Authored by Alexander Aston via The Automatic Earth blog,

“Dulce et Decorum est” is a poem written by Wilfred Owen during World War I, and published posthumously in 1920. The Latin title is taken from Ode 3.2 of the Roman poet Horace and means “it is sweet and fitting …”. It is followed there by “pro patria mori”, which means “to die for one’s country”.

The United States is a warfare economy, its primary export is violence and it is through violence that it creates the demand for its products. The markets of the Empire are the failed states, grinding civil conflicts, escalating regional tensions and human immiseration created by gun-boat diplomacy. In true entrepreneurial spirit, the United States has repeatedly overestimated its abilities to control the course of events and underestimated the complexities of a market predicated on violence. However, since the beginning of the twenty-first century the American Imperium has proven itself as incompetent as it is vicious. After nearly two decades of intensifying conflicts, a fundamentally broken global economy and a dysfunctional political system, Washington has turned feral, lashing out against decline.

The points of instability in the global system are various and growing, and the only geo-political logics that the Imperium appears to be operating under are threats, coercion, and violence. It is at this moment, with the most erratic president in the country’s history, surrounded by some of the most extreme neo-conservative voices, that the United States has been belligerently stumbling across the globe. In the past few months we have witnessed a surrealistic reimagining of the Latin American coup, the medieval melodrama of Canadian vassals taking a royal hostage from the Middle Kingdom and British buccaneers’ privateering off the coast of Gibraltar. The Imperial system is in a paroxysm of incoherent but sustained aggression.

It has long been clear that if another Great War were to emerge, it would likely begin in the Middle East. Just over a century later, we have found ourselves amidst another July crisis of escalating military and diplomatic confrontations. European modernity immolated itself in the Balkans though miscalculation, overconfidence and the prisoners dilemma of national prestige. The conditions of the contemporary Middle East are no less volatile than those of Europe when the Austro-Hungarian Empire decided to attack Serbia. If anything, conditions are far more complex in a region entangled with allegiances and enmities that transgress and supersede the national borders imposed in the wake of the first world war.

The United States’ withdrawal from the JCPOA and the stated aim of reducing Iranian oil exports to zero has enforced a zero-sum logic between the American Imperium and Persia. With each move and counter move the two countries are further entangled into the dynamics of a conflict. Much like the run up to July 28th 1914, tanker seizures, drone shoot downs, sanctions, military deployments and general bellicosity reinforce the rational of the opposing sides and make it harder to back down without losing face and appearing weak.

Due to the asymmetry of the two powers the Iranians have the fewest options for de-escalation while the American establishment perceives the least incentive. This dynamic is further exacerbated by major regional powers agitating for a conflict they believe they will benefit from. Indeed, the slide to war might be inexorable at this point, the momentum of historical causality may have already exceeded the abilities of those in power to control. Czar Nicholas and Kaiser Wilhelm were cousins that desperately wanted to avoid war and were nonetheless impotent to avert disaster. There is nowhere near such intimacy, communication and motivation in our current context.

If war with Iran erupts, the Pax Americana will come to an end and humanity will fully enter a new historical epoch. The most unlikely scenario is an easy victory for the United States, yet even this outcome will only exacerbate the decline of the Empire. The other great powers would expedite their exit from the dollar system and drastically increase investment into the means to counter American hegemony. Likewise, victory would further reinforce Washington’s hubris, generating more serious challenges to the Imperial order and making the US prone to take on even bigger fights. Ironically, easy military success would almost assure the outbreak of a third world war in the long-term.

War with Iran would likely ignite violence in Israel-Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq, re-energise and expand the ongoing wars in Syria and Yemen as well as generate sectarian violence and domestic insurgencies across the Middle East. Under such conditions regional actors would likely utilise a dramatically intensifying conflict as cover for their own agendas, for example with a renewed Turkish assault on the Syrian Kurds. The conditions for rapid escalation are extremely high in which non-linear dynamics could easily take hold and quickly outstrip any attempts to maintain control of the situation.

Pyrrhic victory for either side is the most likely outcome, making the parallels to the Great War all the more salient. Global conflagration is a possibility, but with “luck” the fighting could be contained to the region. Nonetheless, amplified refugee crises, supply chain disruptions and immense geopolitical realignments will cascade out of such an event. Undoubtedly, there would be concerted efforts to abandon the dollar system as quickly as possible. Furthermore, rapid increases in the price of oil would all but grind the global economy to a halt within a matter of months, tipping citizenries already saturated with private debt into financial crises.

Furthermore, the entanglement of the military-industrial complex, the petrodollar reserve currency system and the omni-bubble generated by quantitative easing has left the Empire systemically fragile. Particularly, the bubble in non-conventional fuels precipitated by QE, depressed oil prices with scaled down exploration, R&D and maintenance makes the possibility of a self-reinforcing collapse in the American energy and financial systems extremely plausible. It is a Gordian knot which war with Persia would leave in fetters.

The most likely long-term outcome of a war with Iran would be the economic isolation and political fragmentation of the United States. What is assured is that whatever world results it will not look anything like the world since 1945. The first world war collapsed the European world system, dynasties that had persisted for centuries were left in ruins and the surviving great powers crippled by the overwhelming expenditures of blood and treasure. We are on the precipice of another such moment. The American world system is fundamentally dependent upon the relationship between warfare, energy dominance and debt.

Conflict is required to maintain control of the energy markets which prop up a financialised economy. A dynamic that puts the nation deeper in hock while amplifying resistance to financial vassalage. Losing energy dominance undermines the country’s reserve currency status and weakens the Empires ability to generate the debt necessary to sustain the warfare economy. Likewise, the system of national and international debt peonage parasitizes global populations to work against their own best interests. This fuels resentment and resistance which further drives the warfare economy. It is, in the inimitably American expression, a “self-licking ice cream cone.”

On August 3rd 1914, one week into the war, the British Foreign Secretary Edward Grey famously remarked that “the lamps are going out across Europe and we shall not see them relit in our lifetime.” At the beginning of the twenty-first century, we face similar, terrifying prospects. Indeed, we could witness the collapse of democratic societies for a very long time to come. If we have any hope of averting calamity we need to generate loud opposition to imperialist warfare.

