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The first is that Merkel and Hollande may realize that the USA is stirring up a shitstorm and that they are (as one of my former professors used to say) "standing in front of the fan".-SIGNY

Or, it could be they are the carrot and the US is the stick, good cop bad cop, that they are in fact actually working together. It is quite possible they have had actual discussions about all of this. It's more likely a semi-bluff to get Russia to think about it's next move carefully.-MRG

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The second thing that Hollande and Merkel may possibly realize is that they have absolutely no leverage on anything the USA might do. They can't stop weapons flow from the USA. In addition, Poroshenko and "Yats" owe their careers to the USA. What could the EU do to pressure Poroshenko into accepting a cease fire that didn't please the USA? Kerry visited Kiev to discuss policy with Kiev's leaders (ie stiffen their spine, remind them who they owe their positions to) then Merkel and Hollande trail in afterwards?-SIGNY

Sounds like old Soviet style, "threaten them!" Instead of actually using intelligence. No one wants a war, no one - it hurts everyone. I'm not sure Russia cares though.

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So, what can Merkel and Hollande actually do? -SIGNY

Try and get Putin to see there's no benefit to this? That there's no good end game for Russia other than support peace? Now?-G

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The German chancellor, who has acted as the West’s chief interlocutor with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the crisis, bluntly rejected those calls on Saturday. “The problem is I cannot imagine a situation in which an improved arming of the Ukrainian army leads to President Putin being so impressed that he believes he will lose militarily,” Ms. Merkel said at the Munich Security Conference in response to criticism from some U.S. senators. “This cannot be won militarily. That is the bitter truth. The international community must think of something else.”

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When Victoria Nuland said "fuck the EU", I don't think anyone in Europe realized exactly how deeply and how hard she was prepared to do exactly that. I think if it means turning Europe into a war-torn wasteland to destroy Russia, she'd be OK with that. EU politicians should have paid more attention, but of course Germany was at the time entranced with its vision of itself as the creditor nation and "powerhouse of the EU", and everyone in NATO owes their vaunted position to the USA.-SIGNY

Your type never gets tired of that (mostly out of context) quote do you? It's a new twist though giving her that much power, like she's the one deciding the outcome of all of this.

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If Merkel and Hollande really understand the situation, they would have gone to Putin on bended knee, and begged him to accept something that would bring peace and save them from the threat of war.-SIGNY

Snort! Your fantasy is showing.... icky!

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Another point is the timing of what Russia might do in response to the USA arming Kiev. Many people already believe that the USA is providing arms and supplies to Kiev, and that the USA would simply be making it official.-SIGNY

That would be pretty easy to prove wouldn't it? Since they would be arming them with US made weapons, so no easy excuses about they use the same kind.

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But taking the idea of the USA supplying arms to Kiev, all Russia has to do is supply some high-tech weapons to the DPR-LPR. Kiev's army is close to collapse already, the command structure has "shoot to kill" orders for deserters, and - worse- unless Kiev gets a HUGE injection of money RIGHT AWAY, the economy and civil society won't stick together much longer. - SIGNY

So you are pro destroy Ukraine then?-G

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So you are pro destroy Ukraine then?-G
You're such as ass. You just can't resist putting words in my mouth, can you?-SIGNY
And you're an illiterate ass - that's a question not a statement - see the question mark? I actually did something you rarely do and asked rather than negatively presume. Your's usually go, "so what you are saying is >fill in negative presumption here."-G

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The reality is that Ukraine started to destroy itself the minute it rejected the Russian trade/aid offer and signed on to the EU offer. Yanukovich, as corrupt as he may have been, was right about what Kiev could and couldn't afford and Kiev couldn't afford the EU "deal". -SIGNY
Looks like Ukraine felt they couldn't afford Yanukovich either.-G

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You're going to have to explain it better, cites, etc., because it sounds like you're saying the IMF lends money to destroy their customer's economies?

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You sure are awfully dismissive of the pull that Europe has, and at the same time you think Nuland runs the show, or her husband does. ... Very interesting - who are the others in this cabal?

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Members of the Senate Armed Services Committee first viewed the graphic pictures in December. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R., Okla.) then obtained the photos and worked to independently verify and confirm the authenticity of the photos, before providing them exclusively to the Free Beacon.

Inhofe said he hopes the images act as a wake up call to the Obama administration and American people, who largely have been spared from seeing the graphic violence inflicted upon Ukraine by the Russian-backed separatists…

Following publication of this story, serious questions have been raised about the authenticity of some of the photographs provided by Sen. Jim Inhofe (R., Okla.). Several images of the Russian convoys appear to have been taken in 2008, during Russia’s conflict with Georgia. Given the similarities between the earlier images and those provided by the senator’s office, the Washington Free Beacon is investigating further and will update as necessary.

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Originally posted by G:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
There is only one way to peace in Ukraine, something which I have already mentioned: real elections in the Donbas, some form of federalization in which the people of the Donbas get to control their local issues (such as language) while still paying into/ participating in the larger programs like pensions, a neutral (non-NATO) Ukraine, Crimea recognized as part of Russia, and huge amounts of reconstruction money which the EU is not likely to pony up.

In exchange, Count Chocula, Yats, and their band of Merrie Nazis get to stay in power in western Ukraine, and good luck to them.

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Amazing timing - Merkel says she's in favor of elections by Ukrainian Law for Donbas, and then you predict it.

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Yesterday, when we reported that the last Ukraine outpost in the rebel-controlled eastern territory, the town of Debaltseve, has fallen into separatist hands, we concluded that "perhaps the only question is whether fighting continues around Mariupol which would enable Russia to have a land corridor all the way to Crimea."

Moments ago we got the answer when Reuters reported that "pro-Russian separatists have launched mortar attacks on government-held positions near the coastal town of Mariupol in southeast Ukraine and are building up their forces there, local military reached by telephone said on Thursday."

"Right now there are mortar attacks on Shyrokine," a local military spokesman said referring to a village about 30 km (19 miles) east of Mariupol, along the coast of the Sea of Azov.

"There is no attempt to seize our positions up to now. The rebels are bringing up reserves," the spokesman said.

Well, since the Minsk ceasefire is officially over before it even started, one can be sure that an attempt will be made. The reason: as the updated map below showing who controls what territory in east Ukraine currently - with Debaltseve firmly in separatist hands - Mariupol is the last remaining outpost before "Novorossiya" will have a land access to Crimea.



As for what happens after Mariupol, too, falls? Well, the broke Ukraine government is just making it too easy. As Reuters also reports, "Ukraine has suspended supplies of gas to its eastern regions because the gas network was damaged by fighting between pro-Russian separatists and government forces, Ukrainian state gas firm Naftogaz said on Thursday. "Due to the extensive damage of the gas transport networks, the supply of gas ... was suspended on Feb. 18. The resumption of gas supplies is not yet possible because of the ongoing hostilities in the region," the company said in a statement."

In other words, with Kiev fully cutting off east Ukraine from its control, it will be up to Putin to swoop in and "save" the territory from its host government which no longer cares about the fate of the people living there.

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So are links facts? Are links evidence too then? I keep asking Signym, she keeps ducking.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Ukraine Fighting Shifts To Mariupol Whose Capture Would Grant Russian Land Corridor To Crimea

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Yesterday, when we reported that the last Ukraine outpost in the rebel-controlled eastern territory, the town of Debaltseve, has fallen into separatist hands, we concluded that "perhaps the only question is whether fighting continues around Mariupol which would enable Russia to have a land corridor all the way to Crimea."

