Paul Craig Roberts Warns "Armageddon Approaches" After German Leak

by Tyler Durden

Jul 24, 2016 10:35 PM

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-07-24/paul-craig-roberts-warns-armageddon-approaches-after-german-leak 

Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,
The Western public doesn’t know it, but Washington and its European vassals are convincing Russia that they are preparing to attack. Eric Zuesse reports on a German newspaper leak of a Bundeswehr decision to declare Russia to be an enemy nation of Germany.

According to a report issued on June 6th in German Economic News (Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten, or DWN), the German government is preparing to go to war against Russia, and has in draft-form a Bundeswehr report declaring Russia to be an enemy nation. DWN says: “The Russian secret services have apparently thoroughly studied the paper.

In advance of the paper’s publication, a harsh note of protest has been sent to Berlin: The head of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Russian State Duma, Alexei Puschkow, has posted the Twitter message: ‘The decision of the German government declaring Russia to be an enemy shows Merkel’s subservience to the Obama administration.’”

This is the interpretation that some Russian politicians themselves have put on the NATO military bases that Washington is establishing on Russia’s borders.
Washington might intend the military buildup as pressure on President Putin to reduce Russian opposition to Washington’s unilateralism. However, it reminds some outspoken Russians such as Vladimir Zhirinovsky of Hitler’s troops on Russia’s border in 1941.

Zhirinovsky is the founder and leader of Russia’s Liberal Democratic Party and a vice chairman of the Russian parliament. In a confrontation with the editor of a German newspaper, Zhirinovsky tells him that German troops again on Russia’s border will provoke a preventive strike after which nothing will remain of German and NATO troops. “The more NATO soldiers in your territory, the faster you are going to die. To the last man. Remove NATO from your territory!” 

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has expressed his frustration with Washington’s reliance on force and coercion instead of diplomacy. It is reckless for Washington to convince Russia that diplomacy is a dead end without promise. When the Russians reach that conclusion, force will confront force.
Indeed Zhirinovsky has already reached that point and perhaps Vladimir Putin also. As I reported, Putin recently dressed down Western presstitutes for their role in fomenting nuclear war.
Putin has made it clear that Russia will not accept US missile bases in Poland and Romania. He has informed Washington and the imbecilic Polish and Romanian governments. However, as Putin observed, “they don’t hear.”
The inability to hear means that Washington’s arrogance has made Washington too stupid to take seriously Putin’s warning. If Washington persists, it will provoke the preventive strike that Zhirinovsky told the German editor the Merkel regime was inviting.
Americans need to wake up to the dangerous situation that Washington has created, but I doubt they will. Most wars happen without the public’s knowledge until they happen. The main function of the American left-wing is to serve as a bogyman with which to scare conservatives about the country’s loss of morals, and the main function of conservatives is to create fear and hysteria about immigrants, Muslims, and Russians. There is no sign that Congress is aware of approaching Armageddon, and the media consists of propaganda.

I and a few others try to alert people to the real threats that they face, but our voices are not loud enough. Not even Vladimir Putin’s voice is loud enough. It looks like the West won’t hear until “there remains nothing at all of the German and NATO troops,” and of Poland and Romania and the rest of us.

America’s & NATO’s Outrageous Behavior, Greatest Threat that Exists

Posted on May 19, 2016 by Eric Zuesse.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2016/05/americas-natos-outrageous-behavior-greatest-threat-exists.html

On May 18th, two top people at NATO, one being its current Secretary General — the very top person — laid out in preliminary form the case for war against Russia, which presumably will be presented in more detail at the NATO Summit to be held in Poland on 8-9 July this year.

As if that weren’t bad enough, there’s the matter reported by Bryan Cloughly at Strategic Culture, headlining on May 19th, “Surging Towards yet Another War”, where he pointed out that “The United States has no territorial rights of any sort, in the South China Sea which is 7,000 miles (11,000 kilometres) from its west coast. There is nothing in international law that justifies its unilateral military ‘challenge’ to China’s presence” there, in that area which is contested between five countries: China, Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Brunei. The American government, which has no authority to speak for the entire world regarding international law — of which the U.S. itself has been perhaps the most frequent violator during the past 16 years — isn’t “policeman of the world,” certainly not judge and jury and executioner (well, maybe executioner) of the world, but instead it’s merely an aspiring global thug: “The Pentagon declared on 10 May that China’s ‘excessive maritime claims are inconsistent with international law as reflected in the Law of the Sea Convention in that they purport to restrict the navigation rights that the United States and all states are entitled to exercise’.” Cloughly points out that the U.S. “refuses to ratify the Law of the Sea Convention — while ordering every other country to abide by it.”

America’s — and NATO’s — biggest danger to the world, however, is its (their) aggressions against Russia, by:

1: Violating the promise that the agents of U.S. President George Herbert Walker Bush made in 1990 to the USSR’s, and then Russia’s, President, Mikhail Gorbachev — and on the basis of which the USSR was dissolved and the Warsaw Pact terminated — that NATO would not be expanded “one inch to the east” (i.e., toward Russia), a promise that was violated by Bill Clinton (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland), George W. Bush (Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia), and Barack Obama (Albania and Croatia — with current aspirants being Bosnia, Georgia, Montenegro, Macedonia, and Ukraine). Gorbachev would have had to have been crazy to have ended the Cold War under those conditions if he had known about it — known that GHW Bush and his successor Presidents are a bunch of lying thugs. But because he trusted the word of Bush and his agents (such as James Baker, Francois Miterrand, and Helmut Kohl), Russia is now in this extremely vulnerable position, and Gorbachev himself thus has the lowest approval-rating of all Russia’s rulers since the czars: below even that of Stalin (28%) and Yeltsin (17%). Another poll, of only 20th-Century leaders of Russia (i.e., excluding Putin and Medvedev, both of whom scored atop that other poll), rated Brezhnev the best, and Gorbachev the worst. (That poll included Czar Nicholas II, who, along with Lenin and Khrushchev, rated near 50% approval. The only leader who was almost as low-rated as Gorbachev’s 20% was Yeltsin, at 22%.) Though Gorbachev was a sucker, America’s recent Presidents have been even worse than that — and the entire world is now threatened by what they did (and, under Obama, are doing, perhaps culminating).

