One 77-year-old’s search for the truth: 9/11, election fraud, illegal wars, Wall Street criminality, a stolen nuke, the neocon wars, control of the U.S. government by global corporations, the unjustified assault on Social Security, media complicity, and the "Great Recession" about to become the second Great Depression. "The most important truths are hidden from us by the powerful few who strive to steal the American dream by keeping We the People in the dark."
Washington Has Placed The World On The Road To War Does the world have a death wish? Paul Craig Roberts The drums for war are being loudly beaten in Washington, European
capitals, and the presstitute Western media. A headline in the Asia
Times is “NATO Is Desperate For War.” http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/CEN-01-080814.html This time the target is Russia, a major nuclear power. The deadly consequences of such a war would extend beyond Russia,
Europe, and the US to the entire world. The Western use of lies to
demonize Russia endangers life on earth and reveals the West to be both
reckless and irresponsible. Yet, few voices are raised against this
recklessness and irresponsibility. Ron Unz brings to our attention the important voice of a distinguished Dutch journalist, Karel Van Wolferen. Wolferen http://www.unz.com/article/the-ukraine-corrupted-journalism-and-the-atlanticist-faith/ and Unz himself http://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-who-shot-down-flight-mh17-in-ukraine/
are important offsets to what Unz regards, correctly in my opinion, as
“the utter corruption and unreliability of the mainstream American
media.” Wolferen’s article is long but very important. Readers will see analysis akin to my own. Wolferen shows how the Washington hegemon has captured Europe within an
Atlanticist ideology that forecloses any independent thinking or foreign
policy on the part of Europeans who are reduced to a state of
vassalage. Wolferen concludes that as Washington drives Europe toward
war, “Europeans cannot bring themselves to believe in the dysfunction
and utter irresponsibility of the American state.” With no internal checks on Washington’s recklessness from allies, the
media, and US Senators, the only brake on Washington’s drive to war is
Russian, Chinese, Indian, and South American diplomacy. If this
diplomacy fails, Fukushima, as bad as it is, becomes a mere raindrop in
the ocean. http://www.globalresearch.ca/weve-opened-the-gates-of-hell-fukushima-spews-radiation-world-wide/5395912 The slaughter by Washington, Washington’s Kiev stooges and
Washington’s EU vassals of civilians in the former Russian territories
that comprise the southern and eastern borders of present-day Ukraine is
not only largely unreported in the Western media, but also denied or
blamed on Russia. The crimes that Washington is perpetrating while blaming Russia has
aroused a high level of anger among the Russian people. Such anger is
dangerous as it could force Putin, who continues to emphasize
non-confrontation http://rt.com/news/180268-putin-russia-mobilize-confrontation/ , to turn away from diplomacy to violence. Egor Prosvirnin, the chief editor of a Russian news site, shows us
the extent of the anger in Russia caused by the dangerous mixture of
Washington’s broken promises with the vicious propaganda war against
Russia and the German government’s complicity. http://sputnikipogrom.com/europe/germany/18213/russian-appeal/ Prosvirnin expresses anger that is white hot: “Germans have failed
their test. When Evil has returned again to Europe, you do not even
attempt to resist it, and immediately fall prostrate at its feet like a
slave.” As Russians see it, all of Europe is a slave to the evil
emanating from Washington. Why did Merkel allow Washington to force Germany into a conflict with
Russia that has produced enormous Russian anger toward Germany? What
accounts for Merkel’s total failure as a leader? The Clinton, Bush, and Obama regimes have set the world on the path to the final war. How is it possible for their evil to go unrecognized? The two murderous states are the US and Israel. By tolerating their
endless slaughters and endless lies, the world prepares its own demise. The only hope for life and truth is that the world unite against
these two criminal governments, isolate them diplomatically and
economically, and make it impossible for their government officials to
travel abroad without being arrested and placed on trial. Why does the world need Washington and Israel? Unless the world has a
death wish, the world does not need Washington and Israel.
Washington Threatens The World Paul Craig Roberts The consequence of Washington’s reckless and irresponsible political
and military interventions in Iraq, Libya, and Syria has been to unleash
evil. The various sects that lived in peace under the rule of Saddam
Hussein, Gaddafi, and Assad are butchering one another, and a new group,
ISIS, is in the process of creating a new state out of parts of Iraq
and Syria. The turmoil brought into the Middle East by the Bush and Obama
regimes has meant death and displacement for millions and untold future
deaths. As I write 40,000 Iraqis are stranded on a mountain top without
water awaiting death at the hands of ISIS, a creation of US meddling. The reality in the Middle East stands in vast contradiction to the
stage managed landing of George W. Bush on the US aircraft carrier
Abraham Lincoln where Bush declared “Mission Accomplished” on May 1,
2003. The mission that Washington accomplished was to wreck the Middle
East and the lives of millions of people and to destroy America’s
reputation in the process. Thanks to the demonic neoconservative Bush
regime, today America is regarded by the rest of the world as the
greatest threat to world peace. The Clinton regime’s attack on Serbia set the pattern. Bush upped
the ante with Washington’s naked aggression against Afghanistan, which
Washington clothed in Orwellian language – ”Operation Enduring Freedom.” Washington brought ruin, not freedom, to Afghanistan. After 13 years
of blowing up the country, Washington is now withdrawing, the
“superpower” having been defeated by a few thousand lightly armed
Taliban, but leaving a wasteland behind for which Washington will accept
no responsibility. Another source of endless Middle East turmoil is Israel whose theft of Palestine is Washington-enabled. In the middle of Israel’s latest attack on
civilians in Gaza, the US Congress passed resolutions in support of
Israel’s war crimes and voted hundreds of millions of dollars to pay for
Israel’s ammunition. Here we witness Great Moral America 100 percent in
support of unambiguous war crimes against essentially defenseless
people. When Israel murders women and children, Washington calls it “Israel’s
right to defend their own country” – a country that Israel stole from
Palestinians – but when Palestinians retaliate Washington calls it
“terrorism.” By supporting Israel, declared to be a terrorist state by a
few moral governments that still exist, and accused of war crimes by
the UN General Secretary, Washington is in violation of its own laws
against supporting terrorist states. Of course, Washington itself is the leading terrorist state.
