Putin Warns Romania and Poland Against Installing ABM Missiles

Dispatches from Eric Zuesse

PUTIN IS ON TO OBAMA’S ENORMOUS LIES, AND THAT IS A FACT. BUT THE US PUBLIC DON’T HAVE A CLUE OF WHAT’S COMING.

On Friday, May 27th, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin again said that American President Barack Obama lies when saying that the reason America’s anti-ballistic missile (“ABM”) or Ballistic Missile Defense (“BMD”) system is being installed in Romania, and will soon be installed in Poland, is to protect Europe from Iranian missiles that don’t even exist and that Obama himself says won’t exist because of Obama’s deal with Iran. Putin is saying: I know that you are lying there, not being honest. You’re aiming to disable our retaliatory capacity here, not Iran’s. I’m not so dumb as to believe so transparent a lie as your assurances that this is about Iran, not about Russia.

Putin says that ABMs such as America is installing, disable a country’s (in this case, Russia’s) ability to retaliate against a blitz invasion — something increasingly likely from NATO now as NATO has extended right up to Russia’s very borders — and that Russia will not allow this disabling of Russia’s retaliatory forces.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg (C) —a prominent Washington stooge, along with other vassal European “leaders”—reviews an honour guard during an inauguration ceremony of the US anti-missile station Aegis Ashore Romania (in the background) at the military base in Deveselu, Romania on May 12, 2016. The appalling corruption of European regimes across the continent is pushing the world to the nuclear abyss. © Daniel Mihailescu / AFP

He said that “NATO fend us off with vague statements that this is no threat to Russia … that the whole project began as a preventive measure against Iran’s nuclear program. Where is that program now? It doesn’t exist. … We have been saying since the early 2000s that we will have to react somehow to your moves to undermine international security. No one is listening to us.”

In other words, he is saying that the West is ignoring Russia’s words, and that therefore Russia will, if this continues, respond by eliminating the ABM sites before they become fully operational. To do otherwise than to eliminate any fully operational ABM system on or near Russia’s borders would be to leave the Russian people vulnerable to a blitz attack by NATO, and this will not be permitted.

He said: “At the moment the interceptor missiles installed have a range of 500 kilometers, soon this will go up to 1000 kilometers, and worse than that, they can be rearmed with 2400km-range offensive missiles even today, and it can be done by simply switching the software, so that even the Romanians themselves won’t know.”

In other words: Only the Americans, who have designed and control the ABM system, will be able to know if and when Russia is left totally vulnerable. Not even the Romanians will know; and Putin says, “Russia has ‘no choice’ but to target Romania” — and later Poland, if they follow through with their plans to do the same.

“Putin is saying that the West is ignoring Russia’s words, and that therefore Russia will, if this continues, respond by eliminating the ABM sites before they become fully operational…”

By implication, Putin is saying that, whereas he doesn’t need to strike Romania’s site immediately, he’ll need to do it soon enough to block the ABM system’s upgrade that will leave Russia vulnerable to attack and (because of the fully functional ABM) with no ability on Russia’s part to counter-strike.

He is saying: Remove the ABM system, or else we’ll have to do it by knocking it out ourselves.

Putin knows that according to the Article Five, “Mutual Defense,” provision of the NATO Treaty, any attack against a NATO member, such as Romania, is supposed to elicit an attack by all NATO members against the nation that is attacking. However, Putin is saying that, if NATO is going to be attacking Russia, then it will be without any fully operational ABM system, and (by implication) that Russia’s response to any such attack will be a full-scale nuclear attack against all NATO nations, and a nuclear war resulting which will destroy the planet by unleashing all the nuclear weaponry of both sides, NATO and Russia.

Putin is saying that either Romania — and subsequently Poland — will cancel and nullify their cooperation with U.S. President Obama’s ABM installation, or else there will be a surgical strike by Russia against such installation(s), even though that would likely produce a nuclear attack against Russia by NATO, and a counter-strike nuclear attack by Russia against NATO.

When Putin said “No one is listening to us” on the other side, the NATO side, Putin meant: I don’t want to have to speak by means of a surgical strike to eliminate a NATO ABM system, but that’s the way I’ll ‘speak’ if you are deaf to words and to reason and to common decency.

