Historic footage showing moment the 1st SAA tank broke the 3 year ISIS siege on Deir Ezzor

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Time to uncork that champagne, folks...and toast one of the most heroic armies in modern history, the Syrian Arab Army. Drink to the health and sovereign freedom of the Syrian people who have paid a horrendous price in their struggle against the malignant forces injected into their nation by Western imperialism. 

 

The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found


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North Korea’s Missile Tests Used as Pretext for Nuclearization of Asia-Pacific

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Staff Sgt. Randy Broome signals a jammer operator to move a BRU-61 [bomb rack unit] forward, while loading it onto an F-15E Strike Eagle at Royal Air Force Lakenheath, England, on Tuesday, Aug. 1. The sergeant from Houston is an aircraft munitions specialist with the 48th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron. (U.S. Air Force photo/Master Sgt. Lance Cheung)

The US National Nuclear Security Administration has announced that the Air Force had successfully flight tested the B61-12 guided bomb. Two qualification tests took place on August 8 at Tonopah Test Range in Nevada. The non-nuclear test assemblies, which were dropped from an F-15E based at Nellis Air Force Base, evaluated the weapon’s non-nuclear functions and the aircraft’s capability to deliver the weapon. It’s hardly a coincidence that the information was made public only now as tensions are running high because of North Korean recent tests, with some missiles flying over Japan.

The original B61 gravity bomb is the mainstay of the Air Force’s nuclear arsenal. Numerous upgrades have been made to improve it. The B61-12 will replace other B61modifications. Moving fins will make the bomb smarter and allow it to be guided more accurately to a target. Furthermore, a yield of 0.3 to 340 kilotons in its various modes can be adjusted before launch, according to the target.

The B61-12 will have both air- and ground-burst capability. The capability to penetrate below the surface has significant implications for the types of targets that can be held at risk with the bomb. Even at the lowest selective yield setting of only 0.3 kt, the ground-shock coupling of a B61-12 exploding a few meters underground would be equivalent to a surface-burst weapon with a yield of 4.5 kt to 7.5 kt. Existing US nuclear bombs have circular error probabilities (CEP) of between 110-170 meters. The B61-12’s CEP is just 30 meters. A combination of its accuracy and low-yield makes the B61-12 the most dangerous nuclear warhead in America’s arsenal.

There is a plethora of conventional weapons to counter the North Korean threat but using low yield variable nukes is a great temptation. General James Cartwright, the former commander of US Strategic Command and former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said that the increased accuracy of the new guided B61-12 nuclear bomb could make the weapon “more useable”.

This month, Air Force Gen. Paul Selva, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, confirmed that as part of the Pentagon's ongoing nuclear posture review, it is looking at a new generation of low-yield "mini-nukes" in order to ensure that the threat from America's nuclear arsenal remains credible.

The first production of the bomb is scheduled for March 2020. The bomb will be air-delivered in either ballistic gravity or guided drop modes, and is being certified for delivery on current strategic (B-2A) and dual capable aircraft (F-15E, F-16C/D & MLU, PA-200) as well as future aircraft platforms (F-35, B-21). Once the bomb is authorized for use in 2020, the US plans to deploy some 180 of the B61-12 precision-guided thermonuclear bombs to European NATO allies, including the U.K, Belgium, the Netherlands and Italy.

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]t’s important to note that the US plans to arm tactical aviation in Europe with modernized B61-12 guided warheads will virtually nullify all the benefits of the INF Treaty from the point of view of Russia’s security. The aircraft could fly from bases in Lithuania, Estonia and Poland to Russia’s largest cities in 15-20 minutes – not that much longer than the flight time of the missiles scuttled by the INF treaty. The United States is the only nuclear power to deploy atomic weapons abroad. Poland wants to join the US NATO allies that have American nuclear weapons on their territories. Tactical nuclear weapons are not covered by any international treaty.

Now the plans of the new weapon deployment go beyond Europe to encompass the Asia Pacific. For instance, the North Korean missile tests made the main opposition Liberty Korea Party put forward the idea of bringing back US tactical nuclear weapons pulled out in 1991. On August 16, the party adopted a demand for the redeployment of US tactical nuclear arms as its official party line during a general meeting of its lawmakers. Leaders from the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan have argued in favor of producing tactical nuclear weapons for self-defense purposes.

