Category: THE PENTAGON-MEDIA COMPLEX

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Sergei Skripal: why would Russia want to kill this man after writing him off years ago as a traitor unworthy of further interest, and exchanging him for some of her own loyal spies? And why would Moscow choose a "signature" poison that anyone could trace to Russia? The incident, managed by Washington's lapdog Theresa May with all the requisite theatrics and disregard for international conventions, is clearly a Western fabrication, comparable in its cynicism and groundlessness to the Russiagate furor.

UK's Boris Johnson: A clown and provocateur not just unsuited for the job of FM, but "overwhelmingly" unsuited. This is the kind scum chosen to lead the British nation today. Hypocrites, criminals and morons, or all three.

As a consequence, Theresa May expels 23 Russian diplomats, who have to leave the UK within a week. Then came Boris Johnson, the Foreign Minister clown, also an abject liar. He said, no, he yelled, at his fellow parliamentarians that it was “overwhelmingly likely, that Putin personally ordered the spy attack.” This accusation out of nothing against the Russian President is way more than a deep breach in diplomatic behavior, it is a shameful insult. – And no evidence is provided. Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, in fact, said that Johnson’s personal attack on President Putin was “unforgivable”.

Not to miss out on the bashing theatre, UK Defense Secretary, Gavin Williamson, got even more insolent, Russia “should go away and shut up”. In response to all this demonizing Russia for an alleged crime, for which absolutely no proof has been provided, Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, said that the undiplomatic comments meant that the British authorities are nervous and have “something to hide,”. Lavrov also strongly objected, wanted to initiate a joint UK-Russia investigation into the case – is he dreaming? – and responded to a question of diplomatic retaliation, yes, that Russia will also expel UK diplomates ‘soon’.

There is no doubt that the UK acted as Washington’s poodle. In the course of this anti-Russia tirade, Trump twittered that he fully supported UK’s position. Indeed, the European puppets, Macron, Merkel, May and their chief, The Donald, signed a joint statement blaming Russia for the nerve gas attack on the former double agent, “There is no plausible alternative explanation than that Russia was to blame for the attack”. Bingo, that says it all. The presstitutes pick it up and airs it to the seven corners of this globe – and the western sheeple are brainwashed once again: The Russians did it.

Well we know that. But the real point I want to make is that Russia always reacts to such nonsensical and outright false accusations; Russia always responds, rejects of course the accusations but usually with lengthy explanations, and with suggestions on how to come to the truth – as if the UK and the west would give a shit about the truth – why are they doing that? Why are you, Russia, even responding?

That is a foolish sign of weakness. As if Russia was still believing in the goodness of the west, as if it just needed to be awakened. What Russia is doing, every time, not just in this Skripal case, but in every senseless and ruthless attack, accusations about cyber hacking, invading Ukraine, annexing Crimea, and not to speak about the never-ending saga of Russia-Gate, Russian meddling and hacking into the 2016 US Presidential elections, favoring Trump over Hillary. Everybody with half a brain knows it’s a load of crap. Even the FBI and CIA said that there was no evidence. So, why even respond? Why even try to undo the lies, convince the liars that they, Russia, are not culpable?

Every time the West notices Russia’s wanting to be a “good neighbor” – about which the west really couldn’t care less, Russia makes herself more vulnerable, more prone to be accused and attacked and more slandered.

Why does Russia not just break away from the west? Instead of trying to ‘belong’ to the west? Accept that you are not wanted in the west, that the west only wants to plunder your resources, your vast landmass, they want to provoke you into a war where there are no winners, a war that may destroy entire Mother Earth, but they, the Anglozionist handlers of Washington, dream that their elite will survive to eventually take over beautiful grand Russia. That’s what they want. The Bashing is a means towards that end. The more people are with them, the easier it is to launch an atrocious war.

The Skripal case is typical. The intensity with which this UK lie-propaganda has been launched is exemplary. It has brought all of halfwit Europe – and there is a lot of them – under the spell of Russia hating. Nobody can believe that May, Merkel, Macron are such blatant liars… that is beyond what they have been brought up with. A lifelong of lies pushed down their throats, squeezed into their brains. Even if something tells them – this is not quite correct, the force of comfort, not leaving their comfort zone- not questioning their own lives – is so strong that they rather cry for War, War against Russia, War against the eternal enemy of mankind. – I sadly remember in my youth in neutral Switzerland, the enemy always, but always came from the East. He was hiding behind the “Iron Curtain”.

The West is fabricating a new Iron Curtain. But while doing that, they don’t realize they are putting a noose around their own neck. Russia doesn’t need the west, but the west will soon be unable to survive without the East, the future is in the east – and Russia is an integral part of the East, of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), that encompasses half the world’s population and controls a third of the world’s economic output.

Mr. Putin, you don’t need to respond to insults from the west, because that’s what they are, abusive insults. The abject slander that Johnson boy threw at you is nothing but a miserable insult; you don’t need to respond to this behavior. You draw your consequences.

