Russia

“Russia and China together”: the greatest fear of Donald Trump

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From New Eastern Outlook

09.09.2015
by Caleb Maupin

In his interview with Bill O’Reilly, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump ranted against Barack Obama’s foreign policy. Within his tirade, he proclaimed:

“You can’t have everybody hating you. The whole world hates us. One of the things that I heard for years and years, never drive Russia and China together, and Obama has done that.”

These are very interesting words that point to a fundamental reality of US foreign policy. The fear of a world where these two massive countries stand arm in arm — with economies independent of western banking institutions — is nothing new. Since the creation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the strategy of the ruling financial elite of the United States, often openly stated, has been to divide the leaders of Russia and China, in order to effectively undermine both, and keep their position of dominance within the global market.

The Kremlin Meets the Rifle Faction

In attempting to drive the two countries apart, the intelligence agencies of the United States and western countries have often exploited real tensions and differences.

Even before the victory of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, underlying tensions existed between the Chinese Communist Party and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In 1927, the overwhelming majority of Communist Party members in China were exterminated. The nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek, who had been embraced by the leaders of the Soviet Union, reversed his policy and began rounding up communists, putting them in prison camps and slaughtering them. The death or imprisonment of so many of its members, less than a decade after its founding conference, completely reshuffled the leadership and political line of the party. The extreme repression carried out by Chiang Kai-shek impacted the young party and effectively secured the rise of one of the most influential people in the 20th century Mao Zedong.

Mao Zedong was a university librarian who had previously been an anarchist, and led a small faction among Chinese communists. Mao Zedong’s followers had been dubbed the “Rifle Faction” by their opponents because they constantly promoted armed struggle, and had embedded themselves in the wave of peasant uprisings in the Chinese countryside. Mao’s polemical “Report on an investigation of the Peasant in the Hunan Province,” now considered to be one of the most important documents in the history of Chinese Communism, had harshly criticized the tactics recommended by the Communist International, and urged a complete reorientation away from nationalism and organized labor, toward China’s overwhelming peasant majority.

When Mao Zedong secured his dominant position within the party, the Chinese Communists adopted a political strategy far different than what was being globally directed by Moscow. The Chinese Communists rarely spoke in the stereotypical Marxist-Leninist language of the 1930s. Their rhetoric did not refer to “surplus value,” “exploitation,” or “dictatorship of the proletariat.” Figures like Edgar Snow, Anna Louise Strong, and Agnes Smedley visited the People’s Liberation Army in the Chinese countryside and described it as a kind of military expansionist utopian commune. The bulk of the People’s Liberation Army’s leaders were university students recruited on the basis of “building a new China” for “the people.” With guns in their hands, they recruited hundreds of thousands of peasants on the basis of land reform, opposing corruption and bribery, and establishing “people’s courts” that could facilitate revenge against the land-owning aristocracy.

While Soviet money and guns were instrumental in strengthening the Chinese Communist Party, the Chinese Communists were not “Soviet puppets” by any means. They clearly had their own independent ideas and strategy, and were not going to surrender it. The innovative rural policy of the Chinese communists was probably the personal brainchild of Mao Zedong. It was officially called “New Democracy.”

Stalin’s “Shock Brigade” Scares Wall Street

When the 1949 Chinese Revolution was victorious, the US political establishment went into a panic. The revolution resulted in two great Eurasian powers, the Soviet Union and China, standing united in their opposition to the rule of the world by British and Wall Street bankers. Constant warnings of a Soviet-Chinese invasion were broadcast into U.S. households on the screens of the newly invented television. The Republicans blasted Truman for “losing China,” and the Democratic Party faced a wave of defeats amid the anticommunist hysteria dubbed McCarthyism.

When the United States went to war in order to prevent the reunification of Korea, the Soviet Union, China, Korea, and most of Eastern Europe were all united against the US. Mao Zedong’s own son died in this conflict, along with thousands of Chinese and Korean people, who received weapons, funding, training, and instruction from the Soviet Union. The US was humiliated in this conflict as armed peasants from Korea and China forced a superpower with atomic bombs to a stalemate. This conflict that Koreans called the “Fatherland Liberation War” was the only time in history that a US military general has ever been taken prisoner.

In his final public speech given in 1952, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin hailed the Chinese Communist Party as a “shock brigade” in spreading world revolution. The speech declared: “Now, from China and Korea to Czechoslovakia and Hungary, new ‘shock brigades’ have appeared on the map, in the form of people’s democracies; now the struggle has been eased for our Party and also the work proceeds better.”

This final address from the political leader still most admired among Russians called for a global uprising to ensure the national liberation of historically colonized countries: “Now the bourgeoisie sell the rights and independence of their nations for dollars. The banner of national independence and national sovereignty has been thrown overboard. Without doubt, you, the representatives of the communist and democratic parties must raise this banner and carry it forward if you want to be patriots of your countries, if you want to be the leading powers of the nations. There is nobody else to raise it.”

In the early months of 1950, the New York Times blatantly declared that the intent of US policy was to end this highly important relationship, and convince China to view the USSR as “imperialist.” On January 23, 1950, the New York Times declared: “In carrying out its long range policy the United States might do well to remind Eastern nations that if they believe in the slogan of ‘Asia for the Asiatics,’ Russian imperialism is not the answer.” On January 29, 1950, a New York Times editorial declared: “The United States’ aim indeed is to ‘drive a wedge’ between the Chinese and the Russians.”

Ripped Apart by “Peaceful Coexistence”

In 1956, Khruschev delivered his infamous “secret speech” denouncing Joseph Stalin. China at first embraced the speech, and praised “de-Stalinization” efforts in the USSR. However, by 1961, it became very apparent that the foreign policy of the Chinese Communist Party and the foreign policy of the Soviet Union were incompatible. China, like Stalin in his final speech, urged peoples in Africa, Asia, and Latin America to take up arms in order to secure their economic and political independence. Khruschev and the Soviet Communist Party completely reoriented their international strategy, and urged “peaceful transition” to socialism, as well as “peaceful coexistence” with the United States.

In 1961, the Soviet Union officially terminated its relationship with the People’s Republic of China. Soviet foreign aid was pulled out. Buildings remained half-constructed as Soviet architects burned the blueprints. Chinese students in Moscow brawled with the police as they protested Khruschev’s policies. Aging US communist leader William Z. Foster shouted at Khruschev from his Moscow hospital bed, urging him not to end the important geopolitical relationship between the Soviet Union and China.

Following the Cuban Missile Crisis, Khruschev established a friendly relationship with the United States, as China sounded the trumpet of world communist revolution. The Soviet press referred to Mao Zedong as a “dictator.” The Soviet Union urged its followers around the world to participate in elections, align with capitalist parties, and cease any action toward armed revolution.

