Sunday, September 28, 2014

George Galloway, and millions of others, opposed the previous Iraq War, which was based on deliberate lies. He said at the time that Western bombing would result in more terrorism, and horrendous deaths of civilians and destruction of civil society. He was proved right by history. Now, once again, the same ignorant, lying war mongers tell us they can defeat terrorism, which they themselves created, by more bombing. 

George Galloway explains how more bombing now will make the situation worse, and offers some alternative solutions to defeat terrorism. 

Watch these short videos, and decide who you believe.



George Galloway's Statement in UK Parliament on Isis airstrikes 

Video  (7:04)

George Galloway, Respect MP, gave a powerful speech in the parliamentary debate considering whether the UK should take action against the Islamic State in Iraq. Unfortunately, his common sense did not prevail. The ignorant majority, deceived by the war propaganda, "won".



George Galloway hammers Jacqui Smith on bombing ISIS                        - BBC This Week, 25/9/14          Video  (13:40)





The "War On Terror" Is A Fraud: 

It Is Not Meant To Be Won, It Is Meant To Be Continuous 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ztm_ZqCV5Kg 




Notice that the countries that have been effective at suppressing extremists such as al Qaeda, al Nusra, and ISIS just happen to have been the TARGETS of U.S. regime change? 

These terrorist groups were held in check in Iraq before the U.S. invasion. Libya also. And Syria, before the U.S. and U.S. allies supported anti-government terrorists there under the false cover name "moderate rebels". Iran is also a U.S. target. 

It only makes sense when we understand that the USA and its allies are INTENTIONALLY AIDING the terrorist/extremists as a matter of policy. The real goal IS destabilization and chaos and perpetual conflict.



Friday, September 26, 2014

What a disgrace!      

Tony Abbott addresses a meeting of the United Nations Security Council.

Australian Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, repeating blatant lies and Western propaganda during his debut speech at the United Nations General Assembly.
TONY'S LIE # 1: He labelled Russia a "bully" for its invasion of Ukraine. 
No, Tony, the troubles in Ukraine resulted from the actions of the US and EU countries that supported the coup in Kiev. 
TONY'S LIE # 2: "...Flight MH17 was shot down by Russian-backed rebels over eastern Ukraine."
No, Tony, read the Dutch Safety Board's preliminary report [Preliminary Report: Crash involving Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200 flight MH17" (.pdf)], which does not draw any conclusions about who was responsible, and insisted that none be jumped to.
But, of course, Tony, you jumped to that conclusion from the moment it happened, as did your puppet-master President Obama, even before any investigation, and still without any evidence.
Anyone who believes Tony's lies, has not been paying attention, and must only be influenced by the discredited Western 'news' media propaganda.
Bruce.

Saturday, September 20, 2014

Remember when we were told by Obama, Abbott, etc., and the mainstream ‘news’ media, that Malaysian flight MH17 was shot down by a Russian missile?  Some of us knew they were lying from the beginning, but now the Dutch Safety Board’s preliminary report clearly proves they were indeed lying - and some still are!

September 19, 2014 "ICH" - "Land Destroyer" - 

The absence of America's so-called "intelligence" regarding the downing of Malaysia Airlines MH17 over Ukraine in a 34 page Dutch Safety Board preliminary report raises serious questions about the credibility and legitimacy of both America's political agenda, and all agencies, organizations, and political parties currently behind it. [Including in Australia! - Bruce]

The report titled, "Preliminary Report: Crash involving Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200 flight MH17" (.pdf), cites a wide variety of evidence in its attempt to determine the cause of flight MH17's crash and to prevent similar accidents or incidents from occurring again in the future...

With the black boxes in hand and a wealth of data from multiple sources both onboard the aircraft and from the ground in both Ukraine and Russia, the Dutch Safety Board was still hesitant to draw any conclusions and insisted that none be jumped to.

The report specifically mentions information collected from Russia, including air traffic control and radar data - both of which were publicly shared by Russia in the aftermath of the disaster. The report also cites data collected from Ukraine air traffic controllers. 

The United States however, apart from providing technical information about the aircraft itself considering it was manufactured in the US, provided absolutely no data in any regard according to the report.

Had the US actually possessed any credible information to substantiate its claims that MH17 was shot down by a missile, such evidence surely would have been submitted to and included in the Dutch Safety Board's preliminary reporting. 