During the election campaign, US president Donald Trump put forward the idea that more countries, such as Japan, South Korea, may need to develop their own nuclear weapons.

The deployment of such weapons in South Korea or Japan would pose a threat to Russia’s Far East to make Moscow take appropriate steps to respond. The US forward-based tactical nuclear weapons in the Asia Pacific will be considered by Russia as an addition to the American strategic arsenal that is capable of striking deep into its territory. Moscow will certainly take steps to counter the threat. The deployment will also greatly complicate further arms control efforts with the New START Treaty expiring in 2021.

The North Korean threat may be used as a pretext for deploying nukes in Asia-Pacific. The danger of arms race in the region is looming. And there is one more thing to remember. Allowing deploying nukes on its soil or going nuclear turns a country into a target for a nuclear strike. Nobody with foreign nukes on its territory has ever enhanced its national security. 


About the Author
Andrei Akulov is a retired colonel and Moscow-based expert on international security issues.

SOURCE: https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2017/09/03/north-korea-missile-tests-used-pretext-nuclearization-asia-pacific.html

ANDREI AKULOV Now the plans of the new weapon deployment go beyond Europe to encompass the Asia Pacific. For instance, the North Korean missile tests made the main opposition Liberty Korea Party put forward the idea of bringing back US tactical nuclear weapons pulled out in 1991. On August 16, the party adopted a demand for the redeployment of US tactical nuclear arms as its official party line during a general meeting of its lawmakers. Leaders from the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan have argued in favor of producing tactical nuclear weapons for self-defense purposes.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.




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Parting shot—a word from the editors
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 

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Manufacturing a Heinous Crime: U.S. Congress and Media Push for War Against Russia



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The relentless demonisation of Russia by the US ruling orders has had its inevitable consequences, and now a nation so frequently plagued with anti-communist and anti-Russian fever, has an extra share of badly misguided imbeciles.

Obviously, given the history of Western intel (and Mossad's) dirty tricks this could easily be a false flag, a fabrication from start to finish, reliant on the whore media to gain traction, since all the usual parts of the disinformation campaign—from media to politicians and other equally corrupt elements— are always at the ready. 

On Wednesday, September 6th, Reuters bannered "Facebook says likely Russian-based operation funded U.S. ads with political message”, and reported:
Facebook Inc said on Wednesday it had found that an operation likely based in Russia spent $100,000 on thousands of U.S. ads promoting divisive social and political messages in a two-year-period through May.
Facebook, the dominant social media network, said 3,000 ads and 470 “inauthentic” accounts and pages spread polarizing views on topics including immigration, race and gay rights.
..
Facebook briefed members of both the Senate and House of Representatives intelligence committees on Wednesday about the suspected Russia advertising, according to a congressional source familiar with the matter. Both committees are conducting probes into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election, including potential collusion between the campaign of President Donald Trump and Moscow.
..
Facebook also gave its findings to Robert Mueller, the special counsel in charge of investigating alleged Russian interference in last year’s presidential election, a source familiar with the matter said. The company produced copies of advertisements as well as data about the buyers, the source said.
..
Mueller’s office declined to comment.
..
Facebook said it found no link between the Russian-purchased advertising and any specific presidential campaign. The ads were mostly national in their focus and did not appear to reflect targeting of political swing-states, the company said.
..
Even if no laws were violated, Facebook said the 470 accounts and pages associated with the ads ran afoul of the social network’s requirements for authenticity and have since been suspended.
..
Representative Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, called the Facebook report “deeply disturbing and yet fully consistent with the unclassified assessment of the intelligence community.”
..
Facebook’s disclosure may be the first time a private entity has pointed to receiving Russian money related to U.S. elections, said Brendan Fischer, a program director at the Campaign Legal Center, a Washington nonprofit that advocates for more transparency.