Dear President Putin, Dear Mr. Lavrov, Let them! Let them holler. Let them rot in their insanity. – Respond to the UK no longer with words but with deeds, with drastic deeds. Close their embassy. Give all embassy staff a week to vacate your country, then you abolish and eviscerate the embassy the same way the US abolished your consulates in Washington and San Francisco – a bit more than a year ago. Surely you have not forgotten. Then you give all Brits generously a month to pack up and leave your beautiful country (it can be done – that’s about what Washington is forcing its vassals around the globe to do with North Korean foreign laborers); block all trade with the UK (or with the entire West for that matter), block all western assets in Russia, because that’s the first thing the western plunderers will do, blocking Russian assets abroad. Stealing is in their blood.

Mr. Putin, You don’t need to respond to their miserable abusive attacks, slanders, lies. You and Russia are way above the level of this lowly western pack. Shut your relations to the west. You have China, the SCO, the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), Russia is part of the OBI – President Xi’s One Belt Initiative – the multi-trillion development thrives, emanating from China, connecting continents – Asia, Africa, Europe, South America – with infrastructure, trade, creating hundreds of millions of decent jobs, developing and promoting science and culture and providing hundreds of millions of people with a decent life.

What would the west do, if suddenly they had no enemy, because the enemy has decided to ignore them and take a nap? China will join you.

Everything else, responding, justifying, explaining, denying the most flagrant lies, trying to make them believe in the truth is not only a frustrating waste of time, it’s committing political suicide. You will never win. The west gives a hoot about the truth – they have proven that for the last two thousand years or more. And in all that time, not an iota of conscience has entered the west’s collective mind. The west cannot be trusted. Period.

The author’s warnings about NATO in exacerbating the probability of world war have been proven by the role played by this insidious organisation in the recent Western-manufactured wave of russophobia, which shows no signs of abatement.

The US continues to beef up the NATO air force and other branches.

By John Scales Avery

Violation of the UN Charter and the Nuremberg Principles

FIRST PUBLISHED ON MAY 26, 2014
Countercurrents.org
THIS IS A REPOST

In recent years, participation in NATO has made European countries accomplices in US efforts to achieve global hegemony by means of military force, in violation of international law, and especially in violation of the UN Charter, the Nuremberg Principles.

Former UN Assistant Secretary General Hans Christof von Sponeck used the following words to express his opinion that NATO now violates the UN Charter and international law: “In the 1949 North Atlantic Treaty, the Charter of the United Nations was declared to be NATO’s legally binding framework. However, the United-Nations monopoly of the use of force, especially as specified in Article 51 of the Charter, was no longer accepted according to the 1999 NATO doctrine. NATO’s territorial scope, until then limited to the Euro-Atlantic region, was expanded by its members to include the whole world”

Article 2 of the UN Charter requires that “All members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.” This requirement is somewhat qualified by Article 51, which says that “Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.”

Thus, in general, war is illegal under the UN Charter. Self-defense against an armed attack is permitted, but only for a limited time, until the Security Council has had time to act. The United Nations Charter does not permit the threat or use of force in preemptive wars, or to produce regime changes, or for so-called “democratization”, or for the domination of regions that are rich in oil. NATO must not be a party to the threat or use of force for such illegal purposes.

In 1946, the United Nations General Assembly unanimously affirmed “the principles of international law recognized by the Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal and the judgment of the Tribunal”. The General Assembly also established an International Law Commission to formalize the Nuremberg Principles. The result was a list that included Principles VI and VII, which are particularly important in the context of the illegality of NATO:

Principle VI: The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under international law:

a Crimes against peace: (I) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances; (ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (I).

b War crimes: Violations of the laws and customs of war which include, but are not limited to, murder, ill treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destructions of cities, towns or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity

c. Crimes against humanity: Atrocities and offenses, including but not limited to murder, extermination, deportation, imprisonment, torture, rape or other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds, whether or not in violation of the laws of the country where perpetrated

ci.
cii. Principle VII: Complicity in the commission of a crime against the peace, a war crime or a crime against humanity as set forth in Principle VI as a crime against international law.

Robert H. Jackson, who was the chief United States prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials, said that “To initiate a war of aggression is therefore not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime, differing from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”

Violation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty

At present, NATO’s nuclear weapons policies violate both the spirit and the text of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in several respects: Today there are an estimated 200 US nuclear weapons still in Europe The air forces of the nations in which they are based are regularly trained to deliver the US weapons. This “nuclear sharing”, as it is called, violates Articles I and II of the NPT, which forbid the transfer of nuclear weapons to non-nuclear-weapon states. It has been argued that the NPT would no longer be in force if a crisis arose, but there is nothing in the NPT saying that the treaty would not hold under all circumstances.

Article VI of the NPT requires states possessing nuclear weapon to get rid of them within a reasonable period of time. This article is violated by fact that NATO policy is guided by a Strategic Concept, which visualizes the continued use of nuclear weapons in the foreseeable future.’