This does not mean some hackneyed anti-war movement based on past glories and the parochialism of domestic politics, but earnest effort to find common cause in resisting the insanity of those that seek profit in our collective suffering. This means working with people that we have very deep disagreements with by respecting our mutual opposition to the masters of war. It also means serious commitment to strategies such as tax and debt strikes as expressions of non-consent as well as other peaceful means of direct action. Indeed, it is from a place of agreement that we can potentially rebuild civil discourse and renew our trust in the ability of democratic institutions to mediate our quarrels. Perhaps it is too late to change course, but how sweet and fitting it is to face madness with dignity.

“What is the cause of historical events? Power. What is power? …power is a word the meaning of which we do not understand. ”

“Kings are the slaves of history.”

– Tolstoy, War and Peace

Authored by Brett Redmayne-Titley via Off-Guardian.org,

No other country in the Middle East is as important in countering America’s rush to provide Israel with another war than Iraq. Fortunately for Iran, the winds of change in Iraq and the many other local countries under similar threat, thus, make up an unbroken chain of border to border support. This support is only in part due to sympathy for Iran and its plight against the latest bluster by the Zio-American bully.

In the politics of the Middle East, however, money is at the heart of all matters. As such, this ring of defensive nations is collectively and quickly shifting towards the new Russo/ Sino sphere of economic influence. These countries now form a geo-political defensive perimeter that, with Iraq entering the fold, make a US ground war virtually impossible and an air war very restricted in opportunity.

If Iraq holds, there will be no war in Iran.

In the last two months, Iraq parliamentarians have been exceptionally vocal in their calls for all foreign military forces- particularly US forces- to leave immediately. Politicians from both blocs of Iraq’s divided parliament called for a vote to expel US troops and promised to schedule an extraordinary session to debate the matter. “Parliament must clearly and urgently express its view about the ongoing American violations of Iraqi sovereignty,” said Salam al-Shimiri, a lawmaker loyal to the populist cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

Iraq’s ambassador to Moscow, Haidar Mansour Hadi, went further saying that Iraq “does not want a new devastating war in the region.” He told a press conference in Moscow this past week, “Iraq is a sovereign nation. We will not let [the US] use our territory,” he said. Other comments by Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi agreed. Other MPs called for a timetable for complete US troop withdrawal.

Then a motion was introduced demanding war reparations from the US and Israel for using internationally banned weapons while destroying Iraq for seventeen years and somehow failing to find those “weapons of mass destruction.”

As Iraq/ Iran economic ties continue to strengthen, with Iraq recently signing on for billions of cubic meters of Iranian natural gas, the shift towards Russian influence– an influence that prefers peace- was certified as Iraq sent a delegation to Moscow to negotiate the purchase of the Russian S-400 anti-aircraft system.

To this massive show of pending democracy and rapidly rising Iraqi nationalism, US Army spokesman, Colonel Ryan Dillon, provided the kind of delusion only the Zio-American military is known for, saying,

Our continued presence in Iraq will be conditions-based, proportional to need, in coordination with and by the approval of the Iraqi government.”

Good luck with that.

US influence in Iraq came to a possible conclusion this past Saturday, May 18, 2019, when it was reported that the Iraqi parliament would vote on a bill compelling the invaders to leave. Speaking about the vote on the draft bill, Karim Alivi, a member of the Iraqi parliament’s national security and defense committee, said on Thursday that the country’s two biggest parliamentary factions — the Sairoon bloc, led by Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, and the Fatah alliance, headed by secretary general of the Badr Organization, Hadi al-Ameri — supported the bill.

Strangely, Saturday’s result has not made it to the media as yet, and American meddling would be a safe guess as to the delay, but the fact that this bill would certainly have passed strongly shows that Iraq well understands the weakness of the American bully: Iraq’s own US militarily imposed democracy.

Iraq shares a common border with Iran that the US must have for any ground war. Both countries also share a similar religious demographic where Shia is predominant and the plurality of cultures substantially similar and previously living in harmony. Both also share a very deep seeded and deserved hatred of Zio- America. Muqtada al-Sadr, who, after coming out first in the 2018 Iraqi elections, is similar to Hizbullah’s Hassan Nasrallah in his religious and military influence within the well trained and various Shia militias. He is firmly aligned with Iran as is Fattah Alliance. Both detest Zio- America.

A ground invasion needs a common and safe border. Without Iraq, this strategic problem for US forces becomes complete. The other countries also with borders with Iran are Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Turkey, Afghanistan and Pakistan. All have several good reasons that they will not, or cannot, be used for ground forces.

With former Armenian President Robert Kocharian under arrest in the aftermath of the massive anti-government 2018 protests, Bolton can check that one off the list first. Azerbaijan is mere months behind the example next door in Armenia, with protests increasing and indicating a change towards eastern winds. Regardless, Azerbaijan, like Turkmenistan, is an oil producing nation and as such is firmly aligned economically with Russia. Political allegiance seems obvious since US influence is limited in all three countries to blindly ignoring the massive additional corruption and human rights violations by Presidents Ilham Aliyev and Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow.

However, Russian economic influence pays in cash. Oil under Russian control is the lifeblood of both of these countries. Recent developments and new international contracts with Russia clearly show whom these leaders are actually listening to.

Turkey would appear to be firmly shifting into Russian influence. A NATO member in name only. Ever since he shot down his first- and last- Russian fighter jet, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has thumbed his nose at the Americans. Recently he refused to succumb to pressure and will receive Iranian oil and, in July, the Russian S-400 anti-aircraft/missile system. This is important since there is zero chance Putin will relinquish command and control or see them missiles used against Russian armaments. Now, Erdogan is considering replacing his purchase of thirty US F-35s with the far superior Russian SU- 57 and a few S-500s for good measure.