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]hese ads were alleged (and Facebook refuses to provide documentation of them) to have consisted of ‘3,000 ads and 470 “inauthentic” accounts and pages’ that were ‘likely based in Russia’, and which were allegedly issued ‘in a two-year period through May’. Three thousand online ads over a two-year period would probably fail to sway an election in any town, much less in an entire nation — anywhere (especially since Facebook grossly overstates its effectiveness). This entire alleged program had cost ‘$100,000’ out of Facebook’s reported $66 billion in total revenue during 2016, and that’s the same ratio as one dollar out of $66,000,000 dollars; so, one might wonder: “What votes, and where, were even possibly decided, by such a tiny alleged advertising campaign, on just this single advertising-medium (Facebook)? Was that an alleged advertising-campaign which is even worthy of making national (and international) ‘news’?” (Furthermore, that $66 billion was being spent only in 2016, and therefore was spent during one year, but the alleged $100,000 was being spent during a two-year period; so, the ratio here is even tinier than one dollar out of 66 billion.) 

But, that’s not the only reason to question the massive attention this matter has been receiving in the U.S. Congress and in the Western press.
 ..
Should any of these entirely unsubstantiated allegations even be published, at all; or, perhaps, are they instead more like the unsubstantiated allegations that the U.S. Government and the Western press spread against Iraq and used in 2003, as the ‘justification’ for invading it (destroying it) — i.e., are they actually nothing more than propaganda for war?
 ..
And, since these alleged 3,000 ads were allegedly “promoting divisive social and political messages,” were all (or even just some) of these ads promoting any particular political candidates? Or, perhaps, not? The reports don’t even provide examples of the types of ‘political messages’ here, other than ‘divisive’ (and, perhaps that term would more accurately have been “controversial,” or maybe even “constructive” — without typical examples, no one can reasonably say).
 ..
And, if this “operation likely based in Russia” existed at all, then was it being done by private persons in Russia who weren’t, in any way, being directed by the Russian Government — or was the alleged operation instead directed by the Russian Government, such as the U.S. Congress and the Western press are strongly implying
 ..
Moreover, there is a broader context to this, than merely the invasion of Iraq. Ever since the U.S. coup in February 2014 overthrew the democratically elected President of Ukraine and thus caused two regions of Ukraine (Crimea and Donbass, both of which had voted more than 75% for him) to break away from Ukraine, and Obama then slapped sanctions against Russia for supporting the two breakaway regions on its doorstep, the U.S. Congress and the U.S. (and allied foreign) ‘news’ media have been trying to build up a case to overthrow Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin, if not to force him to war with NATO. 
 ..
This Ukrainian coup started being planned inside Obama’s U.S. State Department, and with the heavy top-level involvement of Google Inc., in 2011, during U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s time heading the Department. The decline in approval of Russia by Americans, as measured by Gallup, started becoming clear in February 2013, when the 50% favorable and 44% unfavorable rating of Russia the prior February (2012), reversed into 50% unfavorable and 44% favorable (2013). Then, the unfavorable rating soared: to 60% in February 2014 (versus 34% favorable), 70% unfavorable (and 24% favorable) in February 2015, and then stable thereafter, till at least February 2017. During this period — basically the second Presidential term of Obama — some of the ‘news’ stories against Russia were justifiable on the basis of the facts (especially the performance-drug doping of Russia’s Olympic athletes), but most (and especially regarding both Ukraine and Syria) were more like the opposite of the truth than the truth. As a consequence, most Americans are so misinformed, by now, so that only few are aware that even Western polling shows that if given a free and fair opportunity to choose their national leader today, Russians would overwhelmingly choose Putin, Assad would win strongly in Syria, and Yanukovych would win strongly if all of the Ukrainians in 2013 were to vote in an election between him and (America’s regime) Poroshenko (whose votes even outside of the two breakaway regions might still be fewer than Yanukovych’s). Furthermore, in the American ‘democracy’, the public’s approval of almost all elected national officials — President, and Congress — is below their disapproval-numbers, and, so, there’s only a choice here between uglies (except in a few states such as Vermont, where the public’s approval of the state’s congressional delegation is very high).
 ..