Moments ago we got the answer when Reuters reported that "pro-Russian separatists have launched mortar attacks on government-held positions near the coastal town of Mariupol in southeast Ukraine and are building up their forces there, local military reached by telephone said on Thursday."

"Right now there are mortar attacks on Shyrokine," a local military spokesman said referring to a village about 30 km (19 miles) east of Mariupol, along the coast of the Sea of Azov.

"There is no attempt to seize our positions up to now. The rebels are bringing up reserves," the spokesman said.

Well, since the Minsk ceasefire is officially over before it even started, one can be sure that an attempt will be made. The reason: as the updated map below showing who controls what territory in east Ukraine currently - with Debaltseve firmly in separatist hands - Mariupol is the last remaining outpost before "Novorossiya" will have a land access to Crimea.



As for what happens after Mariupol, too, falls? Well, the broke Ukraine government is just making it too easy. As Reuters also reports, "Ukraine has suspended supplies of gas to its eastern regions because the gas network was damaged by fighting between pro-Russian separatists and government forces, Ukrainian state gas firm Naftogaz said on Thursday. "Due to the extensive damage of the gas transport networks, the supply of gas ... was suspended on Feb. 18. The resumption of gas supplies is not yet possible because of the ongoing hostilities in the region," the company said in a statement."

In other words, with Kiev fully cutting off east Ukraine from its control, it will be up to Putin to swoop in and "save" the territory from its host government which no longer cares about the fate of the people living there.

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http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-02-19/ukraine-fighting-shifts-mariu
pol-whose-capture-would-grant-russian-land-corridor-cri

Not knowing how the terms of the cease-fire are supposed to be interpreted, I'm not sure how this fighting (if true) would impact the agreement. It seems to me that small-arms fire was never mentioned in the agreement, most of the agreement seemed to be involved with the withdrawal of heavy weapons, which would not preclude heavy infiltration of an area by individuals carrying rifles, close-quarters combat, etc. A very legalistic drawing of fines lines, I"m sure, which would leave the advantage to whoever has the most troops and/or the most popular support.

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You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

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whoever has the most troops and/or the most popular support.

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The EU will prepare possible new sanctions on Russia over the Ukraine conflict that could be imposed quickly if the Minsk ceasefire agreement is broken, Britain’s foreign minister said on Friday. “The EU will remain united on the question of sanctions, sanctions must remain in place until there is full compliance [with the Minsk agreement],” Reuters quoted Philip Hammond as saying in Warsaw. Hammond added that Britain does not have plans to supply Kiev with weapons. However, it is “not ruling anything out for the future” as the situation in east Ukraine is “dynamic,” the minister said.

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Yep, the west. How dare they want a cease fire to stick! Outrageous!

Ever-vigilant for violations of human rights (except when THEY'RE the ones doing the killing and bombing, of course!)

thank god for our press and people like Snowden and our citizen journalists for their freedom to cite our transgressions. Unlike Russia of course. -GSTRING

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What this means is that the UK would like Kiev to start something-SIGNY

you mean defend itself?-GSTRING

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so that the DPR and/or LPR respond- SIGNY
they already have-GSTRING

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so that the UK can claim that "Russia" is not meeting its Minsk obligations- SIGNY
they already aren't -GSTRING

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so that the UK can send actual combat troops into Ukraine, instead of their panty-waist trainers.-SIGNY

GSTRING is dreaming of a bigger conflict with more deaths. But mostly he's covering his bets so if the conflict escalates he can say, "I predicted it!"

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While Russia's envoy to NATO notes that statements by the deputy head of NATO testify to the fact that the leaders of the bloc want to intervene in Russia’s internal politics, and are "dreaming of Russian Maidan," Washington has a bigger problem... Germany. As Der Spiegel reports, while US President Obama 'supports' Chancellor Merkel's efforts at finding a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine crisis, hawks in Washington seem determined to torpedo Berlin's approach. And NATO's top commander in Europe hasn't been helping either with sources in the Chancellery have referred to Breedlove's comments as "dangerous propaganda."

This is the view of Russia’s permanent envoy to NATO:

“The speech in Riga demonstrates the concern about Russia’s democracy and internal policy. At last, now we know that NATO has a dream, and this dream is a Maidan in Russia,” Aleksandr Grushko said in comment that was tweeted through the Russian representation office in the alliance.

Grushko referred to the words of NATO's deputy secretary general, Alexander Vershbow, who had told a conference in the Latvian capital Riga that President Vladimir Putin's "aim seems to be to turn Ukraine into a failed state and to suppress and discredit alternative voices in Russia, so as to prevent a Russian 'Maidan.'" Both officials used the Ukrainian word ‘Maidan’ to describe a string of protest actions that eventually turned into mass unrest and the ousting of the legally elected president and parliament.

And as Der Spiegel reports, The Germans are not happy.

Breedlove's Bellicosity: Berlin Alarmed by Aggressive NATO Stance on Ukraine

US President Obama supports Chancellor Merkel's efforts at finding a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine crisis. But hawks in Washington seem determined to torpedo Berlin's approach. And NATO's top commander in Europe hasn't been helping either.

It was quiet in eastern Ukraine last Wednesday. Indeed, it was another quiet day in an extended stretch of relative calm. The battles between the Ukrainian army and the pro-Russian separatists had largely stopped and heavy weaponry was being withdrawn. The Minsk cease-fire wasn't holding perfectly, but it was holding.

On that same day, General Philip Breedlove, the top NATO commander in Europe, stepped before the press in Washington. Putin, the 59-year-old said, had once again "upped the ante" in eastern Ukraine -- with "well over a thousand combat vehicles, Russian combat forces, some of their most sophisticated air defense, battalions of artillery" having been sent to the Donbass. "What is clear," Breedlove said, "is that right now, it is not getting better. It is getting worse every day."

German leaders in Berlin were stunned. They didn't understand what Breedlove was talking about. And it wasn't the first time. Once again, the German government, supported by intelligence gathered by the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), Germany's foreign intelligence agency, did not share the view of NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR).

The pattern has become a familiar one. For months, Breedlove has been commenting on Russian activities in eastern Ukraine, speaking of troop advances on the border, the amassing of munitions and alleged columns of Russian tanks. Over and over again, Breedlove's numbers have been significantly higher than those in the possession of America's NATO allies in Europe. As such, he is playing directly into the hands of the hardliners in the US Congress and in NATO.

The German government is alarmed. Are the Americans trying to thwart European efforts at mediation led by Chancellor Angela Merkel? Sources in the Chancellery have referred to Breedlove's comments as "dangerous propaganda." Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier even found it necessary recently to bring up Breedlove's comments with NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg.

The 'Super Hawk'

But Breedlove hasn't been the only source of friction. Europeans have also begun to see others as hindrances in their search for a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine conflict. First and foremost among them is Victoria Nuland, head of European affairs at the US State Department. She and others would like to see Washington deliver arms to Ukraine and are supported by Congressional Republicans as well as many powerful Democrats.

Indeed, US President Barack Obama seems almost isolated. He has thrown his support behind Merkel's diplomatic efforts for the time being, but he has also done little to quiet those who would seek to increase tensions with Russia and deliver weapons to Ukraine. Sources in Washington say that Breedlove's bellicose comments are first cleared with the White House and the Pentagon. The general, they say, has the role of the "super hawk," whose role is that of increasing the pressure on America's more reserved trans-Atlantic partners.