Therefore, it is illegal under US law for Washington to support itself.
Washington, however, does not accept law, neither domestic nor
international, as a constraint on its actions. Washington is
“exceptional, indispensable.” No one else counts. No law, no
Constitution, and no humane consideration has authority to constrain
Washington’s will. In its claims Washington surpasses those of the Third
Reich. As horrific as Washington’s recklessness toward the Middle East is,
Washington’s recklessness toward Russia is many orders of magnitude
greater. Washington has convinced nuclear armed Russia that Washington is planning a nuclear first strike. In response Russia is beefing up its nuclear forces and testing US air defense reactions. http://freebeacon.com/national-security/russian-strategic-bombers-conduct-more-than-16-incursions-of-u-s-air-defense-zones/ It is difficult to imagine a more irresponsible act than to convince
Russia that Washington intends to hit Russia with a preemptive first
strike. One of Putin’s advisers has explained to the Russian media
Washington’s first strike intentions, and a member of the Russian Duma
has made a documented presentation of Washington’s first strike
intentions. http://financearmageddon.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/official-warning-u-s-to-hit-russia-with.html By marshaling the evidence, I have pointed out in my columns that it is impossible for Russia to avoid this conclusion. China is aware that China faces the same threat from Washington. http://yalejournal.org/2013/06/12/who-authorized-preparations-for-war-with-china/
China’s response to Washington’s war plans against China was to
demonstrate how China’s nuclear forces would be used in response to
Washington’s attack on China to destroy the US. China made this public,
hoping to create opposition among Americans to Washington’s war plans
against China. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2484334/China-boasts-new-submarine-fleet-capable-launching-nuclear-warheads-cities-United-States.html Like Russia, China is a rising country that does not need war in order to succeed. The only country on earth that needs war is Washington, and that is
because Washington’s goal is the neoconservative one of exercising
hegemony over the world. Prior to the Bush and Obama regimes, every previous US president went
to great efforts to avoid telegraphing any nuclear threat. US war
doctrine was careful to keep nuclear weapons limited to retaliation in
the event the US suffered a nuclear attack. The purpose of nuclear
forces was to prevent the use of such weapons. The reckless George W.
Bush regime elevated nuclear weapons to preemptive first use, thus
destroying the constraint placed on the use of nuclear weapons. The overriding purpose of the Reagan administration was to end the
cold war and, thereby, the threat of nuclear war. The George W. Bush
regime, together with the Obama regime’s demonization of Russia, have
overturned President Reagan’s unique achievement and made nuclear war
likely. When the incompetent Obama regime decided to overthrow the
democratically elected government in Ukraine and install a puppet
government of Washington’s choosing, the Obama State Department, run by
neoconservative ideologues, forgot that the eastern and southern
portions of Ukraine consist of former Russian provinces that were
attached to the Ukraine Soviet Socialist Republic by Communist Party
leaders when Ukraine and Russia were part of the same country – the Soviet
Union. When the Russophobic stooges that Washington installed in Kiev
demonstrated in word and deed their hostility to Ukraine’s Russian
population, the former Russian provinces declared their desire to return
to mother Russia. This is not surprising, nor is it something that can
be blamed on Russia. Crimea succeeded in returning to Russia, where Crimea resided since
the 1700s, but Putin, hoping to defuse the propaganda war that
Washington was mounting against him did not accept the pleas from the
other former Russian provinces. Consequently, Washington’s stooges in
Kiev felt free to attack the protesting provinces and have been
following the Israeli policy of attacking civilian populations, civilian
residences, and civilian infrastructure. The presstitute Western media ignored the facts and accused Russia of
invading and annexing parts of Ukraine. This lie is comparable to the
lies that US Secretary of State Colin Powell told the UN about Iraqi
weapons of mass destruction in behalf of the criminal Bush regime, lies
that Colin Powell later apologized for to no avail as Iraq had been
destroyed by his lies. When the Malaysian airliner was destroyed, before any facts were
known Russia was blamed. The British media was especially primed to
blame Russia almost the instant it was known the airliner was downed. I
heard the BBC’s gross misrepresentation and blatant lies on American
National Public Radio, and only the Daily Mail’s propagandistic account
was worse. The entire “news” event has the appearance of orchestration
prior to the event, which, of course, suggests that Washington was
behind it. The airliner deaths became all important for Washington’s propaganda
war. The 290 casualties are unfortunate, but they are a small fraction
of the deaths that Israel was inflicting on Palestinians at the same
moment without provoking any protests from Western governments, as
distinct from Western peoples in the streets, people whose protests were
conveniently suppressed for Israel by Western security forces. Washington used the downing of the airliner, which probably was
Washington’s responsibility, as an excuse for another round of
sanctions and to pressure its European puppets to join the sanctions
with sanctions of their own, which Washington’s EU puppets did. Washington relies on accusations and insinuations and refuses to
release the evidence from the satellite photos, because the photos do
not support Washington’s lies. Facts are not permitted to interfere with Washington’s demonization of Russia
any more than facts interfered with Washington’s demonization of Iraq,
Libya, Syria, and Iran. Twenty-two reckless and irresponsible US senators have introduced the
“Russian Aggression Prevention Act of 2014,” US Senate bill 2277,
