The build-up to war on Russia

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Re: The build-up to war on Russia

Postby Elvis » Sun Apr 15, 2018 9:44 pm

minime wrote:But the real question is: What is happening while we're not watching?


That's what I'm asking.

In this case, "who" should be watched? Look at page one again. I don't think the current, massively heightened tensions just "happened." Indeed, what is happening?

Elvis wrote:
MacCruiskeen » Mon Apr 09, 2018 11:50 am wrote:Americans dreaming of war with Russia: as of today, you have john Bolton there to make that dream come true. Four years of solid propagandizing have not been in vain. Any pretext will suffice, however transparently fake.


Somebody, somewhere, has decided the US should go to war with Russia; the question I'd be asking is, who?
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Re: The build-up to war on Russia

Postby minime » Mon Apr 16, 2018 11:47 am

Elvis » Sun Apr 15, 2018 7:44 pm wrote:
minime wrote:But the real question is: What is happening while we're not watching?


That's what I'm asking.

In this case, "who" should be watched? Look at page one again. I don't think the current, massively heightened tensions just "happened." Indeed, what is happening?

Elvis wrote:
MacCruiskeen » Mon Apr 09, 2018 11:50 am wrote:Americans dreaming of war with Russia: as of today, you have john Bolton there to make that dream come true. Four years of solid propagandizing have not been in vain. Any pretext will suffice, however transparently fake.


Somebody, somewhere, has decided the US should go to war with Russia; the question I'd be asking is, who?


Why ask 'who'?
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Re: The build-up to war on Russia

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Apr 16, 2018 12:11 pm

who made trump and company get involved with all the Russian oligarchs mafia?

U.S. banks?
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: The build-up to war on Russia

Postby minime » Mon Apr 16, 2018 10:59 pm

minime » Mon Apr 16, 2018 9:47 am wrote:
Elvis » Sun Apr 15, 2018 7:44 pm wrote:
minime wrote:But the real question is: What is happening while we're not watching?


That's what I'm asking.

In this case, "who" should be watched? Look at page one again. I don't think the current, massively heightened tensions just "happened." Indeed, what is happening?

Elvis wrote:
MacCruiskeen » Mon Apr 09, 2018 11:50 am wrote:Americans dreaming of war with Russia: as of today, you have john Bolton there to make that dream come true. Four years of solid propagandizing have not been in vain. Any pretext will suffice, however transparently fake.


Somebody, somewhere, has decided the US should go to war with Russia; the question I'd be asking is, who?


Why ask 'who'?


Why ask 'who'?
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Re: The build-up to war on Russia

Postby MacCruiskeen » Wed May 09, 2018 12:41 pm

The US 2nd Fleet was disbanded ("to cut costs") in 2011, about two years before the launching of the propaganda campaign documented since page 1 of this thread.

Now:

US Navy reactivates 2nd Fleet to patrol Atlantic as Russia tensions grow

Pentagon puts countering Russia at the heart of its military strategy

PUBLISHED : Sunday, 06 May, 2018, 5:05pm
UPDATED : Sunday, 06 May, 2018, 11:03pm

[...]

http://www.scmp.com/news/world/united-s ... tic-russia
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Re: The build-up to war on Russia

Postby MacCruiskeen » Thu May 10, 2018 12:14 pm

This absolutely belongs in this thread, because "Israel's" (sic) bombardment of Syria is a US-sponsored, US-financed and US-approved reckless act of war. "Bibi" could not and would not have done it without the full & explicit approval of Trump, Bolton et al. These fuckers are going to fry the planet.

Israel strikes Iranian targets in Syria

http://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-middle ... s-in-syria


Nothing was more predictable. Two days ago, in the Guardian:

Donald Trump says US will no longer abide by Iran deal – as it happened

The Republican Jewish Coalition, a group that aggressively lobbied against the Iran deal and is backed by the casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, welcomed Trump's announcement. “Today's decision renewed hope for a truly long-term nuclear-free Iran,” the group said in a statement.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/ ... ve-updates


Trump & Adelson. Lovely. What's the Latin term for "rule by casino magnates"?