With the Soviet Union speaking in more conservative terms, China became the beacon that revolutionaries were attracted to, as radicalism swept the globe in the late 1960s and early 70s. The Soviet Union, with its proclamations of “peaceful coexistence,” seemed far less exciting than the government representing one quarter of humanity that proclaimed “Revolution is The Main Trend in the World Today.”

Various “anti-revisionist” parties, who sought political direction from China, were established around the world in opposition to the parties formed as part of Lenin’s Communist International.

China’s critique of Soviet foreign policy took a vulgar turn when Chinese leaders started saying that the USSR was “imperialist.” By the early 1970s, Chinese leaders had declared that Soviet “social imperialism” was the “main danger to the people of the world.” Mao Zedong met with US President Richard Nixon.

In Angola, the Chinese government opposed the Soviet-aligned forces that won independence, instead supporting CIA-trained forces aligned with the United States.

Behind Reagan’s “Victory”

The China-aligned Revolutionary Communist Party of Chile wrote a document condemning China for its friendly relations with the Pinochet regime that was torturing and slaughtering their members with help from the CIA. China happily embraced the brutal anticommunist, US-backed Chilean dictator, seeing him as a strong ally against “Soviet social imperialism.”

The Chinese government also embraced the Shah of Iran during this period, causing mass confusion among the China-inspired “People’s Fedayeen Guerillas,” who were waging an armed insurgency in the Iranian countryside.

By the late 70s, after Mao died, and Deng Xiaoping rose to power in China, the Cold War no longer seemed to make any ideological sense. The idea that it was a battle between free markets and Marxist-Leninists had been forgotten. A Vietnam veteran addressed a large antiwar gathering in 1979, declaring: “They sent us to Vietnam, telling us we were going there to fight the communists. But now, we are signing deals with Chinese communists, who are killing the Vietnamese communists, while our government supports the Kampuchean communists, who are fighting the Vietnamese communists, saying they are just agents of Russian communists.”

After the US removed its forces from southeast Asia, the pro-Chinese government of Pol Pot battled the pro-Soviet government of Vietnam. The Central Intelligence Agency quietly armed the Kampuchean forces while the Soviet Union sent money and weapons to Vietnam. The Chinese government rallied the remnants of the increasingly confused “Maoist” movement to support Pol Pot against “Soviet social imperialism.”

As Jimmy Carter sat in the White House, the dream of his top adviser Brzezinski became reality. As Brzezinski put it in his book “The Grand Chessboard,” the strategy was: “Keep the barbarians killing each other.” In Afghanistan, China supported the Mujahadeen, while the Soviet Union sent troops to defend the People’s Democratic government.

The common neoconservative narrative of the 1980s credits Reagan’s “toughness” for “defeating the Soviet Union” and “winning the cold war.” This is only half the story. When Reagan entered the White House, the world communist movement — which had almost completely been united in 1950 — was in a state of complete disarray and confusion. The Soviet Union and China were at each other’s throats, with their allies killing each other all across the planet. Various European communist parties were officially ending their relationship with both the USSR and China and calling themselves “Eurocommunists.” Cuba and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea attempted to maintain some level of neutrality. In Africa, armed Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries were divided along even more complex lines.

Reagan’s “hardline” policies against the USSR took place in the context of an anti-imperialist movement that was in complete ruin and confusion. The Soviet Union could not muster a strong international alliance of supporters as it had in the 1950s. China often supported the US in international affairs, and Third World insurrections were scattered and confused.

The Iranian revolution shocked the world in 1979. No Marxist faction, whether Soviet or Chinese aligned, could win the support of the Iranian people. Imam Khomeini established the Islamic Republic on a program of “Not Capitalism But Islam” and a “War of Poverty Against Wealth.” The Islamic Republic successfully defended itself in a costly war with Iraq, and maintained power with an international position of “neither East nor West.” Various anti-imperialist uprisings continued to take place, but like the Iranian revolution, many of them were not communist-led, and had no international allegiance.

Neoliberalism as the “New World Order”

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, George H.W. Bush spoke of a “New World Order.” The defenders of neoliberal capitalism proclaimed that their system of unregulated free markets was the only way forward for the human race.

As the globalist market cult announced its New World Order after the demise of the USSR, the differences among political forces in the west became merely tactical. In the early 1990s, European Social-Democrats publicly abandoned the goal of creating an egalitarian society. British “New Labour,” French Socialism, and German Social-Democracy all declared that “socialism” was merely a synonym for economic prosperity, and embraced privatizations and neoliberal restructuring. In the United States, the Democratic Leadership Council made the left flank of the US political establishment into a party that hailed the sacredness of markets and profits. The Clintons echoed Tony Blair, talking about how “the world has changed.” Collectivism, class struggle, and cooperation were considered outmoded concepts from a previous era.

In the US and Europe, the various voices of conservatism and the “right wing” abandoned their economic nationalism and protectionism, and embraced “free trade.” The goal of maximizing profits and “integrating” every country into Wall Street’s economic empire became the official party line of all major political forces in western societies.

At the dawn of the 21st Century, a program of global transformation was in progress, as global elites began tearing down economic borders, eliminating social services, expanding international military coalitions along with policing agencies and prisons — all to defend the “sacredness of private property.” The goal was to create the “unknown ideal” of “true capitalism” as envisioned in the texts of the Austrian Economics and the Chicago School.

A variety of governments incurred the wrath of the highly ideological and aggressive new world order. Many of them had committed no real crime other than their existence. Saddam Hussein was happy to serve Wall Street with ruthless crimes against Iran, but the exports from his state-owned oil company and the Ba’ath Arab Socialist Party’s tight control of domestic affairs still could not be tolerated. Iraq was blown to bits by Bush’s “shock and awe” and has been a mess of chaos ever since.

Russia’s leaders have attempted to keep the friendship with the United States that began after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Their efforts to maintain healthy diplomacy have been ignored. The Wall Street clique sees Russia’s state-owned oil and natural gas corporations as intolerable. Furthermore, Putin’s stabilization of Russian society has unforgivably involved renewed feelings of national unity and pride, as well as a large public sector of the economy.

Wall Street and the Pentagon don’t want to destroy Putin. They want to destroy Russia. A stable country, united in its rejection of neoliberalism and cooperating to strengthen its economy is something Wall Street will never tolerate. Publicly owned natural resources, stability, and national unity are always a threat to the power of western finance, whether done in the name of communism, nationalism, Christianity, Islam, or anything else.

