Wednesday, December 30, 2015



Retro Cold War Guff from the NY Times
By Eric Margolis

A striking example of how dangerously [we] are misinformed and misled by the war party was featured in a major article in 24 December, New York Times.


In “Russia Rearms for a New Era,” the authors assert Russian military spending is growing and has risen $11 billion from 2014 to 2015. Lurid maps and diagrams of weapons make it seem that Stalin’s 210-division Red Army is again on the march – and headed into Europe.


A professor at Columbia’s Harriman Institute was actually quoted claiming that President Vladimir Putin is trying to “provoke the US and NATO into military action” to bolster his popularity.


What unbelievable rubbish. This dimwitted lady believes that Putin, whose popularity ratings rise over 82% in Russia, needs to court nuclear war to gain a few more points? Shame on the NY Times.


Let’s look at the true figures. The US so-called “defense budget”(it should be called “offense budget”) is in the range of $600 billion, 37% of total world military spending by a nation that only 5% of world population. Some studies put the true figure at $700 billion.


Not included in this figure are “black” projects, a lot of handouts to foreign military forces, and secret slush funds for waging small wars in Afghanistan, the Mideast, Africa and Asia. The US has over 700 military bases around the globe, with new ones opening all the time.


The US spends more on its armed forces than the next nine military powers – combined. America’s wealthy allies in Europe and Japan add important power to America’s global military domination.


Russia defense spending is roughly $70 billion, and this in spite of plunging oil prices and US-led sanctions. France and Britain each spend almost as much; Saudi Arabia spends more. A French admiral ruefully told me the US Navy’s budget alone exceeded that of France’s total armed forces.


Russia is a vast nation with very difficult geography that limits its different military regions from supporting one another – a problem from which Russia has suffered since its 1904 war with Japan. Moscow needs large, often redundant armed forces to cover its immensity. This includes the warming Arctic, where Russia, like other coastal nations, is asserting its sovereignty. And Russia must also keep a watchful eye on neighboring China.


The Kremlin’s view is that America is trying to tear down what’s left of the post-Soviet Russian Federation by subversion (see regime changes in Georgia, Ukraine) and by stirring up Muslim independence movements in the Caucasus and Central Asia. That’s why Russian military forces are fighting in Syria.


After the total collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia’s economy and its once potent military fell to ruin. For two decades, Russia military was starved of men and money, and allowed to rust. 


Putin has been playing catch-up for the past decade to rebuild his nation’s great power status and defend against what Russians see a constant western plots.


Memories are still raw of how Russia’s most secret military technologies were sold to the US during the ultra-corrupt Yeltsin era.


Russia’s relatively modest military budget is hardly a threat to the mighty United States. In fact, the only real Russia threat we face is the danger of blundering into a potential nuclear confrontation with Russia in Ukraine, the Black Sea, Syria or Iraq. Great, nuclear-armed powers should never…repeat, never…engage in direct confrontations.


It appalls and mystifies me that otherwise smart, world-wise people at the NY Times and the anti-Russian Council on Foreign Relations would even contemplate military conflict with Russia – for what? Mariupol Ukraine or Idlib, Syria, places no one has ever heard of.


We have been closer to blundering into nuclear war with Russia than any time since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. Or worse, 1983, when a NATO military exercise codenamed Able Archer was misinterpreted by the Soviet military as an incoming attack by NATO.


This ultimately terrifying crisis was played against the background of intense anti-Soviet propaganda by the West, crowned by Ronald Reagan’s fulminations against the “Evil Empire,” which convinced the Kremlin a western attack was coming. Nuclear war was just averted thanks to a few courageous officers in the Soviet Air Defense Command.


Eric S. Margolis is an award-winning, internationally syndicated columnist.



Tuesday, December 15, 2015


'Inconvenient' truths that contradict the official narratives of the warmongers will be excluded from the Western corporate mainstream media. Anyone who has been following alternative news media will already know this, but it's always good to have some more evidence:

Bashar al-Assad Has More Support Than The Western-backed Opposition
By Stephen Gowans   Bashar al Assad, and his ally, Iran, have more support than do the forces arrayed against him, according to a public opinion poll taken by a research firm that is working with the US and British governments. Continue



Turkey Smuggled Sarin Gas to Terrorists in Syria
By Stephen Lendman   Western sources know very well who carried out the sarin gas attack in Syria. No evidence showed Syrian use of chemical or other toxic substances throughout years of conflict. Plenty shows CIA and US special forces train takfiri terrorists in chemical weapons use, perhaps directly supplying them with toxic agents. Blaming Assad for incidents of chemical weapons’ use is part of the US-led propaganda campaign to wrongfully vilify him. Expect no letup ahead. 
Continue

Wednesday, December 09, 2015

theREALnews.com




Israel Key Link in Exporting ISIS Oil

 Vijay Prashad says that ISIS oil is smuggled through Turkey to Israel and is a major source of ISIS funding
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Noam Chomsky on the Terror Attacks in Paris

Professor Noam Chomsky took part in an event titled "Germany's role in the European Union and International Affairs: Post War History, Present and Possible futures" hosted by acTVism Munich on November 17, 2015.
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