Ashley Parker

VerifiedAccount @AshleyRParker

Sheldon Adelson to meet with Trump in D.C. tomorrow. Described as a “friendly,” long-planned meeting, not related to today’s Iran news.

11:25 - 8. May 2018

https://twitter.com/AshleyRParker/statu ... 9053820928


Riiight.

Trump appointed Bolton because Republicans desperately need Adelson’s money
US Politics Philip Weiss on March 25, 2018

http://mondoweiss.net/2018/03/appointed ... sperately/


Unelected casino-magnate billionaire heavily influences the course of US foreign policy and the fate of the planet. Why did Putin have to go and spoil American democracy?

Image
Trump & the Adelsons in their spiritual home, Las Vegas (Photo: Mondoweiss)

A 92-second video from the NYT, from Dec. 2017:

Sheldon Adelson’s Influence on Trump’s Israel Policy
By NILO TABRIZY

https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/politi ... olicy.html


^^Democracy at work.

Image
Photo & captions: Haaretz (Article link, from Nov 2016: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/MAG ... -1.5458529

(They say politics is showbusiness for the ugly, and boy, they're not kidding.)

Image
Photo: Haaretz

Democracy at work. Lovely.

So how will Russia respond? Prudently, circumspectly and intelligently, I hope. (This does not mean "by lying down and taking it".)
"Ich kann gar nicht so viel fressen, wie ich kotzen möchte." - Max Liebermann,, Berlin, 1933

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Re: The build-up to war on Russia

Postby Rory » Wed May 23, 2018 10:07 am

IMG_20180523_065024.jpg


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Re: The build-up to war on Russia

Postby Elvis » Tue Jun 26, 2018 5:45 am

I've sort of rediscovered Asia Times, which IMO had some of the best reporting during the U.S. invasion of Iraq, including some excellent below-the-surface investigations. Compared to U.S. news, their reporting on Russia and other controversial subjects is refreshingly objective, without the colorations skewing to Anglo-American corporate/strategic interests. A variety of columnists are given space; sometimes the U.S./neoliberal view gets in that way, but that reflects a good balance.

This piece by Pepe Escobar is a great example of what you might see in Asia Times (but never the New York Times):

http://www.atimes.com/article/popular-p ... d-war-2-0/
Russia Vladimir Putin Opinion

Popular Putin prepares for Cold War 2.0
As US-led Western hostility against Moscow mounts, Vladimir Putin's new government is bound to be a war cabinet
By Pepe Escobar May 4, 2018 11:33 AM (UTC+8)

Immediately after his official inauguration on Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin is expected to announce a new government. And a bombshell is in the making. The new cabinet is bound to be a Stavka: that is, a war cabinet.

In the context of the interminable Russiagate saga, increasingly harsh US sanctions, the Skripal charade (which, incidentally, has totally disappeared from the Western news cycle), and the serious escalation in Syria – in contrast to the Russia-Iran-Turkey attempt at a peace process in Astana – that’s an all but inevitable option chosen by the Kremlin.

Even more crucially, Russia’s state-of-the-art missile technology, as announced by Putin in his landmark March 1 address, poses serious questions for the US naval empire.

Moscow’s military spending decreased by 20% in 2017 to US$66.3 billion, according to a report released this week by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). This happened to constitute the first annual decline in almost 20 years.

Compare it with the combined 29-nation NATO military spending in 2017: $201 billion.

Not to mention US military spending, relatively stable, for the second year in a row, at a whopping $610 billion. But SIPRI says this is bound to go up, linked to “modernization of conventional and nuclear weapons.”

Yet the heart of the matter from now on is not the enormous discrepancy between the Russian and NATO/American military budgets; it’s the fact that Moscow can churn out serial hypersonic missiles – fast and cheap – compared with the Pentagon’s capacity to build multibillion-dollar aircraft carriers.


Eurasianists vs Atlanticists

Russian analysts have confirmed to Asia Times that a Stavka is in the making – translated as a tight, cohesive collective bent on devising pragmatic solutions in a war-economy setting, on all fronts. That implies extremely close coordination among the Kremlin, the Defense Ministry, the General Staff, all the agencies in the security apparatus and the Russian military-industrial complex.

