russia's eyes but only if the US “eliminates its earlier violations of its obligations” under the deal.

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Pepe Escobar: Putin rattles sabre as nuclear pact collapses

Pepe Escobar
Asia Times

President Putin's state of the nation address to the Federal Assembly in Moscow this week was an extraordinary affair. While heavily focused on domestic social and economic development, Putin noted, predictably, the US decision to pull out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty and clearly outlined the red lines in regard to possible consequences of the move.

It would be naïve to believe that there would not be a serious counterpunch to the possibility of the US deploying launchers "suitable for using Tomahawk missiles" in Poland and Romania, only a 12-minute flight away from Russian territory. Putin cut to the chase: "This is a very serious threat to us. In this case, we will be forced - I want to emphasize this - forced to take tit-for-tat steps."

Later that night, many hours after his address, Putin detailed what was construed in the US, once again, as a threat.

"Is there some hard ideological confrontation now similar to what was [going on] during the Cold War? There is none. We surely have mutual complaints, conflicting approaches to some issues, but that is no reason to escalate things to a stand-off on the level of the Caribbean crisis of the early 1960s".

This was a direct reference to the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 when President Kennedy confronted USSR's Nikita Khrushchev over missiles deployed off the US mainland.

The Russian Defense Ministry, meanwhile, has discreetly assured that conference calls with the Pentagon are proceeding as scheduled, every week, and that this bilateral dialogue is "working".

In parallel, tests of state-of-the-art Russian weaponry such as the Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile and the hypersonic Khinzal also proceed, alongside mass production of the hypersonic Avangard. The first regiment of the Russian Strategic Missile Forces will get the Avangard before the end of this year. 

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Declassified US report on potential for 'super EMP blackout warfare'

Zero Hedge

Russia, China and several other nations are developing powerful high-altitude nuclear bombs that can produce super-electromagnetic pulse (EMP) waves capable of knocking out critical electronic infrastructure, according to several declassified 2017 reports from the now-defunct Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from EMP Attack (see below).

"Foreign adversaries may aptly consider nuclear EMP attack a weapon that can gravely damage the U.S. by striking at its technological Achilles Heel, without having to confront the U.S. military," reads the report, which notes how foreign actors could use EMP attacks virtually anywhere in the world.

"Super-EMP" weapons, as they are termed by Russia, are nuclear weapons specially designed to generate an extraordinarily powerful E1 EMP field. Super-EMP warheads are designed to produce gamma rays, which generate the E1 EMP effect, not a big explosion, and typically have very low explosive yields, only 1-10 kilotons ... Even EMP hardened U.S. strategic forces and command, control, communications and intelligence (C3I) systems are potentially vulnerable to such a threat. -Firstempcommission.org

"Nuclear EMP attack is part of the military doctrines, plans, and exercises of Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran for a revolutionary new way of warfare against military forces and civilian critical infrastructures by cyber, sabotage, and EMP," the report continues.

"The Commission sees the high-altitude nuclear explosion-generated electromagnetic pulse as an existential threat to the survival of the United States and its allies that can be exploited by major nuclear powers and small-scale nuclear weapon powers, including North Korea and non-state actors, such as nuclear-armed terrorists." 

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The Art of the Deal worked on Sentosa Island

M.K. Bhadrakumar
Asia Times

Some statesmen by their sheer force of personality and unorthodox ways of politicking arouse disdain among onlookers. US President Donald is perhaps the most famous figure of that kind in world politics today.

No matter what he does, Trump attracts criticism. He evokes strong feelings of antipathy among a large and voluble swathe of opinion within half of America. The making of history in a virtual solo act on his part, which is the rarest of efforts, on Sentosa Island in Singapore on Tuesday and which the world watched with awe and disbelief, will be instinctively stonewalled.

Half of America simply refuses to accept the positive tidings about him coming from Singapore. The skeptics are all over social media pouring scorn, voicing skepticism, unable to accept that if the man has done something sensible and good for his country and for world peace, it deserves at the very least patient, courteous attention.

The problem is about Trump – not so much the imperative need of North Korea’s denuclearization. But western detractors – ostensibly rooting for the “liberal international order” – will eventually lapse into silence because what emerges is that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has enough to “bite” here in the deal that Trump is offering – broadly, a security guarantee from the US and the offer of a full-bodied relationship with an incremental end to sanctions plus a peace treaty.