The United States encouraged its Georgian puppets to attack South Ossetia in 2008, and more recently backed and funded the violent overthrow of the elected Ukrainian government in 2014. The CIA’s “National Endowment for Democracy” works to foment unrest within Russia, while the US facilitates and arms hostile anti-Russian forces on the country’s borders. The presence of US and NATO military forces is rapidly expanding in Eastern Europe. Whatever the intentions of the Russian leaders, Wall Street is looking to provoke a continued state of crisis and weaken the forces of independence in the world’s geographically largest country.

Chinese leaders have also attempted to maintain their friendly ties with the United States. China has worked hard to facilitate investment by US corporations. Since the 1980s, the Chinese government has effectively abandoned any effort to spread communist ideas around the world.

Regardless of China’s attempts to accommodate the global capitalists, the CIA still facilitates efforts to destabilize the country. The Falun Gong, the Tibetan separatists, “Occupy Hong Kong,” and a variety of bizarre dissidents are propped up by the United States in the hopes of overthrowing the Chinese Communist Party and transforming the country into Wall Street’s playground. The US is militarily surrounding China with its Asian pivot. The US is also looking to economically weaken China’s influence throughout Asia with the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

US media and politicians have responded to Xi Jinping’s recent anti-corruption crackdown with an escalating anti-China frenzy. All of the major presidential candidates in the United States, from Bernie Sanders to Donald Trump, preach hatred for the People’s Republic of China, and seek to somehow blame it for the rising economic woes of working families across the United States.

Two Global Economies: Destruction vs. Construction

It is in this context that Russia, no longer led by communists, and China, led by the world’s largest communist party, have been able to rekindle the relationship that abruptly ended in 1961. Chinese President Xi Jinping currently hails a “New Silk Road,” connecting the formerly colonized countries of the world. A new global economy that does not involve Wall Street and London is coming into existence. China and Russia have conducted joint military exercises.

A natural gas pipeline connecting Russia and China is currently being constructed. Chinese forces are working in Nicaragua to construct a new canal to rival the US-controlled Panama Canal. Vladimir Putin has visited Latin America, and befriended the Bolivarian Bloc, where countries seeking the goal of “21st Century Socialism” are bound together in a bank called the “Bolivarian Alternative for Latin America.”

Conversation about a new currency for Brazil, Russia, India, and China (known collectively as BRICs) continue to take place. China continues its investment in many African countries, including Nigeria, the top oil exporter on the continent.

As the United States is on the verge of a nuclear agreement with Iran, it has become clear that Russia and China are happy to cooperate with the Islamic Republic. If the nuclear conclusion is somehow blocked by the US Congress, Russia and China are likely not to comply. Russia recently sold Iran SB-300 missiles with which to defend itself in the context of an Israeli or US attack.

China and Russia are both looking to build. Their economies are based on construction, development, and expansion. Western neoliberal capitalism has oriented itself completely toward destruction.

Oil prices have fallen because too much oil exists. Hydraulic fracking, drilling, and other technological innovations have made it more efficient to produce crude oil than ever before. The only hope for reviving oil profits is to somehow reduce the huge apparatus of oil extraction and production. The only hope for raising the profits of Exxon-Mobil, BP, and Shell is a large amount of destruction.

The billionaires who own Raytheon, General Electric, Boeing, and the many other Pentagon contractors actively fear, not a new world war, but a rise of stability, tolerance, and cooperation between countries. The universal human dream of peace on earth would put the war profiteers and weapons manufacturers out of business. The US economy is tightly centered around Pentagon contracts. Wall Street depends on military aggression.

Banks in the United States have made huge profits, not by lending people to money to buy homes, but with “predatory lending” practices that result in home foreclosure. The government has cooperated with banking institutions to create a situation where profits can be made by transforming prosperous residential neighborhoods into eerie overgrown ghost towns.

Wells Fargo Bank, along with a number of other key financial players, has turned crime and imprisonment into a business opportunity. The Corrections Corporation of America, GEO Group, and other private entities bring in billions of dollars every year from locking people away. In order to ensure Wall Street profits, the US prison population has grown to be astronomical. The highly profitable US policing agencies have been given far more power than ever before, “stopping and frisking” people without a proper cause, tapping millions of phones, reading personal e-mails, and indefinitely detaining and torturing people.

The drive for profits that pushed the United States and Western Europe, as they violently conquered their central place in the world economy, has taken a predictable yet horrific turn. The world wants to continue developing, but the invisible hand behind western neoliberal capitalism mandates nothing but war, imprisonment, and poverty.

The neoliberal mythology of capitalism as a system that encourages innovation and freedom is being exposed on a global level. The rise of the New World Order and its market cult in the early 1990s has meant the destruction of civil liberties, the impoverishment of millions, and an end to the hopes and dreams of an entire generation.

Russia and China, friends once again, are cooperating to provide an alternative. Trump’s words reflect the real concerns about the wealthy elite. Not only does “the whole world hate us;” they have another option to turn toward. The New Silk Road, the rising economic bloc oriented toward construction, points to a way out of war, fascism, and chaos. The unity and cooperation of Russia and China is an essential part of the Eurasian alternative to the destructive, cannibalistic capitalism that has taken power in western countries.

Donald Trump is very concerned about it, because it points the human race toward a world that is no longer ruled by people like him, where human life is valued, and selfishness is no longer considered to be a virtue.

Caleb Maupin is a political analyst and activist based in New York. He studied political science at Baldwin-Wallace College and was inspired and involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Sukhois obliterate Daesh command centers; Western press in a frenzy

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Screen grab from video released by Russian Ministry of Defense
Even faced with the Islamic State, the West would rather lose Syria and other countries of the region rather than support the pro-Assad policy of Moscow.
 
Valeria Smakhtina
In Novorossia Today
October 3, 2015
Translated from French by Tom Winter
 
Russian roulette in Syria: Putin plans six moves ahead.
[Your translator would have written Russian CHESS in Syria…]
Even faced with the Islamic State, the West would rather lose Syria and other countries of the region rather than support the pro-Assad policy of Moscow.
These last days, the Russians have managed to surprise the Americans three times over. First, in upping their military support to the regime of Bashar Al-Assad. Next when they opened a coordination center jointly with Russia, Syria, Iran and Iraq in Bagdad, for sorting out the assignments for the four countries. The last and the biggest surprise was what the Americans have called “pouring gas on the fire,” when Moscow launched air operations against the jihadists in Syria, notifying Washington one hour in advance of the strikes.
A more or less lucid examination of the mid-eastern context, with the Shia-Sunni Israeli-Paestinian tensions, would have shown that betwixt two evils, Russia has chosen the lesser.
Either Russia would have left Da’esh to propagate itself beyond the Mid-east; for, once the Syrian regime had fallen the Jihadists would be in Russia and in post- soviet countries, obliging Moscow to get involved in land operations even in the heart of the country, with all the consequences that would ensue. Or Russia aids the legitimate government of Assad by equipping the Syrian troops on the ground, and bombarding the Da’esh positions.
 