That it is predictably missing confirms what commentators, analysts, and politicians around the world had long since suspected - the West's premature conclusions regarding MH17's demise were driven by a political agenda, not a factually based search for the truth. 

The evidence that MH17 was shot down by a missile as the West insisted is missing because it never existed in the first place...

That the Dutch Safety Board possesses such a vast amount of information but is still unable to draw anything but the most tentative conclusions, exposes the alleged certainty of Western pundits and politicians in the hours and days after MH17's loss as an utterly irresponsible, politically motivated, exploitation of tragedy at best, and at worst, exposing the West - NATO in particular - as possible suspects in a crime they clearly stood the most to benefit from...

Surely if the West had solid evidence implicating eastern Ukrainian rebels and/or Russia, the world would never have heard the end of the MH17 disaster until the truth was fully aired before the public...

The lesson to be learned from the MH17 disaster is that real investigations and their subsequent conclusions take time - weeks or even months. 

Anyone drawing immediate conclusions within hours or days after an event like the MH17 disaster are exploiting tragedy at best, and at worst implicate themselves as suspects having created it in the first place to serve as impetus for further chaos, conflict, and confusion.

Those incapable of resisting the need to jump to conclusions are those who are least suitable to lead. [And that includes the Australian government and mass media - Bruce]

The United States, United Kingdom, and the European Union have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are at best tasteless, irresponsible, politically motivated exploiters of human tragedy, and at worst, the prime suspects of a heinous act of mass murder aimed at perpetuating their agenda of war and carnage in Ukraine and beyond.




Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, 
especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”. 


Tuesday, September 16, 2014

How do Australians feel about this, I wonder?

Australian PM leaves door open to action in Syria

Prime Minister Tony Abbott.
LATIKA BOURKE 
Tony Abbott has left open the possibility Australia might push across Iraq border to fight Islamic State.


Do Australians understand that if Australian soldiers "push across" the border into Syria, without permission from the legally-recognized government of Syria, this would be an act of blatant aggression under international law?

Do Australians care about such reckless warmongering? Will anyone do anything about it?
Or, will Australia continue its pathetic role of Uncle Sam's obedient little puppet?

Australia's media has been very effective at confusing and misinforming the public about what is really going on, so how meaningful is "public opinion" anyway?




The US military-finance-corporate empire (US-Empire) is characterized by
  • global military projection using over 1000 military bases
  • control over the global finance instruments (and the money supply)
  • corporate exploitation of labour and resources on the scale of entire continents
  • dominant influence on World organizations such as the United Nations
  • a demonstrated willingness to annihilate entire populations and societies -- directly or by proxy -- in order to ensure complete compliance
The nations entirely destroyed recently by the US-Empire include: Haiti, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and so on. 

These actions are outright crimes of mass aggression viciously targeting entire peoples, using combinations of military devastation, political overthrows, and brutal economic blockades.

No other regime in today's world is responsible for such premeditated and repeated acts of mass murder against entire modern societies. The US with its military allies, most notably Israel, is presently by far the greatest threat to peace and the greatest purveyor of terror on the planet.

This is not debatable by reasonable people. 

The US-Empire's present preeminent position of brutal global thug is a self-evident truth based on hard facts regarding the magnitudes of death and destruction; counted in millions of lives, millions of refugees, and nation-wide obliterations of civil infrastructure, not to mention annihilations of national and civil institutions. 

US crimes do not diminish the importance of injustices perpetrated by non-aligned regimes, but there is an obvious asymmetry of magnitudes that simply cannot be denied.

It is also apparent that the US-Empire's projects of nation destruction are strategic and premeditated. 

Having built an instrument for annihilating nations, it appears difficult for the US-Empire to not use it, irrespective of any moral or legal considerations. US "diplomacy" has become strictly an exercise in promoting its wars for geopolitical design.

It is in this realistic context of a ferocious, rogue and barely-constrained superpower that we must understand Obama's emanations about ISIS as nothing but a pretext to "remove Assad". 

And "removing Assad" can only mean destroying the Syrian nation and its people because the Syrian army and the Syrian people stand together and overwhelmingly support Assad against the foreign invaders.

