Even as I repost his lecture, Paul Craig Roberts is or soon will be presenting it in Delphi, Greece. And while of importance to the Greeks, you will read why it is of far greater importance to the citizens of the US and France. The message is that the neoconservatives that control both the US and its European vassals are looking toward the day when they can launch their nuclear attack on Russia and China with gullible Americans and Europeans becoming "collateral damage." The best, and perhaps only, way to avoid this horror is to ignore the lying "mainsteam media,” put away your cognitive dissonances, and make your voices heard in Washington and Paris. Digesting PCR's seminal lecture below can be your starting point.

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Paul Craig Roberts’ Address to the International Conference on the European/Russian Crisis Created by Washington

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June 19, 2015 | Original Here                                            Go here to sign up to receive email notice of this news letter

Paul Craig Roberts’ address to the Conference on the European/Russian Crisis, Delphi, Greece, June 20-21, 2015


Paul Craig Roberts, formerly Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury for Economic Policy, Associate Editor, Wall Street Journal, Senior Research Fellow, Stanford University, William E. Simon Chair in Political Economy, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.

The United States has pursued empire since early in its history, but it was the Soviet collapse in 1991 that enabled Washington to see the entire world as its oyster.

The collapse of the Soviet Union resulted in the rise of the neoconservatives to power and influence in the US government. The neoconservatives have interpreted the Soviet collapse as History’s choice of “American democratic capitalism” as the New World Order.

Chosen by History as the exceptional and indispensable country, Washington claims the right and the responsibility to impose its hegemony on the world. Neoconservatives regard their agenda to be too important to be constrained by domestic and international law or by the interests of other countries. Indeed, as the Unipower, Washington is required by the neoconservative doctrine to prevent the rise of other countries that could constrain American power.

Paul Wolfowitz, a leading neoconservative, penned the Wolfowitz Doctrine shortly after the Soviet collapse. This doctrine is the basis of US foreign and military policy.

The doctrine states:

“Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power.”

 

Notice that Washington’s “first objective” is not peace, not prosperity, not human rights, not democracy, not justice. Washington’s “first objective” is world hegemony. Only the very confident so blatantly reveal their agenda.

 

As a former member of the Cold War Committee on the Present Danger, I can explain what Wolfowitz’s words mean. The “threat posed formerly by the Soviet Union” was the ability of the Soviet Union to block unilateral US action in some parts of the world. The Soviet Union was a constraint on US unilateral action, not everywhere but in some places. Any constraint on Washington is regarded as a threat.

 

A “hostile power” is a country with an independent foreign policy, such as the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) have proclaimed. Iran, Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Argentina, Cuba, and North Korea also proclaim an independent foreign policy.

 

This is too much independence for Washington to stomach. As Russian President Vladimir Putin recently stated, “Washington doesn’t want partners. Washington wants vassals.”

 

The Wolfowitz doctrine requires Washington to dispense with or overthrow governments that do not acquiesce to Washington’s will. It is the “first objective.”

 

The collapse of the Soviet Union resulted in Boris Yeltsin becoming president of a dismembered Russia. Washington became accustomed to Yeltsin’s compliance and absorbed itself in its Middle Eastern wars, expecting Vladimir Putin to continue Russia’s vassalage.

 

However at the 43rd Munich Conference on Security Policy, Putin said: “I consider that the unipolar model is not only unacceptable but also impossible in today’s world.”

 

Putin went on to say: 

 

“We are seeing a greater and greater disdain for the basic principles of international law, and independent legal norms are, as a matter of fact, coming increasingly closer to one state’s legal system. One state and, of course, first and foremost the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way. This is visible in the economic, political, cultural and educational policies it imposes on other nations. Well, who likes this? Who is happy about this?”
 

When Putin issued this fundamental challenge to US unipower, Washington was preoccupied with its lack of success with its invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Mission was not accomplished.

By 2014 it had come to Washington’s attention that while Washington was blowing up weddings, funerals, village elders, and children’s soccer games in the Middle East, Russia had achieved independence from Washington’s control and presented itself as a formidable challenge to Washington’s uni-power. Putin blocked Obama’s planned invasion of Syria and bombing of Iran.

 

The unmistakable rise of Russia refocused Washington from the Middle East to Russia’s vulnerabilities. 

Ukraine, long a constituent part of Russia and subsequently the Soviet Union, was split off from Russia in the wake of the Soviet collapse by Washington’s maneuvering. In 2004 Washington had tried to capture Ukraine in the Orange Revolution, which failed to deliver Ukraine into Washington’s hands. Consequently, according to neocon Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, Washington spent $5 billion over the following decade developing Ukrainian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that could be called into the streets of Kiev and in developing Ukrainian political leaders willing to represent Washington’s interests.

Washington launched its coup in February 2014 with orchestrated demonstrations that, with the addition of violence, resulted in the overthrow and flight of the elected democratic government of Victor Yanukovych. In other words, Washington destroyed democracy in a new country with a coup before democracy could take root.
 

Ukrainian democracy meant nothing to Washington. Washington was intent on seizing Ukraine in order to present Russia with a security problem and also to justify sanctions against “Russian aggression” in order to break up Russia’s growing economic and political relationships with Europe. Washington feared that these relationships could undermine Washington’s hold on Europe.
 

Sanctions are contrary to Europe’s interests. Nevertheless European governments accommodated Washington’s agenda. The reason was explained to me several decades ago by my Ph.D. dissertation committee chairman who became Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs. I had the opportunity to ask him how Washington managed to have foreign governments act in Washington’s interest rather than in the interest of their own countries. He said, “money.” I said, “you mean foreign aide?” He said, “no, we give the politicians bags full of money. They belong to us. They answer to us.”
 

Recently, the German journalist Udo Ulfkotte wrote a book, Bought Journalists, in which he reported that every significant European journalist functions as a CIA asset.
 

This does not surprise me. The same is the situation in the US.

 

As Europe is an appendage of Washington, a collection of vassal states, Europe enables Washington’s pursuit of hegemony even to the extent of being driven into conflict with Russia over a “crisis” that is entirely a propaganda creation of Washington’s.
 