A mixture of political argumentation and military propaganda is necessary. But for months now, many in the Chancellery simply shake their heads each time NATO, under Breedlove's leadership, goes public with striking announcements about Russian troop or tank movements. To be sure, neither Berlin's Russia experts nor BND intelligence analysts doubt that Moscow is supporting the pro-Russian separatists. The BND even has proof of such support.

But it is the tone of Breedlove's announcements that makes Berlin uneasy. False claims and exaggerated accounts, warned a top German official during a recent meeting on Ukraine, have put NATO -- and by extension, the entire West -- in danger of losing its credibility.

There are plenty of examples. Just over three weeks ago, during the cease-fire talks in Minsk, the Ukrainian military warned that the Russians -- even as the diplomatic marathon was ongoing -- had moved 50 tanks and dozens of rockets across the border into Luhansk. Just one day earlier, US Lieutenant General Ben Hodges had announced "direct Russian military intervention."

Senior officials in Berlin immediately asked the BND for an assessment, but the intelligence agency's satellite images showed just a few armored vehicles. Even those American intelligence officials who supply the BND with daily situation reports were much more reserved about the incident than Hodges was in his public statements. One intelligence agent says it "remains a riddle until today" how the general reached his conclusions.

Much More Cautious

"The German intelligence services generally appraise the threat level much more cautiously than the Americans do," an international military expert in Kiev confirmed.

At the beginning of the crisis, General Breedlove announced that the Russians had assembled 40,000 troops on the Ukrainian border and warned that an invasion could take place at any moment. The situation, he said, was "incredibly concerning." But intelligence officials from NATO member states had already excluded the possibility of a Russian invasion. They believed that neither the composition nor the equipment of the troops was consistent with an imminent invasion.

The experts contradicted Breedlove's view in almost every respect. There weren't 40,000 soldiers on the border, they believed, rather there were much less than 30,000 and perhaps even fewer than 20,000. Furthermore, most of the military equipment had not been brought to the border for a possible invasion, but had already been there prior to the beginning of the conflict. Furthermore, there was no evidence of logistical preparation for an invasion, such as a field headquarters.

Breedlove, though, repeatedly made inexact, contradictory or even flat-out inaccurate statements. On Nov. 18, 2014, he told the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that there were "regular Russian army units in eastern Ukraine." One day later, he told the website of the German newsmagazine Stern that they weren't fighting units, but "mostly trainers and advisors."

He initially said there were "between 250 and 300" of them, and then "between 300 and 500." For a time, NATO was even saying there were 1,000 of them.

The fact that NATO has no intelligence agency of its own plays into Breedlove's hands. The alliance relies on intelligence gathered by agents from the US, Britain, Germany and other member states. As such, SACEUR has a wide range of information to choose from.

Influencing Breedlove

On Nov. 12, during a visit to Sofia, Bulgaria, Breedlove reported that "we have seen columns of Russian equipment -- primarily Russian tanks, Russian artillery, Russian air defense systems and Russian combat troops -- entering into Ukraine." It was, he noted, "the same thing that OSCE is reporting." But the OSCE had only observed military convoys within eastern Ukraine. OSCE observers had said nothing about troops marching in from Russia.

Breedlove sees no reason to revise his approach. "I stand by all the public statements I have made during the Ukraine crisis," he wrote to SPIEGEL in response to a request for a statement accompanied by a list of his controversial claims. He wrote that it was to be expected that assessments of NATO's intelligence center, which receives information from all 33 alliance members in addition to partner states, doesn't always match assessments made by individual nations. "It is normal that not everyone agrees with the assessments that I provide," he wrote.

He says that NATO's strategy is to "release clear, accurate and timely information regarding ongoing events." He also wrote that: "As an alliance based on the fundamental values of freedom and democracy, our response to propaganda cannot be more propaganda. It can only be the truth."

The German government, meanwhile, is doing what it can to influence Breedlove. Sources in Berlin say that conversations to this end have taken place in recent weeks. But there are many at NATO headquarters in Brussels who are likewise concerned about Breedlove's statements. On Tuesday of last week, Breedlove's public appearances were an official item on the agenda of the North Atlantic Council's weekly lunch meeting. Several ambassadors present criticized Breedlove and expressed their incredulity at some of the commander's statements.

The government in Berlin is concerned that Breedlove's statements could harm the West's credibility. The West can't counter Russian propaganda with its own propaganda, "rather it must use arguments that are worthy of a constitutional state." Berlin sources also say that it has become conspicuous that Breedlove's controversial statements are often made just as a step forward has been made in the difficult negotiations aimed at a political resolution. Berlin sources say that Germany should be able to depend on its allies to support its efforts at peace.

Pressure on Obama

German foreign policy experts are united in their view of Breedlove as a hawk. "I would prefer that Breedlove's comments on political questions be intelligent and reserved," says Social Democrat parliamentarian Niels Annen, for example. "Instead, NATO in the past has always announced a new Russian offensive just as, from our point of view, the time had come for cautious optimism." Annen, who has long specialized in foreign policy, has also been frequently dissatisfied with the information provided by NATO headquarters. "We parliamentarians were often confused by information regarding alleged troop movements that were inconsistent with the information we had," he says.

The pressure on Obama from the Republicans, but also from his own political camp, is intense. Should the ceasefire in eastern Ukraine not hold, it will likely be difficult to continue refusing Kiev's requests for shipments of so-called "defensive weapons." And that would represent a dramatic escalation of the crisis. Moscow has already begun issuing threats in anticipation of such deliveries. "Any weapons deliveries to Kiev will escalate the tensions and would unhinge European security," Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of Russia's national security council, told the Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda on Wednesday.

Although President Obama has decided for the time being to give European diplomacy a chance, hawks like Breedlove or Victoria Nuland are doing what they can to pave the way for weapons deliveries. "We can fight against the Europeans, fight against them rhetorically," Nuland said during a private meeting of American officials on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference at the beginning of February.

In reporting on the meeting later, the German tabloid Bild reported that Nuland referred to the chancellor's early February trip to Moscow for talks with Putin as "Merkel's Moscow stuff." No wonder, then, that people in Berlin have the impression that important power brokers in Washington are working against the Europeans. Berlin officials have noticed that, following the visit of American politicians or military leaders in Kiev, Ukrainian officials are much more bellicose and optimistic about the Ukrainian military's ability to win the conflict on the battlefield. "We then have to laboriously bring the Ukrainians back onto the course of negotiations," said one Berlin official.

Nuland Diplomacy

Nuland, who is seen as a possible secretary of state should the Republicans win back the White House in next year's presidential election, is an important voice in US policy concerning Ukraine and Russia. She has never sought to hide her emotional bond to Russia, even saying "I love Russia." Her grandparents immigrated to the US from Bessarabia, which belonged to the Russian empire at the time. Nuland speaks Russian fluently.

She is also very direct. She can be very keen and entertaining, but has been known to take on an undiplomatic tone -- and has not always been wrong to do so. Mykola Asarov, who was prime minister under toppled Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, recalls that Nuland basically blackmailed Yanukovych in order to prevent greater bloodshed in Kiev during the Maidan protests. "No violence against the protesters or you'll fall," Nuland told him according to Asarov. She also, he said, threatened tough economic and political sanctions against both Ukraine and the country's leaders. According to Asarov, Nuland said that, were violence used against the protesters on Maidan Square, information about the money he and his cronies had taken out of the country would be made public.

Nuland has also been open -- at least internally -- about her contempt for European weakness and is famous for having said "Fuck the EU" during the initial days of the Ukraine crisis in February of 2014. Her husband, the neo-conservative Robert Kagan, is, after all, the originator of the idea that Americans are from Mars and Europeans, unwilling as they are to realize that true security depends on military power, are from Venus.