CNN, on September 7th, quoted the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mark Warner: 
 ..
"It appeared to me that the very social media sites that we rely on for virtually everything -- our Facebooks, Googles and Twitters — it was my belief the Russians were using those sites to intervene in our elections," Warner said Thursday, speaking at the Intelligence & National Security Summit in Washington. "And the first reaction from Facebook was: 'Well you're crazy, there's nothing going on' — well, we find yesterday there actually was something going on."
 ..
Also on September 7th, the New York Times headlined “The Fake Americans Russia Created to Influence the Election”, and reported “The Perfect Weapon: How Russian Cyberpower Invaded the U.S.” Their report was full of vague allegations, except that it said specifically that an alleged “Melvin Redick of Harrisburg, Pa.” had been on Facebook as early as June 2016, with pro-Russian and Anti-Hillary-Clinton links, but “No Melvin Redick appears in Pennsylvania records, and his photos seem to be borrowed from an unsuspecting Brazilian. … The Redick profile lists Central High School in Philadelphia and Indiana University of Pennsylvania as his alma maters; neither has any record of his attendance. In one of his photos, this purported Pennsylvania lifer is sitting in a restaurant in Brazil — and in another, his daughter’s bedroom appears to have a Brazilian-style electrical outlet. His posts were never personal, just news articles reflecting a pro-Russian worldview.” Not made clear in this article is the question of precisely why the only specific instance that the Times cited here of “Russian meddling” in the U.S. Presidential election, happened to be, apparently, a Brazilian (or was it only someone who had “borrowed from an unsuspecting Brazilian”, and, if so, then who had “borrowed” these things from him — these and other important questions went unanswered in this ‘news’-report, which otherwise blathered with vagueries). Of course, maybe someone in Brazil did hate Clinton enough to pretend to be an American and to promote on Facebook “news articles reflecting a pro-Russian worldview,” but that’s no evidence of “Russian meddling” in anything.
 ..
Furthermore, the way that Obama overthrew Yanukovich in Ukraine by means of a coup, was that, starting in 2011, Eric Schmidt of Google and Jared Cohen of Hillary Clinton’s State Department began planning a social-media campaign to stir up and organize racist anti-Russians in Ukraine to be trained militarily in how to perform a coup, and the money then started flowing to enable them to provide the muscle to carry out their plan. These initial training sessions were called “Tech Camps.” All of this was the culminaing part of what had been a $5 billion decades-long U.S. Government plan to take over Ukraine for the U.S. Nothing that the Russian Government is alleged by the U.S. Government to have done to “meddle” in any U.S. election is even nearly as barbaric an intrusion into U.S. elections as what the U.S. Government has been caught red-handed (just keep clinking through to all the source documents and evidence there, to see and hear that evidence) as having done, to end Ukraine’s struggling democracy, force the country’s break-up, and operate an ethnic-cleansing campaign in Ukraine’s former Donbass region, in order to kill the people who had voted for Yanukovych. How much of this has been reported in the American press?
 ..
Americans used to trust the U.S. ‘news’-media before America invaded Iraq in 2003 on the basis of lies, and some still do, but there is no more reason to trust them now than there was in 2003. 
 ..
On September 8th, National Public Radio headlined “Facebook Acknowledges Russian Ads In 2016 Election. Will Investigations Follow?” and reported that, “Common Cause has filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission, alleging that some of the ads violated federal laws that bar foreign interference in U.S. campaigns. In a second request, for investigations by the Justice Department and special counsel Robert Mueller, Common Cause says the ads ‘pose a direct threat to democracy and national security.’” Of course, NPR, like the rest of America’s ‘news’media, had never reported the U.S. coup in Ukraine, but instead reported only the Obama regime’s propaganda, about the ‘democratic revolution’ that overthrew Yanukovych. In fact, even within just months of Yanukovych’s election in 2010 as Ukraine’s President, NPR was campaigning for him to be overthrown in a ‘democratic revolution’. The CIA-edited Wikipedia also doesn’t report that there was a coup in Ukraine in 2014; instead, they call it the “2014 Ukrainian revolution”. They call this a ‘revolution’, instead of a “coup”.
 ..
Might America’s politicians and press be lying so much about international affairs in order to make Americans loathe foreigners (especially the ones that the U.S. aristocracy want to conquer) even more than Americans already — and with good reason — loathe America’s own politicians and press? 