The success of the Russian strikes are undeniable. Since September 30, an Islamic State command center has been obliterated in the Aleppo province and another one in the town of Raqa, while the one American strike did in — two excavators.
The polemics keep on swelling around the effectiveness of the actions of the coalition of 62 countries … Myriam Benraad, a specialist in Middle East, researcher at Sciences Po in Paris [with a doctorate in political science], gave us her view of the conflict that is again becoming more international: “The Middle East is a trap for all who set foot there. It is a quagmire, a powder keg. My essential hope for the Russian engagement in Syria is that it may revive much more serious negotiations between Russia, the United States, and the other actors in the region to decide the fate of Assad and what can get put back together in political terms. At the time of the Gulf War, the Russians and Americans were closely coordinated to respond multilaterally around the Iraqi crisis. These US-Soviet agreements of the time, in the period of the cold war, were aimed at giving birth to a collective security managed by the UN, but were betrayed by the Americans (for the war in Iraq, 2003 and Libya in 2011).
“The Russian involvement in Syria is a response to unilateralism. It’s obvious. Sergei Lavrov has said it a few times over. And Americans are paying the price. Other countries, such as Venezuela, have raised their voice, saying that the United States cannot keep on behaving as they have been doing over the past 25 years. I think those Russian-US tensions, with the Ukrainian crisis behind, can finally result in a dialogue between Washington and Moscow. “
Meanwhile, the Russian Air Force had scarcely gotten the order from president Vladimir Putin to attack the terrorists in Syria when the western press fell into an inquisitorial frenzy. Accusing Russia of “flying to the aid of her ally Assad on the pretext of fighting terrorism” the big western media have spread out their choir of photos and videos showing Syrian victims among the civilians. But these men, women and infants covered in blood that denounce the “ferocious Russians” are nothing but fakes. The photos were taken September 28 (See above). With scarce a smile, and steel nerves, the Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov condemned the information war and underlined that its releases were premeditated.
The scandal was, moreover, far from unhorsing the Americans whose positions in the Middle East seem undermined by Moscow. Washington has asked the Iraqi authorities not to send the information that the United States communicates to Baghdad to “third countries” — namely Russia.
Why put a spoke in the wheel for the Sukhoi planes in Syria when the chairman of the US General Staff is prepared to cooperate tactically with Russian forces? And now Moscow could initiate air strikes against the Islamic State in Iraq, if the authorities of that country so request. A low blow for the US, the UK, France, Germany, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, who respond with a joint statement calling on Russia to stop air strikes … One more proof that Vladimir Putin is on track …
http://fortruss.blogspot.com/2015/10/sukhois-obliterate-daesh-command.html
Comment: What a lot must be at stake for the U.S. and allies, that they are so focused on eliminating Assad and installing a “friendly” regime.

Senior NATO official claims we’ll be at war by summer

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By Joshua Krause
Global Research, May 28, 2015
The Daily Sheeple 25 May 2015

Last week, former NSA intelligence analyst John Schindler posted a rather disturbing tweet. With a statement that one could only assume to be a reference towards Russia, Schindler wrote “Said a senior NATO (non-US) GOFO to me today: “We’ll probably be at war this summer. If we’re lucky it won’t be nuclear.” Let that sink in.”

So who is John Schindler? As a ten-year veteran of the NSA, he was in the news a bit more when Snowden was making frequent headlines. He used to be a professor at the U.S. Naval War College, and is currently a frequent contributor to Business Insider. According to his biography on Business Insider, he used to teach classes on security, strategy, intelligence, and terrorism, and he has “collaborated closely with other government agencies who would probably prefer he didn’t mention them.” It’s safe to say that Schindler probably brushes shoulders with high-ranking officials from time to time, so his tweet should be taken seriously.

It’s frightening to think that members of NATO may actually be preparing for, and expecting a war with Russia this summer, but unfortunately it’s not all that surprising. Given some of the activity we’re seeing around the world, it’s safe to assume that superpowers like the US, Russia, and China, are preparing for something big.  Infowars also reported on Schindler’s tweet, and noted some of the provocative moves that have been going on around the world lately.

Earlier this month NATO launched its biggest ever wargame exercise on Russia’s doorstep. Moscow responded by conducting “provocative” wargames in the Mediterranean Sea in coordination with the Chinese PLA, the first ever naval drill involving both superpowers.

NATO powers are also taking part in one of Europe’s largest ever fighter jet drills from today, with the United States, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Finland, Norway and Sweden all involved in the 12 day exercise.

Tensions are also building between the U.S. and China, with The Global Times, a state media outlet owned by the ruling Communist Party, today warning that “war is inevitable” if Washington doesn’t halt its demands that Beijing stop building artificial islands in the South China Sea.

“If the United States’ bottom line is that China has to halt its activities, then a U.S.-China war is inevitable in the South China Sea,” the newspaper said. “The intensity of the conflict will be higher than what people usually think of as ‘friction’.”

Last week, CNN revealed how China’s Navy has repeatedly issued warnings to U.S. surveillance planes flying over the South China Sea.

While these sorts of warnings come and go all the time, that in and of itself is kind of scary. The fact that we now live in a world where high-ranking officials just assume nuclear war is right around the corner, means we should be very concerned. Wars rarely, if ever, happen out of the blue. There are always quiet rumors of wars before the real deal comes to pass.

Contributed by Joshua Krause of The Daily Sheeple.

Joshua Krause is a reporter, writer and researcher at The Daily Sheeple. He was born and raised in the Bay Area and is a freelance writer and author. You can follow Joshua’s reports at Facebook or on his personal Twitter. Joshua’s website is Strange Danger .

http://www.globalresearch.ca/senior-nato-official-claims-well-be-at-war-by-summer/5452220

 

Transcript of President Vladimir Putin’s Victory Day speech: 70th Anniversary of “Victory in the Great Patriotic War”

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Speech at military parade on Red Square in Moscow to mark the 70th anniversary of Victory in the 1941–1945 Great Patriotic War.

Dear veterans,

Distinguished guests,

Comrade soldiers and seamen, sergeants and sergeant majors, midshipmen and warrant officers,

Comrade officers, generals and admirals,

I congratulate you all on the 70th Anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War!