sponsored by Senator Bob Corker, who well represents in his ignorance
and stupidity what appears to be the majority of the American population
or the majority of voters in the state of Tennessee. Corker’s bill is a
mindless piece of legislation designed to start a war that would be
likely to leave no survivors. Apparently, idiotic Americans will elect
any fool to power. The belief that Russia is responsible for the downed Malaysian
airliner has become fact in Western capitals despite the total absence
of even a tiny scrap of evidence in behalf of the claim. Moreover, even
it the accusation were true, is one airliner worth a World War? The UK Defense Committee has concluded that a broke and militarily
impotent UK must “focus on the defense of Europe against Russia.” The
military spending drums, if not the war drums, are beating and the
entire West has joined in. A militarily impotent Britain is going to
defend Europe from a non-existent, although much proclaimed, attack from
the Russian bear. US and NATO military dignitaries and the Pentagon chief are issuing
Russia Threat Warnings based on alleged but non-existent Russian
troop-buildups on Ukraine’s border. According to the the Western
Ministry of Propaganda if Russia defends the Russian populations in
Ukraine from military attack from Washington’s stooge government in
Kiev, it is proof that Russia is the villain. Washington’s propaganda campaign has succeeded in turning Russia into
a threat. Polls show that 69 percent of Americans now regard Russia as a
threat, and that the confidence of Russians in American leadership has
vanished. Russians and their government observe the identical demonization of
their country and their leader as they observed of Iraq and Saddam
Hussein, of Libya and Gaddafi, of Syria and Assad, and of Afghanistan
and the Taliban just prior to military assaults on these countries by
the West. For a Russian, the safest conclusion from the evidence is
that Washington intends war on Russia. It is my opinion that the irresponsibility and recklessness of the
Obama regime is without precedent. Never before has the United States
government or the government of any nuclear power gone to such great
efforts to convince another nuclear power that that power was being set
up for attack. It is difficult to imagine a more provocative act that
more endangers life on earth. Indeed, the White House Fool has doubled
up, convincing both Russia and China that Washington is planning a
preemptive first strike on both. Republicans want to sue or to impeach Obama over relatively
inconsequential issues, such as ObamaCare. Why don’t Republicans want
to impeach Obama over such a critical issue as subjecting the world to
the risk of nuclear armageddon? The answer is that the Republicans are as crazed as the Democrats.
Their leaders, such as John McCain and Lindsay Graham, are determined
that “we stand up to the Russians!” Wherever one looks in American
politics one sees crazed people, psychopaths and sociopaths who should
not be in political office. Washington long ago gave up diplomacy. Washington relies on force
and intimidation. The US government is utterly devoid of judgment.
This is why polls show that the rest of the world regards the US
government as the greatest threat to world peace. Today (August 8, 2014) Handelsblatt, Germany’s Wall Street Journal, wrote in a signed editorial by the publisher: “The American tendency to move from verbal escalation to military
escalation – the isolation, demonization, and attacking of enemies – has not
proven effective. The last successful major military action the US
conducted was the Normandy landing [in 1944]. Everything else – Korea,
Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan – was a clear failure. Moving NATO units
towards the Polish border with Russia and thinking about arming Ukraine
is a continuation of relying on military means in the absence of
diplomacy.” Washington’s puppet states – all of Europe, Japan, Canada, and
Australia – enable Washington’s unrivaled danger to the world by their
support of Washington’s agenda of exercising hegemony over the entire
world. The 100th anniversary of World War I is upon us. And the folly that
caused this war is being repeated. WWI destroyed a civilized Western
world, and it was the work of a mere handful of scheming people. The
result was Lenin, the Soviet Union, Hitler, the rise of American
Imperialism, Korea, Vietnam, the military interventions that created
ISIS, and now resurrected conflict between Washington and Russia that
President Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev had ended. As Stephen Starr has pointed out on my website, if merely 10% of the
nuclear weapons in the US and Russian arsenals are used, life on earth
terminates. Dear readers, ask yourselves, when has Washington told you anything
that was not a lie? Washington’s lies have caused millions of
casualties. Do you want to be a casualty of Washington’s lies? Do you believe that Washington’s lies and propaganda about the
Malaysian airliner and Ukraine are worth risking life on earth? Who is
so gullible that he cannot recognize that Washington’s lies about
Ukraine are like Washington’s lies about Hussein’s weapons of mass
destruction, Iranian nukes, and Assad’s use of chemical weapons? Do you think that the neoconservative influence that prevails in
Washington, regardless of the political party in office, is too
dangerous to be tolerated?
I wish I had only good news to bring to readers, or even one item of
good news. Alas, goodness has ceased to be a feature of US policy and
simply cannot be found in any words or deeds emanating from Washington
or the capitals of its European vassal states. The Western World has
succumbed to evil.
US war doctrine has been changed. US nuclear weapons are no longer
restricted to a retaliatory force, but have been elevated to the role of
preemptive nuclear attack. Washington pulled out of the Anti-Ballistic
Missile Treaty with Russia and is developing and deploying an ABM
shield. Washington is demonizing Russia and Russia’s President with
shameless lies and propaganda, thus preparing the populations of the US
and its client states for war with Russia.