2: Overthrowing the secular leader of Libya, who held that nation together and gave it the highest living-standard in Africa — overthrowing Muammar Gaddafi because he was friendly toward Russia — turned that country into a failed state and another festering hotbed for jihadists.

3: Scheming ever since 1949 to overthrow Syria’s secular leaders so as to enable Saudi oil to be pipelined through it into Europe so as to choke off Russia’s largest oil and gas market and hand it to the fundamentalist Saud family who own Saudi Arabia, and the fundamentalist Thani family who own Qatar — both of which families (and especially the Sauds) are top financial backers of jihadists (everywhere but in their own countries), which are America’s best foot-soldiers against the leaders of nations who are friendly to Russia (and in Chechnia were trying to get Putin overthrown). Obama even prioritizes ousting Assad over defeating Syria’s jihadists, as a consequence of which Syria has by far the world’s highest misery-index in Gallup’s polling of 140 nations, and a comprehensive article on the subject noted that “at least 18,000 Syrians have had organs removed during the war thus far” and, “All this tragic human horror only occurs because of an overly aggressive, imperialistic US-Israeli foreign policy creating a path of chaos and destruction across the Middle East and North Africa secretly supporting Islamic terrorists to fight US-Israeli proxy wars to illegally overthrow sovereign national governments like Assad’s.” Unfortunately, that commentator ignored the key fact: that the reason Obama wants Assad overthrown is that Assad supports and is supported by Russia. (Israel’s government might have different motivation on that matter, but likewise supports the jihadists — and is importantly profiting from the organ-trade.)

4: Overthrowing the democratically elected President of Ukraine in 2014 and replacing his democratic government by a barbaric fascist regime which perpetrated a massive ethnic-cleansing operation against its former Donbass region, which had voted 90% for that President. Then slapping economic sanctions against, and now even threatening invasion of, Russia, for Russia’s having protected Crimeans (who had voted 75% for that overthrown President) from their being similarly invaded, and from Obama’s intended take-over of Russia’s key naval base there at Sebastopol. (Oh, and did I mention, crashing Ukraine’s economy, and stripping it — but there’s too much misery in Ukraine now to even begin to itemize.)

5: Creating the refugee crisis in Europe, which doesn’t only produce hell for the millions of refugees from America’s coups and invasions, but which also weakens Europe — an American ‘ally,’ but an ‘ally’ which America’s Presidents don’t want to be able to overtake the U.S. so as to become the world’s top dog.

6: Now increasingly trying to do the same thing in Asia, especially to keep China down.

This is a far cry from the America of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who would be twisting in his grave to know what his successors have been doing after the anti-communist war was won in 1991. It’s become a shameful America, which is shameless. And the American people aren’t to blame for it; the American aristocracy, which rule here, are. The American people have been conquered, too. America’s aristocracy are as guilty as sin. They’re top dog, but this dog is rabid, and it now threatens the entire world. It’s not just George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and the Kochs, and George Soros, but it’s the whole hypocritical lot of them, the entire American aristocracy, the people who don’t merely run this lunatic asylum, they’re the schemers who’ve made it go mad and are trying to sic it against the rest of the world.

So, perhaps we’ll see what happens after July 8th and 9th. Will they call off their war? Or — as expected — escalate it to the next level?

NATO as a War-Racket

Posted on April 8, 2016 by Eric Zuesse.

NATO Causes Refugees, Then Uses Them As Excuse for More Invasions

Eric Zuesse

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2016/04/nato-war-racket.html

NATO is the anti-Russia military club of nations, even after the communist Soviet Union and its military club against the U.S., the Warsaw Pact, ended in 1991 — NATO didn’t reciprocate that by ending itself, as it should have done (and would have done if the U.S. President at the time, George Herbert Walker Bush, had had any basic decency; instead, he said in private, “To hell with that; we won, they didn’t!” but he continued telling Gorbachev that NATO wouldn’t move “one inch to the east” — which promise he was planning to violate, and which his successors have been violating).

With the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact gone, NATO’s claimed raison d’etre was also gone, but NATO shamelessly continued on, and it even has expanded right up to Russia’s borders (just try to imagine what John Fitzgerald Kennedy would have thought if it hadn’t been Soviet nuclear missiles merely in Cuba in 1962, but all surrounding the U.S. — and that’s the situation today but reversed: today’s Russia is in the situation of 1962’s U.S., but even more so, though NATO has the audacity to accuse Russia of ‘aggression’ for, essentially, defending itself from NATO — from the enemies that are increasingly surrounding it!). (Yes, what America has been doing, really, is that bad.)

On April 6th, NATO’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg (son of Norway’s Defense Minister) said that NATO must now expand outside Europe and North America:

Millions fleeing the region in a humanitarian crisis of a magnitude not seen since World War Two.Terrorist groups like ISIL taking hold of ungoverned spaces. And spreading violence across the region and beyond. Inciting attacks on our streets. From Brussels to Istanbul, Paris to San Bernardino. These are attacks on our open societies. On the values we share. 