Today, when we mark this sacred anniversary, we once again appreciate the enormous scale of Victory over Nazism. We are proud that it was our fathers and grandfathers who succeeded in prevailing over, smashing and destroying that dark force.

Hitler’s reckless adventure became a tough lesson for the entire world community. At that time, in the 1930s, the enlightened Europe failed to see the deadly threat in the Nazi ideology.

Today, seventy years later, the history calls again to our wisdom and vigilance. We must not forget that the ideas of racial supremacy and exclusiveness had provoked the bloodiest war ever. The war affected almost 80 percent of the world population. Many European nations were enslaved and occupied.

The Soviet Union bore the brunt of the enemy’s attacks. The elite Nazi forces were brought to bear on it. All their military power was concentrated against it. And all major decisive battles of World War II, in terms of military power and equipment involved, had been waged there.

And it is no surprise that it was the Red Army that, by taking Berlin in a crushing attack, hit the final blow to Hitler’s Germany finishing the war.

Our entire multi-ethnic nation rose to fight for our Motherland’s freedom. Everyone bore the severe burden of the war. Together, our people made an immortal exploit to save the country. They predetermined the outcome of World War II. They liberated European nations from the Nazis.

Veterans of the Great Patriotic War, wherever they live today, should know that here, in Russia, we highly value their fortitude, courage and dedication to frontline brotherhood.

Dear friends,

The Great Victory will always remain a heroic pinnacle in the history of our country. But we also pay tribute to our allies in the anti-Hitler coalition.

We are grateful to the peoples of Great Britain, France and the United States of America for their contribution to the Victory. We are thankful to the anti-fascists of various countries who selflessly fought the enemy as guerrillas and members of the underground resistance, including in Germany itself.

We remember the historical meeting on the Elbe, and the trust and unity that became our common legacy and an example of unification of peoples – for the sake of peace and stability.

It is precisely these values that became the foundation of the post-war world order. The United Nations came into existence. And the system of the modern international law has emerged.

These institutions have proved in practice their effectiveness in resolving disputes and conflicts.

However, in the last decades, the basic principles of international cooperation have come to be increasingly ignored. These are the principles that have been hard won by mankind as a result of the ordeal of the war.

We saw attempts to establish a unipolar world. We see the strong-arm block thinking gaining momentum. All that undermines sustainable global development.

The creation of a system of equal security for all states should become our common task. Such system should be an adequate match to modern threats, and it should rest on a regional and global non-block basis. Only then will we be able to ensure peace and tranquillity on the planet.

Dear friends,

We welcome today all our foreign guests while expressing a particular gratitude to the representatives of the countries that fought against Nazism and Japanese militarism.

Besides the Russian servicemen, parade units of ten other states will march through the Red Square as well. These include soldiers from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Their forefathers fought shoulder to shoulder both at the front and in the rear.

These also include servicemen from China, which, just like the Soviet Union, lost many millions of people in this war. China was also the main front in the fight against militarism in Asia.

Indian soldiers fought courageously against the Nazis as well.

Serbian troops also offered strong and relentless resistance to the fascists.

Throughout the war our country received strong support from Mongolia.

These parade ranks include grandsons and great-grandsons of the war generation. The Victory Day is our common holiday. The Great Patriotic War was in fact the battle for the future of the entire humanity.

Our fathers and grandfathers lived through unbearable sufferings, hardships and losses. They worked till exhaustion, at the limit of human capacity. They fought even unto death. They proved the example of honour and true patriotism.

We pay tribute to all those who fought to the bitter for every street, every house and every frontier of our Motherland. We bow to those who perished in severe battles near Moscow and Stalingrad, at the Kursk Bulge and on the Dnieper.

We bow to those who died from famine and cold in the unconquered Leningrad, to those who were tortured to death in concentration camps, in captivity and under occupation.

We bow in loving memory of sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, grandfathers, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, comrades-in-arms, relatives and friends – all those who never came back from war, all those who are no longer with us.

A minute of silence is announced.

Minute of silence.

Dear veterans,

You are the main heroes of the Great Victory Day. Your feat predestined peace and decent life for many generations. It made it possible for them to create and move forward fearlessly.

And today your children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren live up to the highest standards that you set. They work for the sake of their country’s present and future. They serve their Fatherland with devotion. They respond to complex challenges of the time with honour. They guarantee the successful development, might and prosperity of our Motherland, our Russia!

Long live the victorious people!

Happy holiday!

Congratulations on the Victory Day!

Hooray!

http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/49438

http://www.globalresearch.ca/transcript-of-russias-president-vladimir-putins-v-day-speech-70th-anniversary-of-victory-in-the-great-patriotic-war/5448502

The West won’t admit: Crimeans still saying no to Ukraine

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From Consortium News, March 22, 2015
By Robert Parry

A central piece of the West’s false narrative on the Ukraine crisis has been that Russian President Vladimir Putin “invaded” Crimea and then staged a “sham” referendum purporting to show 96 percent support for leaving Ukraine and rejoining Russia. More recently, Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland claimed that Putin has subjected Crimea to a “reign of terror.”

Both elements have been part of the “group think” that dominates U.S. political and media circles, but this propagandistic storyline simply isn’t true, especially the part about the Crimeans being subjugated by Russia.

Consistently, over the past year, polls conducted by major Western firms have revealed that the people of Crimea by overwhelming numbers prefer being part of Russia over Ukraine, an embarrassing reality that Forbes business magazine has now acknowledged.

An article by Kenneth Rapoza, a Forbes specialist on developing markets, cited these polls as showing that the Crimeans do not want the United States and the European Union to force them back into an unhappy marriage with Ukraine. “The Crimeans are happy right where they are” with Russia, Rapoza wrote.

“One year after the annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula in the Black Sea, poll after poll shows that the locals there — be they Ukrainians, ethnic Russians or Tartars are all in agreement: life with Russia is better than life with Ukraine,” he wrote, adding that “the bulk of humanity living on the Black Sea peninsula believe the referendum to secede from Ukraine was legit.”

Rapoza noted that a June 2014 Gallup poll, which was sponsored by the U.S. government’s Broadcasting Board of Governors, found that 82.8 percent of Crimeans said the March 16 referendum on secession reflected the views of the Crimean people. In the poll, when asked if joining Russia would improve their lives, 73.9 percent said yes and only 5.5 percent said no.

A February 2015 poll by German polling firm GfK found similar results. When Crimeans were asked “do you endorse Russia’s annexation of Crimea,” 93 percent gave a positive response, with 82 percent saying, “yes, definitely.” Only 2 percent said no, with the remainder unsure or not answering.