The legitimate political dissidence in Syria was used as a front and a pretext to inject massive numbers of externally-funded foreign rebels into a proxy war for the US-Empire and its regional partners-in-crime. This is established by every credible researcher. (And, of course actively masked by the US-Empire's propaganda.)

And now an element (ISIS) of the injected foreign rebels is used as a pretext for all-out war US-style. 

For Syria, this means complete annihilation of the national defence forces, and total destruction of civilian infrastructure to bring the population to its knees and lay siege to any resistance. Straight-up crimes against humanity as the modus operandi for "regime change", a la USA, followed by US corporation predation, territorial control, etc.
 

Obama's ISIS project is nothing but a pretext to murder and destroy Syrian society.
 
Obama's ISIS project is nothing but a pretext to murder and destroy Syrian society.
 
Obama's ISIS project is nothing but a pretext to murder and destroy Syrian society.




Dr. Denis G. Rancourt is a former tenured and Full Professor of physics at the University of Ottawa, Canada. He is known for his applications of physics education research (TVO Interview). He has published over 100 articles in leading scientific journals, and has written several social commentary essays. He is the author of the book Hierarchy and Free Expression in the Fight Against Racism. While he was at the University of Ottawa, he supported student activism and opposed the influence of the Israel lobby on that institution, which fired him for a false pretext in 2009:




Watch some additional insights from The Real News:

















What Drives Obama's Foreign Policy?
Andrew Levine says Obama is continuing a triumphalist policy towards Russia
Go to story
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ISIS Wants the US Drawn into a Ground War










By Moon Of Alabama


"There are serious active preparations for a new attack on Damascus. Anti-government forces, including the Al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra, have been trained and equipped in Jordan and are now moving into their starting position...

The anti-government forces cooperating for this operation are the Syrian Revolutionaries Front (SRF), which is backed by the United States, assisted by the Islamic Front, backed by Saudi Arabia, and al-Qaeda's Jabhat al-Nusrah which just received some $20 million from Qatar. 

These forces infiltrated from Jordan through Daara and then up north-westward along the border with Israel.

This movement, during which some UN observers were kidnapped by these forces, was supported by Israeli artillery strikes against Syrian units that tried to prevent it. 

The sole border station between Israel and Syria is now in the hands of the anti-government forces. 

The Israeli military is also providing medical support to these anti-government forces. The UN has pulled out all peacekeepers from the Syrian side of the Golan height demarcation line...

The rather empty Quneitra area makes little sense to conquer except to be used as a launching pad for an attack from the south towards Damascus. The distance to the capital is only some 40 miles (60km). 

While two Syrian army divisions are stationed between Quneitra governate and Damascus, coordinated air attacks against them could open and secure a route from Quneitra governate into the capital. 

Recent truceagreements between the U.S. supported Syrian Revolutionary Front and ISIS in the area south of Damascus may have been concluded with these attack plans in mind...

The U.S. military... may well plan to use the murky new "war on ISIS" as pretext for attacks on the Syrian army divisions protecting Damascus from the south...

The stampede to attack ISIS may have been pure maskirovka to hide this violent regime change attack plan against Syria under some "anti-terrorism" label. 

This at the same time as the plan is coordinated with and actively supported by Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda's affiliate in Syria, and made possible through truce agreements with ISIS."




Friday, September 12, 2014

What the mainstream media (with a long history of reporting deliberate lies and misleading public opinion) won't say about ISIS and the real agenda of the 'long war'.  It's all following the 'strategic plan'. 

Artelligence Inc.

America, ISIS, and Syria: 
We have to bomb the jihadis in order to save them

From The Polemicist
Friday September 5, 2014


Does it take more than one full minute of thought to see what’s going on here?


The short version:

* ISIS is the product of years of American military intervention in Iraq, Libya, and Syria. ISIS is the creature of an imperial enterprise—a global effort to bring down the Syrian state using jihadi proxies that included the U.S and its allies--Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, Turkey, and Israel, at least—that could only have proceeded, “at the bidding of,” and managed by, the imperial center. It was by surfing the American-directed “cataract” of weaponry and funds directed against Syria that ISIS became an international jihadi movement surpassing Al-Qaeda itself. Without that American intervention, there would be no ISIS.