So our response must be strong.

Who caused those refugees? The U.S. and other NATO nations did. The American White House had been seeking to overthrow the Russia-friendly leaders, specifically in Libya, Syria, and Ukraine, but also elsewhere. And now, the refugees from those invasions are flooding into Europe. Oblivious to this reality, Stoltenberg continued:

To protect our territory, we must be willing to project stability beyond our borders. If our neighbours are more stable, we are more secure.

There was stability (and peace, and remarkable and remarkably evenly-distributed prosperity) in Libyaunder Gaddafi, whom the U.S. and some of its NATO allies killed. There was stability, peace, and moderate prosperity, also in Syria under Assad, whom the U.S. and some of its NATO allies tried  to kill. (Gaddafi and Assad were the two non-sectarian national leaders in the Middle East; NATO downed one, and still tries to down the other.) (The U.S. plan to overthrow the secular government of Syria and replace it by a sectarian, specifically fundamentalist Sunni and Saudi-allied government, had actually been drawn up by the CIA in 1957, but couldn’t be carried out until 2011, and Obama has been putting it into practice ever since.) There was stability throughout the Middle East before the U.S.-led NATO bombing campaign enabled the chaotic opposition forces to capture and kill Gaddafi, and before the U.S., Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and UAE, organized the intended overthrow of the secular (non-sectarian) Shiite leader of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, in order to replace him with imported fundamentalist Sunni jihadists, passionate to establish a fundamentalist-Sunni Islamic state there (a terrorist-state, it inevitably would be, but NATO likes that fine, because it produces yet more of a market for its ‘defense’ contractors such as Lockheed Martin — you scratch my back, Lockheed; I’ll scratch yours, NATO).

NATO is the biggest hoax in the history of the world: it’s an extension of a fascist CIA takeover of the formerly democratic nations, of the United States and Europe, by infiltrating fascists into NATO, and its associated propaganda organs: the Atlantic Council, the German Marshall Fund of the United States, USAID, Open Society Foundations, Brookings Institution, American Enterprise Institute, and other Establishment (i.e., Western aristocracy-controlled) organizations.

Specifically regarding Russia, Stoltenberg said:

About Russia, we don’t see any imminent threat against any NATO allied country, including the countries in the Eastern part of the Alliance. But what we see is a more assertive Russia responsible for aggressive actions in Ukraine and willing to use military force. Not only invest in Russian military capabilities but also the willingness to use those capabilities to intimidate neighbours, to change borders in Europe, annex Crimea, destabilizing Eastern Ukraine and having troops in Georgia and Moldova and so on. And this, of course, is of great concern and that’s the reason why we are responding and when I say we I mean the United States and Europe together. Before we didn’t have forces in the Eastern part of the Alliance and now we have forces there on a rotational basis. And we have substantially increased our readiness to redeploy forces if needed. So again I’m concerned but as long as we are able to adapt and because we are able to adapt we are in a way responding to those concerns and making sure that the Baltic countries, all NATO allied countries are safe because NATO is there. … Russia is trying to re-establish a sphere of influence around its borders and that’s why they are behaving as they are in Georgia and Moldova and Ukraine. And that’s not acceptable because they are violating international law, they are not respecting the sovereignty and the territorial integrity — the sovereignty and the territorial integrity of independent Nations, countries in Europe and that’s also the reason why it’s important that we respond. At the same time — and we are responding by the biggest re-enforcement of collected defense since the end of the Cold War.  But at the same time I always underline that NATO is not seeking a confrontation with Russia. We will avoid a Cold — new Cold War. [Later he said this:] after the illegal and illegitimate annexation of Crimea in 2014 NATO decided to suspend all practical cooperation with Russia [but he was saying that there was no ‘new Cold War’, even though he’s surrounding Russia by new enemy countries, which, according to “The Debate on NATO Expansion”, are now to include: Ukraine, Montenegro, Croatia, Macedonia, Georgia, Bosnia and Herzegovin, Serbia; and, possibly also Kosovo, which “will probably be admitted to the Alliance as well.”]

When he said, “Russia is trying to re-establish a sphere of influence around its borders and that’s why they are behaving as they are in Georgia and Moldova and Ukraine,” one can think rationally about that by reversing sides and considering what one should think of “America is trying to re-establish a sphere of influence around its borders and that’s why they are behaving as they are in NAFTA (with Mexico and Canada), and behaved as it did during the Cuban Missile Crisis.” To Stoltenberg: for Russia to think like that is “assertive” and “aggressive.”

Here are the facts regarding specifically “Crimea” there — the NATO club’s current excuse for demonizing Russia (and for Obama’s economic sanctions to crush Russia):