Succinctly put, Trump has offered a deal that Kim simply cannot afford to reject. The ending of the US-ROK military exercises forthwith; Trump’s agenda of eventual withdrawal of troops from ROK; the lure of possible withdrawal of sanctions once 20% of the denuclearization process gets underway, or once the process becomes irreversible; Trump’s hint that he has sought assurances from Japan and the ROK that they will be “generous” in offering economic assistance to the reconstruction of North Korea; China’s involvement in the crucial process – these are tangibles.

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BREAKING ANALYSIS: Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un agree to denuclearization process

The Duran

Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un signed a document after a historic summit in Singapore with POTUS Trump declaring that North Korea’s denuclearization process would be starting “very quickly.”

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un stated that the world was about to see “a major change.”

RT CrossTalk host Peter Lavelle unpacks the breaking news from Singapore, where Trump and Kim addressed the world on their communique, and the 4 starting points contained in the joint document.

Trump Ends The Nuclear Deal With Iran - What's Next?

Moon of Alabama

With a very belligerent speech Trump nixed the nuclear deal with Iran. He also lied a lot in it. Neither is a surprise. The United States only keeps agreements as long as they are to its short term advantage - just ask native Americans. One can never count on the U.S. to keep its word.

Trump will reimpose U.S. sanctions on Iran because:

• The nuclear deal was negotiated by the Obama administration and thus must be bad;
• Israel wants to keep Iran as the boogeyman;
• the Zionists and right wing nuts in the U.S. want the U.S. to attack Iran;
• MAGA - Trump needs Iran as enemy of the Gulf states to sell more U.S. weapons.

Three European countries, Britain, France and Germany, were naive enough to think they could prevent this. The EU3 offered the U.S. to put additional sanctions on Iran for other pretended reason - ballistic missiles and the Iranian engagement in Syria. I was disgusted when I first read of the plan. It was obvious from the beginning that it  would only discredit these countries AND fail.

Luckily Italy and some eastern European countries shot the effort down at the EU level. They were not willing to sacrifice their credibility over the issue. The nuclear agreement was signed and should be followed by all sides. They pointed out that there was no guarantee from Trump that any additional European effort would change his view.

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The Latest Act in Israel’s Iran Nuclear Disinformation Campaign

Gareth Porter
Washington's Blog

Gareth Porter, an investigative historian and journalist specializing in U.S. national security policy, who received the UK-based Gellhorn Prize for journalism for 2011 for articles on the U.S. war in Afghanistan. His latest book is Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare (Just World Books, 2014). Originally published by The Consortium News. Republished with permission of author.
 
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim in his theatrical 20-minute presentation of an Israeli physical seizure of Iran’s “atomic archive” in Tehran would certainly have been the “great intelligence achievement” he boasted if it had actually happened. But the claim does not hold up under careful scrutiny, and his assertion that Israel now possesses a vast documentary record of a covert Iranian nuclear weapons program is certainly fraudulent.

Netanyahu’s tale of an Israeli intelligence raid right in Tehran that carted off 55,000 paper files and another 55,000 CDs from a “highly secret location” requires that we accept a proposition that is absurd on its face: that Iranian policymakers decided to store their most sensitive military secrets in a small tin-roofed hut with nothing to protect it from heat (thus almost certainly ensuring loss of data on CDs within a few years) and no sign of any security, based on the satellite image shown in the slide show. (As Steve Simon observed in The New York Times the door did not even appear to have a lock on it.)

The laughable explanation suggested by Israeli officials to The Daily Telegraph– that the Iranian government was afraid the files might be found by international inspectors if they remained at “major bases” — merely reveals the utter contempt that Netanyahu has for Western governments and news media. Even if Iran were pursuing nuclear weapons secretly, their files on the subject would be kept at the Ministry of Defense, not at military bases. And of course the alleged but wholly implausible move to an implausible new location came just as Netanyahu needed a dramatic new story to galvanize Trump to resist the European allies’ strong insistence on preserving the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Act (JCPOA) nuclear deal with Iran.

In fact, there is no massive treasure trove of secret files about an Iran “Manhattan Project.” The shelves of black binders and CDs that Netanyahu revealed with such a dramatic flourish date back to 2003 (after which a U.S. National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) said Iran had abandoned any nuclear weapons program) and became nothing more than stage props like the cartoon bomb that Netanyahu used at the United Nations in 2012.

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Top 100 Reasons Not to Bomb Iran

Comment: As if it wasn't obvious to anyone with a functioning brain, but here's the first 20...