Economically, America did all it could to stop the Turk Stream gas pipeline installed by Russia’s Gazprom, that runs through Turkey to eastern Europe and will provide $billions to Erdogan and Turkey. It will commence operation this year. Erdogan continues to purchase Iranian oil and to call for Arab nations to come together against US invasion in Iran. This week, Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar renewed Turkey’s resolve, saying his country is preparing for potential American sanctions as a deadline reportedly set by the US for Ankara to cancel the S-400 arms deal with Russia or face penalties draws near.

So, Turkey is out for both a ground war and an air war since the effectiveness of all those S-400’s might be put to good use if America was to launch from naval positions in the Mediterranean. Attacking from the Black Sea is out since it is ringed by countries under Russo/ Sino influence and any attack on Iran will have to illegally cross national airspace aligned with countries preferring the Russo/ Sino alliance that favours peace. An unprovoked attack would leave the US fleet surrounded with the only safe harbours in Romania and Ukraine. Ships move much slower than missiles.

Afghanistan is out, as the Taliban are winning. Considering recent peace talks from which they walked out and next slaughtered a police station near the western border with Iran, they have already won. Add the difficult terrain near the Iranian border and a ground invasion is very unlikely

Although new Pakistani President Imran Khan has all the power and authority of a primary school crossing guard, the real power within the Pakistani military, the ISI, is more than tired of American influence. ISI has propagated the Taliban for years and often gave refuge to Afghan anti-US forces allowing them to use their common border for cover. Although in the past ISI has been utterly mercenary in its very duplicitous- at least- foreign allegiances, after a decade of US drone strikes on innocent Pakistanis, the chance of ground-based forces being allowed is very doubtful. Like Afghanistan terrain also increases this unlikelihood.

Considerations as to terrain and location for a ground war and the resulting failure of not doing so was shown to Israel previously when, in 2006 Hizbullah virtually obliterated its ground attack, heavy armour and battle tanks in the hills of southern Lebanon. In further cautionary detail, this failure cost PM Ehud Olmert his job.

For the Russo/Sino pact nations, or those leaning in their direction, the definition of national foreign interest is no longer military, it is economic. Those with resources and therefore bright futures within the expanding philosophy and economic offerings of the Russo/ Sino pact have little use any longer for the “Sorrows of Empire.” These nation’s leaders, if nothing more than to line their own pockets, have had a very natural epiphany: War…is not, for them, profitable.

For Iran, the geographic, economic and therefore geo-political ring of defensive nations is made complete by Syria, Lebanon and Iraq. Syria, like Iraq, has every reason to despise the Americans and similar reasons to embrace Iran, Russia, China and border neighbour Lebanon. Syria now has its own Russian S-300 system which is already bringing down Israeli missiles. It is surprising that Lebanon has not requested a few S-300s of their own.

No one knows what Hizbullah has up its sleeve, but it has been enough to keep the Israelis at bay. Combined with a currently more prepared Lebanese army, Lebanon under the direction of Nasrallah is a formidable nation for its size. Ask Israel.

Lebanon and Syria also take away the chance of a ground-based attack, leaving the US Marines and Army to stare longingly across the Persian Gulf open waters from Saudi Arabia or one of its too few and militarily insignificant allies in the southern Gulf region.

Friendly airspace will also be vastly limited, so also gone will be the tactical element of surprise of any incoming attack. The reality of this defensive ring of nations means that US military options will be severely limited. The lack of a ground invasion threat and the element of surprise will allow Iranian defences to prioritize and therefore be dramatically more effective. As shown in a previous article, The Return of the Madness of M.A.D, Iran like Russia and China, after forty years of US/ Israeli threats, has developed new weapons and military capabilities, that combined with tactics will make any direct aggression towards it by American forces a fair fight.

If the US launches a war it will go it alone except for the few remaining US lapdogs like the UK, France, Germany and Australia, but with anti-US emotions running as wild across the EU as in the southern Caspian nations, the support of these Zionist influenced EU leaders is not necessarily guaranteed.

Regardless, a lengthy public ramp-up to stage military assets for an attack by the US will be seen by the vast majority of the world- and Iran- as an unprovoked act of war. Certainly at absolute minimum Iran will close the Straits of Hormuz, throwing the price of oil skyrocketing and world economies into very shaky waters. World capitalist leaders will not be happy. Without a friendly landing point for ground troops, the US will either have to abandon this strategy in favour of an air war or see piles of body bags of US servicemen sacrificed to Israeli inspired hegemony come home by the thousands just months before the ’20 primary season. If this is not military and economic suicide, it is certainly political.

Air war will likely see a similar disaster. With avenues of attack severely restricted, obvious targets such as Iran’s non-military nuclear program and major infrastructure will be thus more easily defended and the likelihood of the deaths of US airmen similarly increased.

In terms of Naval power, Bolton would have only the Mediterranean as a launch pad, since using the Black Sea to initiate war will see the US fleet virtually surrounded by nations aligned with the Russo/ Sino pact. Naval forces, it should be recalled, are, due to modern anti-ship technologies and weapons, now the sitting ducks of blusterous diplomacy. A hot naval war in the Persian Gulf, like a ground war, will leave a US death toll far worse than the American public has witnessed in their lifetimes and the US navy in tatters.

Trump is already reportedly seething that his machismo has been tarnished by Bolton and Pompeo’s false assurances of an easy overthrow of Maduro in Venezuela. With too many top generals getting jumpy about him initiating a hot war with Iraq, Bolton’s stock in trade-war is waning. Trump basks in being the American bully personified, but he and his ego will not stand for being exposed as weak. Remaining as president is necessary to stoke his shallow character. When Trump’s limited political intelligence wakes up to the facts that his Zio masters want a war with Iran more than they want him as president, and that these forces can easily replace him with a Biden, Harris, Bernie or Warren political prostitute instead, even America’s marmalade Messiah, will lose the flavor of his master’s blood lust for war.