Back in February 2014, Obama overthrew (please click on the link if you have any doubt about anything that’s being said here) the democratically elected President of Russia’s neighbor Ukraine, in an extremely bloody coup, which was at least a year in being set-up, and the rationale for this ‘democratic uprising’ was that that actually democratically elected President was corrupt — but no one mentioned that all of Ukraine’s post-Soviet leaders have been  corrupt. Obama’s agent Victoria Nuland had instructed the U.S. Ambassador in Ukraine whom to get appointed to take over control of Ukraine as soon as the coup would be completed, and that person did become appointed — and top officials of the EU were shocked to find out that it had been a coup. The “armed militias in ski masks” that Obama referred to in the coup (and in the ‘Anti Terrorist Operation’ afterward), were actually his, not Viktor Yanukovych’s (the President whom Obama overthrew); they were America’s mercenaries, not either Yanukovych’s or Russia’s operatives as he pretends they were. And, now, after the extremely bloody civil war that resulted in Ukraine when the regions that had voted overwhelmingly for the President whom Obama overthrew rejected  Obama’s coup-regime and refused to be ruled by it, Ukraine is even more corrupt than it ever was, but, for some mysterious reason, the United States isn’t overthrowing the post-coup government. Obama had gotten what he basically wanted out of his coup: Russia’s ability to pipeline its gas into the EU is now severely hampered by the necessity to establish alternate pipeline-routes. Ukraine is crucial to strangulating Russia, because most of Russia’s gas-pipelines into Europe run through its formerly friendly neighbor, Ukraine, which now is rabidly anti-Russian. So: the coup andethnic-cleansing and all the rest have been just a part of America’s effort to strangulate Russia; and all of the maimed and dead people are merely collateral damage — no concern of Obama (nor of his NATO).

Furthermore, on 20 February 2014, the peak day of the coup, Crimeans who had been in Kiev demonstrating against overthrowing the President for whom 75% of Crimeans had voted, commissioned a number of buses to take them promptly back to Crimea, especially because the rabidly racist anti-Russian fascists whom the U.S. had hired to carry out the coup terrified them. These buses en-route back to Crimea got stopped by those fascists (from the very same organization that was headed by the man who actually led the coup), who beat the escaping Crimeans bloody and burned at least one of their buses. Some undetermined number of these victims were killed, and many were injured, but there was no official investigation of this event, which became known in Crimea as “The Korsun Massacre” and“The Pogrom of Korsun”; consequently, the Obama-installed coup-regime — which was soon to produce massacres far worse, such as this and this — denies that it happened, but those videos caused Crimeans, who already were against the coup, to be determined to separate from Ukraine and rejoin Russia, of which Crimea had been a part for hundreds of years until the Soviet dictator in 1954 transferred Crimea from Russia to Ukraine (without even asking the Crimean people). (That’s the same dictator, Nikita Khrushchev, whom U.S. President JFK faced down in the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962; but, now, U.S. Presidents treat Khrushchev’s arbitrary action in regard to Crimea as presenting a bigger argument for Crimeans to have no right to determine what their government will be than the Scotts do regarding whether it will continue to be par of the UK, or the Catalans do regarding whether it will continue to be in Spain. We’re not bombing the Catalans nor the Scotts for demanding the right of self-determination — just the residents of Donbass for their rejecting the coup that overthrew the man, Yanukovych, for whom they had voted 90%.)

So: NATO and the U.S. regime know that what they are accusing against Russia are lies. They aren’t deluded, nor merely mistaken on the facts. They created the problems; they know they created the problems; and, now, they blame Russia (and leaders who are friendly to Russia) for having caused the problems by Russia’s ‘aggression’, which is simply Russia’s necessary efforts to defend itself against U.S. aggression.

Then, Stoltenberg said that NATO intends to make more official its alliance with the people who sponsor jihadists throughout the world:

I very much believe that we can expand and enhance our cooperation with the Gulf Cooperation Council. I visited the United Arab Emirates a couple of weeks ago and and I think that in a way by helping countries in the region to stabilize the region we are of course also making the countries more secure. The whole idea is that if our, NATO’s neighbourhood is more stable they are more secure and we are more secure so it’s not in a way -security is not you get less of if you share it; you get more security if you create security together. So I strongly believe in us working together with the GCC.

The GCC is run by Saudi Arabia, just as NATO is run by the United States. GCC consists not only of the royals of Saudi Arabis (the al-Sauds), but of the royals of Qatar (the al-Thanis), of Kuwait (the al-Sabahs), of UAE (six royal families), of Bahrain (the al-Khalifas), and of Oman (the bin-Saids). All of them are fundamentalist Sunnis. They are the main competitors against Russia, the world’s largest producer of oil and gas. They, like the U.S. and its allied aristocracies in the various European nations, want to cut Russia out of the world’s largest oil-and-gas market, the EU, and to cut in the GCC royals. The GCC royals also are the main funders of jihadist groups that commit terrorist acts in both the U.S. and Europe — all of which groups are likewise fundamentalist Sunnis, just like their royal paymasters are. The top funder of Al Qaeda prior to 9/11 was — and at least as of 2009 it still remained — the Saud princes and their business-partners. But NATO is allied with them. This is how NATO intends “to project stability beyond our borders”: by becoming even tighter-allied with the funders of international jihadist groups.

So: the refugee problem in Europe is caused by the enemies of the European peoples, and these enemies are the aristocracies of the U.S., the EU, and the GCC.

Stoltenberg was arguing possibly to expand NATO to include the GCC.

He was also asked there about Turkey, which — under Tayyip Erdogan’s dictatorship — is the Saud family’s representative in NATO. A Brookings Institution scholar inquired:

“General Breedlove said recently that he felt the Russians were weaponizing the refugee situation with the aim of destabilizing Europe, and I know NATO has sent some sea patrols in the Aegean recently. But my question is why did it take so long for NATO to respond to such a serious security threat to the European continent when Greece and Turkey, both frontline States, are members of NATO?”

Stoltenberg replied:

Turkey participate in the coalition fighting ISIL. Turkey provides military assets but in addition Turkey provides infrastructure, bases, the Incirlik Base and other facilities for the efforts of the coalition fighting ISIL.  So without Turkey it would have been much more difficult to, for instance, to conduct many of the air strikes and so on fighting ISIL. Second Turkey is the NATO ally most affected by the influx of refugees. They host more than two million, close to three million perhaps refugees and so Turkey is heavily affected by the crisis in Iraq, Syria, ISIL.