When it comes to the goal of delivering weapons to Ukraine, Nuland and Breedlove work hand-in-hand. On the first day of the Munich Security Conference, the two gathered the US delegation behind closed doors to discuss their strategy for breaking Europe's resistance to arming Ukraine.

On the seventh floor of the Bayerischer Hof hotel in the heart of Munich, it was Nuland who began coaching. "While talking to the Europeans this weekend, you need to make the case that Russia is putting in more and more offensive stuff while we want to help the Ukrainians defend against these systems," Nuland said. "It is defensive in nature although some of it has lethality."

Training Troops?

Breedlove complemented that with the military details, saying that moderate weapons aid was inevitable -- otherwise neither sanctions nor diplomatic pressure would have any effect. "If we can increase the cost for Russia on the battlefield, the other tools will become more effective," he said. "That's what we should do here."

In Berlin, top politicians have always considered a common position vis-a-vis Russia as a necessary prerequisite for success in peace efforts. For the time being, that common front is still holding, but the dispute is a fundamental one -- and hinges on the question of whether diplomacy can be successful without the threat of military action. Additionally, the trans-Atlantic partners also have differing goals. Whereas the aim of the Franco-German initiative is to stabilize the situation in Ukraine, it is Russia that concerns hawks within the US administration. They want to drive back Moscow's influence in the region and destabilize Putin's power. For them, the dream outcome would be regime change in Moscow.

A massive troop training range is located in Yavoriv in western Ukraine near the Polish border. During Soviet times, it served as the westernmost military district in the Soviet Union. Since 1998, though, it has been used for joint exercises by Ukrainian forces together with the United States and NATO. Yavoriv is also the site where US soldiers want to train members of the Ukrainian National Guard for their future battle against the separatists. According to the Pentagon's plans, American officers would train the Ukrainians on how to use American artillery-locating radar devices. At least that's what US Army in Europe commander Lt. Gen. Hodges announced in January.

The training was actually supposed to start at the beginning of March. Before it began, however, President Obama temporarily put it on hold in order to give the ceasefire agreement reached in Minsk a chance. Still, the hawks remain confident that they will soon come a step closer to their goal. On Tuesday, Hodges said during an appearance in Berlin that he expects the training will still begin at some point this month.

* * *

Who's Isolated Now?

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After the beginning of the Ukrainian crisis, the stream of anti-Russian propaganda in the world has reached the scale of the times of the Soviet Union. But if the majority of EU countries have relatively neutral forces, calling for reconciliation, in Scandinavia and the Baltics the line towards Russia is most radical and destructive. It is in these countries, where the US influence is constantly growing: in the Baltics there are no longer any independent states, and in Scandinavia the process is actively moving in the same direction. Interestingly, of the four Scandinavian countries (including Finland - it's not always included in this geographical concept), only Norway and Denmark are a part of NATO, and Sweden and Finland so far have a non-aligned status, at least on words. Nevertheless, the wave of anti-Russian hysteria and militarization is sweeping through these two states.


The tools are misinformation and lies at the highest level: just remember the story about the Russian nuclear submarine, supposedly entering the territorial waters of Sweden. Only what was the reason and how such an object could be missed, no one answered - irresponsibility in big politics is now in fashion.


Norway constantly sheds "crocodile tears" - drawing attention to the flights of Russian strategic aviation (which, incidentally, never violated anyone's borders), and most recently voicing ridiculous assumption that the Russian research vessels are "spying" on them, located at the former submarine base Olavson. The base was sold a few years ago by Norwegian authorities themselves, as the cost of its operation was huge, but there was no real military purpose -in the war with Russia it will not help, though, it really is a powerful refuge for submarines, and in the global conflict the underwater forces of the Norwegian Navy are miniscule - only 6 diesel-electric submarines of "Ula" class.


The rhetoric in Denmark and Finland is not as harsh, and the amount of too obvious misinformation, voiced by officials, is much smaller. But this are just words. But actions are no different - Denmark has already agreed to participate in the formation of the system of European missile defense, and Finland is actively establishing the cooperation of their armed forces with the armies of other Scandinavian and Baltic countries (especially Sweden), and, of course, with the U.S. forces.



Military tandem Sweden-Finland



The most active is the formation of a military tandem Sweden-Finland and, although the intention to create a military bloc with the participation of these countries was officially refuted, in fact, the opposite is happening. The countries expressed their readiness to create joint land and naval brigades, and at the end of March held joint Air Force exercises. They were also joined by the U.S. Air Force, landing at the Estonian airfield "Amari". Moreover, the integration of Air Forces of those two countries will continue to grow - instead of 62 aging American fighters F/A-18, Finland is going to buy either the Swedish SAAB JAS-39 Gripen of new modification or French Dassault Rafale, and most likely the choice will fall on the Swedes. In both cases, the interaction of the Air Forces of the countries will grow significantly, and in the case of the purchase of JAS-39 it will reach the maximum - even the weapons and spare parts will be standardized.


Now a key objective for the U.S. in this area is pulling these countries into NATO. The population is actively prepped - in the event of a further escalation of the Ukrainian conflict, the accession of Sweden and Finland into NATO may be a matter of time.



Baltic Foothold




Active placement of U.S. troops on the territory of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, and the constant NATO exercises held there indicate that these three countries will become a staging ground for NATO forces, including for the aviation of the Scandinavian countries. The geographical location of these countries allows to simultaneously strike in the direction of surrounded by NATO Kaliningrad region, and in the direction of Leningrad and Pskov regions. The armed forces of the Baltic countries themselves are extremely weak and small - collectively they can only provide 23 thousand soldiers, and can not boast of any significant amount of military equipment, and the Air Force in these countries is virtually absent. So the main role of these states is to become a springboard for NATO troops and a battlefield - not the brightest prospect, but it doesn't bother the anti-people government of these countries, "dancing the tune" of the overseas "ally".



Norway: Arctic Oil Bait


Among the Nordic countries Norway stands out perhaps by the highest degree of anti-Russian hysteria. And unlike the Baltic States, there is a material substrate - namely the Arctic oil reserves, for which the Norwegians have serious sights, actually - just like us. This adds to the pressure from the United States, leading to a kind of "resonance". In addition, Americans can "warm up" the Arctic appetites of Norwegians, killing two birds with one stone - forming a new enemy for Russia and increasing the supplies of their weapons. Thus, Norway is in a kind of "trap" based on its own energy ambitions. In regards to a purely military component - Norway has a strong Air Force and Navy, as well as a high level of training of soldiers. Very soon will begin deliveries of American fighters of the 5th generation, F-35, which will be purchased in the amount of 52 units, in addition to (and in the future - replacement) 57 F-16.



The Northern Fist Against Russia



As we can see, the above mentioned countries are increasingly militarizing and uniting around an anti-Russian ideology. Under the patronage of the US a kind of a military "fist" is forming threatening the North-Western borders of Russia. What forces, and in what directions can these states throw against the Russian Federation?

1) A powerful aviation group, able to operate from Murmansk to Kaliningrad region - along the entire length of the potential front line. In total it includes nearly 300 fighters - 62 F-18, 134 JAS-39 Gripen?, 102 F-16. All light class aircraft, but of a good level and in a very serious quantity.

2) Two naval groups - the first in the "Northern seas" (North, Norwegian, Barents) represented mainly by the Norwegian Navy. It includes 5 frigates of Fridtjof Nansen model, equipped with anti-ship missiles (ASM) Naval Strike Missile and Aegis combat information and control system, 6 Skjold missile boats with the same missiles and 6 Ula diesel submarines.