The media disguises the reality. During the Clinton regime, six mega-media companies were permitted to acquire 90% of the US print, TV, radio, and entertainment media, a concentration that destroyed diversity and independence. Today the media throughout the Western world serves as a Propaganda Ministry for Washington. The Western media is Washington’s Ministry of Truth. Gerald Celente, the trends forecaster, calls the Western media “presstitutes,” a combination of press prostitutes.
 

In the US Putin and Russia are demonized around the clock. Every broadcast alerts us to “the Russian threat.” Even Putin’s facial expressions are psychologically analyzed. Putin is the New Hitler. Putin has ambitions to recreate the Soviet empire. Putin invaded Ukraine. Putin is going to invade the Baltic states and Poland. Putin is a threat on the level of ebola and the Islamist State. US Russian experts, such as Stephen Cohen, who state the facts are dismissed as “Putin apologists.” Any and every one who takes exception to the anti-Putin, anti-Russian propaganda is branded a “Putin apologist,” just as 9/11 skeptics are dismissed as “conspiracy theorists.” In the Western world, the few truth-tellers are demonized along with Putin and Russia.
 

The world should take note that today, right now, Truth is the most unwelcome presence in the Western world. No one wants to hear it in Washington, London, Tokyo, or in any of the political capitals of Washington’s empire.
 

The majority of the American population has fallen for the anti-Russian propaganda, just as they fell for “Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction,” “Assad’s use of chemical weapons against his own people,” Iranian nukes,” the endless lies about Gaddafi, 9/11, shoe bombers, underwear bombers, shampoo and bottled water bombers. There is always a new lie to keep the fear factor working for Washington’s endless wars and police state measures that enrich the rich and impoverish the poor.

 

The gullibility of the public has enabled Washington to establish the foundation for a new Cold War or for a preemptive nuclear strike on Russia. Some neoconservatives prefer the latter. They believe nuclear war can be won, and they ask, “What is the purpose of nuclear weapons if they cannot be used?”
 

China is the other rising power that the Wolfowitz Doctrine requires to be constrained. Washington’s “pivot to Asia” creates new naval and air bases to control China and perpetuate Washington’s hegemony in the South China Sea.
 

We come to the bottom line. Washington’s position is not negotiable. Washington has no interest in compromising with Russia or China. Washington has no interest in any facts. Washington’s deal is this: “You can be part of our world order as our vassals, but not otherwise.”

 

European governments and, of course, the lapdog UK government, are complicit in this implicit declaration of war against Russia and China. If it comes to war, Europeans will pay the ultimate price for the treason of their leaders, such as Merkel, Cameron, and Hollande, as Europe will cease to exist.
 

War with Russia and China is beyond Washington’s capability. However, if the demonized “enemy” does not succumb to the pressure and accept Washington’s leadership, war can be inevitable. Washington has launched an attack. How does Washington back off? Don’t expect any American regime to say, “we made a mistake. Let’s work this out.” Every one of the announced candidates for the American presidency is committed to American hegemony and war.
 

Washington believes Russia can be isolated from the West and that this isolation will motivate those secularized and westernized elements in Russia, who desire to be part of the West, into more active opposition against Putin. The Saker calls these Russians “Atlanticist integrationists.”
 

After two decades of Russia being infiltrated by Washington’s NGO Fifth Columns, the Russian government has finally taken action to regulate the hundreds of Western-financed NGOs inside Russia that comprise Washington’ subversion of the Russian government. However, Washington still hopes to use sanctions to cause enough disruption of economic life within Russia to be able to send protesters into the streets. Regime change, as in Ukraine, is one of Washington’s tools. In China the US organized the Hong Kong “student” riots, which Washington hopes will spread into China, and Washington supports the independence of the Muslim population in the Chinese province that borders Kazakhstan.
 

The problem with a government in the control of an ideology is that ideology and not reason drives the action of the government. As the majority of Western populations lack the interest to search for independent explanations, the populations impose no constraint on governments.

 

To understand Washington, go online and read the neoconservative documents and position papers. You will see an agenda unconstrained by law, by morality, by compassion, by common sense. You will see an agenda of evil.
 

Who is Obama’s Assistant Secretary of State for the Ukrainian part of the world? It is the neoconservative Victoria Nuland who organized the Ukrainian coup, who put in office the new puppet government, who is married to the even more extreme neoconservative, Robert Kagan.
 

Who is Obama’s National Security advisor? It is Susan Rice, a neoconservative.
 

Who is Obama’s Ambassador to the UN? It is Samantha Power, a neoconservative.
 

Now we turn to material interests. The neoconservative agenda of world hegemony serves the powerful military/security complex whose one trillion dollar annual budget depends on war, hot or cold.
 

The agenda of American hegemony serves the interests of Wall Street and the mega-banks. As Washington’s power and influence spreads, so does American financial imperialism. So does the reach of American oil companies and American agribusiness corporations such as Monsanto.
 

Washington’s hegemony means that US corporations get to loot the rest of the world.
 

The danger of the neoconservative ideology is that it is in perfect harmony with powerful economic interests. In the US the left-wing has made itself impotent. It believes all the foundational government lies that have given America a police/warfare state incapable of producing alternative leadership. The American left, what little remains, for emotional reasons believes the government’s 9/11 story. The anti-religious left-wing believes the threat posed to free thought by a Christian Russia. The left-wing, convinced that Americans are racists, believes the government’s account of the assassinations of Martin Luther King.
 

The left-wing accepts the government’s transparent 9/11 fable, because it is emotionally important to the American left that oppressed peoples strike back. For the American left, it is emotionally satisfying that the Middle East, long oppressed and exploited by the French, British and Americans, struck back and humiliated the Unipower in the 9/11 attack.
 

This emotional need is so powerful for the left that it blinds the left-wing to the improbability of a few Saudi Arabians, who could not fly airplanes, outwitting not merely the FBI, CIA, and NSA, which spies on the entire world, but as well all 16 US intelligence agencies and the intelligence agencies of Washington’s NATO vassal states and Israel’s Mossad, which has infiltrated every terrorist organization, including those created by Washington itself.
 