The principle of no-first-use of nuclear weapons has been an extremely important safeguard over the years, but it is violated by present NATO policy, which permits the first-use of nuclear weapons in a wide variety of circumstances.

Must Europe really be dragged into a potentially catastrophic war with Russia?

At present the United States government is trying to force the European members of NATO to participate in aggressive operations in connection with the coup which it carried out in Ukraine. Europe must refuse. See the following link:

https://www.transcend.org/tms/2014/04/natos-aggression-against-russia-and-the-danger-of-war-in-europe/

The hubris, and reckless irresponsibility of the US government in risking a catastrophic war with Russia is almost beyond belief, but the intervention in Ukraine is only one in a long series of US interventions:

During the period from 1945 to the present, the US interfered, militarily or covertly, in the internal affairs of a large number of nations: China, 1945-49; Italy, 1947-48; Greece, 1947-49; Philippines, 1946-53; South Korea, 1945-53; Albania, 1949-53; Germany, 1950s; Iran, 1953; Guatemala, 1953-1990s; Middle East, 1956-58; Indonesia, 1957-58; British Guiana/Guyana, 1953-64; Vietnam, 1950-73; Cambodia, 1955-73; The Congo/Zaire, 1960-65; Brazil, 1961-64; Dominican Republic, 1963-66; Cuba, 1959-present; Indonesia, 1965; Chile, 1964-73; Greece, 1964-74; East Timor, 1975-present; Nicaragua, 1978-89; Grenada, 1979-84; Libya, 1981-89; Panama, 1989; Iraq, 1990-present; Afghanistan 1979-92; El Salvador, 1980-92; Haiti, 1987-94; Yugoslavia, 1999; and Afghanistan, 2001-present, Syria, 2013-present. Egypt, 2013-present.

Most of these interventions were explained to the American people as being necessary to combat communism (or more recently, terrorism), but an underlying motive was undoubtedly the desire of the ruling oligarchy to put in place governments and laws that would be favorable to the economic interests of the US and its allies. Also, the military-industrial complex needs justification for the incredibly bloated military budgets that drain desperately needed resources from social and environmental projects.

Do the people of Europe really want to participate in the madness of aggression against Russia? Of course not! What about European leaders? Why don’t they follow the will of the people and free Europe from bondage to the United States? Have our leaders been bribed? Or have they been blackmailed through personal secrets, discovered by the long arm of NSA spying?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John Avery received a B.Sc. in theoretical physics from MIT and an M.Sc. from the University of Chicago. He later studied theoretical chemistry at the University of London, and was awarded a Ph.D. there in 1965. He is now Lektor Emeritus, Associate Professor, at the Department of Chemistry, University of Copenhagen. Fellowships, memberships in societies: Since 1990 he has been the Contact Person in Denmark for Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs. In 1995, this group received the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts. He was the Member of the Danish Peace Commission of 1998. Technical Advisor, World Health Organization, Regional Office for Europe (1988- 1997). Chairman of the Danish Peace Academy, April 2004. http://www.fredsakademiet.dk/ordbog/aord/a220.htm. He can be reached at avery.john.s@gmail.com

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Newsletter 32: My new NGO Book is Out!
Manifest Destiny: Democracy as Cognitive Dissonance

Dear Readers,

Click on book to buy on Amazon

For this installment of my gratis newsletter I’m very pleased to tell you my newest book has just been published and is available on Amazon. I am happy to report that within only days it has climbed on Amazon rankings near the top in certain categories. What I treat in the book, Manifest Destiny: Democracy as Cognitive Dissonance, is the hidden role of Washington-backed NGOs in advancing under the banner of democracy the select taking down of governments not willing to play to the Washington agenda. Over the past thirty years and more Washington intelligence agencies have refined subtle techniques to destroy almost any serious opposition government using NGOs such as NED, Open Society Foundations, Freedom House, Albert Einstein Institution. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the devastating Yeltsin years of the 1990s, the war to destroy Yugoslavia, and the failed attempt at Tiananmen Square in China in 1989 were all orchestrated events steered by the CIA and US State Department. If you’re interested in the deeper background to recent world events including the Arab Spring, the war in Syria, the US-backed coup in Ukraine, you will find the book well worth your time and investment. Today I want to share with you the Foreword along with a detailed Table of Contents to give you an idea of what’s inside. I am convinced that you will find the book well worth buying and reading.

I also want to encourage you to consider making a support contribution at the donate button at the top of my website, www.williamengdahl.com, so that I am able to continue offering my content such as presented there without cost. I want to thank those of you as well who have already chosen to offer your financial support.

Thank you again for your interest, F. William Engdahl
Frankfurt, Germany

Destroying Nations in the Name of Democracy

George Orwell (b. Eric Blair) at the BBC. A disenchanted anarcho-syndicalist with Trotskyist sympathies, in 1948 he wrongly envisioned the Soviet Union as the highest form of totalitarianism. We can only wonder if he would have fallen for the fraud perpetrated by the Western machinery of disinformation in our time.