Washington has been convinced by neoconservatives that Russian
strategic nuclear forces are in run down and unprepared condition and
are sitting ducks for attack. This false belief is based on out-of-date
information, a decade old, such as the argument presented in “The Rise
of U.S. Nuclear Primacy” by Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press in the
April 2006 issue of Foreign Affairs, a publication of the Council on Foreign Relations, an organization of American elites. http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/61508/keir-a-lieber-and-daryl-g-press/the-rise-of-us-nuclear-primacy
Regardless of the condition of Russian nuclear forces, the success of
Washington’s first strike and degree of protection provided by
Washington’s ABM shield against retaliation, the article I posted by
Steven Starr, “The Lethality of Nuclear Weapons,” makes clear that
nuclear war has no winners. Everyone dies. http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2014/05/30/lethality-nuclear-weapons/
In an article published in the December 2008 issue of Physics Today,
three atmospheric scientists point out that even the substantial
reduction in nuclear arsenals that the Strategic Offensive Reductions
Treaty hoped to achieve, from 70,000 warheads in 1986 to 1700-2200
warheads by the end of 2012, did not reduce the threat that nuclear war
presents to life on earth. The authors conclude that in addition to the
direct blast effects of hundreds of millions of human fatalities, “the
indirect effects would likely eliminate the majority of the human
population.” The stratospheric smoke from firestorms would cause nuclear
winter and agricultural collapse. Those who did not perish from blast
and radiation would starve to death. http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/ToonRobockTurcoPhysicsToday.pdf
Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev understood this. Unfortunately,
no successor US government has. As far as Washington is concerned, death
is what happens to others, not to “the exceptional people.” (The SORT
agreement apparently failed. According to the Stockholm International
Peace Research Institute, the nine nuclear-armed states still possess a
total of 16,300 nuclear weapons. http://rt.com/news/166132-nuclear-weapons-report-obama/ )
It is a fact that Washington has policymakers who think, incorrectly,
that nuclear war is winnable and who regard nuclear war as a means of
preventing the rise of Russia and China as checks on Washington’s
hegemony over the world. The US government, regardless of party in
office, is a massive threat to life on earth. European governments,
which think of themselves as civilized, are not, because they enable
Washington’s pursuit of hegemony. It is this pursuit that threatens
life with extinction. The ideology that grants “exceptional,
indispensable America” supremacy is an enormous threat to the world.
The destruction of seven countries in whole or in part by the West in
the 21st century, with the support of “Western civilization” and the
Western media, comprises powerful evidence that the leadership of the
Western world is devoid of moral conscience and human compassion. Now
that Washington is armed with its false doctrine of “nuclear primacy,”
the outlook for humanity is very bleak.
Washington has begun the run up to the Third World War, and Europeans
seem to be on board. As recently as November 2012 NATO Secretary
General Rasmussen said that NATO does not regard Russia as an enemy.
Now that the White House Fool and his European vassals have convinced
Russia that the West is an enemy, Rasmussen declared that “we must adapt
to the fact that Russia now considers us its adversary” by beefing up
Ukraine’s military along with those of Eastern and Central Europe.
Last month Alexander Vershbow, former US ambassador to Russia,
currently NATO Deputy Secretary General, declared Russia to be the enemy
and said that the American and European taxpayers need to fork over for
the military modernization “not just of Ukraine, but also Moldova,
Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan.”
It is possible to see these calls for more military spending as just
the normal functioning of agents for the US military/security complex.
Having lost “the war on terror” in Iraq and Afghanistan, Washington
needs a replacement and has set about resurrecting the Cold War.
This is probably how the armaments industry, its shills, and part of
Washington sees it. But the neoconservatives are more ambitious. They
are not pursuing merely more profits for the military/security complex.
Their goal is Washington’s hegemony over the world, which means
reckless actions such as the strategic threat that the Obama regime,
with the complicity of its European vassals, has brought to Russia in
Ukraine.
Since last autumn the US government has been lying through its teeth
about Ukraine, blaming Russia for the consequences of Washington’s
actions, and demonizing Putin exactly as Washington demonized Gaddafi,
Saddam Hussein, Assad, the Taliban, and Iran. The presstitute media and
the European capitals have seconded the lies and propaganda and repeat
them endlessly. Consequently, the US public’s attitude toward Russia
moved sharply negative.
How do you think Russia and China see this? Russia has witnessed
NATO brought to its borders, a violation of the Reagan-Gorbachev
understandings. Russia has witnessed the US pull out of the ABM treaty
and develop a “star wars” shield. (Whether or not the shield would work
is immaterial. The purpose of the shield is to convince the politicians
and the public that Americans are safe.) Russia has witnessed
Washington change the role of nuclear weapons in its war doctrine from
deterrent to preemptive first strike. And now Russia listens to a daily
stream of lies from the West and witnesses the slaughter by
Washington’s vassal in Kiev of civilians in Russian Ukraine, branded
“terrorists” by Washington, by such weapons as white phosphorus with not
a peep of protest from the West.
Massive attacks by artillery and air strikes on homes and apartments
in Russian Ukraine were conducted on the 25th anniversary of Tiananmen
Square, while Washington and its puppets condemned China for an event
that did not happen. As we now know, there was no massacre in Tiananmen
Square. It was just another Washington lie like Tonkin Gulf, Saddam
Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, Assad’s use of chemical weapons,
Iranian nukes, etc. It is an amazing fact that the world lives in a
false reality created by Washington’s lies.
The movie, The Matrix, is a true depiction of life in the West. The
population lives in a false reality created for them by their rulers. A
handful of humans have escaped the false existence and are committed to
bringing humans back to reality. They rescue Neo, “The One,” who they
believe correctly to have the power to free humans from the false
reality in which they live. Morpheus, the leader of the rebels, explains
to Neo:
“The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when
you’re inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers,
lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save.
But until we do, these people are still a part of that system, and that
makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are
not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly
dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it.”
I experience this every time I write a column. Protests from those
determined not to be unplugged arrive in emails and on those websites
that expose their writers to slander by government trolls in comment
sections. Don’t believe real reality, they insist, believe the false
reality.
The Matrix even encompasses part of the Russian and Chinese
population, especially those educated in the West and those susceptible
to Western propaganda, but on the whole those populations know the
difference between lies and truth. The problem for Washington is that
the propaganda that prevails over the Western peoples does not prevail
over the Russian and Chinese governments.
How do you think China reacts when Washington declares the South
China Sea to be an area of US national interests, allocates 60 percent
of its vast fleet to the Pacific, and constructs new US air and naval
bases from the Philippines to Vietnam?
Suppose all Washington intends is to keep taxpayer funding alive for
the military/security complex which launders some of the taxpayers’
money and returns it as political campaign contributions. Can Russia
and China take the risk of viewing Washington’s words and deeds in this
limited way?