The second - in the Baltic sea, represented by the Navy of Finland, Sweden and Denmark. Here into the battle can be thrown: 5 Danish frigates with American Nagroopi anti-ship missiles with a good air defense system; 5 Swedish diesel-electric submarines with torpedo armament and 9 corvettes with anti-ship missiles RBS-15, including 5 of the Visby class with "Stealth" technology; 8 Finnish missile boats with anti-ship missiles RBS-15 (the maximum range - 200 km), 6 minelayers and 13 minesweepers.


3) Ground forces - we won't consider the Danish forces here, because geographically they are somewhat "detached" from the action. Finland, Sweden and Denmark collectively can provide 31 thousand soldiers, 284 German "Leopard 2" battle tanks and about 1000 units of various artillery. The Baltic states have another 23 thousand soldiers, absolutely deprived of equipment. As you can see - ground forces is the weakest point of these countries.


In addition there is an American presence in the Baltics - still small, only a few dozen pieces of equipment and several hundred personnel, who officially arrived for exercises, but so far are not in a hurry to go back to the USA.


The Kaliningrad Region is the #1 Target



Kaliningrad region, which is actually surrounded by NATO forces, due to sharing land borders only with Poland and Lithuania, is the most vulnerable target for a potential enemy. Already Lithuania often creates problems for the delivery of goods to this territory, a total ground blockade is theoretically possible, as well as energy blockade.


The Russian armed forces stationed in the Kaliningrad region, are not very strong , but are actively rearming, for example, in 2012 they got the most modern anti-aircraft missile systems S-400. However, the number of troops is small - only about 10 thousand people.


From Poland and the Baltic up to 80 thousand troops can be thrown to battle simultaneously - and that is without US support. The force of the "Northern Fist" can provide powerful air support to the Polish ground forces, and try to create a naval blockade of Kaliningrad. To counter this attempt to take Kaliningrad under a full siege will be the task of the Baltic Fleet of the Russian Navy - its forces are approximately equal to the combined forces of the "Northern fist" Navy: 2 destroyers (956 model), 2 modern patrol ships (model 11540) with "Stealth" technology, 4 patrol ships (20380 model), 12 missile boats, 3 diesel-electric submarines. All these ships are armed with anti-ship missiles of different types, with most characteristics superior to the Scandinavian and American ASMs. So the victory in this confrontation depends more on the level of crew training and third factors, such as intelligence, etc.


The task of the armed forces of RF in case of such an aggressive attempt to take the Kaliningrad region must be the urgent creation of a land corridor through Latvia and Lithuania, here the ground forces and aviation of Sweden, Norway and Finland would try to interfere, engaging some of the forces of the Western military district (ZVO) in the Leningrad region. Of course, the Western military district forces, which comprise up to 40% of the armed forces personnel, are incomparably more powerful, but, nevertheless, the forces of the "Northern Fist" can buy time until the arrival of reinforcements from Western Europe and the USA.


Limited Nuclear Conflict



Is the scenario of a major European war plausible, given large stockpiles of strategic and tactical nuclear weapons of the opposing sides? If the main "battlefield" will become the Baltic States, Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Finland, Norway - that is, non-nuclear states, then it is real. Nuclear strikes will not be launched on the countries which don't possess them. However, in this scenario, the use of tactical nuclear weapons is of little doubt - this is especially true for us since the number of NATO armies exceeds ours several times on almost all indicators. As a result, in such a war the losers will be those countries which now advocate most against Russia. And there will not be any winners - both camps will have hundreds of thousands of soldiers killed and mountains of destroyed military equipment. Nevertheless, mankind, as history shows, can not exist without war for long - and in Europe there was no (large) wars since 1945. How many more years will the nuclear weapons deter aggression and hatred? It is clear that the war would have been burning in Europe since March 2014, if not for this deterrent.


Conclusions and Outlook


1) "The Northern Fist" is really forming. Its goal is geopolitical pressure on Russia and creating a threat to the Kaliningrad region.


2) The troops in Kaliningrad should be maintained in the most combat-ready state, its numbers should be increased.


3) The US through the creation of "mini" military bloc in the Nordic and Baltic countries are squeezing the ring of military encirclement of Russia.


4) Norway, despite its ambitions, is still far from being able to compete with Russia in the Arctic. The Northern fleet of the Russian Federation is a serious force with which it is impossible to compete with the 6 diesel submarines, several frigates and missile boats. Here Russia has 45 submarines, including 23 nuclear, aircraft-carrier "Admiral Kuznetsov", the heavy nuclear cruiser "Peter the Great" and many other ships.


5) In addition to geopolitical reasons and the US fight against Russia there is a much more urgent task - to get the military-industrial complex to work at "full speed", despite the economic problems in most European countries. Now, even the broke Baltic States are beginning to allocate some money for the purchase of military equipment.


6) A big war in Europe may still occur - the voltage level, at times really is approaching critical. And the presence of a large number of weapons and active preparations for war can cause extra confidence.


7) The next step of the expansion of the European missile defense project could be its placement in Scandinavia. The GMD system (Ground-based Midcourse Defense) will be able to intercept some of Russian Intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), flying over the North pole to the USA. And most importantly, to intercept them before deploying battle units because most modern Russian ICBMs have multiple warheads. Such a scenario is possible after 2020, when the current phase of the European missile defense will be implemented and the GMD will be refined. The temptation to ignite a war after this step will naturally be higher.


8) Countries in this new anti-Russian bloc, are not the beneficiaries - rather, just the opposite, they will suffer most, as they will become the battlefield. The US, as always, is far away.


9) All the countries that are near Russia and are hosting the elements of the US missile defense must be [officially] warned at the highest level that they will be the first target for the strategic nuclear forces of the Russian Federation and they will not get security, but vice versa - a mortal danger. Such a statement should not be at the level of Ambassador, as was done in Denmark, but at the highest level. The population of these countries must know where the decisions of their governments are leading them.

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"We see Russian intelligence operations in Sweden - we can't interpret this in any other way - as preparation for military operations against Sweden," security police chief analyst Wilhelm Unge told a news conference.

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Hamburg - statements by the NATO commander in Europe Ukraine-conflict initiated with several allies, including Germany, on criticism. General Philip Breedlove, after MIRROR accused information from capitals to have the military role of Russia in eastern Ukraine exaggerated since the crisis began. In the Chancellery is even "dangerous propaganda" is mentioned. Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier therefore intervened personally NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. (Read the whole story in the new MIRROR.)

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This indicates the Swedish military's view of things:

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"We see Russian intelligence operations in Sweden - we can't interpret this in any other way - as preparation for military operations against Sweden," security police chief analyst Wilhelm Unge told a news conference.


http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/18/us-sweden-espionnage-russia-
idUSKBN0ME1H620150318

I think they're just whipping up hysteria. If Russian WERE planning actual military operations against Sweden

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Originally posted by kpo:
Still going with this 'Kiev's claims' talking point, huh?

It's not personal. It's just war.

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That's right, the whole world is lying

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Once again, probably for a hundredth time we hear that Putin will betray someone. They said, he will betray Novorossia, but this has not happened, then the same tune was heard about Syria. Generally speaking, it's not news about Syria at all. These talks hasn't stopped, but each time nothing happens.

It's time to once and for all clarify whether he will or will not betray them and if the Americans will start bombing Syria. So far we have said that bombing Assad is impossible, now, we're ready to say more and reveal the cards of what we believe will happen in Syria.