Somehow these Saudis were able to also outwit NORAD, airport security, causing security to fail four times in one hour on the same day. They were able to prevent for the first time ever the US Air Force from intercepting the hijacked airliners. Air traffic control somehow lost the hijacked airliners on radar. Two airliners crashed, one into the Pennsylvania country side and one into the Pentagon without leaving any debris. The passport of the leader of the attack, Mohammed Atta was reported to be found as the only undamaged element in the debris of the World Trade Center towers. The story of the passport was so preposterous that it had to be changed.
 

This implausible account did not raise any eyebrows in the tame Western print and TV media.
 

The right-wing is obsessed with immigration of darker-skinned peoples, and 9/11 has become an argument against immigration. The left-wing awaits the oppressed to strike back against their oppressors. The 9/11 fable survives as it serves the interests of both left and right.
 

I can tell you for a fact that if American national security had so totally failed as it is represented to have failed by the official explanation of 9/11, the White House, the Congress, the media would have been screaming for an investigation. Heads would have rolled in agencies that permitted such massive failure of the national security state. The embarrassment of a Superpower being so easily attacked and humiliated by a handful of Arabs acting independently of any intelligence agency would have created an uproar demanding accountability.
 

Instead, the White House resisted any investigation for one year. Under pressure from the 9/11 families who lost family members in the World Trade Center Towers, the White House created a political commission consisting of politicians managed by the White House. The commission sat and listened to the government’s account and wrote it down. This is not an investigation.
 

In the United States the left-wing is focused on demonizing Ronald Reagan, who had nothing whatsoever to do with any of this. The left-wing hates Reagan because he had to use anti-communist rhetoric in order to keep his electoral basis while he strove to end the Cold War in the face of the powerful opposition of the military/security complex.
 

Is the left-wing more effective in Europe? Not that I can see. Look at Greece for example. The Greek people are driven into the ground by the EU, the IMF, the German and Dutch banks and the New York hedge funds. Yet, when presented with candidates who promise to resist the looting of Greece, the Greek voters give the candidates a mere 36% of the vote, enough to form a government, but not enough to have any clout with creditors.
 

Having hamstrung their government with such low electoral support, the Greek people further impose impotence on their government by demanding to remain in the EU. If leaving the EU is not a realistic threat, the Greek government has no negotiating power.
 

Obviously, the Greek population is so throughly brainwashed about the necessity of being part of the EU that the population is willing to be economically dispossessed rather than to leave the EU. Thus Greeks have forfeited their sovereignty and independence. A country without its own money is not, and cannot be, an independent country.
 

Once European intellectuals signed off on the EU, they committed nations to vassalage, both to the EU bureaucrats and to Washington. Consequently, European nations are not independent and cannot exercise an independent foreign policy.
 

Their impotence means that Washington can drive them to war. To fully understand the impotence of Europe look at France. The only leader in Europe worthy of the name is Marine Le Pen. Having said this, I am immediately denounced by the European left as a fascist, a racist, and so forth. This only shows the knee-jerk response of the European left.
 

It is not I who shares Le Pen’s views on immigration. It is the French people. Le Pen’s party won the recent EU elections. What Le Pen stands for is French independence from the EU. The majority of French see themselves as French and want to remain French with their own laws and customs. Only Le Pen among European politicians has stated the obvious: “The Americans are taking us to war!”
 

Despite the French desire for independence, the French will elect Le Pen’s party to the EU but will not give it the vote to be the government of France. The French deny themselves their independence, because they are heavily conditioned by brainwashing, much coming from the left, and are ashamed to be racists, fascists, and whatever epithets have been assigned to Le Pen’s political party, a party that stands for the independence of France.
 

The European left-wing, once a progressive force, even a revolutionary one, has become a reactionary force. It is the same in the US. I say this as one of CounterPunch’s popular contributors.
 

The inability even of intellectuals to recognize and accept reality means that restraints on neoconservatives are nowhere present except within Russia and China. The West is impotent to prevent Armageddon.

 

It is up to Russia and China, and as Washington has framed the dilemma, Armageddon can only be prevented by Russia and China accepting vassal status.
 

I don’t believe this is going to happen. Why would any self-respecting people submit to the corrupt West?
 

The hope is that Washington will cause its European vassals to rebel by pushing them too hard into conflict with Russia. The hope that European countries will be forced into an independent foreign policy also seems to be the basis of the Russian government’s strategy.
 

Perhaps intellectuals can help to bring this hope to fruition. If European politicians were to break from Washington’s hegemony and instead represent European interests, Washington would be deprived of cover for its war crimes. Washington’s aggressions would be constrained by an independent European foreign policy. The breakdown of the neoconservative unipower model would be apparent even to Washington, and the world would become a safer and better place.

Is this a great country or what? The Guardian: "Every state in the US fails to comply with international standards on the lethal use of force by law enforcement officers, according to a report by Amnesty International USA."

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All 50 US states fail to meet global police use of force standards, report finds

Amnesty International report describes ‘shocking lack of fundamental respect for the sanctity of human life’ as nine states have no laws to deal with police force

Police response to protests across the country in the wake of several high-profile police shootings point to a need for better use of standards, says Amnesty. Photograph: Scott Olson/Getty Images

Every state in the US fails to comply with international standards on the lethal use of force by law enforcement officers, according to a report by Amnesty International USA, which also says 13 US states fall beneath even lower legal standards enshrined in US constitutional law and that nine states currently have no laws at all to deal with the issue.

The stinging review comes amid a national debate over police violence and widespread protest following the high-profile deaths of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri; 43-year-old Eric Garner in New York; 50-year-old Walter Scott in South Carolina; and 25-year-old Freddie Gray in Baltimore – all unarmed black men killed by police within the past 11 months.

Amnesty USA executive director Steven Hawkins told the Guardian the findings represented a “shocking lack of fundamental respect for the sanctity of human life”.