So far the Russians, and only the Russians (and Chinese), have
remained sensible. Lavrov, the Foreign Minister said: “At this stage, we
want to give our partners a chance to calm down. We’ll see what happens
next. If absolutely baseless accusations against Russia continue, it
there are attempts to pressure us with economic leverage, then we may
reevaluate the situation.”
If the White House Fool, Washington’s media whores and European
vassals convince Russia that war is in the cards, war will be in the
cards. As there is no prospect whatsoever of NATO being able to mount a
conventional offensive threat against Russia anywhere near the size and
power of the German invasion force in 1941 that met with destruction,
the war will be nuclear, which will mean the end of all of us.
Keep that firmly in mind as Washington and its media whores continue
to beat the drums for war. Keep in mind also that a long history proves
beyond all doubt that everything Washington and the presstitute media
tells you is a lie serving an undeclared agenda. You cannot rectify the
situation by voting Democrat instead of Republican or by voting
Republican instead of Democrat.
Thomas Jefferson told us his solution: “The tree of liberty must be
refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It
is its natural manure.”
There are few patriots in Washington but many tyrants.
On Wednesday, June 11th, CNN headlined "U.S. Sends B-2 Stealth Bombers to Europe," and
reported that "they arrived in Europe this week for training." Wikipedia notes
that B-2s were "originally designed primarily as a nuclear bomber,"
and that "The B-2 is the only aircraft that can carry large
air-to-surface standoff weapons in a
stealth configuration."
Some historical background is necessary here, so that a reader can understand why this is happening -- the switch to an objective of
actually winning a nuclear war (as opposed to deterring one). One cannot
understand what's happening now in Ukraine without knowing this bigger picture.
(This account is written under the assumption that the
reader already knows some of the allegations it contains, but not all of them,
and that the reader will click on the link wherever a given allegation requires
documentation and support.)
Consequently, for example, a recent CNN Poll has found that Americans'
fear of Russia has soared within just the past two years. Our news media
present a type of news "reporting" that places Russia's leader, Vladimir Putin,
into a very bad light, even when it's unjustified
by the facts.
The situation
now is thus rather similar to that right before World
War I, when the aristocracy in America decided that a pretext
had to be created for our going to war against Germany. That War had already started in Europe on 28 July 1914, and
President Wilson wanted to keep the U.S. out of it, but we ultimately joined it
on the side of J.P. Morgan and Company. This was documented in detail in an important
1985 book, Britain, America and the Sinews of War, 1914-1918, which was
well summarized in Business History Review, by noting that:
"J.P. Morgan & Co. served as Britain's financial and purchasing agent,
and the author makes especially good use of the Morgan Grenfell & Co.
papers in London to probe that relationship. Expanding British demand for U.S.
dollars to pay for North American imports made the politics of foreign exchange
absolutely central to Anglo-American relations. How to manage those politics
became the chief preoccupation of Her Majesty's representatives in the United
States," and most especially of Britain's financial and purchasing agent
in the U.S.
In 1917,
after almost two years of heavy anti-German propaganda in the U.S. press that
built an overwhelming public support for our joining that war against Germany, Congress found that, in March 1915, "J.P. Morgan interests had bought 25 of America's
leading newspapers, and inserted their own editors, in order to control the
media" so that we'd join the war on England's side.
Whereas back then, it was Germany's leader who was being goaded into providing
a pretext for us to declare war against his country, this time it's Russia's
leader (Putin) who is being demonized and goaded into providing such a pretext,
though Putin (unlike Germany's Kaiser) has thus far refrained from providing
the pretext that Obama constantly warns us that he will (a Russian invasion of
Ukraine). Consequently, Obama's people are stepping up the pressure upon Putin by bombing the areas of neighboring Ukraine where Russian
speakers live, who have family across the border inside Russia
itself. Just a few more weeks of this, and Putin's public support inside Russia
could palpably erode if Putin simply lets the slaughter proceed without his sending
troops in to defend them and to fight back against Kiev's (Washington'ssurrogate's) bombing-campaign. This would provide the pretext that Obama has been warning
about.
I also have reported on "Why Ukraine's Civil War Is of Global
Historical Importance." The article argued that
"This civil war is of massive historical importance, because
it re-starts the global Cold War, this time no longer under the
fig-leaf rationalization of an ideological battle between 'capitalism'
versus 'communism,' but instead more raw, as a struggle between, on the
one hand, the U.S. and West European aristocracies; and, on the other
hand, the newly emerging aristocracies of Russia and of China."
The conflict's origin, as recounted there, was told in its highest detail in
an article in the scholarly journal Diplomatic
History, about how U.S. President George H.W. Bush in 1990 fooled the
Soviet Union's leader Mikhail Gorbachev into Gorbachev's allowing the Cold War
to be ended without any assurance being given to the remaining rump country, his
own Russia, that NATO and its missiles and bombers won't expand right up to
Russia's doorstep and surround Russia with a first-strike ability to destroy
Russia before Russia will even have a chance to get its own nuclear weapons
into the air in order to destroy the U.S. right back in retaliation.
That old system -- "Mutually Assured
Destruction" or MAD, but actually very rational
from the public's perspective on both sides -- is gone. The U.S. increasingly
is getting nuclear primacy. Russia, surrounded by NATO nations and U.S. nuclear weapons,
would be able to be wiped out before its rusty and comparatively
puny military force could be mustered to respond. Whereas we
are not surrounded by their weapons, they are surrounded by ours. Whereas they
don't have the ability to wipe us out before we can respond, we have the
ability to wipe them out before they'll be able to respond. This is the reason
why America's aristocracy argue that MAD is dead. An article, "Environmental Consequences of Nuclear War" was
published in the December 2008 Physics Today, and it concluded that,
"the indirect effects ['nuclear winter'] would likely eliminate the
majority of the human population." (It would be even worse, and far
faster, than the expected harms from global warming.) However, aristocrats
separate themselves from the public, and so their perspective is not
necessarily the same as the public's. The perspective that J.P. Morgan and Co.
had in 1915 wasn't the perspective that the U.S. public had back then, and it
also wasn't the perspective that our President, Woodrow Wilson, did back then,
when we were a democracy. But it's even less clear today that we are a
democracy than it was in 1915. In that regard, things have only gotten worse in
America.