He will not allow the Russian people to become totally vulnerable to a nuclear attack by the United States and its military allies. He is determined that, if NATO attacks Russia, then it will be game-over for the entire world, not only for Russia.

He is saying to Obama and to all of NATO: Please hear and understand my words, and be reasonable, because the results otherwise will be far worse for everyone if you persist in continuing to ignore my words.

About the author

They're Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST'S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

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Sit Up and Listen Before They Go Deaf

Rowan Wolf, PhD
Voice of Conscience

[dropcap]O[/dropcap]n May 19th, 2016 a documentary by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) will be released – Sonic Sea. Sound is critical for sea life to survive. Their medium is water, and increasingly so much noise is introduced that it is undermining many species ability to survive. This is not even to mention the decade old fight with the Navy to constrain their “Sonar testing” which had the ability to burst the ear drums of marine mammals – particularly whales – and even kill them.

Whales can communicate with each other over thousands of miles, but not when when to human made noise drowns them out. Sea life depend on sound for virtually every aspect of their lives from mating and raising their young, to finding food, and avoiding hazards and predators. We are detroying their capability to use this critical sense, but WE DON’T HAVE TO, AND WE CAN DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.

This documentary has been screened across the country, and you can host your own screening by contacting this… It will also be played on the Discovery Channel on May 19, 2006 at 9pm (ET). Below are two trailers for the program.

Rowan Wolf, PhD

Is Managing Editor of The Greanville Post and Director of The Russian Desk. She is a sociologist, writer and activist with life long engagement in social justice, peace, environmental, and animal rights movements. Her research and writing includes issues of imperialism, oppression, global capitalism, peak resources, global warming, and environmental degradation. Rowan taught sociology for twenty-two years, was a member of the City of Portland’s Peak Oil Task Force, and maintains her own site Uncommon Thought Journal. She may be reached by email at rowanwolf@greanvillepost.com

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In War We Trust, Even If It’s Nuclear?

Murray Polner
Past in Present Tense

A small sample of the US “tactical” arsenal. (Zig Zag).

What have we forgotten since the days when MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) was taken off the table? We are now at a point where a candidate for President of the U.S. can casually and loudly threaten using nuclear weapons and most seem blasé about the concept.

I recently watched Stanley Kramer’s Cold War classic, “0n the Beach,” where Gregory Peck, Fred Astaire, Ava Gardner and Anthony Perkins are fated to die along with everyone else after a worldwide nuclear war. It sounded a bit like Revelation chapter nine, verse 15, which predicts that the most destructive war is yet to come. But no, it really reflected Kramer’s anxiety about reckless and feckless leaders and the damage they do. At least the film had Peck and Gardner to console the victims on their final destination.

The US has always needed real or imaginary enemies to make its historic addiction to war more palatable. Nowadays it’s perfectly acceptable to damn Vladimir Putin as an authoritarian but he’s no more authoritarian than some of America’s closest allies. The problem is that, like the US, he commands thousands of nuclear bombs, a subject about which I’ve been writing since the start of what sounds like another Cold/maybe Hot War era. The hawkish Hillary Clinton compared him to Hitler after Moscow’s annexation of Crimea. But Henry Kissinger of all people saw through the hot air emanating from Washington’s inner circles (echoed by an uncritical media) when he wrote that excoriating Putin was no substitute for shaping a sane policy, which our foreign policy elites have regularly disdained to do, especially after past and present incompetents and worse have caused the deaths of some 38,000 US military in Korea, 58,000 in Vietnam and 7,000 in Iraq, not to mention millions of innocent Asians and Middle Easterners. No VIP has ever been tried or imprisoned for these deaths.

Russia wants war? (Gewoon-Nieuws.nl)

The US noose around Russia began in earnest when our most lethal weaponry began pouring into Russia’s erstwhile satellites adjacent to Russian borders, (great news for Merchants of Death stockholders). US troops are now stationed in the Baltics and Poland targeting Russia and its 8,000 nuclear bombs and history of successfully destroying invaders, even absorbing 27 million deaths fighting and defeating German armies –and thus ironically saving the West from defeat. The new US commander of NATO, Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, seemed oblivious to this aspect of Russian history while sworn in recently as NATO’s latest military commander, saying NATO (read the US, its major funder) must be ready to “fight tonight.” How many Americans, “amusing themselves to death” in Neil Postman’s deathless prose, are ready for that? And “tonight,” no less?