* In this regard, ISIS is only the latest in a series of worst-ever takfiri groups that has been cooked up in the stew of jihadi proxy fighters the U.S. and its allies have been serving up since the its holy war in Afghanistan in 1979—the one where Zbigniew Brzezinski told Bin Laden’s jihadis, “God is on your side.”1 As Gilbert Mercier quipped, “Just like al-Qaeda, ISIS is the secret love child of United States imperialism and the kings and sheiks of the Gulf states.”2

* An American (“coalition”) military attack on Syria will not destroy ISIS, and will not have the primary purpose of destroying ISIS; it will target and degrade the Syrian military, and its primary purpose will be to destroy the Syrian state’s capacity to resist the onslaught of jihadi rebels, including ISIS—a “rebellion” which hasn’t been going so well recently. 

The Obama administration knows, and says, that an American military attack will not defeat ISIS. It also knows, and says (sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly, depending on the audience), that its main objective will be to help the jihadi onslaught succeed. “A­ssad must go” is still the prime directive; the jihadis are still the most effective instrument for that. 

ISIS changes nothing, except to help sell military intervention to the Western publics. In a number of ways, ISIS has intervened to save the jihadi rebellion from defeat. It’s the reverse of the Vietnam rule: We have to bomb the jihadis in order to save them.

For those who want the details, the long version:







How the West Created the Islamic State
… With a Little Help From Our Friends


By Nafeez Ahmed

"...Missing from the chorus of outrage, however, has been any acknowledgement of the integral role of covert US and British regional military intelligence strategy in empowering and even directly sponsoring the very same virulent Islamist militants in Iraq, Syria and beyond, that went on to break away from al-Qaeda and form ‘ISIS’, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or now simply, the Islamic State (IS).


Since 2003, Anglo-American power has secretly and openly coordinated direct and indirect support for Islamist terrorist groups linked to al-Qaeda across the Middle East and North Africa. 

This ill-conceived patchwork geostrategy is a legacy of the persistent influence of neoconservative ideology, motivated by longstanding but often contradictory ambitions to dominate regional oil resources, defend an expansionist Israel, and in pursuit of these, re-draw the map of the Middle East...

The Third Iraq War has begun. With it, longstanding neocon dreams to partition Iraq into three along ethnic and religious lines have been resurrected.

White House officials now estimate that the fight against the region’s ‘Islamic State’ will last years, and may outlive the Obama administration. 

But this ‘long war’ vision goes back to nebulous ideas formally presented by late RAND Corp analyst Laurent Muraweic before the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board at the invitation of then chairman Richard Perle. That presentation described Iraq as a “tactical pivot” by which to transform the wider Middle East.

Brian Whitaker, former Guardian Middle East editor, rightly noted that the Perle-RAND strategy drew inspiration from a 1996 paper published by the Israeli Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, co-authored by Perle and other neocons who held top positions in the post-9/11 Bush administration.

The policy paper advocated a strategy that bears startling resemblance to the chaos unfolding in the wake of the expansion of the ‘Islamic State’ – Israel would “shape its strategic environment” by first securing the removal of Saddam Hussein. “Jordan and Turkey would form an axis along with Israel to weaken and ‘roll back’ Syria.” This axis would attempt to weaken the influence of Lebanon, Syria and Iran by “weaning” off their Shi’ite populations.

To succeed, Israel would need to engender US support, which would be obtained by Benjamin Netanyahu formulating the strategy “in language familiar to the Americans by tapping into themes of American administrations during the cold war.”

The 2002 Perle-RAND plan was active in the Bush administration’s strategic thinking on Iraq shortly before the 2003 war. 

According to US private intelligence firm Stratfor, in late 2002, then vice-president Dick Cheney and deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz had co-authored a scheme under which central Sunni-majority Iraq would join with Jordan; the northern Kurdish regions would become an autonomous state; all becoming separate from the southern Shi’ite region.

The strategic advantages of an Iraq partition, Stratfor argued, focused on US control of oil:...

The expansion of the ‘Islamic State’ has provided a pretext for the fundamental contours of this scenario to unfold...

In 2008, the strategy re-surfaced – once again via RAND Corp – through a report funded by the US Army Training and Doctrine Command on how to prosecute the ‘long war.’ 