So, President Obama is now trying to persuade EU leaders
to join with him to complete this plan to replace MAD with a first-strike
nuclear capability that will eliminate Russia altogether from the world stage.
As I also documented, the IMF is thoroughly supportive of
this plan to remove Russia, and announced on May 1st, just a day prior to our massacre
of independence-supporters in the south Ukrainian city of Odessa on May
2nd, that unless all of the independence supporters in south and eastern
Ukraine can be defeated and/or killed, the IMF will pull the plug on
Ukraine and force it into receivership.
Obama clearly
means business here, and so the government that we have installed in Kiev
is bombing throughout southeastern Ukraine, in
order to convince the residents there that resistance will be futile. Part of
the short-term goal here is to get Russia to absorb the losses of all of
Ukraine's unpaid debts to Russia, so that far less of Ukraine's unpaid debts to
the IMF, U.S. and E.U., will remain
unpaid. It's basically an international bankruptcy proceeding, but without an
international bankruptcy court, using instead military means. It's like creditors
going to a bankrupt for repayment, and the one with the most gunmen gets paid,
while the others do not. This is the reason why the IMF ordered the leaders in
Kiev to put down the rebellion in Ukraine's southeast.
What's important to the IMF is not land, it's the Kiev government's continued
control over the assets in the rebelling part of Ukraine -- assets that will be
worth something in a privatization or sell-off to repay that debt. However, for
Obama, what is even more important than repaid debts is the continued dominance
of the U.S. dollar. Wall Street needs that.
Among other indications that the U.S. is now preparing a
nuclear attack against Russia is an article on May 23rd, "U.S. Tests Advanced Missile For NATO
Interceptor System," and also a June 10th report
from a website with good sources in Russian intelligence, which alleges that
Ukrainian President Petro "Poroshenko secretly met with ... [an] American delegation
headed by the Director of ... the CIA's National Clandestine Service,
Frank Archibald, which also included former CIA chief in Ukraine
Jeffrey Egan, the current -- Raymond Mark Davidson, Mark Buggy (CIA,
Istanbul), Andrzej Derlatka, a CIA agent in the Polish intelligence
Agency, and member of CIA Kevin Duffin who is working as senior Vice
President of the insurance company Brower. Poroshenko and Archibald
signed a paper entitled an 'Agreement on Military Cooperation between
the U.S. and Ukraine'"
Furthermore, barely a month before the CIA and State
Department overthrew the previous, the pro-Russian, President of Ukraine,
Viktor Yanukovych, the government of Netherlands decided, after 18
years of "dithering," to allow the U.S.
to arm our F-35 bombers there with nuclear weapons. And this was already after
Holland's "Parliament in November signed off on
a government plan to purchase 37 F-35As to replace the Dutch air
force's aging fleet of nuclear-capable F-16s. The Netherlands is
widely understood to host about two dozen U.S. B-61 gravity bombs at the
Volkel air base, as part of NATO's policy of
nuclear burden-sharing."
Moreover, Obama isn't only beefing up our first-strike nuclear capability, but is also building
something new, called "Prompt Global Strike," to
supplement that nuclear force, by means of "a precision
conventional weapon strike" that, if launched against Russia from
next-door Ukraine, could wipe out Russia's nuclear weapons within just a minute
or so. That might be a fallback position, for Obama, in case the EU's leaders
(other than Netherlands and perhaps one or two others) might happen to decide
that they won't participate in our planned nuclear invasion of Russia.
Certainly, Obama means business here, but the big question is
whether he'll be able to get the leaders of other "democratic"
nations to go along with his first-strike plan.
The two likeliest things that can stop him, at this stage,
would be either NATO's breaking up, or else Putin's deciding to take a
political beating among his own public for simply not responding to our increasing
provocations. Perhaps Putin will decide that a temporary embarrassment for him
at home (for being "wimpy") will be better, even for just himself, than the
annihilation of his entire country would be. And maybe, if Obama pushes his
indubitable Superpower card too hard, he'll be even more embarrassed by this
conflict than Putin will be. After all, things like this and this aren't going to burnish Obama's
reputation in the history books, if he cares about that. But maybe he's
satisfied to be considered to have been George W. Bush II, just a far
better-spoken version: a more charming liar than the original. However, if
things come to a nuclear invasion, even a U.S. "victory" won't do much more for
Obama's reputation than Bush's "victory" in Iraq did for his. In fact, perhaps
Americans will then come to feel that George W. Bush wasn't America's worst
President, after all. Maybe the second half of the Bush-Obama Presidency will
be even worse than the first.