For every provocative move by the US and NATO, the Russians have retaliated by recklessly buzzing US naval ships and aircraft. Moscow added that it will send three army divisions to their western borders and, more ominously, nuclear warheads will be placed on its new Iskander missiles and set down near Kaliningrad, close to Lithuania and Poland and targeted at Western Europe just as the US-NATO buildup is aimed at Russia.That’s Russian Roulette and can easily “lead to miscalculation,” noted a NY Times piece.

Igor Ivanov was once Boris Yeltsin’s foreign minister and also worked for Putin and now runs a Russian government think tank. “The risk of confrontation with the use of nuclear weapons in Europe is higher than at any time in the 1980s,” he told the London Express. Both sides, incidentally, are about to conduct war maneuvers much like the darkest Cold War or pre-1914 years.

“This new conflict is shaping up to be extraordinarily dangerous, entailing a broad confrontation that will play out in various proxy theaters around the world and bringing back the ever-present possibility of nuclear war,” warns Samuel Charlap of the Center for American Progress and Jeremy Shapiro of the Brookings Institution in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists’ issue (vol. 72, Issue 3, 2016) devoted to US-Russian relations. “A misreading of this man [Putin] — now one of the most consequential international political figures and challengers to the US-led world order since the end of the Cold War–could have catastrophic consequences.”

As Dmitry Kiselyov, director of a Russian TV network put it, pulling no punches. “Russia is the only country in the world which is realistically capable of turning the US into radioactive ash.” But Dmitry, please bear in mind that the US can play the same game.

Meanwhile, President 0bama has approved all the moves directed at Russia and given a green light to those who want to confront the Chinese, a nuclear power, in the South China Sea, most recently near the Fiery Cross Reef, a miniscule pile of rocks where the Chinese have built an airstrip. Tit for tat, the US aircraft carrier John Stennis, named after the late Mississippi segregationist, was prevented from docking in Hong Kong. The US says its warships are in the region to protect freedom of navigation but China sees it as the US trying to maintain regional hegemony, with force if necessary. So the dangerous game goes on between the three powers until someone either devises a diplomatic solution with people they may not like or we slip mindlessly into a nuclear war. Then a brainy entrepreneur can start selling up-to-date bumper stickers reading “Support 0ur Troops on Fiery Cross Reef”– that is, if anyone is still alive to read it.

While writing this blog Daniel Berrigan, the antiwar, nonviolent Jesuit priest- activist whose life was dedicated to creating “a world uncursed by war and starvation,” and Donald Duncan, the Vietnam Green Beret who turned against his war, had died, Dan in May and Don in March. 0nce discharged, Don joined William Sloane Coffin, Benjamin Spock and David Dellinger in mass rallies where draft cards were burned. He also defended the Green Beret Dr. Howard Levy, who also turned against the war and was jailed by the very liars and murderers whose policies had cost the lives of millions. Had Dan and Don been physically able in our new Cold War-ish atmosphere they would surely be warning Americans that our policies may well force them and their people into yet another calamitous war, but this time a nuclear war brought to you courtesy of our latest generation of American, Chinese and Russian madmen.

WWIII (Iam Haden)

Image credit for screen graphic with the Statue of Liberty: Screen capture from video by Daryl Lawson.

Murray Polner

Wrote “No Victory Parades: The Return of the Vietnam Veteran“; “When Can I Come Home,” about draft evaders during the Vietnam era; co-authored with Jim O’Grady, “Disarmed and Dangerous,” a dual biography of Dan and Phil Berrigan; and most recently, with Thomas Woods,Jr., ” We Who Dared to Say No to War.” He is the senior book review editor for the History News Network.