In 1945, British writer and social critic George Orwell wrote a book titled 1984 on the theme of a fictional totalitarian society. The book, one of the most successful in publishing history, relates the aftermath of an atomic world war in which the world is partitioned into three states. One state, Oceania, whose capital is London, is ruled by an English Socialist Party that has total control over all its citizens, especially over their minds. The central mind-control program used to keep its citizens abject and obedient mind slaves was referred to as doublethink.

In doublethink, subjects were submitted to two contradictory concepts, both of which they must accept as correct simultaneously, termed by psychologists cognitive dissonance. So, although Oceania is constantly at war, its citizens act as if there is peace too. The essence of the doublethink is summarized by Orwell at the beginning of the novel:

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.i

In the following work I chronicle what, in truth, is an adaptation of Orwell’s doublethink which might be termed democracy is tyranny. It’s the chronicle of one of the most destructive and one of the most effective operations by the intelligence services of any modern state, including that of Stalin’s Soviet Union or even Hitler’s Goebbels-steered Third Reich. It’s the chronicle of a vast project developed by US intelligence services over decades, going back to the May 1968 CIA student strikes that brought down French President Charles de Gaulle, a determined foe of American global domination.

The Cold War between the countries of NATO and those allied to the Soviet Union lasted nearly a half century. Finally, exhausted and economically in dire straits, the Soviet Union, under Mikhail Gorbachev, raised a white flag of surrender in November 1989, as Moscow let the Berlin Wall fall. The wall had become the symbol of what Winston Churchill, in his famous 1946 Fulton, Missouri–speech, called the Iron Curtain dividing the West--the Free World as Washington propaganda was fond of ever repeating--from the communist world dominated by Moscow.

Outside a small circle of US CIA, State Department, and Pentagon senior officials, together with their allies in select Washington think tanks, such as the American Enterprise Institute or the New York Council on Foreign Relations, what few realized was that Washington was about to unleash the most concerted effort at regime change across the former communist countries of Eastern Europe, Ukraine, and the newly formed Russian Federation itself. The rallying call was the introduction of US-style democracy, freedom, human rights, a neo-liberal free market. It was to become a tyranny and in some cases, such as Ukraine, it would be far worse than anything experienced under the Soviet regime.

The Washington regime-change operations came to be called Washington color revolutions because of the distinct Madison Avenue color-logo themes each destabilization brought with it—the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the Rose Revolution in Georgia, the Green Revolution in Iran, and so forth. Invariably, they targeted any significant nation that stood in the way of what David Rockefeller, in his Memoirs, referred to as a one-world government or Bill Clinton, in the 1990s, referred to by the innocent-sounding term but not-so- innocent process of corporate globalization.ii

In truth, what those Washington color revolution, regime-change interventions represented was an attempt to replace former communist leaders with handpicked, Washington-corrupted political leaders who would be willing to sell their national crown jewels and their people to select Western financial predators, such as the billionaire speculator George Soros.

The Aura of American Power

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]ronically, the greatest challenge confronting Washington, the Pentagon, the CIA, and the powerful military–industrial and banking lobby groups, who control congressmen and presidents with their money, was the end of the active Cold War in late 1989. There was suddenly no enemy to justify continued vast US military spending or the existence of NATO.

James R. Schlesinger, former US defense secretary and later CIA director, described the dilemma: American policymakers should be quite clear in their own minds that the basis for determining US force structure and military expenditures in the future should not simply be the response to individual threats, but rather that which is needed to maintain the overall aura of American power. iii

At the end of the 1980s, the economy and financial system of the US was in the throes of its deepest crisis since the Great Depression. The largest banks of Wall Street—Citigroup, Bank of America, and others—were technically bankrupt. The deregulation of US Savings & Loan banks had led to a real estate speculation bubble that collapsed in the late 1980s, at the same time as a dramatic fall in world oil prices led to waves of bankruptcies across the US domestic oil industry.

To demand that US taxpayers continue to waste hundreds of billions of their tax dollars on high levels of defense spending for an enemy that could no longer be identified rather than to create a peace dividend that would allow those billions to go to the renewal of America’s rapidly decaying economic infrastructure was a challenge to the US military and intelligence establishment. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell told Army Times in April 1991: Think hard about it, I’m running out of demons. I’m running out of villains. . . I’m down to Castro and Kim Il Sung. iv

That dilemma was soon to be resolved. Rather than solely relying on military overt force to advance its global agenda, Washington unveiled a dramatic new weapon: fake democracy nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that would be used to covertly create pro-Washington regimes in strategic parts of the world after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Democratic freedom would be the banner, incredibly enough, to introduce a new tyranny: free markets in actual fact controlled by Wall Street and European international banks, as well as Western multinational corporations that would loot the vast state-owned resources of the collapsed communist world.

Weaponizing Human Rights

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]nstead of overt military confrontation, the 1990s, with the brutal exception of Washington’s war in Yugoslavia, were to see the major deployment of what was becoming a dramatically effective new weapon for US-steered, fake democracy regime changes around the world.