In two excellent articles in Asia times by Pepe Escobar, he details the plethora of projects, agreements, and cooperation that are taking place from Asia to the Mid-East to the Baltics. Lead by Russia and China this very quickly developing Russo/ Sino pact of economic opportunity and its intentions of “soft power” collectively spell doom for Zio-America’s only remaining tactics of influence: military intervention. States, Escobar:

We should know by now that the heart of the 21stCentury Great Game is the myriad layers of the battle between the United States and the partnership of Russia and China. The long game indicates Russia and China will break down language and cultural barriers to lead Eurasian integration against American economic hegemony backed by military might.”

The remaining civilized world, that which understands the expanding world threat of Zio-America, can rest easy. Under the direction of this new Russo/ Sino influence, without Iraq, the US will not launch a war on Iran.

This growing Axis of Sanity surrounds Iran geographically and empathetically, but more importantly, economically. This economy, as clearly stated by both Putin and Xi, does not benefit from any further wars of American aggression. In this new allegiance to future riches, it is Russian and China that will call the shots and a shooting war involving their new client nations will not be sanctioned from the top.

However, to Putin, Xi and this Axis of Sanity: If American wishes to continue to bankrupt itself by ineffective military adventures of Israel’s making, rather than fix its own nation that is in societal decline and desiccated after decades of increasing Zionist control, well…

That’s just good for business!

Ed. Note: In the interest of keeping track of the facts, and trying to apportion the blame in the Ukraine debacle, we re-posting an article from2019 by the Italian journalist Murizio Blonded dealing with the events of 2014.

Well before 2014, the Russian side obviously made huge miscalculations when Lenin and later Khrushchev, for misplaced political calculations, assigned the Donbas and Crimea to the Ukraine gubernatorial province – not thinking of the possible consequences down the road. But the Russians seem to have swallowed their pride and accepted the loss, which was somewhat attenuated by certain leasing arrangements with Ukraine.

But here comes the United States who, in its hubris, thought they could corner a wounded animal and actually take possession of the historically Russian outposts in Crimea.  The coup in Kiev in 2014 was prepared in order to enable the US 7^th Fleet, in the Mediterranean, to rapidly cross the seas and install itself in Russia’s critical military defense fortifications of Crimea. – An outright act of war, to which Putin’s team responded magisterially, thus avoiding a nuclear war. 

It was the United States who, not satisfied with the attempted barbarian attack, continued to supply the helpless Ukrainians with arms, munitions, intelligence, training, money, and political cover to continue their assaults on Russian-ethnic areas. Thus, it is 100% the United States who is the criminal party here.

Unfortunately, after some initial successes by the Ukrainians, in the end this resulted in a total loss for the naïve Ukrainians: loss of territory, loss of its best men, economic destruction, and almost the loss of statehood. And now, the same United States, just like in Vietnam and Afghanistan, got tired of accepting their own losses and the Ukrainian disaster, and in utterly hypocritical… (more than hypocritical) is now calling on Ukraine to just accept this historical disaster and feed their still-warm corpses to the wolves.

What makes this even more of a nightmare is that what used to be a defeated Russia on the shores of the Black Sea, prior to 2014, these events have empowered Russia to go further and eye territories beyond their wildest dreams – to take over Odessa, Transdnistria, Moldova, etc. Remember Lavrov’s sinister words about their claim to Moldova – part of the Romanian national body since time immemorial, speaking 100% the Romanian language, who want to re-align with its Mother nation. The same holds for Georgia, Armenia, and the Baltic states: small but historically independent principalities/nations who do not want to be part of the Imperial Russia. And who is going to defend them all? The bankrupt Trumptards? – No. Of course not.

This is not about peace. This is about the U.S. owing many apologies and huge reparations, to the poor and deceived Ukrainians rather than stealing the last resources of a nation they led into near-fatal error.

***********************************
Source: Dialog UA

Translated by Algora Publishing

Italian journalist Maurizio Blondet says that the events of the Ukrainian Maidan were intended to enable the United States to take control of Crimea and to kick out the Russian Black Sea Fleet.

“The coup d’etat perpetrated in Kiev in February in 2014 had a specific goal: to neutralize the Russian Black Sea Fleet based in Sevastopol and replace it with the United States Navy,” – writes Maurizio Blondet in an article published on the website www.effedieffe.com.

“On 22 February, the day when Yanukovych was removed from power, the American carrier strike group quickly entered the Black Sea through the Bosporus Strait. This is the fleet that was supposed to take the place of the Russian Black Sea Fleet based in Crimea. Secret Russian sources tell us just how grave a threat this was to the vital interests of Moscow, making it clear why Putin was quick to take the Crimea peninsula and declare it Russian. He had irrefutable evidence that the coup perpetrated in Kiev in February 2014 had a specific goal: to neutralize the Russian Black Sea Fleet based in Sevastopol, and replace it with a US fleet. On February 18, 2014, the Ukrainian parliament was occupied by armed activists of the “Svoboda” Party and the Right Sector. On February 22, President Yanukovych was forced to leave Kiev, as pro-Western forces took power.

The journalist also claims that the SBU head Valentyn Nalyvaychenko is a citizen of the United States.

“At the same time, Valentin Nalyvaychenko was appointed head of the Secret Services of Ukraine (SBU). Who is he? An American citizen,” – the article says.

The journalist also writes that on February 22, the day Yanukovych fled, a group of American warships entered the Black Sea.

“Of course,” on February 13, “just by chance” one of the four American naval groups, led by the aircraft carrier George Bush (CSG-2), left the naval base in Norfolk and headed for the Aegean Sea. The George H. W. Bush has a displacement of 102,000 tons; it has 90 fixed wing aircraft and helicopters on board. It is accompanied by 16 warships, including the cruiser USS Philippine Sea, the destroyers Truxtun and Roosevelt, and three nuclear submarines. February 22, the day when Yanukovych was removed from power, the American carrier strike group quickly entered the Black Sea through the Bosporus Strait. This was a direct violation of the Treaty of Montreux (1936), which only permits warships up to 45,000 tons to pass through the Dardanelles. But, as reported by the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet, citing a source from the Ministry of War in Turkey, authorities secretly gave permission for the passage of the valiant American fleet. This was fleet that was intended to take the place of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in the naval bases of Crimea. Of course, it was expected that the Crimea would “choose democracy” and would be happy to greet the stars and stripes navy. However, crowds of people took to the streets of Sevastopol, and in a couple of days, the siege of the Parliament of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea drove out Prime Minister Anatoly Mogilev, who had declared his loyalty to the putschists in Kiev (despite the fact that he had bought his position from Yanukovych, having given him a luxury villa in Yalta). Sergei Aksenov, leader of the pro-Russian forces, was chosen in place of Mogilev.