Sergey Sobyanin, currently the mayor of Moscow, stands a pretty good chance of being the next prime minister. The ideal candidate for the military-industrial complex would have been Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu, or even current Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin. But it’s practically sure that Putin, for complex internal-competition reasons, will choose Sobyanin.

US sanctions are a decisive factor. Rogozin was hit by sanctions in 2014. Both Shoigu and Sobyanin are sanctions-free – for now. In consequence, current Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s fortunes are waning.

It’s no secret that at the highest circles of power in Russia an epic battle has been raging for more than a decade between the Eurasian sovereignists – backing Putin – and the Atlantic integrationists – backing Medvedev. The Eurasian drive is toward a multipolar world and Eurasian integration (New Silk Roads, Eurasian Economic Union). The Atlanticist drive is for Russia to be accepted by the West as an equal partner – now a virtually impossible prospect.

Atlanticists totally control Russian banking and finance, including the central bank. For all practical purposes, the Russian economy is run by the Washington Consensus. From the perspective of Eurasian sovereignists, this is the biggest threat to a stable, nationalist system with an extremely popular Putin on top.

Putin, in public, constantly supports the Central Bank of Russia and the Medvedev-related economic team. This should not be taken at face value. Analysts tell Asia Times of a recent barrage of serious criticism against them on all main Russian TV channels.

So the definitive test, after the announcement of the Stavka, is whether there will be a sort of political crackdown on the Central Bank of Russia and Medvedev allies. It’s not far-fetched to say expectations are running as high as for the World Cup in June.


Take it to the (Crimea) bridge

In parallel to Moscow tightening its geopolitical game, the drive for Eurasian integration could not but remain top of the bill, as illustrated by the latest Valdai Club discussion in late April in Shanghai, centered on how Russia and China should coordinate their strategies toward building a “Greater Eurasia.”

That includes, of course, bypassing the US dollar in bilateral trading; strengthening the Shanghai Cooperation Organization; and solidifying the symbiosis of China as a consumer and Russia as a producer of goods.

Analysts Sergey Karaganov and Yu Bin, for instance, agree on what Karaganov defined as “the West’s unilateral war against China and Russia.” A consensus is emerging that the crunch time for shaping a multipolar new world order is during the next 10 to 15 years.

Virtually at the same time, and also totally under the radar of Western corporate media, representatives of no fewer than 71 nations met in Crimea at the fourth annual Yalta International Economic Forum.

This is one of Russia’s top business meetings, along with the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, the Sochi Investment Forum and the Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum, to be held in late May.

Back in February 1945, Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt and Josef Stalin met in Yalta to design the post-World War II world – which ended up being framed by the Cold War. Now, in a Cold War 2.0 environment, Russia is repositioning Crimea as a debate hub on global cooperation – complete with a brand-new, billion-dollar international airport and the Crimean Bridge, spanning 19 kilometers across the Kerch Strait, and open for traffic in late May, six months ahead of schedule.

That’s what “Russian aggression” feels like.

“The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.” ― Joan Robinson
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Re: The build-up to war on Russia

Postby JackRiddler » Tue Jun 26, 2018 2:40 pm

Interesting, the 71-nation meeting in Crimea among other things. And I see the old Slavophiles v. Westernizers divide among Russian elites survives today in that between Eurasianists and Atlanticists. You reminded me to check on The Silence of the Skripals.
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Re: The build-up to war on Russia

Postby MacCruiskeen » Tue Sep 18, 2018 4:20 pm

Russian military aircraft downed, 15 soldiers dead.

Analysis and discussion at MoA:

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/09/sy ... .html#more

and at OffGuardian:

https://off-guardian.org/2018/09/18/ope ... -in-syria/
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Re: The build-up to war on Russia

Postby MacCruiskeen » Thu Sep 27, 2018 3:48 pm

^^That never made it into the Current Events forum, for some mysterious reason. Imagine it had been an Israeli plane shot down by Russia, with 15 Israelis dead. Hold the front page. Start the world war. (In self-defense, of course.) Luckily it was only subhuman Slavs who died, and only Israelis doing the killing, so like, whatever, 15 dead Reds, Putin ignores provocation, that ain't news that's fit to print, never mind copy and paste.