So-called human rights NGOs, such as Human Rights Watch financed by billionaire speculator George Soros, Freedom House, the International Republican Institute (IRI), Amnesty International USA, or the US government’s supposedly private National Endowment for Democracy (NED), were to become a primary Washington weapon for regime change to transform the newly independent states of formerly communist Eastern Europe and Russia as well. Later, Washington’s fake democracy color revolutions would be brought to China, Central Asia, and, most dramatically, to the oil-rich states of the Middle East as the so-called Arab Spring.

The goal was to turn the target countries into US economic satrapies, or vassal states, by way of a series of regime-change color revolutions. It took a while before the unsuspecting target nations realized what was being done to them and their economies in the name of US export of democracy.

The first successful fake democracy color revolution regime change was ai ed at Slo oda Miloše ić, the preside t of hat had e o e y 1999 former Yugoslavia—Serbia Vojvodina, Kosovo, and Montenegro.

We begin our investigation with a description of the birth of the NGO in Washington that was created with little fanfare by President Reagan’s CIA Director Bill Casey and others in the early 1980s. It was called the NED. That NED has played the central role in every Washington-backed regime destabilization aimed at governments pursuing policies not congruent with those of Washington’s post–Cold War new globalization order.

Endnotes:

i George Orwell, 1984, cited in https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/g/georgeorwe141783.html

ii David Rockefeller, Memoirs, p. 405, http://opengov.ideascale.com/a/dtd/David-Rockefeller-s- book-Memoirs-admits-secretly-conspiring-for-a-NWO/4007-4049. The quote reads: “Some even believe we [Rockefeller family] are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure - One World, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.”

iii Joe Stork, New Enemies for a New World Order, MER176, http://www.merip.org/mer/mer176/new-enemies-new-world- order?ip_login_no_cache=e4b596febb56c8ddb4c739f2806fd833.

iv William W. Kaufmann and John D. Steinbruner, Decisions for Defense (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1991), p. 45.

Table of Contents

AUTHOR’S INSTRODUCTION: Destroying Nations in the Name of Democracy. . . CHAPTER ONE: Doing What the CIA Did, but Privately. . .
CHAPTER TWO: A Pope, the NED, and Poland Shock Therapy. . .
CHAPTER THREE: The CIA’s Yeltsin Coup d’État: The Rape of Russia . . . CHAPTER FOUR: Soros and the Harvard Boys Join the KGB and Yeltsin . . . CHAPTER FIVE: The CIA, NGOs, and the Myth of Tiananmen . . .

CHAPTER SIX: The CIA and Their NGOs Disintegrate Yugoslavia...

CHAPTER SEVEN: Otpor!’s Fake Democracy in Serbia ...

CHAPTER EIGHT: A Cold War Ended Not . . .

CHAPTER NINE: NATO Banging on Moscow’s Door: Georgia and Ukraine Color Revolutions Shake Russia. . .

CHAPTER TEN: “Where the Prize Ultimately Lies”. . .
CHAPTER ELEVEN: Arab Spring, Gold Dinars, and Energy Wars . . .

Afterword: Endless Wars for Democracy?... Glossary. . .
Index . . .

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, Engdahl is the son of F. William Engdahl, Sr., and Ruth Aalund (b. Rishoff). Engdahl grew up in Texas and after earning a degree in engineering and jurisprudence from Princeton University in 1966 (BA) and graduate study in comparative economics at the University of Stockholm from 1969 to 1970, he worked as an economist and freelance journalist in New York and in Europe. Engdahl began writing about oil politics with the first oil shock in the early 1970s. His first book was called A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order and discusses the alleged roles of Zbigniew Brzezinski and George Ball and of the USA in the 1979 overthrow of the Shah of Iran, which was meant to manipulate oil prices and to stop Soviet expansion. Engdahl claims that Brzezinski and Ball used the Islamic Balkanization model proposed by Bernard Lewis. In 2007, he completed Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation. Engdahl is also a contributor to the website of the anti-globalization Centre for Research on Globalization, the Russian website New Eastern Outlook,^[2] and the Voltaire Network,^[3] and a freelancer for varied newsmagazines such as the Asia Times. William Engdahl has been married since 1987 and has been living for more than two decades near Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

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ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON THE SAKER

[This article was written for the Unz Review]

killing about “2000 Americans“. This was truly some crazy nonsense so I decided to find out what really happened and, so far, here is what I found out.

First, amazingly enough, the reports of the Su-57 in Syria are true. Some say 2 aircraft, some say 4 (out of a current total of 13). It doesn’t really matter, what matters is that the deployment of a few Su-57s in Syria is a fact and that this represents a dramatic departure from normal Russian (and Soviet) practice.