In other words, the West’s insistence that Russia must return Crimea to Ukraine would mean violating the age-old U.S. principle of a people’s right of self-determination. It would force the largely ethnic Russian population of Crimea to submit to a Ukrainian government that many Crimeans view as illegitimate, the result of a violent U.S.-backed coup on Feb. 22, 2014, that ousted elected President Viktor Yanukovych.

The coup touched off a brutal civil war in which the right-wing regime in Kiev dispatched neo-Nazi and other extremist militias to spearhead a fierce “anti-terrorism operation” against resistance from the ethnic Russian population in the east, which – like Crimea – had supported Yanukovych. More than 6,000 Ukrainians, most of them ethnic Russians, have been killed in the fighting.

Despite this reality, the mainstream U.S. news media has misreported the crisis and distorted the facts to conform to U.S. State Department propaganda. Thus, many Americans believe the false narrative about Russian troops crushing the popular will of the Crimean people, much as the U.S. public was misled about the Iraq situation in 2002-03 by many of the same news outlets.

Or, as Forbes’ Rapoza put it: “At some point, the West will have to recognize Crimea’s right to self rule. Unless we are all to believe that the locals polled by Gallup and GfK were done so with FSB bogey men standing by with guns in their hands.” The FSB is a Russian intelligence agency.

The GfK survey also found that Crimeans considered the Ukrainian media, which has been wildly anti-Russian, unreliable. Only 1 percent said the Ukrainian media “provides entirely truthful information” and only 4 percent said it was “more often truthful than deceitful.”

So, the people at the frontline of this conflict, where Assistant Secretary Nuland, detected a “reign of terror,” say they are not only satisfied with being restored to Russia, which controlled Crimea since the 1700s, but don’t trust the distorted version of events that they see on Ukrainian TV.

Practical Reasons

Some of the reasons for the Crimean attitudes are simply pragmatic. Russian pensions were three times larger than what the Ukrainian government paid – and now the Ukrainian pensions are being slashed further in compliance with austerity demands from the International Monetary Fund.

This month, Nuland boasted about those pension cuts in praising the Kiev regime’s steps toward becoming a “free-market state.” She also hailed “reforms” that will force Ukrainians to work harder and into old age and that slashed gas subsidies which helped the poor pay their heating bills.

Last year, the New York Times and other U.S. news outlets also tossed around the word “invasion” quite promiscuously in discussing Crimea. But you may recall that you saw no images of Russian tanks crashing into the Crimean peninsula or an amphibious landing or paratroops descending from the skies. The reason was simple: Russian troops were already in Crimea.

The Russians had a lease agreement with Ukraine permitting up to 25,000 military personnel in Crimea to protect the Russian naval base at Sevastopol. About 16,000 Russian troops were on the ground when the Feb. 22, 2014 putsch occurred in Kiev – and after a crisis meeting at the Kremlin, they were dispatched to prevent the coup regime from imposing its control on Crimea’s people.

That Russian intervention set the stage for the March 16 referendum in which the voters of Crimea turned out in large numbers and voted overwhelmingly for secession from Ukraine and reintegration with Russia, a move that the Russian parliament and President Putin then approved.

Yet, as another part of its false reporting, the New York Times claimed that Putin denied that Russian troops had operated inside Crimea – when, in fact, he was quite open about it. For instance, on March 4, 2014, almost two weeks before the referendum, Putin discussed at a Moscow press conference the role of Russian troops in preventing the violence from spreading from Kiev to Crimea. Putin said:

“You should note that, thank God, not a single gunshot has been fired there. … Thus the tension in Crimea that was linked to the possibility of using our Armed Forces simply died down and there was no need to use them. The only thing we had to do, and we did it, was to enhance the defense of our military facilities because they were constantly receiving threats and we were aware of the armed nationalists moving in. We did this, it was the right thing to do and very timely.”

Two days after the referendum, which recorded the 96 percent vote in favor of seceding from Ukraine and rejoining Russia, Putin returned to the issue of Russian involvement in Crimea. In a formal speech to the Russian Federation, Putin justified Crimea’s desire to escape the grasp of the coup regime in Kiev, saying:

“Those who opposed the [Feb. 22] coup were immediately threatened with repression. Naturally, the first in line here was Crimea, the Russian-speaking Crimea. In view of this, the residents of Crimea and Sevastopol turned to Russia for help in defending their rights and lives, in preventing the events that were unfolding and are still underway in Kiev, Donetsk, Kharkov and other Ukrainian cities.

“Naturally, we could not leave this plea unheeded; we could not abandon Crimea and its residents in distress. This would have been betrayal on our part.”

But to make it appear that Putin was denying a military intervention, the Times and other U.S. news outlets truncated Putin’s statement when he said, “Russia’s Armed Forces never entered Crimea.” The Western press stopped there, ignoring what he said next: “they were there already in line with an international agreement.”

Putin’s point was that Russian troops based in Crimea took actions that diffused a possibly violent situation and gave the people of Crimea a chance to express their wishes through the ballot. But that version of events didn’t fit with the desired narrative pushed by the U.S. State Department and the New York Times. So the problem was solved by misrepresenting what Putin said.

But the larger issue now is whether the Obama administration and the European Union will insist on forcing the Crimean people – against their will – to rejoin Ukraine, a country that is rapidly sliding into the status of a failed state and a remarkably cruel one at that.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon andbarnesandnoble.com). You also can order Robert Parry’s trilogy on the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for only $34. The trilogy includes America’s Stolen Narrative. For details on this offer, click here.

Crimeans Keep Saying No to Ukraine

http://www.globalresearch.ca/crimeans-keep-saying-no-to-ukraine/5438563

The Remarkable Coincidences of John C. Tefft

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From Fort Russ

3/5/2015

The Remarkable Coincidences of John C. Tefft

By J.Hawk

The graphic above is going viral on the Russian side of the internet, and it reads as follows:

“Since the current US ambassador arrived in Russia, they killed Nemtsov, while he was in Georgia they killed Zhvaniya, and in Ukraine—Gongadze. Coincidence?”

Each of the three was a prominent opposition figure, and in each case his death had led to political upheaval. To quote Ian Fleming, “once is a happenstance, twice–a coincidence, three times–enemy action.”

Symposium: The Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction, February 28-March 1, 2015 at The New York Academy of Medicine

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Updates: http://helencaldicottfoundation.org/symposium-the-dynamics-of-possible-nuclear-extinction-l-february-28-march-1-2015-at-the-new-york-academy-of-medicine/

Advance tickets on sale only until February 25. After that, only cash registration at the door of the event (note: there is no bank machine at the venue)

A unique, two-day symposium at which an international panel of leading experts in disarmament, political science, existential risk, artificial intelligence, anthropology, medicine, nuclear weapons and other nuclear issues will be held at The New York Academy of Medicine on Feb 28- March 1, 2015. The public is welcome.
 A project of The Helen Caldicott Foundation

Venue: The New York Academy of Medicine.
1216 Fifth Ave @ 103rd St.
NY, NY 10029

Location, Directions and Parking

TO REGISTER click HERE. 