So the buildup continues apace. With Brexit entering Full Fiasco phase, the United Kingdom unravelling, the Irish getting uppity and nobody mentioning Gibraltar, the May regime requires nothing more urgently than a really bracing October Surprise, a catastrophic and catalysing event. Americans, too, could use some of that tried and tested Shock Doctrine stuff to unite the Homeland. Works every time.

Maybe the Israelis will be happy to help (again). If 150 dead Russkies aren't enough, 1500 should do the trick, or 15,000. If all else fails, they can just nuke Liverpool and blame Putin for it. Anything goes.

Count the ever-growing number of increasingly demented anti-Russian threads on this former Discussion Board alone, and watch this space while it still exists.
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Re: The build-up to war on Russia

Postby JackRiddler » Thu Sep 27, 2018 6:46 pm

MacCruiskeen » Thu Sep 27, 2018 2:48 pm wrote:^^That never made it into the Current Events forum, for some mysterious reason.


Now you know we are in agreement on this issue. But you also know there's no mysterious reason. The reason is that no one posted it, although any of us could have. Every day there are 50 important news stories that no one posts on "Current Events," and it doesn't really mean anything, since CE is just a subforum here, not a quasi wire-service as the name suggests. That is one of the reasons I for one have a problem with the CE forum. I don't much care for its rules or its rationale. So I don't post there. Also, any post is near-guaranteed to be lost in a permanent flood of items selected by the skewed curation of one highly active member, which I guess is your problem with it too.

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Re: The build-up to war on Russia

Postby Elvis » Thu Sep 27, 2018 10:27 pm

Keep Calm and Blame Russia.png
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Re: The build-up to war on Russia

Postby conniption » Sat Sep 29, 2018 5:22 am

Elvis » Tue Jun 26, 2018 2:45 am wrote:I've sort of rediscovered Asia Times, which IMO had some of the best reporting during the U.S. invasion of Iraq, including some excellent below-the-surface investigations. Compared to U.S. news, their reporting on Russia and other controversial subjects is refreshingly objective, without the colorations skewing to Anglo-American corporate/strategic interests. A variety of columnists are given space; sometimes the U.S./neoliberal view gets in that way, but that reflects a good balance.

This piece by Pepe Escobar is a great example of what you might see in Asia Times (but never the New York Times):


Happened across this comment at MoA and thought you might be interested to see it, Elvis...

OT-FYI--

In case you've wondered what's happened to asiatimesonline, here's the answer: CIA using "a group of American financiers" as cover has taken over, which is why the editorial and reportage focus has so visibly changed. Pepe Escobar's work still appears, but those items deemed "wrong" are now being published at Consortium News. I've long wanted him to have his own website, maybe this event will now move him to do so.

Posted by: karlof1 | Sep 26, 2018 2:56:59 PM | 18
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Re: The build-up to war on Russia

Postby Elvis » Sat Sep 29, 2018 1:49 pm

conniption » Sat Sep 29, 2018 2:22 am wrote:
Elvis » Tue Jun 26, 2018 2:45 am wrote:I've sort of rediscovered Asia Times, which IMO had some of the best reporting during the U.S. invasion of Iraq, including some excellent below-the-surface investigations. Compared to U.S. news, their reporting on Russia and other controversial subjects is refreshingly objective, without the colorations skewing to Anglo-American corporate/strategic interests. A variety of columnists are given space; sometimes the U.S./neoliberal view gets in that way, but that reflects a good balance.

This piece by Pepe Escobar is a great example of what you might see in Asia Times (but never the New York Times):


Happened across this comment at MoA and thought you might be interested to see it, Elvis...

OT-FYI--

In case you've wondered what's happened to asiatimesonline, here's the answer: CIA using "a group of American financiers" as cover has taken over, which is why the editorial and reportage focus has so visibly changed. Pepe Escobar's work still appears, but those items deemed "wrong" are now being published at Consortium News. I've long wanted him to have his own website, maybe this event will now move him to do so.

Posted by: karlof1 | Sep 26, 2018 2:56:59 PM | 18


Interesting and sad, thanks.
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