Syria


Firstly, I want to say to those who want to hear the answer to this question once and for all, that there is no such answer, because there are different circumstances. What if Assad will be gone tomorrow and one of his officials will head the fight, and then it turns out that he himself, killed Assad. Will the Russian President support his fight? The point is - the situation is fluid, and we should go from facts on the ground. But let's break this down. We can define three more or less distinguished parties in the Syrian conflict: Assad, ISIS and the Syrian opposition, supported by the US.

As you know, a fight always involves two sides, and the third tries to incite them, so that they, God forbid, don't reconcile and charge together against the third party. In this case, each side wants to be the third party, which is not involved in the fight. In our present story, there are only two such parties — Assad and the Syrian opposition. ISIS is not content with sitting on the sidelines. ISIS wants to conquer territory, it can't wait, and while things are not great, ISIS wants to capture as much as possible in this situation. But the opposition would love the Islamists to break Assad's neck and then the United States could mercilessly bomb these Islamists, and only when everything is prepared, invite the Syrian opposition to rule over Syria. Those who plan such operations should realize that those who win with foreign bayonets, will not hold on to power. Assad would also like the main fighting to be between the Islamists and the opposition. This is exactly what is happening and will continue. As you know, the most brutal fighting is internal. That is, figuratively speaking, some species of the same breed compete against each other to secure the prey, and then move a step up from their own species. In our situation there are two sides — the challengers and the President. The "challenger" species consists of two members - opposition and ISIS. They will have the internal struggle. Each of them expects to win, and after becoming the sole winner, then move on Assad.

Syria does not border Saudi Arabia directly, but only through Jordan or Iraq, and it's a completely different side from the events that are now taking place between SA and Yemen. This will essentially be a second front against the Saudi army. This second front the Saudis need exactly the same as Hitler needed his second front. The results will be devastating. In this situation, the Saudi capons are not at all looking forward to it, and they feel that this time the bell is ringing for them.

All of this has implications for the global oil prices. Whatever the U.S. does the oil prices will go up. Even if they just bomb Yemen, the price will rise, as military actions sometimes bring surprises and the risks are very high. It will affect not only oil prices, but also political preferences, political stability and so on.

For Europe this operation will definitely backfire as did the previous one. In this case we are talking about Libya. In this case, of course, the EU did not just sat in a puddle [a Russian saying], but fell into crap up to ears. What is happening with refugees from Libya defies description. However, it is quite fair, that the citizens of a destroyed country are fleeing to Europe, where nobody bombed anyone, and on the contrary, they bombed Lybia! Today after shattering the country into broken shards, the EU has to take all these refugees. We have already heard what Merkel said about Ebola and even blaimed WHO for being too slow. Meanwhile Sarkozy is nowhere to be heard and is hiding in dark corners, hiding his eyes from those condemning him, whom there are many. Sarkozy managed to elude prosecution for his "military activities" in the last presidential cadence, but Hollande is generally a nasty centipede. Nevertheless, Libya is destroyed and its hydrocarbons are looted by American companies.


Ukraine


Our readers probably know more about the situation in Ukraine than about the situation in Syria, but it's actually not about Ukraine. This became possible because of the position of the official Ukraine. In the confrontation with the U.S., Putin relies on Ukraine only to force the West, and, to a greater extent, the USA to play his favorite game — gymnastics. Putin loves to coach the US to stretch. This is why none of the provoked military conflicts will be folded. But not quite. Putin is not going to compromise on any one of the conflicts. If the US wants that the warring factions are separated by two steps, then both of these two steps back will have to be taken by the US, for the simple reason that previously they made these two steps forward and unleashed the conflict. Now Putin will stretch the forces of NATO and the United States to different points of the conflict, and the further these points are from each other, the better. The end of the transit to Afghanistan through Russian territory fits into this strategy. Putin increased the cost of transit at the last stage. Now it is about the withdrawal of troops. Remember the cunning Egyptians, who take money from tourists to get off the camel. Without extra money the Egyptians do not order the camel to sit down. This is how the US will have to leave Afghanistan, but not through the territory of Russia and for a different price.

I must say that this is a pretty harsh decision. Exactly the same thing is happening in Ukraine. The Pentagon has sent his thugs there and again - it's expenses. And don't assume that we are talking about some 300 mercenaries, there are many more of them and again it costs America a lot of "evergreens".

Thus Putin smears American resources around the world and doesn't allow them to assemble in one fist. Is it any wonder that Americans are faced with setbacks and failures everywhere?

The biggest recent victory for the State Department was a joint dinner between Nuland and Tefft. As we know they had dumplings with sour cream. In fact, Tefft took a big risk posting this picture, because only God knows how many people at this moment wished him to choke.



Well, we wish Tefft good health and good luck in all his victories, because while eating the dumplings, he will remain silent — and it is no small achievement.

What you read above was learned in a conversation with one of our sources. Generally speaking, according to what was revealed in our conversation, the US cannot end the conflict in Ukraine, even though they would really like to (now we're talking about Obama). USA is about to enter the active cycle of the election campaign and wars will not help anyone, but rather hurt. Moreover, the country really has no money even for more pressing needs, which I wrote about in the post The Republicans - robbers from a big railroad.

So, in the words of our source, Russia has withstood the onslaught of the US, everything that will happen next, will already be an inactive phase. But abandoning the war, the US and the EU leave Poroshenko one on one with the war. There will soon be a large spike in internal activity of the civilian population.

Should you believe our source? The reader, of course is the judge, but I want to inform you that this person told us that the U.S. is leaving Georgia, when Clinton went to Georgia for the last time. This man first told us that the Ukrainian army is losing strength, and its strikes are insufficient, although of course each victim is a tragedy. Now this same person is telling us that Obama lost patience and is even embarrassed by what's happening. He said a lot of other things that we will take note of and will tell the reader next time. We will call him "source X". We ask our readers to follow the situation and to evaluate the forecast provided to us by our source for themselves.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Kiev is desperately trying to claw its way into the EU, but it's such an economic, political, and military clusterfuck that I suspect that the EU WANTS Russia to invade and take over!

Epic detachment from reality- G

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Originally posted by G:


Epic detachment from reality

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Here is some more of what you call freedom SIGNYM.

Eyes on Ukraine, Putin Tightens Curbs on Protesters

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I can't explain to you have comforting it is to know that some, not all who post on this site are nuts.

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Returning to the United States in an election year, I am struck by the silence. I have covered four presidential campaigns, starting with 1968; I was with Robert Kennedy when he was shot and I saw his assassin, preparing to kill him. It was a baptism in the American way, along with the salivating violence of the Chicago police at the Democratic Party’s rigged convention. The great counter revolution had begun.

The first to be assassinated that year, Martin Luther King, had dared link the suffering of African-Americans and the people of Vietnam. When Janis Joplin sang, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose”, she spoke perhaps unconsciously for millions of America’s victims in faraway places.

“We lost 58,000 young soldiers in Vietnam, and they died defending your freedom. Now don’t you forget it.” So said a National Parks Service guide as I filmed last week at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. He was addressing a school party of young teenagers in bright orange T-shirts. As if by rote, he inverted the truth about Vietnam into an unchallenged lie.

The millions of Vietnamese who died and were maimed and poisoned and dispossessed by the American invasion have no historical place in young minds, not to mention the estimated 60,000 veterans who took their own lives. A friend of mine, a marine who became a paraplegic in Vietnam, was often asked, “Which side did you fight on?”