“While law enforcement in the United States is given the authority to use lethal force, there is no equal obligation to respect and preserve human life. It’s shocking that while we give law enforcement this extraordinary power, so many states either have no regulation on their books or nothing that complies with international standards,” Hawkins said. 

 The analysis, which Hawkins said he believed was the first of its kind, compared state statutes on law enforcement’s use of lethal force with international legislation, including the enshrinement of the right to life, as well as United Nations principles limiting lethal use of force to “unavoidable” instances “in order to protect life” after “less extreme means” have failed. Further UN guidelines state that officers should attempt to identify themselves and give warning of intent to use lethal force.

Amnesty found that in all 50 states and Washington DC, written statutes were too broad to fit these international standards, concluding: “None of the laws establish the requirement that lethal force may only be used as a last resort with non-violent means and less harmful means to be tried first. The vast majority of laws do not require officers to give a warning of their intent to use firearms.”

The report arrived just weeks after the recommendations of Barack Obama’s police taskforce were made public and his executive actions on police reform criticized for not going far enough to curtail police violence. The presidential commission stated that “not only should there be policies for deadly and non-deadly uses of force”, but that a “clearly stated ‘sanctity of life’ philosophy must also be in the forefront of every officer’s mind.”

The Amnesty review found that only eight states require a verbal warning to be given before an officer engages in lethal force. In nine states, law enforcement officers are legally allowed to use lethal force during riot. In Pennsylvania, for instance, the use of force statute mandates that deadly force is justifiable if it is “necessary to suppress a riot or mutiny after the rioters or mutineers have been ordered to disperse”.

Further, Amnesty found that in 20 states it is legally permissible for law enforcement officers to employ lethal force against an individual attempting to escape prison or jail, even if they pose no threat. In Mississippi, for instance, law declares “the killing of a human being ... justifiable ... [w]hen necessarily committed by public officers, or those acting by their command in their aid and assistance, in retaking any felon who has been rescued or has escaped”.

Amnesty’s report also charges that the laws on lethal force in 13 states do not even meet the less stringent constitutional standard set by the 1985 US supreme court case Tennessee v Garner. The case was centered on the death of an unarmed black 15-year-old, Edward Garner, a suspect in a home burglary. He was shot in the back of the head as he fled by officers acting under a Tennessee state statute which permitted “use all the necessary means” to make an arrest of a fleeing subject.

The 6-3 majority decision declared that police may not use deadly force to prevent a suspect from escaping unless “the officer has probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others”.

The states whose laws do not meet this constitutional standard, according to Amnesty, tend to include permissive or vague language around the use of force. North Dakota’s statute, for example, permits deadly force against “an individual who has committed or attempted to commit a felony involving violence”, without defining the level of violence that might warrant deadly force.

Amnesty identifies nine states – Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Ohio, South Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming – alongside Washington DC where no law enforcement officer lethal force statues exist.

“Those states can of course argue that they follow common law or supreme court standards, but is that good enough?” Hawkins said. “Certainly we would expect that international human rights standards are what should govern and our fear is that, unless these are clearly quantified, a citizen in any state can’t look at what the law is. That’s critically important to ensuring accountability.”

Amnesty’s report contends that the international standards laid out in the UN basic principles dictate all fatal incidents involving law enforcement officials should be mandatorily reported and well as impartially investigated.

The federal government does not collect a comprehensive record of people killed by police forces throughout the US. Instead, the FBI runs a voluntary program where law enforcement can choose to submit a number of “justifiable homicides” each year.

A Guardian investigation into deaths at the hands of law enforcement officers in the US has so far documented 515 people killed by police this year. The statistics reveal that black people are more than twice as likely as white people to be unarmed during fatal encounters with police, and show that black Americans are killed by police at more than twice the rate as white Americans.

The introduction of mandatory reporting to federal government for all deaths at the hands of law enforcement is a central recommendation of the Amnesty report.

The report also suggests taking action at all levels of government, making recommendations to the president, Congress and the US justice department, along with state legislatures and individual law enforcement departments. Amnesty suggests that laws be brought into compliance with international standards at every level, and that the justice department oversee a national commission “to examine and produce recommendations on policing issues, including a nationwide review of police use of lethal force laws ... as well as a thorough review and reform of oversight and accountability mechanisms”.

Hawkins told the Guardian he expected some resistance to the recommendations from police unions and other agencies but added his hope that “with so much attention on law enforcement and its use of lethal force within the US, in the next legislative session this report will produce some energy for change”.

The Soviet Union lost between 20 and 27 million troops and civilians in the course of winning WW II, so they have absolutely no intentions to foment a WW III. On the other hand, the American neocons, whose country has never been invaded and who have their own underground shelters already prepared, are hankering for the big one. Thus the US’s original agreements between NATO and Russia, including the clause that neither side should be considered an enemy, are now being flagrantly violated by arming NATO countries bordering on Russia. And the populace of these border countries are being aroused by lies claiming that Russia has been attacking Ukraine …a ludicrous claim given that Russia could have won such a war in a couple days had it wished to do so. But finally a couple days ago Vladimir Putin, certainly no war monger, has ordered 40 new intercontinental ballistic missiles to be added to the country's current “mutually assured destruction” deterrent. Unfortunately, the neocons think they need no such deterent...

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New York Times: U.S. poised to put heavy weaponry in East Europe

“Russia’s increasingly aggressive actions around NATO’s borders…”

NATO keeps moving its borders up to Russia’s borders.

“Professor [Mark] Galeotti said. ‘This is about telling Russia that you’re getting closer to a real red line.’”

NATO’s red line is a noose, drawing tighter and tighter around Russia and any country that defies the Anglo-American alliance.

This article is typical mainstream US “journalism”. Unless a reader follows the extensive equipment buildup that has been taking place for months,  and the ongoing, intensifying US/NATO military exercises in the region,  they would conclude from this article that the US and NATO have only a weak force in Europe.

June 13, 2015
By ERIC SCHMITT and STEVEN LEE MYERS

© Oksana Dzadan/Associated Press Stryker vehicles from the Army’s 2nd Cavalry Regiment took part in a military exercise in Riga, Latvia. RIGA, Latvia — In a significant move to deter possible Russian aggression in Europe, the Pentagon is poised to store battle tanks, infantry fighting vehicles and other heavy weapons for as many as 5,000 American troops in several Baltic and Eastern European countries, American and allied officials say.