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Enough of this lesser evilism crap

By Lorna Salzman

THIS IS A PRESCIENT POST THAT SHOULD BE READ AGAIN, NOW THAT FAR TOO MANY DEMOCRATS ARE GETTING READY TO VOTE FOR HILLARY CLINTON, LIKE OBAMA, A CRIMINAL CORPORATE SHILL AND A PHONY. (FIRST PUBLISHED IN 2009).

==THIS IS A REPOST==

The Obama mirage should be a lesson for those who are quick to fall in love with phonies. (Are you listening Daily Kos?)

THOSE OF YOU WHO FOLLOWED the 2004 presidential campaign of Ralph Nader (sadly limited to very few states) probably got his VP candidate Matt Gonzalez’ memo on Obama’s voting record in Illinois and in the US Senate. I myself circulated it on two occasions to my lists.

Anyone who read it instantly recognized that Obama was being groomed by the pro-capitalist, pro-Wall St.-pro-corporate Democratic Party, which squelched Nader as it had in 2000 and 1966 by co-opting and bribing members of the US Green Party who nominated Nader in 2000, and by conducting a vile campaign of vicious lies about Nader.

Their fears were that Nader could not only take away votes from Gore and Kerry but from Democrats running for congress at the same time.

These efforts were aided by the paleoliberal media like The Nation (via Eric Alterman) and its co-conspirators across the narrow liberal spectrum. One big player in this was Code Pink Mafia headliner Medea Benjamin, who started a website for green Progressive Democrats for America, to wean greens away from Nader. Another was former Nader associate Ben Manski of the Wisconsin Green Party, who secretly manipulated the US Green Party National Committee’s executive committee to work against Nader quietly. A wealthy midwest pair of Democrats rewarded Manski handsomely with a quarter of a million dollars after the election, enabling him to set up a “Liberty Foundation”.

…

Members of the Democratic Party defend their party literally to the death. They consistently refuse to hold their congressional representatives accountable for anything except possibly abortion rights. They close their eyes and sign on the dotted line for any and all Democratic Party policies and legislation, and warn of the potential victory of the “lesser of two evils” if anyone dares to assert that she owns her own vote and has the right to cast it as she pleases and prefers, thank you very much, to vote for a candidate she actually likes. Since neither Gore nor Kerry were very likable, defections from the Dems were taken seriously, hence the assault on Nader.

–

The knee-jerk liberal vote for a black Democratic candidate was pre ordained, though his margin of about four percentage points in the election was not huge.

But for the next presidential election, and for the congressional elections before that, nervousness on the part of Democrats is going to increase. The Afghanistan war is of course the crux of it for most liberals, though for environmentalists and health care advocates, those issues will also loom large and any failure will be remembered and loom large.

[dropcap]W[/dropcap]e know Obama is selling out on health care and energy. Duh. No other scenario could have been taken seriously by anyone knowing the issues and watching what was going on in congress, and knowing how the stealthy corrupt Democrats operate. But Afghanistan, and its periphery Pakistan, are going to seal Obama’s fate. I am not placing bets on what he will do because there are plenty of internal fights going on in Washington. The question is this: will Obama throw liberals under the bus on the war issue, as he is doing on health care and energy?

In other words, will he take a calculated risk that he can insure sufficient campaign money and propaganda from corporations, Wall St., energy industry, neo-liberals, centrists, and just plain knee-jerk Democratic Party enrolees who would vote for the party against their own interests in exactly the same way that middle America votes Republican against their own interests? Will these be enough (with of course the requisite mass media endorsements) to insure him the nomination and then, biggest question of all, the election? This calculation has already begun; it is well established that his deal with the insurance companies (a phony one) to limit Rx prices was a quid pro quo: don’t support Republicans in the next election. (There is no price reduction, just a reduction in projected future profits). You have to admire the brains and cojones of Rahm Emmanuel in dreaming that one up. No question that Emmanuel is bad for the Jews.

We can influence his decision in a big way if we circulate articles like the one below, if we refuse to knuckle under to the Dems, if we refuse to accept what that party hands us every four years, if we go public, no holds barred, and if we say clearly, with some red cheeks, that we have been deceived, slickly, continually, but brilliantly, because the Democrats had the wiles to nominate a candidate of color whose skin color gave off one message, while his actual politics and connections gave off another. Wink, wink, Wall St. You guys know I am with you all the way. Read my lips. No new financial regulations. No injury to the health care industry and insurance companies. No threat to WTO, cap and trade energy brokers, coal companies.