Introducing the Sukhoi 57 5th generation multi-role fighter

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he Su-57 (aka “PAK-FA” aka “T-50”) is the first real 5th generation multi-role aircraft produced by Russia. All the other Russian multi-role and air superiority aircraft previously deployed in Syria (such as the Su-30SM and the Su-35S) are 4++ aircraft, not true 5th generation. One might be forgiven for thinking that 4++ is awfully close to 5, but it really is not. 4++ generation aircraft are really 4th generation aircraft upgraded with a number of systems and capabilities typically associated with a 5th generation, but they all lack several key components of a true 5th generation aircraft such as:

a low radar cross-section (“stealth”),
the capability to fly at supersonic speeds without using afterburners,
the ability to carry weapons inside a special weapons bay (as opposed to outside, under its wings or body)
an advanced “situational awareness” (network-centric) capability (sensor and external data fusion).

To make a long story short, the difference between 4th and 5th generation aircraft is really huge and requires not one, but several very complex “technological jumps” especially in the integrations of numerous complex systems.

The only country which currently has a deployed real 5th generation fighter is the USA with its F-22. In theory, the USA also has another 5th generation fighter, the F-35, but the latter is such a terrible design and has such immense problems that for our purposes we can pretty much dismiss it. As for now, the F-22 is the only “real deal”: thoroughly tested and fully deployed in substantial numbers. The Russian Su-57 is still years away from being able to make such a claim as it has not been thoroughly tested or deployed in substantial numbers. That is not to say that the Russians are not catching up really fast, they are, but as of right now, the Su-57 has only completed the first phase of testing. The normal Soviet/Russian procedure should have been at this time to send a few aircraft to the Russian Aerospace Forces (RAF) base in Lipetsk to familiarize the military crews with the aircraft and continue the testing while getting the feedback, not from test pilots but from actual air combat instructors. This second phase of testing could easily last 6 months or more and reveal a very large number of “minor” problems many of which could actually have very severe consequences in an actual combat deployment. In other words, the Su-57 is still very “raw” and probably needs a lot of tuning before it can be deployed in combat. How “raw”? Just one example: as of today, only one of the currently existing Su-57 flies with the new supercruise-capable engines, all the others use a 4th generation type engine. This is no big deal, but it goes to show that a lot of work still needs to be done on this aircraft before it becomes fully operational.

The notion that the Russians sent the Su-57 to Syria to somehow compete with the F-22s or otherwise participate in actual combat is ludicrous. While, on paper, the Su-57 is even more advanced and capable than the F-22, in reality, the Su-57 presents no credible threat to the US forces in Syria (if the Russians really wanted to freak out the Americans, they could have, for example, decided to keep a pair of MiG-31BMs on 24/7 combat air patrol over Syria). The Russian reports about these aircraft flattening Ghouta or killing thousands of Americans are nothing more than cheap and inflammatory propaganda from ignorant Russian nationalists who don’t seem to realize that flattening urban centers is not even the theoretical mission of the Su-57. In fact, as soon as these crazy reports surfaced, Russians analysts immediately dismissed them as nonsense.

Utter nonsense is hardly the monopoly of Russian nationalists, however. The folks at the National Interest reposted an article (initially posted on the blog The War is Boring) which basically dismissed the Su-57 as a failed and dead project and its deployment in Syria as a “farce” (I should tip my hat off to the commentators at the National Interest who immediately saw through the total ridiculous nature of this article and wondered if Lockheed had paid for it). On the other hand, in the western insanity spectrum, we have the UK’s Daily Express which wrote about Vladimir Putin sending his “fearsome new state-of-the-art Su-57” into the Syrian war zone. Just like with the Kuznetsov, the Ziomedia can’t decide if the Russian hardware is an antiquated, useless pile of scrap metal or a terrifying threat which ought to keep the entire world up at night. Maybe both at the same time? With paranoid narcissists, you can’t tell. Finally, the notion that Putin (personally?) sent these 4 aircraft to Syria to help him in his re-election campaign (peddled by the Russophobes at Ha’aret z ) is also devoid of all truth and makes me wonder if those who write that kind of crap are even aware of Putin’s popularity numbers.

So what is really going on?

[dropcap]W[/dropcap]ell, frankly, that is hard to say, and Russian officials are being tight-lipped about it. Still, various well informed Russian analysts have offered some educated guesses as to what is taking place. The short version is this: the Su-57s were only sent to Syria to test their avionics in a rich combat-like electromagnetic environment. The more detailed version would be something like this:

The Su-57 features an extremely complex and fully integrated avionics suite which will include three X band active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar (one main, two side-looking), another two L band active electronically scanned array radars in the wing’s leading edge extensions, plus an integrated electro-optical system location system (working in infra-red, visible and ultra-violet frequencies). All these sensors are fused (5 radars, 2 bands, plus passive optics) and they are then combined with the data received by the Su-57’s advanced electronic warfare suite and a high-speed encrypted datalink, connecting the aircraft to other airborne, space, as well as ground-based sensors. This is not unlike what the USA is trying to achieve with the F-35, but on an even more complex level (even in theory, the F-35 is a comparatively simpler, and much less capable, aircraft). One could see how it would be interesting to test all this gear in a radiation-rich environment like the Syrian skies where the Russians have advanced systems (S-400, A-50U, etc.) and where the USA and Israel also provide a lot of very interesting signals (including US and Israeli AWACS, F-22s and F-35s, etc.). To re-create such a radiation-rich environment in Russia would be very hard and maybe even impossible. The question is whether this is worth the risk?