Author’s note: Paul Craig Roberts held top security clearances. He has repeatedly warned that a US-Russian nuclear war would wipe out the human race, along with all other complex forms of life. As a scientist with expert knowledge, I wish to echo and explain his warning. The Lethality of Nuclear Weapons Steven Starr Nuclear war has no winner. Beginning in 2006, several of the world’s leading climatologists (at Rutgers, UCLA, John Hopkins University, and the University of Colorado-Boulder) published a series of studies that evaluated the long-term environmental consequences of a nuclear war, including baseline scenarios fought with merely 1% of the explosive power in the US and/or Russian launch-ready nuclear arsenals. They concluded that the consequences of even a “small” nuclear war would include catastrophic disruptions of global climate[i] and massive destruction of Earth’s protective ozone layer[ii]. These and more recent studies predict that global agriculture would be so negatively affected by such a war, a global famine would result, which would cause up to 2 billion people to starve to death. [iii]
These peer-reviewed studies – which were analyzed by the best scientists in the world and found to be without error – also predict that a war fought with less than half of US or Russian strategic nuclear weapons would destroy the human race.[iv] In other words, a US-Russian nuclear war would create such extreme long-term damage to the global environment that it would leave the Earth uninhabitable for humans and most animal forms of life. A recent article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, “Self-assured destruction: The climate impacts of nuclear war”,[v] begins by stating: “A nuclear war between Russia and the United States, even after the arsenal reductions planned under New START, could produce a nuclear winter. Hence, an attack by either side could be suicidal, resulting in self-assured destruction.” In 2009, I wrote an article[vi] for the International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament that summarizes the findings of these studies. It explains that nuclear firestorms would produce millions of tons of smoke, which would rise above cloud level and form a global stratospheric smoke layer that would rapidly encircle the Earth. The smoke layer would remain for at least a decade, and it would act to destroy the protective ozone layer (vastly increasing the UV-B reaching Earth[vii]) as well as block warming sunlight, thus creating Ice Age weather conditions that would last 10 years or longer. Following a US-Russian nuclear war, temperatures in the central US and Eurasia would fall below freezing every day for one to three years; the intense cold would completely eliminate growing seasons for a decade or longer. No crops could be grown, leading to a famine that would kill most humans and large animal populations. Electromagnetic pulse from high-altitude nuclear detonations would destroy the integrated circuits in all modern electronic devices[viii], including those in commercial nuclear power plants. Every nuclear reactor would almost instantly meltdown; every nuclear spent fuel pool (which contain many times more radioactivity than found in the reactors) would boil-off, releasing vast amounts of long-lived radioactivity. The fallout would make most of the US and Europe uninhabitable. Of course, the survivors of the nuclear war would be starving to death anyway. Once nuclear weapons were introduced into a US-Russian conflict, there would be little chance that a nuclear holocaust could be avoided. Theories of “limited nuclear war” and “nuclear de-escalation” are unrealistic.[ix] In 2010 the Bush administration modified US strategic doctrine from a retaliatory role to permit preemptive nuclear attack, and Counterforce doctrine[x] – used by both the US and Russian military – emphasizes the need for preemptive strikes once nuclear war begins. Both sides would be under immense pressure to launch a preemptive nuclear first-strike once military hostilities had commenced, especially if nuclear weapons had already been used on the battlefield. Both the US and Russia each have 400 to 500 launch-ready ballistic missiles armed with a total of at least 1800 strategic nuclear warheads,[xi] which can be launched with only a few minutes warning.[xii] Both the US and Russian Presidents are accompanied 24/7 by military officers carrying a “nuclear briefcase”, which allows them to transmit the permission order to launch in a matter of seconds. Yet top political leaders and policymakers of both the US and Russia seem to be unaware that their launch-ready nuclear weapons represent a self-destruct mechanism for the human race. For example, in 2010, I was able to publicly question the chief negotiators of the New START treaty, Russian Ambassador Anatoly Antonov and (then) US Assistant Secretary of State, Rose Gottemoeller, during their joint briefing at the UN (during the Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference). I asked them if they were familiar with the recent peer-reviewed studies that predicted the detonation of less than 1% of the explosive power contained in the operational and deployed U.S. and Russian nuclear forces would cause catastrophic changes in the global climate, and that a nuclear war fought with their strategic nuclear weapons would kill most people on Earth. They both answered “no.” More recently, on April 20, 2014, I asked the same question and received the same answer from the US officials sent to brief representatives of the NGOS at the Non-Proliferation Treaty Preparatory Committee meeting at the UN. None of the US officials at the briefing were aware of the studies. Those present included top officials of the National Security Council. It is frightening that President Obama and his administration appear unaware that the world’s leading scientists have for years predicted that a nuclear war fought with the US and/or Russian strategic nuclear arsenal means the end of human history. Do they not know of the existential threat these arsenals pose to the human race . . . or do they choose to remain silent because this fact doesn’t fit into their official narratives? We hear only about terrorist threats that could destroy a city with an atomic bomb, while the threat of human extinction from nuclear war is never mentioned – even when the US and Russia are each running huge nuclear war games in preparation for a US-Russian war. Even more frightening is the fact that the neocons running US foreign policy believe that the US has “nuclear primacy” over Russia; that is, the US could successfully launch a nuclear sneak attack against Russian (and Chinese) nuclear forces and completely destroy them. This theory was articulated in 2006 in “The Rise of U.S. Nuclear Primacy”, which was published in Foreign Affairs by the Council on Foreign Relations.[xiii] By concluding that the Russians and Chinese would be unable to retaliate, or if some small part of their forces remained, would not risk a second US attack by retaliating, the article invites nuclear war. Colonel Valery Yarynich (who was in charge of security of the Soviet/Russian nuclear command and control systems for 7 years) asked me to help him write a rebuttal, which was titled “Nuclear Primacy is a Fallacy”.