Among its strategies, one scenario advocated by the report was ‘Divide and Rule’ which would involve:
“… exploiting fault lines between the various Salafi-jihadist groups to turn them against each other and dissipate their energy on internal conflicts.”
Simultaneously, the report suggested that the US could foster conflict between Salafi-jihadists and Shi’ite militants by:
“… shoring up the traditional Sunni regimes… as a way of containing Iranian power and influence in the Middle East and Persian Gulf.”
One way or another, some semblance of this plan is in motion...


READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE:






EXTRACT FROM THE POLEMICIST ARTICLE ABOVE:

...

To evoke yet another stated policy for which today’s jihadis are conveniently helpful, we should recognize that ISIS is finishing off the destruction and breakup of the Iraqi state that the U.S. began with its invasion in 2003. 

In Iraq, ISIS is executing an American plan, proposed by Joe Biden and Leslie Gelb in 2006, and endorsed by the U.S. Senate in 2007, to split into three parts—Sunni, Shia, and Kurd.30

That plan is itself uncannily similar—pure coincidence, I am sure—to an Israeli plan, The Yinon Plan of 1982, which “stipulates that Israel must reconfigure its geo-political environment through the balkanization of the surrounding Arab states into smaller and weaker states….[and] called for the division of Iraq into a Kurdish state and two Arab states.” Which also means ISIS is executing an Israeli plan. Yinon-to-Biden-to-Baghdadi, a triple play in which there’s no Chance for Iraq.31  

Remember that the U.S. sat back while ISIS put the finishing touches on the Sunni-Shia split in Iraq, and only intervened when ISIS threatened the already effectively-independent Kurds—who are very close allies of the U.S. and Israel.32

Once Iraq is, like Gaul, divided into three parts, the jihadis can move on to help with the Syrian extension of that plan, “Syria’s fragmentation into provinces,” as gleeful predicted by former Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister, Danny Ayalon, who also suggested that “the Arab world is passing through a phase that will restore it back to the way it was before World War I ….[ruling] out the possibility of the emergence of an Arab alliance that would stand in opposition to Israel in the next 10 to 15 years.”33 
...

Extract from The Polemicist, 
"America, ISIS, and Syria: We have to bomb the jihadis in order to save them" 







Why 'Forever War'?

The untruthful and simplistic propaganda narrative spun by President Obama about ISIS and everything else, is nonsense. 


It is repeated by the mainstream media, but it does not help to explain what is really going on in our world, because they do not intend it to. They intend to confuse and manipulate public opinion.

Perceptively, Russian President Putin recently said: "Anything U.S. touches turns into Libya or Iraq."


Certainly, the only result of U.S./Western intervention seems to be more terrible death and destruction, more terrorism, more failed states, more insecurity and endless war.


The 'Empire of Chaos'
(Pepe Escobar) is also clearly a 'Vampire Empire'. (James Petras)
How else can we describe a system which is sucking the life out of all that is decent, and destroying the environment of our planet, to satisfy and enrich a few?  

This failed system is even destroying its own indebted, bankrupted economies and militarised, corrupted societies, in which the rich just get richer while everyone else goes backwards.


Can the 'powers that be' really be that stupid? I don't think so.


Surely, the only way to understand what is really happening is to understand that this is not the result of 'stupidity'; it is all very deliberate. It is following some long term, strategic plan. 


While millions of ordinary people lose, there are of course beneficiaries, including the war-crazed neo-cons who are safely well away from the battlefields, the military-industrial-security complex, the promoters of imperial oil and gas pipelines, and the Zionist State of Israel.


To understand war, follow the money.


Bruce McPhie





What is taking place in the Middle East & North Africa, today, is precisely what has been clearly stated in various U.S. neo-con strategic plans: region-wide chaos, 'regime change', and Muslim-on-Muslim violence, for imperial control of vital resources, and in order that Israel establish hegemony over the entire region. 


The idea repeated regularly that the Iraq wars were 'a terrible mistake' is either based on ignorance of these strategic plans, or is an attempt to whitewash them from public consciousness. 