“On 6 March, the parliament of an autonomous Crimea declared its refusal to submit to Kiev and its intention to hold a referendum on March 16 on the reunification of the Crimea with the Russian motherland. That messed up the American plans,” – writes Italian journalist.

According to Maurizio Blondet, after this the initial order received by the aircraft carrier was canceled and they headed off in the direction of Turkey.

“On March 5, the initial instruction received by the aircraft carrier was canceled. They were given a new order – to go from the Greek city of Piraeus to Antalya, to go to the Turkish naval base and wait there. Only the destroyers USS Truxtun, USS Donald Cook and the frigate USS Taylor were sent to explore the shores of Northern Crimea from 7 to 22 March under the pretext of joint exercises with Bulgaria and Romania. The Russian Air Force announced through the media that the USS Donald Cook had come to disrupt the antennas associated with the Space Center for the Black Sea fleet and a network of ELINT military satellites working in the electromagnetic spectrum. This sophisticated modern system allows Crimea to receive data from the electronic surveillance radar and navigation systems of the American Navy, the onboard aircraft, and launch vehicles. Russian military planes had to block this action by the Cook. Two Su-24MRs circled the American ship eleven times (!) at the lowest possible altitude, using an onboard blocking system at frequencies of 12-18 Hz to neutralize the US cruiser radar. In addition, the Russian special services were sure that six commando groups, of 16 people each, were ready to swim underwater, undetected, to the coast in order to carry out acts of sabotage in the Crimea and create an atmosphere of panic among the local population. Such actions might include explosions on public transportation during rush hour, undermining government buildings, etc. Injecting fear and terror on the eve of the referendum would mean fewer people would go out to vote, so the results would be invalidated. To prevent such actions, “Russian exercised a strong, tight control.” In fact, one of the Crimean websites ran a story about the capture of some commandos from NATO countries, as was also indicated by the fact that Natalia Poklonskaya, the Prosecutor General of Crimea, had urgently requested translators from the language of one of the NATO countries that bordered on Ukraine and had access to the sea. In our understanding, the references to a “treacherous neighbor” meant Romania.

The journalist says that after the Crimean referendum, the U.S. fleet found that its orders had been rescinded.

“Based on the results of the referendum in Crimea (83% of the total population voted, and 99.7% of those who voted opted for Russia), the American fleet led by the aircraft carrier George Bush was ordered to cut short its mission, left the Aegean Sea and went to Bahrain. Everyone understands that the Russian military base in Sevastopol is of the utmost importance. In confirmation of this, we see the recent modernization of the Black Sea Fleet, which increased its line-up to 20 modern ships, including six submarines, and missile carrier frigates specializing in defense and in blocking the enemy in the electronic field, as well as the newest Mistral class helicopters, built in a French shipyard. The Navy has a large group of rapid response troops consisting of paratroopers and marines. They are supported by the fourth division and air defense. In addition they have a separate air cargo fleet, consisting of 135 aircraft of the AN-22, AN-124, Il-76MD and An-12 classes, that can transport 80,000 soldiers of the 49th and 58th military corps. This is a rapid reaction force, directly subordinate to the Black Sea Fleet, and it has a single goal – to protect against terrorism in the Mediterranean basin, East Africa and the Middle East up to the Persian Gulf. But even more important is the invisible, or almost invisible, part of the fleet. This is the Center for Space Flight Management, which has been in existence since Soviet times. Its history includes launching the Salyut, Soyuz, Apollo-Soyuz and moon rover spaceships. Today the Space Center receives data from radar-missile systems of the Voronezh-M type (within 6,000 km.), in Lekhtusi village in the Leningrad region, in Pionersk, in the Kaliningrad region, and in the city of Armavir. The center receives information from satellite-based early warning systems (ILCs / K, capable of detecting missile launches of any type – cruise as well as ballistic). Since this center is a serious obstacle to U.S. hegemony and expansion towards Central Asia, damaging this system or completely destroying it is one of the Pentagon’s main goals.

At the end of the article, Maurizio Blondet draws the following conclusion: “Based on the foregoing, it seems to us that a coup d’etat in Kiev to bring to power a “democratic” puppet government had as its primary objective the elimination of the Space Center. Ukraine’s entry into NATO was a distinctly secondary objective. With the help of the Ukrainian presidential elections and the strengthening of the “democratic” government, the Pentagon hoped to force Putin to abandon the military base in the Crimea in order to make it later into an American base. But in their haste the Americans made a mistake. Thinking they had the situation under control, they launched a whole squadron of reconnaissance drones in Dnepropetrovsk prematurely. Those drone flights over the territory of Crimea on the eve of the referendum were open to the Russian side, who were able to listen in on the plans of the United States. ”

https://www.dialog.ua/news/16232_1409670244

Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

While the crazed and corrupt people who comprise the Democratic Party and US print and TV media continue to insist that Russiagate is real, a very real threat is emerging in Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran. The threat arises from the fact that Washington has taught each country to have no trust in America’s veracity. The governments of the four countries have learned that everything Washington says is a lie.

Moreover, the countries have learned that Washington does not accept their sovereignty and objects to their existence.Each of the four countries has experienced sanctions designed to overthrow their governments or cause them to submit to Washington’s will.

Russia long ago saw through Washington’s disingenuous claim that the missile ring that Washington has arrayed around Russia is defensive and directed against (non-existent) Iranian missiles.Putin has said many times that the “defensive” missiles can easily and quickly be converted into nuclear armed offensive missiles that leave Russia no response time. I have always been amazed at the utter stupidity of the Polish and Romanian governments for accepting these American missiles. No doubt the Polish and Romanian officials were paid handsome bribes, but money is no good to a dead person. You can bet your life that the Russians are not going to permit such operable weapons to be on Russian borders during a time of high tensions that exists today between the West and Russia.