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Washington's blog

1. There are over 80 million men, women, and children in Iran. Bombing them would be mass-murder.
2. If the U.S. government and its allies bomb Libya and Iran when their governments choose not to have nuclear weapons, you can forget about North Korea and the rest of the world choosing not to have nuclear weapons.
3. The longer the world has nuclear weapons, and the more countries that have them, the greater the likelihood of nuclear war.
4. We now know that even a small nuclear war can block out the sun, kill crops, and starve everyone on earth who survives.
5. Bombing people makes those who survive and many who care about them very angry, which is why the “war on terrorism” has predictably increased terrorism.
6. Bombing people kills many, injures more, traumatizes even more, enrages even more, creates huge numbers of refugees, and destabilizes the region bombed.
7. Bombing Iran will produce anti-U.S. and anti-Western and anti-Israeli terrorism.
8. Bombing Iran risks direct war between the United States and nuclear governments including Russia.
9. If you think people want to be bombed because of shortcomings and evil deeds of their governments, you’re not actually thinking at all; you don’t want to be bombed because of the shortcomings and evil deeds of your government.
10. If bombing nations made people better off and created human rights, earth would be a paradise by now.
11. Bombing countries is illegal under the Kellogg-Briand Pact without exceptions, and regardless of whether Congress “authorizes” it. Another country bombing you would be a crime regardless of which parts of its government “authorized” it.
12. Bombing countries is illegal under the United Nations Charter with two narrow exceptions, and regardless of whether or not the U.S. Congress does or does not do anything.
13. One of those exceptions is when the U.N. Security Council “authorizes” a war. It has not done so in this case and certainly will not. And doing so wouldn’t get you around the Kellogg-Briand Pact.
14. The other exception is “defense,” but if anything is not defense it is the bombing of a far smaller country half-way around the world that has not attacked or even threatened to attack your country.
15. Attempts to provoke Iran into attacking U.S. military forces near Iran (or to disguise some U.S. forces as Iranian and have U.S. forces shoot at each other, as Vice President Dick Cheney once proposed) does not result in an Iranian attack on the actual United States or any legal ability to claim “defense.”
16. Israel is not a U.S. state.
17. The Israeli government has been threatening, provoking, and lying about Iran for decades, which are not defensive behaviors.
18. Saudi Arabia is not a U.S. state.
19. The Saudi government has been threatening, provoking, and lying about Iran for decades, which are not defensive behaviors.
20. Iraq is not a U.S. state. It is the smoldering ruin of a previous war launched on almost identical and wholly dishonest pretexts.

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Israel Closes Airspace Near Syria Ahead of Netanyahu Speech With “Dramatic News About Iran”; Oil Surges

ZHE

Moments ago, Israel’s Channel10 reported that Netanyahu is set to make “significant” televised announcement on Iran on Monday evening at 8pm local time (5pm GMT) in what his office said would be “dramatic news about Iran” and “significant development regarding” the Iran nuclear agreement and which will reportedly influence the world.

 As Channel 10 adds, Netanyahu previously relayed the Iran info to Trump on Saturday and Pompeo on Sunday, during his visit to Israel.

The speech will come after Israel’s security cabinet convened for an impromptu, unscheduled meeting in the wake of the strike on Syria overnight, which as we noted earlier reportedly killed 11 Iranians.

Meanwhile, hinting that Israel may be about to launch another, far more powerful strike on Syria, Ynet reports that Israel has closed its airspace near the Golan Heights and the Israel-Syria border, most likely in anticipation of one or more bombing/missile attacks on Syrian territory.

Having slumped earlier following the disappointing German inflation data, WTI has regained all losses on the news that Israel may be about to attack Syria, even following Putin’s direct warning to Netanyahu not to continue airstrikes on Syria.

March 2018 is Proving to be a Truly Historical Month for the Future of our Planet