Let’s be blunt. Obama is an unmitigated disaster. As Bill Maher famously said, all he’s accomplished since last January is to buy a puppy. (Maher ended up becoming a big supporter of Obama, to thew tune of millions of dollars and plenty of free TV boosterism.—Ed) But let’s not just gripe. Let’s organize. Let’s send a clear unqualified message to the Democrats: we don’t like you, we won’t vote for you, and we won’t vote for Obama next time.

Whether there is the will or energy to form a third party or anti DP voting bloc remains to be seen. But the first step is resistance and delegitimization of the two party system. As my bumper sticker says:

—Lorna Salzman

About the author
Salzman is a well known environmentalist , Green Party activist, and hell-raiser. The only fly in the ointment (A BIG FLY) is that she does support Israel rather unquestioningly, and she's not exactly a fan of Medea Benjamin, Code Pink's firebrand, whom we respect for her activism and sheer courage.

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Aleppo Ceasefire: ‘US Ploy to Buy Time for Terrorist Reinforcements’

//

=By= Patrick Henningsen

Brit and US special forces have “secret missions” in Syria. (The Muslim Issue)

It’s now clearer than ever: The US are leading a dirty war, under the table, in Syria. This is the true backdrop of the stage play in Geneva, where US diplomats are providing cover and buying time for CIA and Pentagon covert operations on the ground in Syria.

What the US State Department said yesterday is very telling, and should be a clear guide to anyone about what Washington DC’s actual agenda is in Syria:

“We look to Russia… to press for the Assad regime’s compliance with this effort, and the United States will do its part with the opposition,” Wednesday’s statement said. Russia and Iran are the primary backers of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, while the United States heads a group of regional and European countries supporting the opposition to his rule.”

Given the fact that the CIA (and the British) have both been working with these very forces – providing logistical support, weapons, and special forces training, and that it was also revealed yesterday that the US tried to include the al Nusra terrorist-held areas in its part of the “ceasefire” agreement, one can only conclude that western-backed “opposition” fighters” in Syria are comprised mostly of sectarian and Islamist militant terrorists. So, by its own admission then yesterday, the US is managing al Nusra/al Qaeda in Syria – and thus prolonging the bloodshed.

21WIRE editor and global affairs analyst Patrick Henningsen spoke to RT International about what diplomats are doing in Geneva, but more importantly, about what western intelligence agencies and terrorist mercenaries are attempting to pull-off in Aleppo. Watch:

In the same Washington Post report, the so-called “opposition” further underlined the desperate US-led ceasefire ploy:

“The opposition said that it was “impractical to speak of only local cease-fires” and that the cessation of hostilities “must apply to all of Syria, without exception.” A statement issued by Salem al-Meslet, spokesman for the opposition High Negotiations Committee, said that they remained committed to political negotiations to end Syria’s civil war.”

Moreover, readers should also be aware by now that the multi-million dollar public relations and social media campaign entitled #AleppoIsBurning is not ‘grassroots’ at all, and is a 100% Soros-funded US digital media creation which can be classed as ‘marketing for regime change.’ This marketing campaign was triggered by what appears to be a completely fabricated story that was spoon-fed to the western media about an alleged MSF/Doctors Without Borders “hospital” in terrorist-held east Aleppo which “rebels” claimed was hit by “barrel bombs” dropped in Syrian Army “airstrikes.” According to all available evidence, this entire story appears to have been made-up for an eager western media.

Washington’s transparent agenda is now fully exposed. Will their next move be an even more desperate?

Patrick Henningsen is a writer, investigative journalist, and filmmaker and founder of the news website 21stCentury Wire.com. He has appeared on RT news and has also written for the Guardian.co.uk, GlobalResearch.ca, and Infowars.com. He is currently investigating issues on location in the Middle East and in Southern Europe. Patrick is a graduate of California State University at San Luis Obispo.

Source: 21st Century Wire

Lead Graphic: McCain was the cheerleader for utilizing “moderate” militants to fight in Syria (Halifax Media Co-Op).

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