Here are the facts on that:

Turkey supplies ISIS. (ISIS is called “ISIL” by the Obama Administration in order to mislead people to think that ISIS wasn’t started by someone who had been enraged by the U.S. invasion and destruction of Iraq in 2003. But ISIS is the usual name, and the second-most common name for it is Daesh, which is the term that the Saud family prefer to use for it. Daesh is the Arabic version of ISIL: the Sauds are merely deferring, but in Arabic, to U.S. President Obama’s preferred name for the group. However, ISIS, hearing the term Daesh in Arabic, find it insulting, and have “reportedly threatened to ‘cut out the tongues’ of anyone it hears using the term’.”)

The GCC, those royal families and their retainers, are the funders of international jihad, not only of ISIS, but of Al Qaeda, etc. However, almost all the money that comes into Al Qaeda is from the Sauds.

When asked specifically about Libya, Stoltenberg said:

One issue we have discussed and also discussed during my visit here to Washington this week and also with Secretary Ash Carter was the possibility of NATO providing AWACS support, our surveillance plane. And that is on the table now and it’s going to be addressed in NATO and then we will be able to provide you with a more precise answer but AWACS support in one way or another is now an issue which is discussed in the Alliance.

He put that forward as being part of a necessary response, by NATO, to the infestation of Libya by “ISIL.” He made no mention of the fact that neither ISIS nor any other jihadist groups were allowed in Libya by Gaddafi, nor present there — that the military campaign there by the U.S., France, and Britain, had enabled  the ISIS-infestation of Libya, because what the U.S. and its allies had done had turned it into a failed state.

NATO’s chief propaganda-arm, the Atlantic Council, put it this way about that part of his presentation(where Stoltenberg was talking about the need to bring about closer ties with the GCC):

“Laying the ground for a potential NATO role in Libya — where ISIS has put down roots in a dysfunctional environment that has until recently seen the country divided between two rival governments — Stoltenberg said Libya will need all the help it can get and that the Alliance is ready to step up.” In other words, NATO’s propaganda-arm said: NATO needs to assist the West’s governments to finish the job of taking control over Libya.

That’s a perfect example of: bomb a formerly Russia-friendly country into a failed state; then claim thatbecause it’s a failed state, we’ve now got to take it over — for the benefit of U.S.-dominated international oil companies and the international corporations of aristocrats in countries that are allied with America’s aristocracy. (As regards the publics in any nations, their interests don’t count, according to the people who do count.)

Of course, it makes sense, then, that the GCC royals will now be NATO’s allies in this grand campaign to ‘protect the Western World’.

The enemies of the European peoples are those royal families, and their own and America’s aristocracies. These are the authentic enemies not only of Europeans, but of the American people, too.

It’s not really country-against-country, such as the powers-that-be pretend; it’s the aristocracy against the public, everywhere. Sectarianism, jihadists, bigotries of all types, are among the main means by which aristocracies become enabled to control the public and turn them into cheap cannon-fodder to achieve their conquests. It’s an ancient technique, and commonly called “Divide and rule.” One public then hates another public. Enslaving the public mentally, by such lies and myths, is the model that every aristocracy has found to be most fruitful, the cheapest way for conquests to be achieved. The cannons might not be cheap (the aristocracy sell those to the taxpayers, the publics, of every country), but the fodder are: the public are a real bargain — they don’t just pay for the weapons, they use them, against some other public.

—————

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

Gov Officials Admit Turkey Has REPEATEDLY Carried Out False Flag Terror

Posted on February 17, 2016 by WashingtonsBlog

Terror attacks have repeatedly rocked Turkey over the last year.
The government has blamed ISIS and Kurds for the attacks … and is about to use this “justification” to launch troops into Syria.
But there is an alternative explanation.  Specifically, government officials have admitted that Turkey has repeatedly carried out false flag attacks.
For example:
(1) The Turkish Prime Minister admitted that the Turkish government carried out the 1955 bombing on a Turkish consulate in Greece – also damaging the nearby birthplace of the founder of modern Turkey – and blamed it on Greece, for the purpose of inciting and justifying anti-Greek violence.
(2) The former Italian Prime Minister, an Italian judge, and the former head of Italian counterintelligence admit that NATO, with the help of the Pentagon and CIA, carried out terror bombings in Italy and other European countries in the 1950s and blamed the communists, in order to rally people’s support for their governments in Europe in their fight against communism. As one participant in this formerly-secret program stated: “You had to attack civilians, people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game. The reason was quite simple. They were supposed to force these people, the Italian public, to turn to the state to ask for greater security” (and see this) (Italy and other European countries subject to the terror campaign had joined NATO before the bombings occurred). And watch this BBC special.