The Saker
The Saker Blog

March 2018 will go down in history as a truly historical month

• March 1st, Vladimir Putin makes his historical address to the Russian Federal Assembly.
• March 4th, Sergei Skripal, a former UK spy, is allegedly poisoned in the UK.
• March 8th, British officials accuse Russia of using nerve gas to attempt to murder Sergei Skripal.
• March 12th, Theresa May officially blames Russia for the poisoning and gives Russia a 24-hour ultimatum to justify herself; the Russians ignore that ultimatum. The same day, the US representative at the UNSC threatens to attack Syria even without a UNSC authorization.
• March 13th, Chief of Russia's General Staff Valery Gerasimov warned that "in case there is a threat to the lives of our military, the Russian Armed Force will take retaliatory measures both over the missiles and carriers that will use them". The same day Chief of the Russian Armed Forces' General Staff, Deputy Defense Minister, General of the Army Valery Gerasimov had a phone conversation with Marine Corps General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the United States' Joint Chiefs of Staff.
• March 15th, the UK blocked Russia's draft UN Security Council statement on Skripal poisoning case asking for an "urgent and civilized investigation" into the Skripal case. The US, UK, France, and Germany issue a statement backing the UK and blaming Russia. The UK Defence Minister tells Russia to "shut up and go away".
• March 16th, Major General Igor Konashenkov calls the British Defense Minister an "uncouth shrew" and "intellectual impotent".
• March 17th, Russian Generals warned that the US is preparing a chemical false flag attack in Syria
• March 18th, Putin overwhelmingly wins the Presidential election. The same day, General Votel, Commander of CENTCOM declares in a testimony to the Armed Services Committee that differences with Russia should be settled "through political and diplomatic channels". When asked whether it would be correct to say that "with Russia and Iran's help, Assad has won the Civil War in Syria?" General Votel replied "I do not think that is too - that is too strong of a statement. I think they have provided him the wherewithal to - to be ascendant at this point".
• March 19th, the EU's Foreign Affairs Council issues a statement fully backing the UK.
• March 21st The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs summons all ambassadors to a briefing on the Skripal case. The language used by the Russian representative at this briefing possibly is the bluntest used by any Russian (or even Soviet) official towards the West since WWII. The French, Swedish and US representative at the meeting all stood up to declare their "solidarity" with the UK.
• March 22nd, The Chief of the Russian Armed Forces' General Staff, Deputy Defense Minister, General of the Army Valery Gerasimov had another phone conversation with Marine Corps General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the United States' Joint Chiefs of Staff. The same day, General Gerasimov also held another conversation by phone with the Commander of US European Command and NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe Army General Curtis Scaparrotti.

So what is really going on here? Surely nobody seriously believes that the Brits really think that the Russians had any motive to try to kill Skripal or, for that matter, if they had a motive, that they would do it in such a stupid manner? And what's the deal with Syria anyway? Is the USA going to execute their false flag and bomb? 

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Might The Donald actually want peace?

Comment: Trump probably isn't on the scale of psychopathy as Killary but the guy is still a waste of time in terms presidential integrity. Even if "wins" he will be bound by the same shadow government that will determine his actions - what he is allowed and not allowed to do. Once again, the system is beyond repair. The sooner we build communities outside of this entropic paradise for psychopaths the sooner we can gradually offer alternatives to replace it - after the inevitable collapse.

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Brian Cloughley
Strategic Culture Foundation

Donald Trump is erratic. We all know that. It is insulting to assert, in the words of Britain's new Foreign Secretary, the erratic Boris Johnson, that he is «frankly unfit to hold the office of President of the United States», but he's certainly unpredictable and says some things that are, to put it mildly, intriguing. The fact remains that he could be next president of the United States, which makes it important to look at what he might do if that comes about, especially in the light of America's military catastrophes so far this century.

Obama followed his predecessors in expanding America's iron fist as self-appointed global policeman. He vastly increased the US military presence around the world and intensified the Pentagon's aggressive confrontations with China and Russia.

In China's case this was effected by sending US Naval E-P3 electronic surveillance aircraft on missions close to the mainland, deploying EA-18G Growler electronic attack aircraft to Clark Air Base in the Philippines, ordering B-52 nuclear bombers to overfly the South China Sea where the US Navy also carried out extended manoeuvres by massive strike groups of nuclear-armed aircraft carriers and guided missile cruisers. All this in a region where the US has not the slightest territorial interest or claim. China's Sea is 12,000 kilometres, 7,000 miles, from the American mainland, yet Washington considers it the sacred right and duty of the United States to act as a global gendarme and give orders to China about its posture in its own back yard, where there has not been one instance of interference with commercial shipping passing through that region.

As to confrontation with Russia, the US has ensured that its Brussels sub-office, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, will go on playing its toy-soldier games right up to Russia's borders. The official statement after NATO's war drum-thumping conclave in Warsaw on July 8-9 is indicative of its determination to continue its attempts to menace Russia, which has not made the slightest move to threaten a single NATO member. It is absurd to claim that 'the security situation has deteriorated' in the Black Sea and the Baltic because of Russian action.
These regions would be perfectly calm if it were not for constant provocations by US-NATO warships and combat and electronic warfare aircraft which deliberately trail their coats in attempts to incite reaction by Russian forces.  