Or: Click or copy and paste: https://tdopne.ticketbud.com/symposium-the-dynamics-of-possible-nuclear-extinction

Important notice: Tickets will be on sale until Feb 25th, 2015. Register early to reserve your place. After the cut off date you will have to pay by CASH at the venue.

There will be NO FOOD OPTION for those who do not pre-register.

There is no bank machine in the building.

 

*****THE EVENT WILL BE LIVE STREAMED***** Look for link on website.

The Symposium: The Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction.

Russia and the U.S. possess 94% of the 16,400 nuclear weapons in the global nuclear arsenal. The U.S. maintains its first strike winnable nuclear war policy, and both countries have raised their nuclear arsenals to a higher state of alert because of the situation in the Ukraine. Furthermore it has just been announced that the administration has plans to replace every nuclear warhead and their delivery systems via ship, submarine, missile and plane, at a cost of one trillion dollars over the next thirty years.

This symposium to be held by The Helen Caldicott Foundation will address the following issues:
. What are the human and technological factors that could precipitate a nuclear war between Russia and the U.S., how many times have we come close to nuclear war and how long will our luck hold?
. What are the ongoing technological and financial developments relevant to the nuclear weapons arsenals of the US and Russia?
. What problems are associated with lateral proliferation of nuclear weapons via strenuous corporate marketing of nuclear technology?
. What are the medical and environmental consequences of either a small or large scale nuclear war?
. What are the underlying philosophical, political, and ideological dynamics that have brought life on earth to the brink of extinction?
. How can we assess this situation from an anthropological perspective?
. What is the pathology within the present political situation that could lead us to extinction?
. How can this nuclear pathology be cured?

Moderated by:

Day One: Kennette Benedict, Executive Director and Publisher, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Day Two: Ray Acheson, Director, Reaching Critical Will

The Presenters
(confirmed speakers, this is not the speaking order):

Theodore A Postol-
Professor Emeritus of Science, Technology, and National Security Policy, 
MIT. Striving for Armageddon. The US nuclear force modernization program, rising tensions with Russia, and the increasing danger of a world nuclear catastrophe
Seth Baum– Global Catastrophic Risk Institute, will address the catastrophic risk of nuclear war
Max Tegmark – Professor of physics at MIT and author of “Our Mathematical Universe,” will discuss artificial intelligence and the risk of accidental nuclear war.
Hans Kristensen – Federation of American Scientists, will address the current size of the global nuclear arsenals
Bill Hartung– Center for International Policy, will discuss the inordinate power and pathological dynamics exercised by the US military industrial complex
Greg Mello -Los Alamos Study Group, the role and funding of the nuclear weapons laboratories inherent within the US nuclear armament dilemma
John Feffer – Institute of Policy Studies will compare the money spent on the US military industrial complex compared with the paltry amount spent on the prevention of global warming
Alex Wellerstein– Assistant Professor of Science and Technology Studies, Stevens Institute of Technology – NukeMap, Personalizing the Bomb- what this means for young people today.

Bruce Gagnon – Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, will elucidate the ongoing and dangerous militarization of space

Bob Alvarez – Institute of Policy Studies, will discuss lateral proliferation and describe how a small nuclear exchange could trigger a global holocaust.

Robert Parry – Investigative Journalist, Consortium News. Will discuss Ukraine and the Human Factor: How propaganda and passions can risk nuclear conflagration.
Steven Starr– Associate of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, a board member and senior scientist for Physicians for Social Responsibility. Nuclear War: An Unrecognized Mass Extinction Event Waiting to Happen.
Holly Barker – Department of Anthropology, University of Washington, Medical, Teratogenic and Genetic pathology related to US nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands.
Alan Robock – Distinguished Professor, Dept. of Environmental Sciences. Rutgers University, will outline his pioneering work on Nuclear Famine and Nuclear Winter.
Janne Nolan – Elliott School of International Affairs –  Hooligans at the Gate: The Checkered History of Arms Control
Mike Lofgren – former congressional staffer and author of Anatomy of the Deep State, will describe the merger of corporations and the US government as an underlying cause of the current  nuclear situation
Susi Snyder– (PAX, the Netherlands), Author of the 2013 & 2014 DON’T BANK ON THE BOMB reports
Hugh Gusterson – Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs, George Washington University will describe his anthropological research over many years studying the culture of nuclear weapons scientists at Livermore and Los Alamos.
Robert Sheer – author of STAR WARRIORS will describe how years after his research into the young men who work on nuclear weapons development at Lawrence Livermore Labs “The Madness Persists.
Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor and Professor of Linguistics, MIT will present the pathology within the present political system that could lead to catastrophic results if not cured
Dave Krieger – Nuclear Age Peace Foundation on what can we do? How the Marshall Islanders are speaking truth to power. The Nuclear Zero Lawsuits Brought by the Marshall Islands Against the 9 Nuclear Nations.
Tim Wright – Campaign Director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) – some potential and exciting solutions
Helen Caldicott – President of The Helen Caldicott Foundation – An urgent prescription for survival

For full schedule:  http://helencaldicottfoundation.org/symposium-the-dynamics-of-possible-nuclear-extinction-l-february-28-march-1-2015-at-the-new-york-academy-of-medicine/

TO REGISTER click HERE. 

Or copy and paste: https://tdopne.ticketbud.com/symposium-the-dynamics-of-possible-nuclear-extinction

German military association demands massive armaments increase

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Welt.de reports that Lieutenant Colonel André Wüstner, President of the Armed Forces Association, said, “Whoever wants peace must prepare for war.” [1]
——————————————————————————

From World Socialist Web Site, February 14, 2015
By Johannes Stern

Against the backdrop of the Ukraine crisis, leading German politicians and military leaders are demanding a massive rearmament of the army.

On Sunday, the president of the armed forces association [Bundeswehrverband], André Wüstner, attending the Munich Security Conference, declared: “Whoever wants freedom must be ready for war.” He has precisely the same view as the German government, namely that the conflict in Ukraine cannot be solved militarily, but that the army must prepare itself for any emergency.

The past year has shown “how quickly risks can turn into dangers,” said Wüstner. The situation in Ukraine, Syria and Iraq is dramatic, he said.