[xiv] Colonel Yarynich, who was on the Soviet General Staff and did war planning for the USSR, concluded that the “Primacy” article used faulty methodology and erroneous assumptions, thus invalidating its conclusions. My contribution lay in my knowledge of the recently published (in 2006) studies, which predicted even a “successful” nuclear first-strike, which destroyed 100% of the opposing sides nuclear weapons, would cause the citizens of the side that “won” the nuclear war to perish from nuclear famine, just as would the rest of humanity. Although the nuclear primacy article created quite a backlash in Russia, leading to a public speech by the Russian Foreign Minister, the story was essentially not covered in the US press. We were unable to get our rebuttal published by US media. The question remains as to whether the US nuclear primacy asserted in the article has been accepted as a fact by the US political and military establishment. Such acceptance would explain the recklessness of US policy toward Russia and China. Thus we find ourselves in a situation in which those who are in charge of our nuclear arsenal seem not to understand that they can end human history if they choose to push the button. Most of the American public also remains completely unaware of this deadly threat. The uninformed are leading the uninformed toward the abyss of extinction. US public schools have not taught students about nuclear weapons for more than 20 years. The last time nuclear war was discussed or debated in a US Presidential election was sometime in the last century. Thus, most people do not know that a single strategic nuclear weapon can easily ignite a massive firestorm over 100 square miles, and that the US and Russia each have many thousands of these weapons ready for immediate use. Meanwhile, neoconservative ideology has kept the US at war during the entire 21st century. It has led to the expansion of US/NATO forces to the very borders of Russia, a huge mistake that has consequently revived the Cold War. A hallmark of neconservatism is that America is the “indispensable nation”, as evidenced by the neoconservative belief in “American exceptionalism”, which essentially asserts that Americans are superior to all other peoples, that American interests and values should reign supreme in the world. At his West Point speech on May 28, President Obama said, “I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being.” Obama stated his bottom line is that “America must always lead on the world stage,” and “the backbone of that leadership always will be the military.” American exceptionalism based on might, not diplomacy, on hard power, not soft, is precisely the hubris and arrogance that could lead to the termination of human life. Washington’s determination to prevent the rise of Russia and China, as set out in the Brzezinski and Wolfowitz doctrines, is a recipe for nuclear war. The need is dire for the president of the US, Russia, or China to state in a highly public forum that the existence of nuclear weapons creates the possibility of their use and that their use in war would likely mean human extinction. As nuclear war has no winners, the weapons should be banned and destroyed before they destroy all of us. Steven Starr is the Senior Scientist for Physicians for Social Responsibility (www.psr.org) and Director of the Clinical Laboratory Science Program at the University of Missouri. Starr has published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and the Strategic Arms Reduction (STAR) website of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. He has a website on the environmental consequences of nuclear war (www.nucleardarkness.org ). The statements are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Physicians for Social Responsibility or the opinions of the University of Missouri and its faculty. Endnotes:
[i] O. B. Toon, R. Turco, A. Robock, C. Bardeen, L. Oman, G. Stenchikov, “Atmospheric effects and societal consequences of regional scale nuclear conflicts and acts of individual nuclear terrorism”, Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, Vol. 7, 2007, pp. 973-2002. Retrieved from http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/acp-7-1973-2007.pdf [ii] M. Mills, O. B. Toon, R. Turco, D. Kinnison, R. Garcia, “Massive global ozone loss predicted following regional nuclear conflict”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA), April 8, 2008, vol. 105(14), pp. 5307-12. Retrieved from http://www.pnas.org/content/105/14/5307.abstract [iii] I. Helfand, “Two Billion People at Risk? Global Impacts of Limited Nuclear War on Agriculture, Food Supply, and Human Nutrition”, Physicians for Social Responsibility, November, 2013. Retrieved from http://www.psr.org/assets/pdfs/two-billion-at-risk.pdf [iv] A. Robock, L. Oman, G. Stenchikov, “Nuclear winter revisited with a modern climate model and current nuclear arsenals: Still catastrophic consequences”, Journal of Geophysical Research –Atmospheres, Vol. 112, No. D13, 2007. Retrieved from http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/RobockNW2006JD008235.pdf [v] A. Robock, O. B. Toon, “Self-assured destruction: The climate impacts of nuclear war”, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, May 30, 2013. Retrieved from http://thebulletin.org/2012/september/self-assured-destruction-climate-impacts-nuclear-war
[vi] S. Starr, “Catastrophic Climatic Consequences of Nuclear Conflicts”, Updated 2009 version (from INESAP Bulletin 28, April 2008), Retrieved from http://icnnd.org/Documents/Starr_Nuclear_Winter_Oct_09.pdf [vii] M. Mills, J. Lee-Taylor, “Nuclear War and Ultraviolet Radiation”, National Center for Atmospheric Research, AtmosNews, March 2, 2011. Retrieved from https://www2.ucar.edu/atmosnews/research/3995/nuclear-war-and-ultraviolet-radiation [viii] Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack, “Report of the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack: Critical National Infrastructures”, April, 2008, ISBN 978-0-16-080927-9; Retrieved from http://www.empcommission.org/docs/A2473-EMP_Commission-7MB.pdf [ix] N. Sokov, “Why Russia calls a limited nuclear strike “de-escalation”, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, March 13, 2014. Retrieved from http://thebulletin.org/why-russia-calls-limited-nuclear-strike-de-escalation [x] H. Kristensen, R. Norris, I. Oelrich, “From Counterforce to Minimal Deterrence: A New Nuclear Policy on the Path Towards Eliminating Nuclear Weapons”, Federation of American Scientists, Occasional Paper No. 7, April, 2009.Retrieved from http://www.fas.org/programs/ssp/nukes/doctrine/targeting.pdf [xi] “Status of World Nuclear Forces (2014)”, Federation of American Scientists, Retrieved from http://www.fas.org/programs/ssp/nukes/nuclearweapons/nukestatus.html [xii] S. Starr, “US and Russian Launch-Ready Nuclear Weapons: A Threat to All Nations and Peoples”, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, July, 2011. Retrieved from http://www.wagingpeace.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/2011_06_24_starr.pdf [xiii] K. Lieber, D. Press, “The Rise of US Nuclear Primacy”, Foreign Affairs, March/April 2006. Retrieved from http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/61508/keir-a-lieber-and-daryl-g-press/the-rise-of-us-nuclear-primacy [xiv] V. Yarynich, S. Starr, “Nuclear Primacy is a Fallacy”, Intelligent.ru, 2006 (Russian) 25 May 2006, Global Research, March 04, 2007. Retrieved from http://www.globalresearch.ca/nuclear-primacy-is-a-fallacy/4991