RIGA, Latvia — In a significant move to deter possible Russian aggression in Europe, the Pentagon is poised to store battle tanks, infantry fighting vehicles and other heavy weapons for as many as 5,000 American troops in several Baltic and Eastern European countries, American and allied officials say.
 
The proposal, if approved, would represent the first time since the end of the Cold War that the United States has stationed heavy military equipment in the newer NATO member nations in Eastern Europe that had once been part of the Soviet sphere of influence. Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the war in eastern Ukraine have caused alarm and prompted new military planning in NATO capitals.
 
It would be the most prominent of a series of moves the United States and NATO have taken to bolster forces in the region and send a clear message of resolve to allies and to Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, that the United States would defend the alliance’s members closest to the Russian frontier.
 
After the expansion of NATO to include the Baltic nations in 2004, the United States and its allies avoided the permanent stationing of equipment or troops in the east as they sought varying forms of partnership with Russia.
 
“This is a very meaningful shift in policy,” said James G. Stavridis, a retired admiral and the former supreme allied commander of NATO, who is now dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. “It provides a reasonable level of reassurance to jittery allies, although nothing is as good as troops stationed full-time on the ground, of course.”
 
The amount of equipment included in the planning is small compared with what Russia could bring to bear against the NATO nations on or near its borders, but it would serve as a credible sign of American commitment, acting as a deterrent the way that the Berlin Brigade did after the Berlin Wall crisis in 1961.
 
“It’s like taking NATO back to the future,” said Julianne Smith, a former defense and White House official who is now a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and a vice president at the consulting firm Beacon Global Strategies.
 
The “prepositioned” stocks — to be stored on allied bases and enough to equip a brigade of 3,000 to 5,000 soldiers — also would be similar to what the United States maintained in Kuwait for more than a decade after Iraq invaded it in 1990 and was expelled by American and allied forces early the next year.
 
The Pentagon’s proposal still requires approval by Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter and the White House. And political hurdles remain, as the significance of the potential step has stirred concern among some NATO allies about Russia’s reaction to a buildup of equipment.
“The U.S. military continues to review the best location to store these materials in consultation with our allies,” said Col. Steven H. Warren, a Pentagon spokesman. “At this time, we have made no decision about if or when to move to this equipment.”
 
Senior officials briefed on the proposals, who described the internal military planning on the condition of anonymity, said that they expected approval to come before the NATO defense ministers’ meeting in Brussels this month.
 
The current proposal falls short of permanently assigning United States troops to the Baltics — something that senior officials of those countries recently requested in a letter to NATO. Even so, officials in those countries say they welcome the proposal to ship at least the equipment forward.
 
“We need the prepositioned equipment because if something happens, we’ll need additional armaments, equipment and ammunition,” Raimonds Vejonis, Latvia’s minister of defense, said in an interview at his office here last week.
 
“If something happens, we can’t wait days or weeks for more equipment,” said Mr. Vejonis, who will become Latvia’s president in July. “We need to react immediately.”
 
Mark Galeotti, a professor at New York University who has written extensively on Russia’s military and security services, noted, “Tanks on the ground, even if they haven’t people in them, make for a significant marker.”
 
As the proposal stands now, a company’s worth of equipment — enough for about 150 soldiers — would be stored in each of the three Baltic nations: Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Enough for a company or possibly a battalion — about 750 soldiers — would be located in Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and possibly Hungary, they said.
 
American military specialists have conducted site surveys in the countries under consideration, and the Pentagon is working on estimates about the costs to upgrade railways, build new warehouses and equipment-cleaning facilities, and to replace other Soviet-era facilities to accommodate the heavy American weaponry. The weapons warehouses would be guarded by local or security contractors, and not by American military personnel, officials said.
 
Positioning the equipment forward saves the United States Army time, money and resources, and avoids having to ship the equipment back and forth to the United States each time an Army unit travels to Europe to train. A full brigade’s worth of equipment — formally called the European Activity Set — would include about 1,200 vehicles, including some 250 M1-A2 tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles, and armored howitzers, according to a senior military official.
 
The Army previously said after the invasion of Crimea last year that it would expand the amount of equipment it stored at the Grafenwöhr training range in southeastern Germany and at other sites to a brigade from a battalion.
 
Army units — currently a battalion from the Third Infantry Division — now fly into the range on regular rotations, using the same equipment left in place. They train with the equipment there or take it to exercises elsewhere in Europe.
 
That, along with stepped-up air patrolling and training exercises on NATO’s eastern flank, was among the initial measures approved by NATO’s leaders at their summit meeting in Wales last year. The Pentagon’s proposal reflects a realization that the tensions with Russia are unlikely to diminish soon.
 
“We have to transition from what was a series of temporary decisions made last year,” said Heather A. Conley, director of the Europe Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
 
The idea of moving prepositioned weapons and materials to the Baltics and Eastern Europe has been discussed before, but never carried out because it would be viewed by the Kremlin as a violation of the spirit of the 1997 agreement between NATO and Russia that laid the foundation for cooperation.
 
In that agreement, NATO pledged that, “in the current and foreseeable security environment,” it would not seek “additional permanent stationing of substantial ground combat forces” in the nations closer to Russia.The agreement also says that “NATO and Russia do not consider each other as adversaries.” Many in the alliance argue that Russia’s increasingly aggressive actions around NATO’s borders have made that pact effectively moot.
 
The Pentagon’s proposal has gained new support because of fears among the eastern NATO allies that they could face a Russian threat.
 
“This is essentially about politics,” Professor Galeotti said. “This is about telling Russia that you’re getting closer to a real red line.”
 
In an interview before a visit to Italy this week, Mr. Putin dismissed fears of any Russian attack on NATO.
 
“I think that only an insane person and only in a dream can imagine that Russia would suddenly attack NATO,” he told the newspaper Corriere Della Sera. “I think some countries are simply taking advantage of people’s fears with regard to Russia. They just want to play the role of front-line countries that should receive some supplementary military, economic, financial or some other aid.”
 