Turkish false flag attacks carried out pursuant to this program include – by way of example only:

• The murder of the Turkish Prime Minister (1960)

• Terror attacks in Turkey kill hundreds (1971)

• Shootings in Istanbul, Turkey (1977)

(3) A top Turkish general admitted that Turkish forces burned down a mosque on Cyprus in the 1970s and blamed it on their enemy. He explained: “In Special War, certain acts of sabotage are staged and blamed on the enemy to increase public resistance. We did this on Cyprus; we even burnt down a mosque.” In response to the surprised correspondent’s incredulous look the general said, “I am giving an example”.
(4) High-level American sources admitted that the Turkish government – a fellow NATO country – carried out the chemical weapons attacks blamed on the Syrian government; and high-ranking Turkish government admitted on tape plans to carry out attacks and blame it on the Syrian government.
Two members of the Turkish parliament stated:

Sarin was sent to Syria from Turkey via several businessmen.
***
The purpose of the attack was allegedly to provoke a US military operation in Syria which would topple the Assad regime …

Pulitzer-prize winning investigative reporter Seymour Hersh – who uncovered the Iraq prison torture scandal and the Mai Lai massacre in Vietnam  – previously reported that high-level American sources tell him that the Turkish government carried out the chemical weapons attacks blamed on the Syrian government.
As Hersh noted:

‘We knew there were some in the Turkish government,’ a former senior US intelligence official, who has access to current intelligence, told me, ‘who believed they could get Assad’s nuts in a vice by dabbling with a sarin attack inside Syria – and forcing Obama to make good on his red line threat.’

Indeed, it’s long been known that sarin was coming through Turkey.
(5) While Turkey pretends it’s fighting ISIS, Turkey is actually one of the main supporters of ISIS.

Russia Sends NATO A Clear Message By Arming Fighter Jets With First Air-To-Air Missles

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 11/30/2015 10:53 -0500
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-11-30/russia-sends-nato-clear-message-arming-fighter-jets-first-air-air-missles
A month ago, US and Russian military officials signed a memorandum of understanding that included steps their pilots should take to avoid an inadvertent clash over Syria as they carry out separate air strikes against armed groups. That MoU has now been shredded, as it certainly did not involve Russian fighter jets operating above Syria being armed with short and medium range air-to-air missiles as a direct threat to other fighter jets also operating above Syria - mostly those of Turkey, France and the US.
Which is precisely what Russia has done as disclosed in an announcement moments ago by the Russian defense ministry, and furthermore, has released a clip as a warning to not only Turkey, but all NATO forces in the region, that any further provocations at its jets will be met with an immediate and proportional response.
Igor Klimov, spokesman for the Russian Air Force, said that "today, Russian Su-34 fighter-bombers have made their first sortie equipped not only with high explosive aviation bombs and hollow charge bombs, but also with short- and medium-range air-to-air missiles The planes are equipped with missiles for defensive purposes."
"The missiles have target-seeking devices and are capable of hitting air targets within a 60km radius."
And the video that was released to commemorate the warning to the "anti-ISIS" alliance:

EU and NATO Set to Destabilize Russia by Anti-Putin Propaganda Operation

Posted on November 3, 2015 by Eric Zuesse.

Eric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org

German Economic News  |  Published:10/31/15 01:23Clock | 

http://deutsche-wirtschafts-nachrichten.de/2015/10/31/eu-und-nato-wollen-russland-mit-unterwanderung-der-medien-destablisieren/

(Translated here by — and then with closing commentary from — Eric Zuesse)

EU, US and NATO are preparing a media offensive against Russia inside Russia. The alliance aim to operate propaganda against the Russian government. This will also reduce the likelihood that independent media will thrive in Russia.

The “Strategic Communication Team East,” as this operation is called,” has already “reached its full staffing levels” as of 1 September 2015, according to the German federal government.

Critical voices against this proposal are arising from within the European Union — especially in Germany’s Left Party. … 

Member of the Bundestag Andrej Hunko, from the Left Party, said:

“The new proposal is an affront to Russia. The media force will be subordinate to the Foreign Service, and thus to the EU’s military arm.” …

Parliamentarian Alexander S. Neu, also from the Left, says:

“The EU member states don’t only build, with NATO’s help, Russian-language media in the eastern EU Member States, as is happening with the television station ETV + in Estonia. In addition, there are clear indications that even Russian free media are being funded [infiltrated] directly. The EU and NATO, the propaganda program against Russia, will be extended with the start of the operation. The EU Member States already finance non-governmental media in Russia, and this means that they intervene directly in the media landscape of Russia. Russian perspectives are now to be neutralized with counter-perspectives, foreign propaganda. The expected communication offensive poses a real danger that the relationship between the Western countries and Russia will become even more confrontational than it already is. The logical reaction of Russia will be to outlaw the foreign financing of free media.”

Hunko then adds:

“Now the media and members of civil society will also be invited to this backroom politics of propaganda. It is extremely dangerous if governments and military try to gain information superiority and pretend that propaganda, even when and if it’s against propaganda, is instead news-reporting, not propaganda itself. It is particularly problematic when the ‘Strategic Communications Team East’ as described by the Foreign Office, even poke at youngsters. Instead of continuing to rely on media tutelage, the EU needs to reconsider its policy towards Russia fundamentally. To say it with the words of former EU Commissioner Günter Verheugen: Peace is possible only if no one wants to dominate the other. This also applies to the media front, Russia, the US and the EU alike.”

——

That’s the German Economic News news-report.

——

COMMENTARY by Eric Zuesse:

This cannot be understood outside its broader context, which is the West’s overall war to defeat Russia — a war that’s heading possibly to become a hot war, perhaps a very hot one. Over what, really?