The same goes for U.S. military attacks on Afghanistan, Sudan, Somalia, Libya, and, soon, Syria, Lebanon and Iran. It's all part of a regional plan, clearly outlined in at least three well known documents: 


The Project for a New American Century (PNAC)

A Clean Break: A new strategy for securing The Realm  

“Greater Israel”: The Zionist Plan for the Middle East 


Excerpt, Oded Yinon: “The plan operates on two essential premises. To survive, Israel must 1) become an imperial regional power, and 2) must effect the division of the whole area into small states by the dissolution of all existing Arab states. Small here will depend on the ethnic or sectarian composition of each state. Consequently, the Zionist hope is that sectarian-based states become Israel’s satellites and, ironically, its source of moral legitimation …" 




Tuesday, September 09, 2014

You can join thousands of others all around the world in signing this open letter for peace:

Please accept our apologies for the behavior of our Governments and Media. Western Nations, led by the United States, seem determined to start a war with Russia. A sane person would recognize the terrible consequences of such a war and would do everything in their power to avoid it. . . . We pray that through our mutual efforts we may defeat the power-hungry and ruthless criminals who seek to enslave us all. We pray that we may instead foster a genuine peace that makes life on Earth worth living.

Sincerely,

READ THE ENTIRE LETTER BEFORE SIGNING:
YOU CAN SIGN THE LETTER!

http://dearputin.com/




Obama commits US to war against Russia in defense of Baltic states

8 September 2014
In a series of speeches and press conferences in connection with last week’s NATO summit in Wales, President Barack Obama publicly declared that the United States military will maintain a permanent presence in the Baltic states of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia, which border Russia. He vowed that US air and ground forces will remain poised forevermore to respond to claims of Russian aggression by the governments of these countries by attacking Moscow.
In appearances in the Estonian capital of Tallinn and later in Wales, Obama announced a series of military moves against Russia by the United States and NATO as well as expanded economic sanctions and pledges to bolster the military forces of the former Soviet republics of Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova. He made clear in addition that Washington will push for all three countries to join the US-dominated NATO military alliance.
These statements represent an immense escalation of US and NATO military threats against Russia. Without any public discussion, and entirely over the heads of the American people, the Obama administration has committed the country to go to war with the second largest nuclear power in the world over three small countries in Eastern Europe.
At a joint press conference September 3 with Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves, Obama declared, “So I’ve come here, first and foremost, to reaffirm the commitment of the United States to the security of Estonia. As NATO allies, we have Article 5 duties to our collective defense. That is a commitment that is unbreakable. It is unwavering. It is eternal.”
In a speech later that day “to the people of Estonia,” Obama was, if anything, even more explicit about the commitment of US military forces in the Baltic states and their readiness to attack Russia. “Today, more NATO aircraft patrol the skies of the Baltics,” he said. “More American forces are on the ground training and rotating through each of the Baltic states. More NATO ships patrol the Black Sea… I believe our Alliance should extend these defensive measures for as long as necessary…
“Article 5 is crystal clear. An attack on one is an attack on all. So if, in such a moment, you ever ask again, ‘who will come to help,’ you’ll know the answer—the NATO Alliance, including the Armed Forces of the United States of America, ‘right here, present, now!’ We’ll be here for Estonia. We will be here for Latvia. We will be here for Lithuania…
“Here in the Baltics… it would mean more US forces—including American boots on the ground continuously rotating through Estonia and Latvia and Lithuania.” [Emphasis added]
He went on to declare, “We need to enhance NATO’s Rapid Response Force so it can deploy even more quickly and not just react to threats, but also deter them .” [Emphasis added]. This last statement clearly implies the right of the US and NATO to militarily respond not only to actions, but also “preventively” to supposed threats.
At a press conference two days later, following the NATO summit, Obama reiterated the same belligerent line.
With the commitments announced last week, the US government is tying the fate of the American people and, indeed, the people of the world, to the actions of governments of three small countries whose combined population is 6.6 million. All three governments are rightwing, ultranationalist and rabidly anti-Russian. They represent a criminal layer of oligarchs who made their fortunes by plundering state property after secession from the Soviet Union and the launching of capitalist restoration.