Not content with this reckless provocation of Russia, the dumbshits that comprise the US government have announced a program to put weapons in space that can neutralize Russia and China’s nuclear deterrent. This reckless and irresponsible plan did not go unnoticed in Russia. Lieutenant General Viktor Poznikhir, Deputy Chief of the Russian General Staff Operative Command, declared last week that Washington’s “on-start interception” program reveals that Washington is preparing a preemptive nuclear attack on Russia and China. You can bet your life that Russia and China are not going to sit there and wait for Washington’s attack, expecially as Russia has coming into deployment hypersonic missiles incapable of interception by any known or deployed means.

What Washington and its corrupt European vassals are doing is preparing the grave for the Western world, a good riddance as far as the rest of the world is concerned.

In the US self-interested political propaganda has succeeded in crowding out all attention to real issues, such as mass displacement of jobs by robotics, global warming whatever the cause, and the rising risk of nuclear war. When the rest of the world looks at the West, it sees an insane asylum in which the two greatest threats to American national security are said to be Venezuela and a Russian agent in the Oval Office.

It is impossible for anyone to take a country this silly seriously. Consequently, American power is collapsing, to everyone else’s relief. Even Washington’s well paid puppets in Germany, Britain, and France are showing signs of independence that have not been seen since the days of Charles DeGaulle.

The Russians, Chinese, Iranians, and North Koreans know that they are dealing with fools, and they are not going to take any chances. They know that no agreement with America means anything and that Washington speaks only with a forked tongue.

Washington is going to be increasingly frustrated abroad as willingness to cooperate with the insane asylum vanishes. The consequence will be increasing tyranny at home.

Russia has launched a new submarine that will carry underwater nuclear torpedoes capable of devastating enemy coastlines with a tsunami wave up to 500 meters (1,600 ft) that can leave behind radioactive isotopes, according to NBC News and US-Govt. funded outlet RFE/RL.

Oleg Kuleshov/TASS

The U.S. intelligence agencies estimate Status-6 will carry a multi-megaton thermonuclear bomb payload. For comparisons’ sake the bomb dropped on Hiroshima was 16 kilotons, several orders of magnitude smaller. A one megaton bomb is the equivalent of 1,000 kilotons—one one million tons of TNT. Reports from Russia indicate the bomb could be as large as 100 megatons.

Status-6 is designed to attack enemy coastal cities, ports, shipyards, and naval bases. Once Status-6 arrives at its destination it detonates the bomb, causing an enormous amount of damage through blast and heat. A 100 megaton bomb would generate artificial tsunamis, carrying the destruction far inshore. –Popular Mechanics

Flood model from wave of 100 Mt explosion near New York City. Clawpack flood modelling (University of Washington, Norwegian Defence Research Establishment and etc.)

Russian President Vladimir Putin oversaw the launch of the Project 09852 special-purpose nuclear-powered submarine Belgorod at the Sevmash Shipyard in Northern Russia on Tuesday, according to Russian state news agency TASS. Of note, the submarine is not yet operational. Construction will be completed afloat, according to TASS, which predicts that the submarine will begin sea trials in 2020, after which it will be delivered to the Russian navy at the end of that year.

A Russian defense industry source told TASS that the Belgorod will carry up to six strategic underwater drones, which can travel up to 54 knots (62 mph) underwater and “avoid all acoustic tracking devices and other traps,” according to Popular Mechanics.

The underwater drone later named Poseidon was unveiled by Russian President Vladimir Putin in his State-of-the-Nation Address to the Federal Assembly on March 1, 2018. The Russian leader said that Russia had already developed drones capable of moving at very large depths and to an intercontinental distance at a speed multiply exceeding the speed of submarines, the most advanced torpedoes and all types of surface ships. As the Russian president said, these drones can be armed with conventional or nuclear munitions, which will allow them to strike a broad range of targets. The Poseidon drone will feature an unlimited operating range and an operational depth of over 1 km. –TASS

In 2015, the Poseidon’s existence was ‘leaked’ during a state-run Channel One report, which noted that it would be launched from the Belgorod and 09851 Khabarovsk series submarines.

Popular Mechanics also notes that the Poseidon drones could be armed with a “salted bomb” which “salts the Earth” with the dangerous isotope Cobalt-60.

In January, TASS reported that the Russian navy plans to procure over 30 Poseidon drones, deployed on at least four submarines.

WAYNE MADSEN in Strategic-Culture

Showing that he is adopting the neoconservative playbook every day he remains in office, Donald Trump handed the neocons a major win when he appointed Iran-contra scandal felon Elliott Abrams as his special envoy on Venezuela. Abrams pleaded guilty in 1991 to two counts of withholding information on the secret sale of US weapons for cash to help illegally supply weapons to the Nicaraguan right-wing contras, who were battling against the government of President Daniel Ortega. Abrams would have headed to a federal prison, but President George H. W. Bush, an unindicted co-conspirator in the scandal, issued pardons to Abrams and his five fellow conspirators – former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, former National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane, and former Central Intelligence Agency officials Alan Fiers, Duane “Dewey” Clarridge, and Clair George – on Christmas Eve 1991, during the final weeks of Bush’s lame duck administration.

Abrams escaped being charged with more serious crimes by Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh because he cut a last-minute deal with federal prosecutors. Trump, who has made no secret of his disdain for cooperating federal witnesses, would have normally called Abrams a “rat,” a gangster term meaning informant. The man who helped engineer the pardons for Abrams and his five convicted friends was none other than Bush’s Attorney General, William Barr, who has just been sworn in as Trump’s Attorney General. Trump, who is always decrying the presence of the “deep state” that thwarts his very move, has become the chief guardian of that entity.

During a recent hearing of the US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, newly-minted congresswoman Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota, reminded her colleagues and the world about the sordid background of Abrams.