The risks of this deployment in Syria are very real and very serious. As far as I know, there are still no bombproof shelters built (yet) and Russia recently lost a number of aircraft (some not totally, some totally) when the “good terrorists” used mortars against the Khmeimim base. So now we have FOUR Su-57s (out of how many total, maybe 12 or 13?!), each worth 50-100 million dollars under an open sky in a war zone?! What about operational security? What about base security?

There is also a political risk. It is well known that the USA has been putting immense political pressure on India to withdraw from the joint development between Russia and India of the Fifth Generation Fighter Aircraft (FGFA) or Perspective Multi-role Fighter (PMF) program. To make things worse, India currently has too many parallel aircraft programs and there are, reportedly, disagreements between the Russians and the Indians on design features. With the apparently never-ending disaster of the F-35, the very last thing the USA needs is a successful Russian 5th generation competitor showing up anywhere on the planet (especially one which has the clear potential to far outclass both the successful F-22 and the disastrous F-35). One can easily imagine what the AngloZionist propaganda machine will do should even a minor problem happen to the Su-57 while in Syria (just read the National Interest article quoted above to see what the mindset is in the West)!

The Su-57 also has formidable competitors inside Russia: the 4++ generation aircraft mentioned above, especially the Su-35S. Here we have a similar dynamic as with the F-22: while on paper the Su-57 is clearly superior to the Su-35S, in the real world the Su-35S is a well tested and deployed system which, unlike the F-22, also happens to be much cheaper than the Su-57 (the F-22 being at least twice as expensive than the Su-57). This issue is especially relevant for the internal, Russian market. So the real question for the RAF is simple: does Russia really need the Su-57 and, if yes, in what numbers?

This is a very complex question, both technically and politically and to even attempt to answer it, a lot of very debatable assumptions have to be made about what kind of threats the RAF will face in the future and what kind of missions it will be given. The biggest problem for the Russians is that they already have an array of extremely successful combat aircraft, especially the Su-35S and the formidable Su-34. Should Russia deploy more of these or should she place huge resources into a new very complex and advanced aircraft? Most Russian analysts would probably agree that Russia needs to be able to deploy some minimal number of real 5th generation combat aircraft, but they would probably disagree on what exactly that minimal number ought to be. The current 4++ generation aircraft are very successful and more than a match for their western counterparts, with the possible exception of the F-22. But how likely is it that Russians and US Americans will really start a shooting war?

Furthermore, the real outcome from a theoretical Su-35S vs F-22 (which so many bloggers love to speculate about) would most likely depend much more on tactics and engagement scenarios than on the actual capabilities of these aircraft. Besides, should the Su-35s and F-22s even be used in anger against each other, a lot would also depend on what else is actually happening around them and where exactly this engagement would take place. Furthermore, to even look at this issue theoretically, we would need to compare not only the actual aircraft but also their weapons. I submit that the outcome of any Su-35S vs F-22 engagement would be impossible to predict (unless you are a flag-waving patriot, in which case you will, of course, be absolutely certain that “your” side will win). If I am correct, then this means that there is no compelling case to be made that Russia needs to deploy Su-57s in large numbers and that the Su-30SM+Su-35S air superiority combo is more than enough to deter the Americans.

[This is a recurrent problem for Russian weapons and weapon systems: being so good that there is little incentive to produce something new. The best example of that is the famous AK-47 Kalashnikov which was modernized a few times, such as the AKM-74, but which has yet to be replaced with a fundamentally new and truly different assault rifle. There are plenty of good candidates out there, but each time one has to wonder if the difference in price is worth the effort. The original Su-27 (introduced in 1985) was such an immense success that it served as a basis for a long series of immensely successful variants including the ones we now see in Syria, the Su-30SM, the Su-35S and even the amazing Su-34 (which still has no equivalent anywhere in the world). Sometimes a weapon, or weapon system, can be even “too successful” and create a problem for future modernization efforts.]

Whatever may be the case, the future of the Su-57 is far from being secured and this might also, in part, explain the decision to send a few of them to Syria: not only to test its avionics suite, but also to score a PR success by raising the visibility and, especially, the symbolical role of the aircraft. Russian officials admitted that the deployment to Syria was scheduled to coincide with the celebration of the “Defender of the Fatherland” day. This kind of move breaks with normal Soviet/Russian procedures and I have to admit that I am most uncomfortable with this development and while I would not go as far as to call it a “farce” (like the article in the National Interest did), it does look like a PR stunt to me. And I wonder: if the Russians are taking such a risk, what is it that drives such a sense of urgency? I don’t believe that anybody in Russia seriously thinks that the US will be deterred, or even be impressed by this, frankly, hasty deployment. So I suspect that this development is linked to the uncertainty of the future of the Su-57 procurement program. Hopefully, the risks will pay-off and the Su-57 will get all the avionics testing it requires and all the funding and export contracts it needs.