All these governments are also led by individuals with close ties to American intelligence and the Pentagon. They are all imposing austerity programs that are impoverishing the working class, removing all social protections, and opening up their respective economies to unfettered profit making by Western capital.
The President of Estonia, Toomas Hendrik Ilves, with whom Obama shared the stage in the Estonian capital, was raised and educated in the United States. From 1984 until 1993 he worked for US-operated Radio Free Europe, heading its Estonian desk.
Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaitė, often referred to as the Iron Lady and the Steel Magnolia, went to study in the Special Program for senior executives at Georgetown University in Washington DC soon after Lithuania broke away from the Soviet Union. In the 1990s she served as minister plenipotentiary at the Lithuanian embassy in Washington.
The prime minister of Latvia, Laimdota Straujuma, is a member of the rightwing Unity Party.
All three are US puppet governments. They are highly unstable and riven by internal conflicts. They preside over populations that are seething with anger over the destruction of working-class living standards and the corruption of the ruling oligarchies. They have been among the most belligerent advocates of aggressive action against Russia. Any one of them could, for domestic political reasons, incite or fabricate a military clash with Russia.
Washington is manufacturing a nonexistent threat to the Baltic states from Russia. More than 20 years ago, during the process of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, these countries became independent, with the approval of Moscow. The claim that they now face an imminent threat from Russia is a pretext for violating previous agreements with Moscow not to expand NATO or station NATO military forces on former Soviet territory.
From a geostrategic standpoint, the fate of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia has virtually no significance for the United States. But for Russia, the positioning of US and NATO ground and air forces and military hardware just miles from its border is an existential threat.
How would Washington react if Russia announced that it was stationing troops in Mexico, Central America or the Caribbean? Fifty-two years ago, in the Cuban missile crisis, the Kennedy administration declared that Moscow’s installation of missiles in Cuba constituted an intolerable threat to US national security. Kennedy threatened nuclear war unless Khrushchev removed them.
The Russian government and military can draw no conclusion from the current crisis other than the belief that Washington is preparing to attack Moscow. Russian officials have announced that in response to the NATO summit, Moscow is revamping its military doctrine.
In the 1950s and 1960s, at the height of the Cold War, the term “brinksmanship” was used to denote willful recklessness in foreign policy. What the Obama administration is doing today goes far beyond anything carried out by a US administration in that period.
Then, the concern was frequently raised that a heightened level of mistrust and tension between Washington and Moscow could result in a relatively minor incident escalating out of control and precipitating a nuclear war. For that reason, the so-called “hot line” was set up between the two capitals to prevent either side from misinterpreting the aims of the other.
Today, the moves by the Obama administration and its NATO allies seem designed to generate in Russia the greatest possible level of apprehension and goad it into responding militarily. Its population is still haunted by the massive loss of life, which followed the surprise attack by Nazi Germany on the Soviet Union in June 1941. In the course of the next four years 27 million Soviet citizens lost their lives.
All of the stated reasons for US-NATO warmongering against Russia are lies. The aggressors in the Ukraine crisis from the outset have been Washington and Berlin. They orchestrated a coup led by neo-fascist forces that overthrew the elected government of President Viktor Yanukovych last February, following Yanukovych’s decision not to enter into an Association Agreement with the European Union or accept an austerity program dictated by the International Monetary Fund.
They have since used the crisis in Ukraine to pursue a policy of isolating and weakening Russia. It is clear that the purpose of the military, political and economic moves against Russia is to compel it to submit to the dictates of US and German imperialism.
Unless the war provocations of US and European imperialism are stopped by the intervention of the international working class, it is only a matter of time before an incident involving NATO and Russian forces triggers a crisis that could escalate into a full-blown nuclear war.