Omar zeroed in on Abrams’s criminal history:

“Mr. Abrams, in 1991 you pleaded guilty to two counts of withholding information from Congress regarding the Iran-Contra affair, for which you were later pardoned by President George H.W. Bush. I fail to understand why members of this committee or the American people should find any testimony you give today to be truthful.”

Abrams, as is the nature of neocons, refused to respond to Omar and cited her comments as “personal attacks.”

Abrams’s and his fellow criminals’ use of mercenaries and “death squads” to conduct secret wars in Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala during the Ronald Reagan administration in the 1980s has made a re-entrance under Trump. Abrams was brought on board by neocons like National Security Adviser John Bolton, Vice President Mike Pence, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to oversee a US military build-up in Colombia, said to be 5000 US troops, to support Venezuelan paramilitary and military efforts to topple President Nicolas Maduro. Abrams and Bolton are also believed to have retained the services of another unindicted conspirator in the Iran-contra affair, Michael Ledeen, a colleague of the disgraced and convicted former Trump National Security Adviser, retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn. Ledeen and Flynn co-authored a book titled, “The Field of Fight: How We Can Win the Global War Against Radical Islam and its Allies.” The book contains nothing more than the standard neocon tripe one might expect from the likes of Ledeen.

An official investigation of the Iran-contra scandal by the late Republican Senator John Tower of Texas concluded that Abrams’s and Ledeen’s friend, Iranian-Jewish middleman Manucher Ghorbanifar, a long-time Mossad asset and well-known prevaricator, was extremely instrumental in establishing the back-channel arms deals with Iran. Ghorbanifar has long been on the CIA “burn list” as an untrustworthy charlatan, along with others in the Middle East of similar sketchy credentials, including the Iraq’s Ahmad Chalabi, Syria’s Farid “Frank” Ghadry, and Lebanon’s Samir “Sami” Geagea. These individuals, however, were warmly embraced by neocons like Abrams and his associates.

Abrams, whose links with Israeli intelligence has always been a point of consternation with US counter-intelligence officials, is part of an old cabal of right-wing anti-Soviet Democrats who coalesced around Senator Henry Jackson in the 1970s. Along with Abrams, this group of war hawks included Richard Perle, Frank Gaffney, William Kristol, Douglas Feith, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Abram Shulsky, and Paul Wolfowitz. Later, this group would have its fingerprints on major US foreign policy debacles, ranging from Nicaragua and Grenada to Lebanon, Iraq, and Libya. Later, in December 2000, these neocons managed to convince president-elect George W. Bush of the need to “democratize” the Middle East. That policy would later bring not democracy but disaster to the Arab Middle East and North Africa.

Abrams and his cronies will not stop with Venezuela. They have old scores to settle with Nicaraguan President Ortega. The initiation of “regime change” operations in Nicaragua, supported by the CIA and the US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) in Miami, have been ongoing for more than a year.

The Trump administration has already achieved a regime change victory of sorts in El Salvador. Nayib Bukele, the former mayor of San Salvador, who was expelled from the formerly-ruling left-wing Farabundo Marti National Liberation (FMLN) party and joined the right-wing GANA party, was recently elected president of El Salvador. Bukele has quickly re-aligned his country’s policies with those of the Trump administration. Bukele has referred to President Maduro of Venezuela as a “dictator.” He has also criticized the former FMLN government’s recognition of China and severance of diplomatic ties with Taiwan. It will be interesting to see how a sycophant like Bukele will politically survive as Trump continues to call hapless asylum-seeking migrants from his country, who seek residency in the United States, “rapists, gang monsters, murderers, and drug smugglers.”

Another country heading for a US-installed “banana republic” dictator is Haiti. President Jovenal Moise has seen rioting in the streets of Port-au-Prince as the US State Department removed all “non-essential” personnel from the country. Moise, whose country has received $2 billion in oil relief from Venezuela, to help offset rising fuel prices, has continued to support the Maduro government. However, at the US-run and neo-colonial artifice, the Organization of American States (OAS), Moise’s envoys have been under tremendous pressure to cut ties with Venezuela and recognize the US puppet Juan Guaido as Venezuelan president. Moise’s refusal to do so resulted in armed gangs hitting the streets of Port-au-Prince demanding Moise’s resignation. It is the same neocon “regime change” playbook being used in Venezuela and Nicaragua.

There will be similar attempts to replace pro-Maduro governments in his remaining allies in the region. These include Suriname, Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.

Abrams was also brought in as an adviser on Middle East policy in the George W. Bush administration. The carnage of Iraq is a stark testament to his record. In 2005, it was reported that two key Bush White House officials – Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliot Abrams – gave a “wink and a nod” for the assassinations by Israeli-paid operatives of three key Lebanese political figures seeking a rapprochement with Syria and Lebanese Hezbollah – Member of Parliament Elie Hobeika, former Lebanese Communist Party chief George Hawi, and former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

In 2008, a United Nations panel headed by former Canadian prosecutor Daniel Bellemare later concluded Hariri was assassinated by a “criminal network” and not by either Syrian and Lebanese intelligence or Lebanese Hezbollah as proffered by Abrams and his friends in Washington.

Representative Omar was spot on in questioning why Abrams, whose name is as disgraced as his two fellow conspirators – Oliver North and John Poindexter – whose criminal convictions were overturned on appeal, is working for the Trump administration on Venezuela. The answer is that the neocons, who can sense, like raptors, Trump’s political weakness, have filled the vacuum left by top-level vacancies in the administration.

In 1997, Ukraine and Russia concluded a Treaty of Friendship which entered into force in 1999. This document was supposed to be automatically renewed every 10 years unless it was denounced by one party or the other.

In October 2018, Ukraine decided to denounce this treaty. Then it organized the incident at Kerch. Furthermore, President Petro Poroshenko gave his administration the task of listing all the agreements concluded with Russia and identifying those that he should denounce.

One of the provisions of the Treaty of Friendship and its extension in 2003 provide that the Sea of Azov falls within the territorial waters of Russia and Ukraine. As such, warships cannot enter these waters without the authorization of both states. The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea 1982 does not apply in this case.