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Video: Putin Warns Journalists of Nuclear War: “I Don’t Know How to Get Through to You People”

Russia Insider

Vladimir Putin has finally taken the kid gloves off.

The Russian president was meeting with foreign journalists at the conclusion of the Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum on June 17th, when he left no one in any doubt that the world is headed down a course which could lead to nuclear war.

Putin railed against the journalists for their “tall tales” in blindly repeating lies and misinformation provided to them by the United States on its anti-ballistic missile systems being constructed in Eastern Europe. He pointed out that since the Iran nuclear deal, the claim the system is to protect against Iranian missiles has been exposed as a lie.

The journalists were informed that within a few years, Russia predicted the US would be able to extend the range of the system to 1000 km. At that point, Russia’s nuclear potential, and thus the nuclear balance between the US and Russia, would be placed in jeopardy.
  

Putin completely lost patience with the journalists, berating them for lazily helping to accelerate a nuclear confrontation by repeating US propaganda. He virtually pleaded with the western media, for the sake of the world, to change their line:

We know year by year what’s going to happen, and they know that we know. It’s only you that they tell tall tales to, and you buy it, and spread it to the citizens of your countries. You people in turn do not feel a sense of the impending danger – this is what worries me. How do you not understand that the world is being pulled in an irreversible direction? While they pretend that nothing is going on. I don’t know how to get through to you anymore.

Does anyone in the reeking garbage heap that is mainstream western media have a conscience? Do they even have enough intellect to get what Putin is saying – that they are helping to push the planet towards World War III?

America’s Greatest Threat Is Its Crazed “Leadership” And Its Brainwashed Population

paulcraigroberts.org

Insouciant Americans do not even know what they should be worried about.

A Russian Warning

By Dmitry Orlov, The Saker, Victor Katsap and Evgenia Gurevich

We, the undersigned, are Russians living and working in the USA. We have been watching with increasing anxiety as the current US and NATO policies have set us on an extremely dangerous collision course with the Russian Federation, as well as with China. Many respected, patriotic Americans, such as Paul Craig Roberts, Stephen Cohen, Philip Giraldi, Ray McGovern and many others have been issuing warnings of a looming Third World War. But their voices have been all but lost among the din of a mass media that is full of deceptive and inaccurate stories that characterize the Russian economy as being in shambles and the Russian military as weak—all based on no evidence. But we-—knowing both Russian history and the current state of Russian society and the Russian military–cannot swallow these lies. We now feel that it is our duty, as Russians living in the US, to warn the American people that they are being lied to, and to tell them the truth. And the truth is simply this:

If there is going to be a war with Russia, then the United States
will most certainly be destroyed, and most of us will end up dead.

Let us take a step back and put what is happening in a historical context. Russia has suffered a great deal at the hands of foreign invaders, losing 22 million people in World War II. Most of the dead were civilians, because the country was invaded, and the Russians have vowed to never let such a disaster happen again. Each time Russia had been invaded, she emerged victorious. In 1812 Nepoleon invaded Russia; in 1814 Russian cavalry rode into Paris. On June 22, 1941, Hitler’s Luftwaffe bombed Kiev; On May 8, 1945, Soviet troops rolled into Berlin.

But times have changed since then. If Hitler were to attack Russia today, he would be dead 20 to 30 minutes later, his bunker reduced to glowing rubble by a strike from a Kalibr supersonic cruise missile launched from a small Russian navy ship somewhere in the Baltic Sea. The operational abilities of the new Russian military have been most persuasively demonstrated during the recent action against ISIS, Al Nusra and other foreign-funded terrorist groups operating in Syria. A long time ago Russia had to respond to provocations by fighting land battles on her own territory, then launching a counter-invasion; but this is no longer necessary. Russia’s new weapons make retaliation instant, undetectable, unstoppable and perfectly lethal.

Thus, if tomorrow a war were to break out between the US and Russia, it is guaranteed that the US would be obliterated. At a minimum, there would no longer be an electric grid, no internet, no oil and gas pipelines, no interstate highway system, no air transportation or GPS-based navigation. Financial centers would lie in ruins. Government at every level would cease to function. US armed forces, stationed all around the globe, would no longer be resupplied. At a maximum, the entire landmass of the US would be covered by a layer of radioactive ash. We tell you this not to be alarmist, but because, based on everything we know, we are ourselves alarmed. If attacked, Russia will not back down; she will retaliate, and she will utterly annihilate the United States.

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