About the author

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

Months of allegations about Russian US election hacking failed to produce evidence because none exists. Last month, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said he has “no doubt” Washington will interfere in next year’s presidential election. “We are used to American interference. We live with it. It’s the same as wire-tapping by US secret services,” he explained. 

BONUS FEATURE

NYT Fake News Alleging Pro-Trump Russian Facebook Political Ads

Home – Stephen Lendman)

it claimed “new evidence (sic) of Russian interference in the 2016 election (surfaced), Facebook disclos(ing) it had identified more than $100,000 worth of divisive ads on hot-button issues purchased by a shadowy Russian company linked to the Kremlin.”
..
No “shadowy Russian company” (if any exists) is linked to the Kremlin, no Russian government ads related to the 2016 election run, nothing by Moscow interfering in the process – despite fabricated claims otherwise, exposed yet unreported by The Times and other media scoundrels. The Times: “The disclosure adds to the evidence of the broad scope of the Russian influence campaign, which American intelligence agencies concluded was designed to damage Hillary Clinton and boost Donald J. Trump during the election…Multiple investigations of the Russian meddling, and the possibility that the Trump campaign somehow colluded with Russia, have cast a shadow over the first eight months of Mr. Trump’s presidency.”
..

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Echoes of Reagan: Another Nuclear Buildup

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Thirty years ago Americans endured an absurd expansion of the US nuclear-weapon force under President Reagan.  The announced weapons modernization program was accompanied by a huge increase in the military budget, the President’s warning to the Soviet Union that he was willing to spend it into oblivion, and crazy talk from some of his advisers about the potential to fight and win a nuclear war.  So here we are evidently back to the future as the Trump administration forges ahead with nuclear “modernization,” without a set strategy for the weapons but with billions of dollars to burn.


The Nuclear Lobby

[dropcap]R[/dropcap]ight now, the US has about 6,800 total nuclear weapons—roughly 1,400 strategic weapons deployed in ground-, air-, and sea-based missiles, and the rest stockpiled or retired. (The Russians’ arsenal is approximately the same in total.)  From any rational point of view, these weapons are far more than are necessary to deter an adversary.  Submarine-launched ballistic missiles alone—920 of which are fixed on 230 invulnerable submarines, each missile having destructive power equivalent to many Hiroshimas—are sufficient to destroy an entire country and bring on nuclear winter.  There simply is no legitimate basis for believing that the nuclear arsenal needs to be larger, more invulnerable, or more accurate and reliable.

Yet as Americans learned long ago, for the nuclear lobby—the pro-nuclear members of Congress, the military industries that test and produce the weapons and the means of their delivery, and the various Pentagon advisory boards, laboratories, and nuclear planners—enough is never enough.  These folks can always be counted on to argue that the nuclear stockpile must be periodically revitalized to ensure readiness.  And all it takes is a supposed nuclear threat—today meaning North Korea—to bolster the nuclear lobby’s case for upgrading.

The arguments against further investment in nuclear weapons are just as compelling now as they were years ago.  As the US invests more in them, so will the Russians and the Chinese, reviving a nuclear arms race.  Continued reliance on nukes supports pro-nuclear thinking in Pakistan, India, Israel, North Korea, and elsewhere, contributing to the potential for war by accident or design.  These weapons, moreover, which have no purpose other than to deter their use by others, can be inherently destabilizing—as is the case now with a new Cruise missile (price tag: $25 billion), whose accuracy and stealth raise the possibility of a disastrous miscalculation by adversaries.  At the same time, such a weapon should, but won’t, eliminate the need for ground-based ICBMs.  No, say the weapons proponents: the ground-air-sea nuclear triad will remain, adding billions to the military budget.

The nuclear weapons lobby is surely delighted with Trump’s decision. The lobby was downcast when it seemed that President Obama was headed toward bringing nuclear weapons numbers down to some minimum figure.  But he reversed course late in his second administration and agreed to new investments in them, apparently in order to ensure Senate approval of the “New Start” agreement with Russia in 2010.  Now, the weapons manufacturers that will be responsible for Trump’s program—Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, and Northrop Grumman—are assured of many more years of multibillion dollar activity.

Present Choices

The Reagans: If people only knew what dear Ronnie truly represented. Comfortable retirement for services (not rendered to the people).