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/us-poised-to-put-heavy-weaponry-in-east-europe/ar-BBl6eku?ocid=DELLDHP
 
Reprinted under Fair Use Rules.

Today is Flag Day celebrating a flag that flys over a country that has destroyed thirteen countries in the past two decades. And tomorrow is the 800th aniversary of the Magna Carta, which together with the US Constitution are in the process of being repealed by the US and it's European vassals.

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Happy Birthday Magna Carta — Paul Craig Roberts

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June 12, 2015 | Original Here                                            Go here to sign up to receive email notice of this news letter

Happy Birthday Magna Carta

Paul Craig Roberts

Monday, June 15, 2015, is the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta. In his book, Magna Carta, J.C. Holt, professor of medieval history, University of Cambridge, notes that three of the chapters of this ancient document still stand on the English Stature Book and that so much of what survives of the Great Charter is “concerned with individual liberty,” which “is a reflexion of the quality of the original act of 1215.”

In the 17th century Sir Edward Coke used the Great Charter of the Liberties to establish the supremacy of Parliament, the representative of the people, as the origin of law.

A number of legal scholars have made the irrelevant point that the Magna Carter protected rights of the Church, nobles, and free men who were not enserfed, a small percentage of the population in the early 13th century. We hear the same about the US Constitution–it was something the rich did for themselves. I have no sympathy for debunking human achievements that, in the end, gave ordinary people liberty.

At Runnymede in 1215 no one but the armed barons had the power and audacity to make King John submit to law. The rule of law, not the rule of the sovereign or of the executive branch in Washington acceded to by a cowardly and corrupt Congress and Supreme Court, is a human achievement that grew out of the Magna Carta over the centuries, with ups and downs of course.

Blackstone’s Commentaries in 1759 fed into the American Revolution and gave us the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

The Geneva Conventions extended the rule of law to the international arena.

Beginning with the Clinton Administration and rapidly accelerating with the George W. Bush and Obama regimes and Tony Blair in England, the US and UK governments have run roughshod over their accountability to law.

Both the US and UK in the 21st century have gone to numerous wars illegally under the Nuremberg Standard established by the US and UK following Germany’s defeat in WWII and used to execute Germans for war crimes. The US and UK claim that unlike Germany they are immune to the very international law that they themselves established in order to punish the defeated Germans. Washington and London can bomb and murder at will, but not Germany.

Both governments illegally and unconstitutionally (the UK Constitution is unwritten) spy on their citizens, and the Bush and Obama executive branches have eviscerated, with the complicity of Congress and the federal courts, the entirely of the US Constitution except for the Second Amendment, which is protected by the strong lobby of the National Rifle Association. If the gun control “progressives” have their way, nothing will be left of the US Constitution.

Washington and its European satellites have subordinated law to a political and economic hegemonic agenda. Just as under the heyday of colonialism when the West looted the non-white world, today the West loots its own. Greece is being looted as was Ireland, and Italy and Spain will not escape looting unless they renege on their debts and leave the EU.

Western capitalism is a looting mechanism. It loots labor. It loots the environment, and with the transpacific and transatlantic “partnerships” it will loot the sovereign law of countries. For example, France’s laws against GMOs become “restraints on trade” and subjects France to punitive law suits by Monsanto. If France doesn’t pay Monsanto the damages Monsanto claims, France is subject to punitive sanctions like Washington applies to Russia when Russia doesn’t do what Washington wants.

A new slave existence is being created in front of our eyes as law ceases to be a shield of peoples and becomes a weapon in the hands of government. Eight hundred years of reform is being overturned as Washington and its vassals invade, bomb, and overthrow governments that are out of step with Washington’s agenda. Formerly self-sufficient agricultural communities are becoming wage slaves for international agribusiness corporations. Everywhere privilege is rising above law and justice is being lost.

The concentration of wealth and power is reminiscent of the aristocratic era and of Rome under the Caesars. The demise of the rule of law has stripped ordinary people of security and dignity. Peoples of the world must protect themselves by acting in defense of the Great Charter’s principle that governments are accountable to law. Governments unaccountable to law are tyrannies whatever they might call themselves, no matter how exceptional and indispensable they declare themselves to be.

Monday in Westminster in London, the International Tribunal for Natural Justice is forming. If my understanding of this work of Humanitad is correct, we have a cause for hope. Perhaps the Tribunal will try the criminals of our time, almost all of which are “leaders” of Western governments, on the Internet with juries and prosecutors so that populations everywhere can witness the evil that every Western government represents.

Once the West is perceived as the evil force that it is, it will have to reform and again embrace Edward Coke’s vision of the Great Charter or become an unimportant backwater while the rest of the world goes on to better things. The world is saved once the world ceases to bow down to the American Caesar.

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Normally I pick my blog posts from other bloggers or news sources providing insights not generally found elsewhere. But this time I’m reposting an article by an investment advisor. And based on evidence that I’ve found elsewhere, his main theme is correct, namely that is that the U.S. is broke, and that all hell will break loose if and when our economy falls into deflation. (I have added the “if” because runaway inflation is the other possibility and would be just as devastating but for different reasons.) Read this investment advisor’s description of runaway deflation and prepare yourselves. One thing is for sure, when the criminal big banks crash this time the government can no longer bail them out. So they will do what happened in Cyprus a couple years ago, that is, do “bail IN”s, which is a cute euphemism for stealing the money of their depositors. So if, dear reader, you have a savings account in any of the big banks, take you money out NOW and put it in a credit union -- or even under you mattress – before it is too late.

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Deflation picking up even more momentum ...

by Larry Edelson

Dear Subscriber,

Some analysts seem to think inflation is making a big comeback. Their reasoning: Interest rates have started to move higher, hence, inflation is lurking out there.

But they're clueless. They are confusing declining bond prices (rising interest rates) with normal times — and the world is about as far away from normal times as I am of becoming the next Pope.

Yes, interest rates all over the globe are starting to rise, and bond prices are sliding — most notably in Europe.