Once the treaty and its extension is repealed, the Azov Sea will be governed by international law, with the Ukrainian and Russian territorial waters as well as an internationalized part. As a consequence, Nato ships will no longer need Russia’s consent to enter.

This explains why Nato is involved in the preparation of the incident at Kerch.

Translation
Anoosha Boralessa

Paul Kaiser

Churchill remarked to Lord Boothby: ‘Germany’s unforgivable crime before the second world war was her attempt to extricate her economic power from the world’s trading system and to create her own exchange mechanism which would deny world finance its opportunity to profit.’ The quote is from the foreword to the second edition of Sydney Rogerson’s Propaganda in the Next War. Gerard Menuhin reproduces it in his Tell the Truth and Shame the Devil, page 85 of the print edition and page 86 of the PDF.

Authored by Andrei Akulov via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

The US announced its withdrawal from the INF Treaty without having an intermediate ground-based missile to deploy. It made arms control pundits wonder what triggered this decision. Even if the China threat were not exaggerated and Russia’s alleged “treaty violations” were true, there would be no explanation for National Security Adviser John Bolton’s statement that the US was leaving the landmark agreement with no land-based intermediate range weapon of its own nearing operational status.

Picking up useful bits of information here and there is the best way to find answers to hard questions. It takes time but the effort pays off.

According to the US Naval institute (USNI), the Navy has set up a program office within its Strategic Systems Programs (SSP) to address the conventional prompt global strike mission handed by the Defense Department to the sea service. According to SSP Director Vice Adm. Johnny Wolfe, who spoke this month at the annual Naval Submarine League symposium, each service will field some sort of hypersonic capability to contribute to conventional prompt global strike.

“We have a program, we are funded, and we’re moving forward with that capability, which is going to be tremendous to allow our Navy to continue to have the access they need, whether it be from submarines or from surface ships,” the admiral noted.

The sea service is to spearhead the effort by developing the hypersonic glide body that all the services will use. The platforms are yet to be determined as the Navy is intentionally keeping its options open.

The idea is to have a booster going up to the upper atmosphere or outer space and a hypersonic glide vehicle able to maneuver while descending to defy air defenses and strike moving targets. With the Avangard operational, Russia is the only country to have such a weapon today.

Unlike the US Air Force, the Navy has been doing its research in high hush-hush mode during a number of years. The first conventional global strike missile test to collect data on hypersonic boost-glide technologies was conducted by the service on October 30, 2017. Initially, it was planned to be held till the end of 2016 but had to be postponed. The glider flew about 2,000 nautical miles (3,800 km) from the Hawaii to the Marshall Islands fired from a ground-based launcher. The $160 million test was a success. The Navy could eventually deploy the conventional strike system on either Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines that have been converted to launch cruise missiles (known as SSGNs) or Virginia-class attack submarines equipped the Virginia payload module.

The DOD budget request for FY2019 indicates that it will conduct a second flight test by the end of FY2020.The funding for the program goes to the Navy. The Congressional Research Service report says, “The funding for the program is expected to increase significantly, from a request for $278 million in FY2019 to a request for $478 million in FY2022, for a total of $1.9 billion between FY2019 and FY2022. This is more than twice the amount expected over a five-year period in the FY2018 budget request.”

If attack submarines can accommodate the weapon, US Navy’s destroyers and cruisers can do it too. One can imagine the number of sea-based PGS weapons in service when mass production process starts running smoothly.

Installed on Virginia–class boats, the missile will be excluded from the verification procedures in accordance with the New START Treaty. The weapon under consideration is a sea-based one. At first glance it has no relation to the INF Treaty but not so fast. The Defense Department said the Navy is responsible for a universal weapon to be used by all services, including the Army. The Hawaii missile was launched from land.

It’s worth to note that by announcing the plans to arm attack submarines with the new weapon the US military actually admits the violation of the INF Treaty because the Romania-based Aegis Ashore uses the same VLS Mk-41 launching pad as ships and submarines. If the PGS weapon is small enough for the MK-41 launcher, or the Virginia Payload Module, it can be installed on a mobile ground platform in open violation of the INF Treaty.

The range of 2,000 nautical miles allows the PGS system to cover most of Russia’s territory, reaching as far as the Arctic archipelago of Novaya Zemlya or the Siberian city of Omsk, about 2,700 km east from Moscow. Deployed in Japan, the land-based version of the weapon can also threaten China, provided Tokyo gave consent. On July 30, Japanese Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera announced a plan to deploy the Aegis Ashore missile-defense system by 2023. The military training grounds in the Akita and Yamaguchi prefectures are prospective sites.

This is a threat for China and Russia. With the Mk-41 used, one can never tell what missile is going to be launched – an interceptor or a prompt global strike missile reaching as far as Russian Primorski Krai (Primorye), the Kamchatka Peninsula where the Pacific Fleet SSBNs are based, and Krasnoyarsk, the third-largest city in Siberia, where Russia plans to deploy its new silo-based heavy ballistic Sarmat missiles. With all only land-based deployments in place, the entire Russian territory will be covered by US PGS weapons. Add to it the naval and aircraft-based PGS component. One can only imagine how strong will be the temptation to deliver a first strike to knock out Russia’s key infrastructure and strategic nuclear weapons sites, leaving the US strategic nuclear arsenal intact! The missile might have delivered a 2,000- pound payload over a 1,500-mile range, 80 with an accuracy of less than 5 meters. This would allow it to reach its target in less than 15 minutes. The payload is enough to fulfill the mission. True, the increased 2,000 nautical miles range will require a less powerful warhead but the US is working on a low-yield nuclear weapon.

As a result, the strategic balance will be tilted in US favor to give it the advantage of first conventional strike. Moscow will not watch idly. The weapons President Putin talked about in March were a response to US land- and air-based intermediate range advantage. Russia will do it again, if it needs to catch up. With the INF Treaty no longer valid, an unfettered arms race will start and there is no guarantee the US will be the winner. It has already started.