[dropcap]W[/dropcap]hen we think about national security in the human interest, two considerations are uppermost: the quality of life for our people and a peaceful future for the planet.  As to the first, we might evaluate the cost of another nuclear-weapon modernization when matched against the urgent need to start thinking about paying for rebuilding Houston after Hurricane Harvey.  The Washington Post reports (August 28) that “Hurricane Katrina, in 2005, caused $160 billion in damage and Hurricane Sandy in 2012 caused around $70 billion in damage, according to inflation-adjusted figures provided by the federal government.” “Harvey” may well cost more—even more than the full cost of Trump’s nuclear modernization program, which will easily top $125 billion. FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) reportedly has only $3.8 billion on hand; the rest of the rescue money must come from elsewhere in the federal budget. But, Texans and Louisianans, don’t count on Trump to divert a dime from the military to bail you out.  (Come to think of it, abandoning the Mexico wall project would also be a welcome response to Houston’s calamity.)

The other consideration is global security while nuclear weapons are under the command of Donald Trump.  In the May-June 2017 issue of Foreign Affairs, Philip Gordon offers three crisis scenarios—with China, Iran, and North Korea—that Trump might well mishandle and involve the US in war.  Each potential crisis might lead a president known for recklessness, unpreparedness, and predilection for making threats to consider use of nuclear weapons. So the issue here is squarely about national security for us and for all. 


About the Author
 Mel Gurtov is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Portland State University, Editor-in-Chief of Asian Perspective, an international affairs quarterly and blogs at In the Human Interest.

The arguments against further investment in nuclear weapons are just as compelling now as they were years ago.  As the US invests more in them, so will the Russians and the Chinese, reviving a nuclear arms race.  Continued reliance on nukes supports pro-nuclear thinking in Pakistan, India, Israel, North Korea, and elsewhere, contributing to the potential for war by accident or design.  These weapons, moreover, which have no purpose other than to deter their use by others, can be inherently destabilizing—as is the case now with a new Cruise missile (price tag: $25 billion), whose accuracy and stealth raise the possibility of a disastrous miscalculation by adversaries. 

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.




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Parting shot—a word from the editors
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 

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Polls: U.S. Is ‘the Greatest Threat to Peace in the World Today’



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 t has happened again: yet another international poll finds that the U.S. is viewed by peoples around the world to be the biggest threat to world peace.

But, to start, let’s summarize the first-ever poll that had been done on this, back in 2013, which was the only prior poll on this entire issue, and it was the best-performed such poll: "An end-of-the-year WIN/Gallup International survey found that people in 65 countries believe the United States is the greatest threat to world peace”, as the N.Y. Post reported on 5 January 2014.


The 3 Amigos. All ran the US government to benefit the super-rich, and the public be damned. As instruments of the plutocracy and its military arm, they waged war in one country after another, on entirely spurious reasons. They are all war criminals, as is the current White House occupant.

On 30 December 2013, the BBC had reported of that poll: "This year, first [meaning here, ‘for’] the first time, Win/Gallup agreed to include three questions submitted by listeners to [BBC’s] Radio 4's Today programme.” And, one of those three listener-asked questions was phrased there by the BBC, as having been “Which country is the biggest threat to peace?” The way that WIN/Gallup International itself had actually asked this open-ended question, to 67,806 respondents from 65 countries, was: “Which country do you think is the greatest threat to peace in the world today?” #1, 24% of respondents, worldwide, volunteered that the U.S. was “the greatest threat.” #2 (the second-most-frequently volunteered ‘greatest threat’) was Pakistan, volunteered by 8%. #3 was China, with 6%. #s 4-7 were a four-way tie, at 5% each, for: Afghanistan, Iran, Israel, and North Korea. #s 8-10 were a three-way tie, at 4% each, for: India, Iraq, and Japan. #11 was Syria, with 3%. #12 was Russia, with 2%. #s 13-20 were a seven-way tie, at 1% each, for: Australia, Germany, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, South Korea, and UK.
..