But that doesn't mean inflation is coming back. It's not. In a minute I'll show you the evidence as to why.

Interest rates are rising and bond prices are falling because the SOVEREIGN DEBT CRISIS is rapidly approaching.

That final point in time — the final reckoning — where the majority of investors begin to realize that Europe, Japan and the biggest debtor of them all, the U.S., are patently bankrupt … will never make good on their debts …

And instead, will do everything they can to chase, track, tax and seize your wealth to help them keep their heads above water.

Government spying: They'll do everything
they can to chase, track, tax and seize your
wealth to help them keep their heads above water.

Which is precisely why the Western socialist governments of this world — Europe, Japan and the U.S. — are all acting like caged animals ...

 Raising taxes, throughout Europe ... a new proposed second hike in the sales tax in Japan ... Obamacare here and behind the curtain in Washington, even more income tax hikes coming.

 Spying on citizens — yes, it's still going on. To track your money, to tax it more, and not too far in the future, to nationalize and confiscate it.

 Enacting extensive capital controls throughout Europe, where in France, for instance, you can no longer conduct any business in cash, and where you cannot take out of the bank more than 1,000 euros at a time. Similar controls exist now in Greece, Cyprus, Italy and even Spain.

 Where economists like Harvard University's Ken Rogoff and Citibank's Willem Buiter are traipsing the globe telling governments it's time to abolish cash and replace it with electronic currency.

 And where governments are now so wrought with troubles that financial repression of their people is not enough and instead, they are moving to distract them by playing games with other countries.  Hence, the rising tide of wars around the world, from terrorism to outright international conflict. Where just recently Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko warned his country to "prepare for a full-scale Russian invasion." 

Where China is ready to duke it out with Japan and other countries, including the United States, in the South China Sea.

Where the number of separatist, anarchist and neo-Nazi groups in Europe are at an all-time high.

This is NOT the stuff of solid economic growth and certainly not a formula for inflation.

To the contrary, it is the stuff of dying empires ...

Of deflationary contractions. Of hoarding and burying wealth.

So much so that stock and commodity market trading volumes are less than half what they were in 2007 and 2008.

Yes, all these things will eventually positively impact gold. But not because of inflation. But because empires of the West are dying.

If you don't believe the picture I paint for you above, as to the evidence that there's no inflation, all you have to do then is simply look at the facts on the ground ...

 The year-over-year change in U.S. retail sales peaked way back in July 2011, and has been declining ever since. 

 U.S. consumer confidence, measured by the widely respected polls of the University of Michigan, remains well below its peak in 1999.

 Quarterly U.S. GDP has been in declining mode since 1999 and this year's first quarter GDP declined a whopping 0.7 percent.

 U.S. industrial production has declined since June 2010, with factory orders plummeting for eight straight months including a 0.4 percent decline in April.

Those are just the gross economic figures that support the fact that there is no inflation on the horizon. Now turn to the markets, and the most inflation-sensitive of them all... commodities.

 Gold has now broken support at the $1,180 level. Its next move, perhaps after a bounce or two: below $1,100.

 Silver too is cracking, now dangerously positioned to fall below $14.50, then even lower.

 Copper is starting to slide once again, falling to the $2.70 level, with lower prices ahead.

 Platinum and palladium, both weak at the knees.

 Oil, unable to get back above $65 a barrel, and now poised to move lower again. Natural gas, barely above multi-year lows.

 The grain markets, all weak. Soybeans, sliding. Corn and wheat, ready to slide again from multi-month and multi-year highs. 

 Coffee, cocoa, sugar, all looking very weak.

 And more.

The U.S. dollar, near multi-year highs and about to take off like a rocket again. In itself, a major deflationary warning.

Prepare for inflation, as these blind analysts would have you do, and you will be on the wrong side of the markets.

Prepare for more deflation with inverse commodity ETFs and the like, and by staying invested in mostly U.S. dollars where they will buy you more and more over the next several months ...

And you will protect and grow your wealth.

And last, but certainly not least, when the time is right — not too far off in the future ...

You will be able to buy gold and silver on the cheap, when everyone else is dumping them ...

Not recognizing that the real crisis is in government, which is when gold and silver truly shine.

I rest my case.

Best wishes and stay safe …

Larry

What is happening in Ukraine is a preview of what will soon be happening in the U.S. And unfortunately most of the American sheeple will not understand this any better than the Ukrainian students who took the bait of American operative Victoria Nuland, who spent 5 billion dollars in Ukraine promising the big lie that a better life could be had if only they were to ally themselves to the west. Fast forward to June 1: “The TASS news agency reported that Ukraine has stopped payments to pensioners, World War II veterans, people with disabilities, and victims of Chernobyl. According to the report, Kiev has also “eliminated transport, healthcare, utilities and financial benefits for former prisoners of Nazi concentration camps and recipients of some Soviet-era orders and titles. Compensations to families with children living in the areas contaminated by radiation from the Chernobyl accident will be no longer paid either.” Paul Craig Roberts continues: “How do the deceived Maiden student protesters feel now that they are culpable in the destruction of their grandparents’ support systems? Do these gullible fools still believe in the Washington-orchestrated Maiden Revolution? The crimes in which these stupid students are complicit are horrific.” Wake up America, you are next!

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Ukrainians Dispossessed, Americans are next — Paul Craig Roberts

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June 4, 2015 | Original Here                                            Go here to sign up to receive email notice of this news letter

Ukrainians Dispossessed Americans are next

Paul Craig Roberts

Over the last 15 months Ukrainians have paid for Washington’s overthrow of their elected government in deaths, dismemberment of their country, and broken economic and political relationships with Russia that cost Ukraine its subsidized energy. Now Ukrainians are losing their pensions and traditional support payments. The Ukrainian population is headed for the graveyard.