America’s war to control Russia is not at all defensive (as is claimed), but extremely aggressive. Even in 2010, before there had yet been even a concocted excuse for the West to prepare for war against Russia, the Obama Administration was already struggling, behind the scenes, to get Europe on-board with their aggressive plans, under the pretext that an Anti Ballistic Missile (ABM) ‘defensive’ shield system based in Europe, which would protect against incoming Russian missiles, would be ‘defensive’ not offensive, even though it’s designed to enable a first-strike nuclear-attack knockout blow by the U.S. of Russia’s capacity to defend itself, by eliminating any incoming missile bombs in flight. It thus would be a way to eliminate Russia’s ability to defend itself. According to a wikileaked cable describing a meeting between U.S. ‘Defense’ Secretary Robert Gates and French Minister of Defense Herve Morin:

Morin, having expressed strong reservations to new U.S. and NATO missile defense (MD) plans at the NATO ministerial in Istanbul (reftel), said he wanted to explain how France sees MD and raise some questions. First, he believes that the shift from Theater Missile Defense (TMD) to defense of populations and territory will give publics a false sense of security, since the sword was ultimately stronger than the shield. For France, security came from strong defense and deterrence. Second, Morin asked what threat the system aims to counter. Nuclear states or rogue states? Third, Morin asked about funding and how European countries would participate in command and control (C2) decisions.  Morin summarized his own personal opposition to MD by asserting that the U.S. and Europe have differing mentalities on defense spending. He said the U.S. has true resiliency with “infinite” means, while in Europe defense spending has collapsed in every country but the UK and France.  As a result, any development needing common funding will dilute the already weak European defenses. Morin concluded by stating that it was folly to assume that MD would give us added security.

¶7. (S/NF) SecDef [Gates] refuted Morin’s arguments, pointing out that MD contributes to deterrence.  SecDef explained to Morin that the system was aimed at nations with a handful of nuclear weapons and a limited but growing missile capability to launch them.  Noting Iran fits that profile, SecDef said that MD provides a good deterrent against limited attacks.

In other words: the U.S. ‘justifies’ its push for ABM’s as being ‘defense’ against what Morin was calling ‘rogue states,’ not against Russia — and this is obviously a lie, so Gates didn’t answer that question in direct words, such as by saying, “This isn’t against Russia.” Gates even went further, to assert that, “the U.S. believed partnering with Russia is once again potentially possible.” (As if it hadn’t always been possible ever since 1991.)

Later, the cable says, “Responding to SecDef’s discussion of MD, Morin asked why there was a need to shift from theater to population defense” (“theater” meaning protection of military forces, versus “population” meaning protection of the civilian population) and Gates had a similarly irrelevant answer: “SecDef said the systems the U.S. was deploying have broader applications. For example the THAAD system, which the U.S. had deployed to Hawaii as a measure against North Korean threat, protects both the theater and the population.”

But actually (and Morin almost certainly knew this), the U.S. had already busted the anti-ABM Treaty with Moscow, under George W. Bush, and the first European installations of U.S. ABMs had already taken place. And they were in Poland and Czech Republic, near Russia — not at all relevant to a nuclear ‘threat’ from Iran (which didn’t even have nukes anyway). Bob Gates might as well have been a salesman for Phillip Morris, as for Lockheed Martin. (In either case, of course, he was being paid by U.S. taxpayers, not by his actual clients, the beneficiary military corporations.)

The end of that cable (section 20) includes this, from Gates to Morin: “SecDef observed that Russian democracy has disappeared and the government was an oligarchy run by the security services.” So: the U.S. argument, essentially, was that ABMs are needed against a non-existent Iranian threat to France, because … “Russian democracy has disappeared and the government was an oligarchy run by the security services.” Sounds like a pretty good description of the United States there: its aristocracy, and the CIA etc. But the evidence that the description actually applies to Russia is far less than that it applies to the U.S. (And here’s more on that, from a different angle.)

Wikileaks’ book, after reviewing and summarizing the cables concerning ABMs, doesn’t mince words, when, at the end of its seventh Chapter, Russ Wellen concludes: “Instead of wasting time and resources lamenting the effects of the [leak of] the cables on international relations and harassing Wikileaks, the United States needs to overhaul its foreign policy. Continuing to view a state such as Russia as a rival in a zero-sum game, as well as an energy resource and an emerging market, instead of as representing a people, only perpetuates conflict.” The topmost of the Amazon reviewers of this book sums up the entire 600+ pages (as E.M. Bristol wrote there): “To say that the US … comes off poorly in this book is like saying the Titanic suffered some water damage.”

America’s anti-Russia club, NATO, has crept up to the very borders of Russia and demands that Russians be so stupid as not to recognize what the West is doing, as if John Fitzgerald Kennedy had been so stupid as not to have recognized that the USSR’s placing nuclear missiles in Cuba in 1962 wouldn’t have constituted an aggressive act by the Soviets and thus needed to be blocked. Russians are even more endangered now by the U.S.: Ukraine, after all, directly borders Russia. America’s coup that overthrew the democratically elected government of Ukraine in February 2014 and installed a rabidly anti-Russian one there, was extremely bloody, and the U.S.-backed ethnic cleansing to eliminate the residents in the heavily pro-Russian far east of Ukraine has been even more so. Even Khrushchev’s intent wasn’t so aggressive against the U.S. in 1962.

This aggressive intention of the U.S. government and its allies — extending to Russia’s very doorstep in Ukraine, Poland, and the Baltics — is so intense, that U.S. President Barack Obama holds it even higher in priority than he does the war against the international jihadist movement, a movement that’s actually funded by America’s allies, the royal families of both Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The U.S. now demands that Russia not even try  to defeat the jihadists in Syria (which is an ally of Russia, one that’s being attacked by jihadists hired by the Sauds and Thanis) — as if the request for Russian help, by Syria’s President (democratically elected by Syrians because no alternative person stood even a chance to hold the country together) were invalid — as if the request for that military assistance doesn’t have legitimacy, but the demand by America’s imperial President Obama does have legimacy. Obama simply lies. He said on October 3rd (1:08 on the video), “We’re not going to make Syria a proxy war between the United States and Russia,” but that’s exactly what he has been doing.