A few years ago, I attended a popular exhibition called “The Price of Freedom” at the venerable Smithsonian Institution in Washington. The lines of ordinary people, mostly children shuffling through a Santa’s grotto of revisionism, were dispensed a variety of lies: the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved “a million lives”; Iraq was “liberated [by] air strikes of unprecedented precision”. The theme was unerringly heroic: only Americans pay the price of freedom.

The 2016 election campaign is remarkable not only for the rise of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders but also for the resilience of an enduring silence about a murderous self-bestowed divinity. A third of the members of the United Nations have felt Washington’s boot, overturning governments, subverting democracy, imposing blockades and boycotts. Most of the presidents responsible have been liberal – Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Clinton, Obama.

The breathtaking record of perfidy is so mutated in the public mind, wrote the late Harold Pinter, that it “never happened …Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest. It didn’t matter … “. Pinter expressed a mock admiration for what he called “a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.”

Take Obama. As he prepares to leave office, the fawning has begun all over again. He is “cool”. One of the more violent presidents, Obama gave full reign to the Pentagon war-making apparatus of his discredited predecessor. He prosecuted more whistleblowers – truth-tellers – than any president. He pronounced Chelsea Manning guilty before she was tried. Today, Obama runs an unprecedented worldwide campaign of terrorism and murder by drone.

In 2009, Obama promised to help “rid the world of nuclear weapons” and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. No American president has built more nuclear warheads than Obama. He is “modernising” America’s doomsday arsenal, including a new “mini” nuclear weapon, whose size and “smart” technology, says a leading general, ensure its use is “no longer unthinkable”.

James Bradley, the best-selling author of Flags of Our Fathers and son of one of the US marines who raised the flag on Iwo Jima, said, “[One] great myth we’re seeing play out is that of Obama as some kind of peaceful guy who’s trying to get rid of nuclear weapons. He’s the biggest nuclear warrior there is. He’s committed us to a ruinous course of spending a trillion dollars on more nuclear weapons. Somehow, people live in this fantasy that because he gives vague news conferences and speeches and feel-good photo-ops that somehow that’s attached to actual policy. It isn’t.”

On Obama’s watch, a second cold war is under way. The Russian president is a pantomime villain; the Chinese are not yet back to their sinister pig-tailed caricature – when all Chinese were banned from the United States – but the media warriors are working on it.

Neither Hillary Clinton nor Bernie Sanders has mentioned any of this. There is no risk and no danger for the United States and all of us. For them, the greatest military build-up on the borders of Russia since World War Two has not happened. On May 11, Romania went “live” with a Nato “missile defence” base that aims its first-strike American missiles at the heart of Russia, the world’s second nuclear power.

Screen Shot 2016-05-09 at 9.15.13 AM

In Asia, the Pentagon is sending ships, planes and special forces to the Philippines to threaten China. The US already encircles China with hundreds of military bases that curve in an arc up from Australia, to Asia and across to Afghanistan. Obama calls this a “pivot”.

As a direct consequence, China reportedly has changed its nuclear weapons policy from no-first-use to high alert and put to sea submarines with nuclear weapons. The escalator is quickening.

It was Hillary Clinton who, as Secretary of State in 2010, elevated the competing territorial claims for rocks and reef in the South China Sea to an international issue; CNN and BBC hysteria followed; China was building airstrips on the disputed islands. In its mammoth war game in 2015, Operation Talisman Sabre, the US practiced “choking” the Straits of Malacca through which pass most of China’s oil and trade. This was not news.

Clinton declared that America had a “national interest” in these Asian waters. The Philippines and Vietnam were encouraged and bribed to pursue their claims and old enmities against China. In America, people are being primed to see any Chinese defensive position as offensive, and so the ground is laid for rapid escalation. A similar strategy of provocation and propaganda is applied to Russia.

Clinton, the “women’s candidate”, leaves a trail of bloody coups: in Honduras, in Libya (plus the murder of the Libyan president) and Ukraine. The latter is now a CIA theme park swarming with Nazis and the frontline of a beckoning war with Russia. It was through Ukraine – literally, borderland — that Hitler’s Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, which lost 27 million people. This epic catastrophe remains a presence in Russia. Clinton’s presidential campaign has received money from all but one of the world’s ten biggest arms companies. No other candidate comes close.

Sanders, the hope of many young Americans, is not very different from Clinton in his proprietorial view of the world beyond the United States. He backed Bill Clinton’s illegal bombing of Serbia. He supports Obama’s terrorism by drone, the provocation of Russia and the return of special forces (death squads) to Iraq. He has nothing to say on the drumbeat of threats to China and the accelerating risk of nuclear war. He agrees that Edward Snowden should stand trial and he calls Hugo Chavez – like him, a social democrat – “a dead communist dictator”. He promises to support Clinton if she is nominated.

The election of Trump or Clinton is the old illusion of choice that is no choice: two sides of the same coin. In scapegoating minorities and promising to “make America great again”, Trump is a far right-wing domestic populist; yet the danger of Clinton may be more lethal for the world.

“Only Donald Trump has said anything meaningful and critical of US foreign policy,” wrote Stephen Cohen, emeritus professor of Russian History at Princeton and NYU, one of the few Russia experts in the United States to speak out about the risk of war.

In a radio broadcast, Cohen referred to critical questions Trump alone had raised. Among them: why is the United States “everywhere on the globe”? What is NATO’s true mission? Why does the US always pursue regime change in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Ukraine? Why does Washington treat Russia and Vladimir Putin as an enemy?

The hysteria in the liberal media over Trump serves an illusion of “free and open debate” and “democracy at work”. His views on immigrants and Muslims are grotesque, yet the deporter-in-chief of vulnerable people from America is not Trump but Obama, whose betrayal of people of colour is his legacy: such as the warehousing of a mostly black prison population, now more numerous than Stalin’s gulag.

This presidential campaign may not be about populism but American liberalism, an ideology that sees itself as modern and therefore superior and the one true way. Those on its right wing bear a likeness to 19th century Christian imperialists, with a God-given duty to convert or co-opt or conquer.

In Britain, this is Blairism. The Christian war criminal Tony Blair got away with his secret preparation for the invasion of Iraq largely because the liberal political class and media fell for his “cool Britannia”. In the Guardian, the applause was deafening; he was called “mystical”. A distraction known as identity politics, imported from the United States, rested easily in his care.

History was declared over, class was abolished and gender promoted as feminism; lots of women became New Labour MPs. They voted on the first day of Parliament to cut the benefits of single parents, mostly women, as instructed. A majority voted for an invasion that produced 700,000 Iraqi widows.

The equivalent in the US are the politically correct warmongers on the New York Times, the Washington Post and network TV who dominate political debate. I watched a furious debate on CNN about Trump’s infidelities. It was clear, they said, a man like that could not be trusted in the White House. No issues were raised. Nothing on the 80 per cent of Americans whose income has collapsed to 1970s levels. Nothing on the drift to war. The received wisdom seems to be “hold your nose” and vote for Clinton: anyone but Trump. That way, you stop the monster and preserve a system gagging for another war.

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On the surface, things seem pretty quiet in mid-July 2016. The biggest news stories were about the speculation surrounding Donald Trump’s choice of running mate (no we know), the stock market in the U.S. keeps setting new all-time record highs, and the media seems completely obsessed with Taylor Swift’s love life.

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But underneath the surface, it is a very different story. As you will see below, the conditions for a “perfect storm” are coming together very rapidly, and the rest of 2016 promises to be much more chaotic than what we have seen so far.