Addendum:

Just as I was writing these words, the Russians have announced (see here and here) that the Israeli satellite images were fakes, that the the Su-57 stayed only two days in Syria and that they have been flown back to Russia. Two days? Frankly, I don’t buy it. What this looks like to me is that what looks like a PR stunt has now backfired, including in the Russian social media, and that Russia decided to bring these aircraft back home. Now *that* sounds like a good idea to me.

—The Saker

ABOUT THE SAKER

THE SAKER is an ex-military analyst who was born in Europe to a family of Russian refugees. He now lives in Florida where he writes the Vineyard of the Saker blog and is a regular contributor to The Unz Review. Like The Greanville Post, with which it is now allied in his war against official disinformation, the Saker's site, VINEYARD OF THE SAKER, is the hub of an international network of sites devoted to fighting the "billion-dollar deception machinery" supporting the empire's wars against Russia, China, Iran, Syria, Venezuela and any other independent nation opposing or standing in the way of Washington's drive for global hegemony. The Saker is published in more than half a dozen languages. A Saker is a very large falcon, native to Europe and Asia.

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The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” -- acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump -- a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all.— Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report

HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.

Dateline: FEBRUARY 23, 2018 | By DEAN BAKER
FAIR.org

Brooks: a practiced disinformer for an age that richly rewards them.

“The key to progress is information — making ourselves better informed,” David Brooks writes in a column (2/22/18) that systematically disinforms its readers.

We would usually expect that a 12-year-old kid would be taller than a 6-year-old kid. However, if a 12-year-old had only grown one inch over their last six years, we would probably be somewhat worried.

David Brooks devotes his most recent New York Timescolumn, “The Virtue of Radical Honesty” (2/22/18), to presenting data from Steven Pinker’s new book, Enlightenment Now, which purports to show that things are better than ever. Most of the data has the character of boasting over our 12-year-old’s one inch of growth over the last six years.

Brooks tells us:

For example, we’re all aware of the gloomy statistics around wage stagnation and income inequality, but Pinker contends that we should not be nostalgic for the economy of the 1950s, when jobs were plentiful and unions strong. A third of American children lived in poverty. Sixty percent of seniors had incomes below $1,000 a year. Only half the population had any savings in the bank at all.

Between 1979 and 2014, meanwhile, the percentage of poor Americans dropped to 20 percent from 24 percent. The percentage of lower-middle-class Americans dropped to 17 from 24. The percentage of Americans who were upper middle class (earning $100,000 to $350,000) shot upward to 30 percent from 13 percent.

The problem with the Brooks/Pinker story is that we expect the economy/people to get richer through time. After all, technology and education improve. In the ’50s, we didn’t have the Internet, cell phones and all sorts of other goodies. In fact, at the start of the ’50s, we didn’t even have the polio vaccine.

The question is not whether we are better off today than we were 60 years ago. It would be incredible if we were not better off. The question is by how much.

In the ’50s, wages and incomes for ordinary families were rising at a rate of close to 2 percent annually. In the last 45 years, they have barely risen at all.

It’s hard to see the steady march of progress when you look at the US poverty rate over time. (chart: Wikipedia)

This fact can be seen even looking at the numbers that Brooks is bragging over. While it’s not clear where they got their poverty data, the child poverty rate comes closest to the numbers in the article. This was at 22.3 percent in 1983, it was down to 21.1 percent in 2014 and fell further to 18.0 percent in 2016.

Should we celebrate this reduction in poverty rates over the last 33 years? Well, the poverty rate had fallen from 27.3 percent in 1959 (the first year for this data series) to 14.0 percent in 1969. That’s a drop of 13.3 percentage points in just ten years. The net direction in the last 47 years has been upward.

A larger share of the population is earning over $100,000 a year. This is due to some growth in hourly wages, but also due to more work per family. A much larger share of women are working today than 50 years ago, and a larger share of the women working are working full-time. If family income had continued growing at its pace from 1967 to 1973 (the last years of the Golden Age), median family income would be almost $150,000 today.

There are a whole a range of other measures which leave real enlightenment types appalled by the state of the country today. While Brooks/Pinker tell us “only half the population had any savings at all” in the 1950s, a recent survey found that 63 percent of the country could not afford an unexpected bill of $500. The homeownership rate is roughly the same as it was 60 years ago. Life expectancy for those in the bottom 40 percent of the income distribution has barely budged in the last 40 years.

In short, a serious analysis of data shows that most people have good grounds for complaints about their situation today, since they have not shared to any significant extent in the economic growth of the last four decades. But apparently there is a big market for the sort of dog-and-pony show that Brooks and Pinker present, trying to argue the opposite.

A version of this post originally appeared on CEPR’s blog Beat the Press(2/23/18).

You can send a message to the New York Times at letters@nytimes.com(Twitter:@NYTOpinion). Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective.

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