Barry Grey



CounterPunch
Obama Begs for More War                                                  

Did Putin Just Bring Peace to Ukraine?

by MIKE WHITNEY
“In the implementing of their policies, our western partners– the United States first and foremost – prefer to be guided not by international law, but by force. They believe in their own ‘exceptionalism’, that they are allowed to decide on the fate of the world, and that they are always right.”
– Russian President Vladimir Putin
“What did we do to deserve this? What did we do to deserve being bombed from planes, shot at from tanks, and have phosphorous bombs dropped on us? ….That we wanted to live the way we want, and speak our own language, and make friends with whom we want?”
– Alexander V. Zakharchenko, Chairman of The Council of Ministers of The Donetsk National Republic, The Vineyard of the Saker
There is no way to overstate the significance of what has transpired in Ukraine in the last three weeks. What began as a murderous onslaught on the mainly Russian-speaking population of east Ukraine, has turned into a major triumph against a belligerent and expansionistic empire that has been repulsed by a scrappy, battle-hardened militia engaged in a conventional, land-based war. ...
THE PROBLEM IS NATO
“The defining factor in relations with NATO remains the unacceptability for Russia of plans to move the military infrastructure of the alliance towards our borders, including via enlargement of the bloc,”  said Mikhail Popov, deputy head of Putin’s Security Council.
The issue has always been NATO expansion, not the ridiculous claim that Putin wants to rebuild the Russian Empire. The only one interested in in stitching together a global Caliphate is Barack Hussein Obama and his nutcase neocon advisors. Putin is not interested in an empire. Putin just wants to make money like everyone else. He wants to sell gas to Europe, raise living standards and rebuild the country.  What’s wrong with that?
Putin’s not a troublemaker. He’s not sticking a freaking first-strike nuclear missile system in Havana just 60 miles from Miami. But that’s what Obama wants to do. Obama want to establish NATO bases on Russia’s doorstep and deploy his fake-named “missile defense system” a couple hundred miles from Moscow. Putin can’t allow that. No one in their right mind would allow that. It’s a direct threat to national security. 
Here’s how Putin summed it up in a recent press conference:
“Russia is an independent and active participant of international relations. Just like any nation it has national interests that must be taken into consideration and respected…..We stand against having a military organization meddling in our backyard, next to our homeland or in the territories that are historically ours. I just cannot imagine visiting NATO sailors in Sevastopol,” he stressed. “Most of them are fine lads, but I’d rather they visit us in Sevastopol than the other way around.” (Vladimir Putin)
Washington’s harebrained gambit was doomed from the get go. Who made the decision to topple Yanuchovych,  install a US-puppet in Kiev, fill-out the security services with neo Nazis, and wage a bloody ethnic cleansing purge on the Russian-speaking people in the east?  Who was it?  Isn’t there any accountability among the Obama team or is it all a matter of “failing upwards” like the Bush crowd? 
Here’s Putin again:
“Our western partners created the ‘Kosovo precedent’ with their own hands. In a situation absolutely the same as the one in Crimea they recognized Kosovo’s secession from Serbia legitimate while arguing that no permission from a country’s central authority for a unilateral declaration of independence is necessary….And the UN International Court of Justice agreed with those arguments. That’s what they said; that’s what they trumpeted all over the world and coerced everyone to accept – and now they are complaining about Crimea. Why is that?”
Doesn’t Putin have a point? Isn’t this what we’ve seen over and over again, that there’s one standard for the US and another for everyone else?
Of course it is. But Putin’s not going to stand for it. In fact, just this week, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov expanded on Putin’s comments in an interview that never appeared in the western media.  
Here’s what he said:
“The current stage of international relations is marked by a transition to a fundamentally new world order – a polycentric model based on due regard for the appearance of new economic and financial centres. And political weight comes with economic and financial influence. Transition to a polycentric world order reflects an objective trend according to which the world order should be based on the world’s cultural and civilisational diversity. This is objective reality, which no one can deny. …
After a long period of dominance in global economy and politics, these countries are trying to keep their positions by artificial means. They know that their economic positions are not as strong as they were after WWII, when America accounted for over half of global GDP, but they are trying to use all available military and political instruments, social media, regime-change technology and other instruments to keep back the objective process of the development of a democratic world order based on the equality of all sides.
Not everyone has realized yet that it is impossible to move contrary to an objective historical process. We strongly hope that this will happen, because otherwise more illegal unilateral sanctions will be approved against Russia, to which we will respond accordingly, as we have already tried to do. But this, I repeat, is not our choice; we don’t want confrontation.” (Press Conference: Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov)
“A new world order based on a polycentric model”? What a great idea. You mean, a world in which other sovereign nations get a say-so in the way the world is run?  You mean, a world in which the economic, political, and military decision-making does not emerge from one center of power that is dominated by privately-owned banks, transnational corporations and voracious western elites? You mean, a world in which international law can be applied evenly so that one country cannot unilaterally create off-shore gulags, or incite color coded revolutions, or carry out extra-legal abductions and killings, or order drone attacks on wedding parties or conduct any of the other heinous violations of human rights which imperial Washington engages in without batting an eye? . . .
So while Obama is busy trying to ramp up the violence by rallying NATO to expand the wars around the world,  international peacekeepers will begin the thorny task of implementing a seven-point peace plan put forward by none-other-than Vladimir Putin.
The difference between the peacemakers and the warmongers has rarely been as stark as it is today.

MIKE WHITNEY lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com.