Let’s start with China. On Tuesday, an international tribunal in the Hague ruled against China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea. The Chinese government announced ahead of time that they do not recognize the jurisdiction of the tribunal, and they have absolutely no intention of abiding by the ruling. In fact, China is becoming even more defiant in the aftermath of this ruling. We aren’t hearing much about it in the U.S. media, but according to international news reports Chinese president Xi Jinping has ordered the People’s Liberation Army “to prepare for combat” with the United States if the Obama administration presses China to abandon the islands that they are currently occupying in the South China Sea…

“Chinese president Xi Jinping has reportedly ordered the People’s Liberation Army to prepare for combat,” reports Arirang.com. “U.S.-based Boxun News said Tuesday that the instruction was given in case the United States takes provocative action in the waters once the ruling is made.”
A U.S. aircraft carrier and fighter jets were already sent to the region in anticipation of the ruling, with the Chinese Navy also carrying out exercises near the disputed Paracel islands.
Last October, China said it was “not frightened” to fight a war with the U.S. following an incident where the guided-missile destroyer USS Lassen violated the 12-nautical mile zone China claims around Subi and Mischief reefs in the Spratly archipelago.

Meanwhile, the relationship between the United States and Russia continues to go from bad to worse. The installation of a missile defense system in Romania is just the latest incident that has the Russians absolutely steaming, and during a public appearance on June 17th Russian President Vladimir Putin tried to get western reporters to understand that the world is being pulled toward war…

“We know year by year what’s going to happen, and they know that we know. It’s only you that they tell tall tales to, and you buy it, and spread it to the citizens of your countries. You people in turn do not feel a sense of the impending danger – this is what worries me. How do you not understand that the world is being pulled in an irreversible direction? While they pretend that nothing is going on. I don’t know how to get through to you anymore.”

And of course the Russians have been feverishly updating and modernizing their military in preparation for a potential future conflict with the United States. Just today we learned that the Russians are working to develop a hypersonic strategic bomber that is going to have the capability of striking targets with nuclear warheads from outer space.

Unfortunately, the Obama administration does not feel a similar sense of urgency. The size of our strategic nuclear arsenal has declined by about 95 percent since the peak of the Cold War, and many of our installations are still actually using rotary phones and the kind of 8 inch floppy disks for computers that were widely used back in the 1970s.

But I don’t expect war with China or Russia to erupt by the end of 2016. Of much more immediate concern is what is going on in the Middle East. The situation in Syria continues to deteriorate, but it is Israel that could soon be the center of attention.

Back in March, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Obama administration wanted to revive the peace process in the Middle East before Obama left office, and that a UN Security Council resolution that would divide the land of Israel and set the parameters for a Palestinian state was still definitely on the table…

The White House is working on plans for reviving long-stalled Middle East negotiations before President Barack Obama leaves office, including a possible United Nations Security Council resolution that would outline steps toward a deal between the Israelis and Palestinians, according to senior U.S. officials.

And just this week, the Washington Post reported that there were renewed “rumblings” about just such a resolution…

Israel is facing a restive European Union, which is backing a French initiative that seeks to outline a future peace deal by year’s end that would probably include a call for the withdrawal of Israeli troops and the creation of a Palestinian state. There are also rumblings that the U.N. Security Council might again hear resolutions about the conflict.

... At the same time all of this is going on, the global economic crisis continues to escalate. Even though U.S. financial markets are in great shape at the moment, the same cannot be said for much of the rest of the world.

... Brazil

... Venezuela

... China is experiencing the worst economic downturn that they have seen in decades

... Japanese are still trying to find the end of their “lost decade”

... banking crisis in Europe

In quite a few articles recently, I have discussed the ongoing implosion of the biggest and most important bank in Germany.

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Simon Black also commented on the turmoil at “the most dangerous bank in Europe”…

Well-capitalized banks are supposed to have double-digit capital levels while making low risk investments.
Deutsche Bank, on the other hand, has a capital level of less that 3% (just like Lehman), and an incredibly risky asset base that boasts notional derivatives exposure of more than $70 trillion, roughly the size of world GDP.

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When Russian aircraft bombed a remote garrison in southeastern Syria last month, alarm bells sounded at the Pentagon and the Ministry of Defense in London.

The Russians weren’t bombarding a run-of-the-mill rebel outpost, according to U.S. officials. Their target was a secret base of operations for elite American and British forces. In fact, a contingent of about 20 British special forces had pulled out of the garrison 24 hours earlier. British officials declined to comment.

U.S. military and intelligence officials say the previously unreported close call for Western forces on June 16, and a subsequent Russian strike on a site linked to the Central Intelligence Agency, were part of a campaign by Moscow to pressure the Obama administration to agree to closer cooperation in the skies over Syria.

The risk that U.S. and British forces could have been killed at the border garrison hardened opposition at the Pentagon and the CIA to accommodating the Russians. But White House and State Department officials, wary of an escalation in U.S. military involvement in Syria, decided to pursue a compromise.

Yury Melnik, a spokesman for the Russian embassy in Washington, referred questions about the incidents to the Russian Defense Ministry, which didn't respond to a request for comment.

A provisional agreement reached by Secretary of State John Kerry in Moscow last week—over Pentagon and CIA objections—calls for the former Cold War adversaries to join forces in strikes against the Nusra Front, Syria’s al Qaeda affiliate. In exchange for the U.S. easing Moscow’s international isolation, Russia would halt airstrikes on the U.S.-backed rebels and restrain the Syrian air force.

Talks are still under way between U.S. and Russian experts over the designated areas where the Russians would have to get Washington’s approval before conducting strikes.

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In this case, the resolution calls for evaluating and developing plans for a“No Fly Zone” which is an act of war. This is obviously controversial and it seems clear the resolution should have been debated and discussed under normal rules with a normal amount of Congressional presence and debate.

The motivation for bypassing normal rules and rushing the bill through without debate was articulated by the bill’s author and ranking Democrat Eliot Engel, who said:

“We cannot delay action on Syria any further…. if we don’t get this legislation across the finish line in the next few weeks, we are back to square one.”

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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How is that not happening now?

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Well, of course it's happening now. The only thing missing is that the media hasn't called it one.

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Nothing says antiquated dictator trying to steal another nation's land by use of force like Russia's latest action.
Nothing says "punishable offense" like Russia's latest action.
Nothing says "breaking international law" like Russia's latest action.

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What has Russia done lately? It seems to me that all of the recent aggressive actions (removing eastern Ukraine from international law, forward positioning troops, sanctioning the vote organizers, stopping banking and other services, vowing to make Ukrainian the sole language), and actively seeking help from the West and admission into NATO, have been precipitated by Kiev and the west.

How do you not notice these things? These are real events fully reported by Kiev's media and backed up by Western media. Why do you keep pointing to ephemeral "Russian" events which may not even be happening - or happening to the extent that you fear - while ignoring provocations by Kiev and the west? I told you when it happened that Kiev announced its forward troop movements. I showed you that Kiev withdrew that announcement because they wanted to save it for the time when they could play innocent and claim it was "in response to" the responding troop movements on the other side of the border. I tell you again that the activities by Kiev (sanctions, banking and other services cutoffs) are a set-piece, precipitated by the west and designed to provoke even further action by Russia and the Donbass. When alternate banking services are provided by Russia, are you going to go all ballistic and blame Russia - again?

You seem to think that you "really want to know what's going on". Well, maybe it's time you started finding out.

G, is it possible to have a discussion and not a grudge match? How can we get back on-track?

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You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

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