PEPE ESCOBAR—In the near future, the Avangard may be launched by the formidable Sarmat RS-28 intercontinental ballistic missile and reach Washington in a mere 15 minutes, flying in a cloud of plasma “like a meteorite” – even if the launch is from Russian territory. Serial production of Sarmat ICBMs starts in 2021. The Avangard simply cannot be intercepted by any existing system on the planet – and the US knows it. Here is General John Hyten, head of US Strategic Command: “We don’t have any defense that could deny the employment of such a weapon against us.”
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The US and its accomplices, especially Britain, spent most of the 20th and much of the 21st centuries trying to smother Soviet communism, and now Russia’s reemergence as an independent power. Churchill, an abject and unapologetic colonialist and imperialist strongly advised “the West” to strangle the “Bolshevik baby” in its cradle. The next decades saw cold and hot wars—including the Western-tolerated buildup of a huge German fascist army with the express purpose of having such force defeat and smash the hated communists. Even before the Second World War was finished, he was advising, with plenty of American interest, the notion the USSR should be invaded and nuked. The Anglo-Americans knew all along that Russia would not abide by Washington’s hegemonic ambitions, or its savage capitalism forever mentality.
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BRUCE DIXON—Briefly, we’re taught that Nazi Germany was just plain inexplicable evil, that this Hitler dude came to power with his Nazi party, they persecuted Jews, gypsies and dissidents, they conquered France and they menaced England but were stopped short when they lost the battle of Britain in the air. Eventually the US joined the war, invading North Africa, defeating the Nazis there, going on to fight the Germans in Italy, and eventually staging the D-Day invasion of France. They marched into Germany to finally defeat the Nazis and hanged a number of Nazi officials for war crimes and genocide at Nuremberg. The Russians, the Soviet Union at the time, we were taught, were sort of in the war too as allies but soon after the defeat of the Nazis they became enemies, and have been that ever since. Nearly all of that is horseshit.
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RUSLAN OSTASHKO—Do you remember the story with Gilad Shalit? He was a corporal of the Israel Defense Forces who on 25 June 2006, was captured by Hamas. To save their own soldier, the IDF started a military operation called “Summer Rains.” After the operation and other efforts did not succeed, after 5 years and 4 months, Israel exchanged Shalit for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners.
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FW ENGDAHL—The Washington-orchestrated coup d’etat in Ukraine in February, 2014 was explicitly aimed at driving a bloody and deep wedge between Russia and Germany. At the time, Ukraine was the prime energy pipeline link feeding the German industry with Russian gas. German exports of everything from machine tools to cars to high-speed locomotives to build the rapidly-recovering Russian economy was transforming the geopolitical balance of power in favor of an emerging German-Russian-centered Eurasia to the detriment of Washington.