So, Obama has placed the jihadists after  Russia, as his targets to destroy. Why?

Islamic jihad is mainly funded by, and an extension from, the two U.S.-backed Arabic royal families (the Sauds of Saudi Arabia, and the Thanis of Qatar), who constitute a genuine national-security threat against the West, by their ongoing financing of Al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, and other Salafist Sunni jihadist organizations, which seek to establish a global Muslim dictatorship. (“Salafist” is basically a synonym for Wahhabist Islam, the Saudi form of Islam; but it’s the term that’s used for the sect outside of Saudi Arabia.) As an example of this jihadism: the Muslim Brotherhood, in its “Who We Are” statement, refers twice to the Salafs (which means ancestors), thrice to the Sunna, and once to jihad. (Specifically regarding jihad, it says: “Prayer is the foundation of religion, jihad is the peak of the [camel’s] hump, and God [the camel’s rider] is the end [religion’s rider].”) (And here is that “Who We Are” in English.) Whereas the Thani clan (which owns Qatar) finances the Muslim Brotherhood, the Saud clan (which owns Saudi Arabia) finances Al Qaeda. Are these Europe’s allies? Or instead Europe’s enemies? They’re America’s and Saudi Arabia’s and Qatar’s tools, so long as they are carrying out their mass-murders in other  countries. As Obama’s advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski told Osama bin Laden’s jihadists back in 1979 when they were fighting against Russia, “God is on your side.” To people such as Brzezinski and Obama, Russia’s abandoning communism and dictatorship, and adopting capitalism and democracy, doesn’t make any difference; like George W. Bush’s and Barack Obama’s ‘Defense’ chief has said: “Russian democracy has disappeared and the government was an oligarchy run by the security services.” But, even if that had been true (and it wasn’t true of Russia, though it has become true of the U.S.), what business is that of America’s? Even if it had been true, this wouldn’t be any reason for America to extend NATO even “one inch to the east.”

For the nations of Europe to be in NATO, and allied to the U.S., is for them to join America’s real war against Russia — a very dangerous and destructive war, which is driving millions of Syrians fleeing into Europe. Such European politicians are thus traitors to their own countries. The nations of Europe should instead be joining in defense of Russia against America’s aggressions (including now against “Strategic Communication Team East”), aggressions which started by Americas’ targeting Russia’s allies: originally, Libya; then, Syria; then, Ukraine. The U.S.-Saud-Thani threat against the most secular, non-sectarian, country in the Middle East, Syria — to replace its secular government by a jihadist one — is also a threat against all of Europe (and not only by its flooding Europe with the refugees). The refugees from Syria and Libya are merely the start of the harms to European peace. Europeans who vote for NATO (alliance with the U.S.) are voting for war against Russia — not for war against America, the Sauds and the Thanis. Not for war against Europe’s actual enemies. And, last of all, such voters, and the politicians they’re voting for, are not voting for peace.

The “Strategic Communication Team East” is the latest phase of this war-treason from these politicians, treason against their own countries. The reviewer of the Wikileaks book had it correct: “To say that the US … comes off poorly in this book is like saying the Titanic suffered some water damage.”

Russia is a part of Europe. By contrast: Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the U.S., are not, and they don’t actually want to be. They’re not trying to be European. (During America’s invasion of Iraq in 2003, non-participant France was even publicly despised with slurring jokes aagainst “French fries.”) They’ve never requested membership in the European Union, and they’re not even on the European Continent. By contrast, Russia is historically a part of the European family. Tchaikovsky and Tolstoy were Europeans, as much as Beethoven and Dickens were. Mark Twain, great though he was, was American, not  European. Arabia and today’s jihadist-supporting U.S. are not and don’t want to be European. Instead, Arabia has been, and the U.S. has become, dictatorial, even having the nerve to demand that Syria’s popular elected President Assad, the only secular leader that that country can have, must be expelled from power and replaced by a U.S./Saudi/Qatari stooge, and the nerve to proclaim that Syrians aren’t the people who possess the right and the final say-so to determine whether or when Assad should be removed from Syria’s Presidency. The EU’s leaders who favor the U.S. instead of Russia are favoring dictatorship over democracy in Syria — and in Europe, too. The U.S. used to be a democracy, but no longer is. “Strategic Communication Team East” is part of the U.S.-Arabic war against Russia — against a nation of  Europe. Rather than having welcomed post-Soviet Russia into the democratic club, the United States has steadily been extending its military alliance against Russia: NATO.

As U.N. Secretary General Ban ki-Moon has said: “The future of President Assad must be decided by the Syrian people. … I think it is totally unfair and unreasonable … to paralyze all this political negotiation. This is not acceptable. It’s not fair. … Many Western countries oppose the Syrian government’s position. Meanwhile, we lost years. 250,000 people have been killed. There are 13 million refugees or internally displaced. Over 50% of hospitals, schools and infrastructure has been destroyed in Syria.” The national leaders he is implicitly charging there are actually being accused by him of war-crimes against the Syrian people; and those war-crimes are even hurting the very people whom those politicians are sworn to be serving — their own populations.

Has democracy been dying in Western countries? Is it already dead in some? Is the ignorance by Western publics regarding these historically important realities of our time, itself proof of that? Did the West learn nothing from George W. Bush’s having lied his country into the catastrophic invasion of Iraq? Now, it’s “regime-change in Syria,” also based upon lies.

—————

The American investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.