On June 1 the TASS news agency reported that Ukraine has stopped payments to pensioners, World War II veterans, people with disabilities, and victims of Chernobyl. According to the report, Kiev has also “eliminated transport, healthcare, utilities and financial benefits for former prisoners of Nazi concentration camps and recipients of some Soviet-era orders and titles. Compensations to families with children living in the areas contaminated by radiation from the Chernobyl accident will be no longer paid either. Ukraine’s parliamentary opposition believes that the Prosecutor General’s Office should launch an investigation against Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk who actively promoted the law on the abolition of privileges.”

Notice that this is a yank of the blanket from under the elderly in Ukraine. “Useless eaters,” they are assigned to the trash can. How do the deceived Maiden student protesters feel now that they are culpable in the destruction of their grandparents’ support systems? Do these gullible fools still believe in the Washington-orchestrated Maiden Revolution? The crimes in which these stupid students are complicit are horrific.

Yatsenyuk, or Yat as Victoria Nuland calls him, is the Washington stooge that the US State Department selected to run the puppet government established by Washington. Yat sounds like a right-wing Republican when he refers to pensions, compensations, and social services as “privileges.” This is the Republican view of Social Security and Medicare, programs paid for by the payroll tax over the working lives of Americans. The Republicans stole the payroll revenues and spent them on their wars that enrich Wall Street and the military/security complex, and now blame “welfare handouts” for America’s fiscal plight.

Is Monsanto’s right to turn Ukraine into GMO food production a privilege? ls VP Biden’s son’s right to destroy Ukraine’s surface and underground water in fracking operations a privilege? Are the external costs imposed on Ukrainians by these looting activities a privilege? Of course not! These are not privileges. This is the operation of free market economics creating the greatest good for the greatest number. (As many Americans will not realize that I am engaging in satire, I would like to affirm that I am.)

The news report does not say whether the abolished “privileges” are one part of a reform that will replace the terminated “privileges” with a new social support system. Possibly this is the case, but as the termination of pensions and payments was triggered by the coming into effect of Yat’s law to “stabilize the financial condition of Ukraine,” the purpose of the termination of Ukraine’s social welfare system might be to free up money to hand over to the IMF and Western banks. In Ukraine, as in Greece, the gullible and naive population that saw salvation in unity with the West will be driven into the ground.

Russia, of course, will be blamed. I can already write the New York Times and Washington Post editorials and the words that will come from Obama, CNN, and Fox “News.” In fact, so can my intelligent readers.

The same looting is underway in Great Britain, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and the United States. In Great Britain everything achieved by the Labour Party over many decades has been taken away, and not only by the Conservatives but by Labour leader Tony Blair himself.

Tony Blair sold out his constituents for money and is now among the One Percent. Bill Clinton did the same thing. Bill and Hillary were able to spend $3 million on their daughter’s wedding, almost a world record, dwarfing many Hollywood weddings. Obama is not even out of office and is already rich. America’s faithful vassals–Merkel, Hollande, and Cameron–can look forward to equal riches.

Karl Marx was correct when he said that money corrupts all. Everything becomes a commodity that is bought and sold for money.

When money becomes the measure of a person, people have become corrupted. And that is the plight of the Western world.

Where in the West is your wealth, small or large, safe? Nowhere. Washington has destroyed financial privacy everywhere in the West. Washington even forced Switzerland to violate its own laws in order to comply with Washington’s insistence on the absence of any financial privacy.

For decades Americans with foreign bank accounts have been required to report them on their income tax returns. Now if an American owns a gold coin in a vault overseas, this must be reported to Washington.

Once Washington knows the location of your assets, the assets can be confiscated at will. Washington only has to make some declaration or accusation or the other, and your wealth is gone.

As Washington has run the printing presses hard in order to serve a handful of banks that control the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve, unless China and Russia acquiesce to becoming Washington’s vassals, at some point the dollar’s value is going to slide downward. When that happens, the Federal Reserve cannot continue to create new money to meet Washington’s needs.

Where will the money come from? It will come from Americans’ pensions.

Pensions accumulate tax free, and this accumulation will be confiscated in whole or part to make up for the failure to tax, another “privilege.”

That confiscation works that year. But what happens the next year when the dollar is reeling on foreign exchange markets from over-supply?

The answer is that another chunk of American pensions, and I am speaking of private pensions, will be confiscated “in order to stabilize the financial system.” Social Security will be long gone by this time.

Alicia Munnel, who was my replacement as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy in the Clinton regime, advocated many years ago a confiscation of private pensions, including your IRAs and 401Ks, in order to compensate the US government for their non-taxed status.

Alicia has a sinecure at an Eastern university where she continues to advocate against your pension. The joint attack by Clinton Democrats on private pensions and by Conservative Republicans on public pensions means that no American can look forward to having a pension. Americans are only one presidential election away from the loss of their pensions, and it doesn’t matter who they vote for.

Economic security is a thing of the past. Security was a product of the US being the only extant economy following World War II. In those days corporations believed, as did Washington, that companies had obligations not only to shareholders but to employees, customers, and the communities in which they were located.

This meant prosperity for all, not merely, as is the case today, for corporate management and shareholders.

Apologists for exploitation claim that the rich are richer because they are smarter. But the stupidity of the rich is everywhere visible. The greedy fools have destroyed their domestic US market. Really, how stupid can you be? How do Americans buy when they are forced by offshoring out of well paid manufacturing and software engineering jobs into being waitresses, bartenders, retail clerks and part-time Walmart workers in order that corporate bottom lines improve? Who buys the stuff that sustains the profits? Not Americans who no longer have the incomes to do so.

The belief spread by Wall Street and “shareholder advocates” that corporations only have responsibility to their owners and managers has destroyed the American economy. 

By locating production offshore, corporations have destroyed the incomes that supported the American consumer market. For example, the incomes associated with the production of Apple computers, I-Pads, and I-Phones are in China. Apple’s American customers do not have the incomes associated with the production of the products that Apple markets to them.

Americans are already dispossessed of their livelihoods and careers and their pensions are next. Wherever we look, the fate of populations under Western influence are the same. The Ukrainians are exploited, the Greeks, the British, the Americans.

Wherever the West has an imprint, the populations are exploited. Exploitation of the many for the few is the Hallmark of the West, a decrepit, corrupt, and collapsing entity.

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