The way that W/G itself had phrased this matter, in their highly uninformative press release for their year-end survey (which included but barely mentioned this finding, in it — as though this particular finding in their annual year-end poll, hardly even deserved to be mentioned), was: “The US was the overwhelming choice (24% of respondents) for the country that represents the greatest threat to peace in the world today. This was followed by Pakistan (8%), China (6%), North Korea, Israel and Iran (5%). Respondents in Russia (54%), China (49%) and Bosnia (49%) were the most fearful of the US as a threat.” That’s all there was of it — W/G never devoted a press-release to the stunning subject of this particular finding, and they even buried this finding when mentioning it in their year-end press-release.

Clint Eastwood as Gunny Sgt. in Heartbreak Ridge. His almost childish, mawkish glorification of the military is a lifelong passion usually denied. His movies whitewash the crimes of the US plutocracy around the world, but Eastwood and his Hollywood pals are too stupid or too corrupt to stop their propaganda.

..
I had hoped that they would repeat this excellent global survey question every year (so that a trendline could be shown, in the global answers over time), but the question was unfortunately never repeated.
 ..
However, now, on August 1st of 2017, Pew Research Center has issued results of their polling of 30 nations in which they had surveyed, first in 2013, and then again in 2017, posing a less-clear but similar question (vague perhaps because they were fearing a similar type of finding — embarrassing to their own country, the U.S.), in which respondents had been asked “Do you think that the United States’ power and influence is a major threat, a minor threat, or not a threat to (survey country)?” and which also asked this same question but regarding “China,” and then again but regarding “Russia,” as a possible threat instead of “United States.” (This wasn’t an open-ended question; only those three nations were named as possible responses.)
 ..
On page 3 of their 32-page pdf is shown that the “major threat” category was selected by 35% of respondents worldwide for “U.S. power and influence,” 31% worldwide selected that for “Russia’s power and influence,” and also 31% worldwide said it for “China’s power and influence.” However, on pages 23 and 24 of the pdf is shown the 30 countries that had been surveyed in this poll, in both 2013 and 2017, and most of these 30 nations were U.S. allies; only Venezuela clearly was not. None of the 30 countries was an ally of either Russia or China (the other two countries offered as possibly being “a major threat”). And, yet, nonetheless, more respondents among the 30 sampled countries saw the U.S. as “a major threat,” than saw either Russia or China that way.
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Furthermore, the trend, in those 30 countries, throughout that four-year period, was generally in the direction of an increase in fear of the U.S. — increase in fear of the country that had been overwhelmingly cited in 2013 by people in 65 countries in WIN/Gallup’s poll, as constituting, in 2013, “the greatest threat to peace in the world today."
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Consequently: though WIN/Gallup never repeated its question, the evidence in this newly released poll, from Pew, clearly suggests that the percentage of people in the 65 nations that WIN/Gallup had polled in 2013 who saw the U.S. as being “the greatest threat to peace in the world today” would be even higher today than it was in 2013, when 24% of respondents worldwide volunteered the U.S. as being the world’s most frightening country.
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Perhaps people around the world are noticing that, at least since 2001, the U.S. is wrecking one country after another: Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, and Ukraine. Which is next? Maybe Iran? Maybe Russia? Maybe Venezuela? Who knows?
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Regarding the 2013 WIN/Gallup End-of-Year international survey, you can see the nation-by-nation results here. For example, their sampling that year of 4,556 Americans found that residents of the U.S. answered to “Q8. Which country do you think is the greatest threat to peace in the world today?”: #1 Iran 20%, #2 Afghanistan 14%, #3 N. Korea 13%, #4 United States 13%, #5 Iraq 6%, #7 Syria 5%, #8 China 5%, #9 Russia 3%, #10 Pakistan 1%. A remarkably high 13% of Americans gave the correct answer. And, late in that year, U.S. President Obama pulled the trigger on his long-planned bloody overthrow and replacement of Ukraine’s government, which was portrayed throughout the Western press as being a ‘democratic revolution’, though it actually ended democracy in Ukraine
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And the U.S. has just increased its ‘defense’ spending, which already is three times China’s, and nine times higher than Russia’s. Do the owners of America’s military-industrial complex own the U.S. government, and own the U.S. ‘news’media, to permit this rabid military to control the government’s budget, in a ‘democracy’? Is that how it happens? 

About the author

EricZuesseThey'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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What will it take to bring America to live according to its own self image?


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