“For us, that means insisting that the army should be fully equipped—equipment caps passed by the previous legislature must be abolished! That begins with the weapons system and goes all the way to the personal equipment of the individual soldier.”

“To achieve complete preparation of the army for deployment”, he added, “we must raise the defense budget step by step in the next few years. Otherwise, we risk losing the trust of our allies that we have only just won back.”

Wüstner was referring to “global challenges” and the German role in NATO. Germany has a “payback responsibility” with regard to the army and NATO.

The lieutenant colonel complained, “Since 1990, the budget was restructured to save money at the expense of the army,” and demanded: “It is time for that to end—there have to be credible assurances of funding for deterrence and security!”

This year’s defense report raises similar demands and read like a blueprint for the rearmament of the army. In the forward, the parliamentary defense commissioner Hellmut Königshaus (Free Democratic Party, FDP) describes the year 2014 as “the year of truth” for the army. It is being rebuilt into an army capable of intervening worldwide, but is “stretched to the limit of its capacity.”

The first part of the report creates the impression that the German armed forces are a chronically underfinanced scrapheap in need of redevelopment and in urgent need of a massive increase in budgetary allotments.

In nearly all units, there are personnel problems: the anti-aircraft missile unit stationed in Turkish territory, the speedboat squadron, the U-boat squadron, the tactical air force squadron, the marine planes and the signals division.

With regard to large military equipment, the report says there are massive “inadequacies and deficits.” It mentions, for instance, the Eurofighter, the transport helicopter NH 90, the transport airplane Transall and the marine mine warfare systems. There are not enough armored personnel carriers, and barracks are dilapidated. Replacement parts for military equipment and adequate ammunition are also lacking. And the main gun used by the army, the G36, does not shoot accurately.

Wüstner and the defense report demand what the German government and NATO have wanted for a long time but have previously only formulated cautiously because of widespread popular opposition.

Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) said in her opening speech to the Munich Security Conference last weekend that Germany is working “very hard to bring the army’s weaponry and equipment into a condition that will allow us to maintain our role as enduring alliance partners.” NATO wants this to take place immediately. The military alliance has long demanded of its members that they raise their defense budgets to at least two percent of GDP. Recently, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg insisted that Germany set a good example.

Stoltenberg held talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Defense Minister von der Leyen about increasing military funding during his inaugural visit to Berlin in January. He also presented his plans to the parliamentary committees for defense and foreign policy.

Germany is a “key country” on the continent and has an important leadership role to play, said Stoltenberg. Therefore it must set an example for other NATO countries with its military. The security situation is changing “and we must adjust ourselves to that,” the NATO secretary general said.

Like Wüstner and von der Leyen, Stoltenberg directly related his plans for armaments with Russia’s “confrontation course”. NATO must stock up its arsenal, because only on the basis of a “position of strength” is a dialog with Moscow possible.

However, the most important reason for the demand to build up the army is not the NATO insistence, but the end of German restraint in matters of foreign policy announced by President Gauck and the German government a year ago. In order to be able to intervene worldwide to defend German economic, geopolitical and security interests, they need an army that is well equipped and prepared.

The complaints of the defense report about the bad condition of the army evoke historical parallels. In 1933, minister of the army of the Reich, Werner von Blomberg, prepared a memorandum in which he called the state of the German army “hopeless.” Like the current defense report, Blomberg’s memorandum complained that there were inadequate personnel reserves, military equipment and ammunition. Not even the equipment guaranteed by the Versailles treaty was available to the marines. Armoured ships were not delivered and the air force was almost nonexistent.

The dramatic development that then followed is well known. At the end of the same year, the Nazi regime began a rapid rearmament of the army. Within a short time, the German weapons industry, which had shrunk dramatically in accordance with the Versailles peace treaty, became a powerful fighting force that began the Second World War in 1939, left large parts of Europe in ruins and led a brutal war of destruction against the Soviet Union.

 

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/02/14/bund-f14.html

http://www.globalresearch.ca/german-army-association-demands-massive-armaments-increase/5431282

[1] http://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article137224332/Deutschland-muss-auf-Krieg-vorbereitet-sein.html

 

“America on a War Footing”– Dennis Kucinich condemns HR 5859 and its late night approval by just three members of Congress

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The three members of Congress who did this:
Rep. Ed Royce (California)
Rep. Eliot Engel (New  York)
Rep. Marcy Kaptur (Ohio)

Rep. Jim Gerlach (Pennsylvania) wrote HR 5859.
—————————————————————————
America on a War Footing: Three Members of Congress Just Reignited the Cold War While No One Was Looking
By former Congressman Dennis Kucinich
Posted at Global Research, December 16, 2014
http://www.globalresearch.ca/america-on-a-war-footing-three-members-of-congress-just-reignited-the-cold-war-while-no-one-was-looking/5420146
Truth Dig

Late Thursday night, the House of Representatives unanimously passed a far-reaching Russia sanctions bill, a hydra-headed incubator of poisonous conflict. The second provocative anti-Russian legislation in a week, it further polarizes our relations with Russia, helping to cement a Russia-China alliance against Western hegemony, and undermines long-term America’s financial and physical security by handing the national treasury over to war profiteers.

Here’s how the House’s touted “unanimity” was achieved: Under a parliamentary motion termed “unanimous consent,” legislative rules can be suspended and any bill can be called up. If any member of Congress objects, the motion is blocked and the bill dies.

At 10:23:54 p.m. on Thursday, a member rose to ask “unanimous consent” for four committees to be relieved of a Russia sanctions bill. At this point the motion, and the legislation, could have been blocked by a single member who would say “I object.”  No one objected, because no one was watching for last-minute bills to be slipped through.

Most of the House and the media had emptied out of the chambers after passage of the $1.1 trillion government spending package.

The Congressional Record will show only three of 425 members were present on the floor to consider the sanctions bill. Two of the three feigned objection, creating the legislative equivalent of a ‘time out.’ They entered a few words of support, withdrew their “objections” and the clock resumed.

According to the clerk’s records, once the bill was considered under unanimous consent, it was passed, at 10:23:55 p.m., without objection, in one recorded, time-stamped second, unanimously.

Then the House adjourned.

I discovered, in my 16 years in Congress, that many members seldom read the legislation on which they vote. On Oct. 24, 2001, House committees spent long hours debating the Patriot Act. At the last minute, the old bill was swapped out for a version with draconian provisions. I voted against that version of the Patriot Act, because I read it. The legislative process requires attention.

Legislation brought before Congress under “unanimous consent” is not read by most members simply because copies of the bill are generally not available. During the closing sessions of Congress I would often camp out in the House chamber, near the clerk’s desk, prepared to say “I object” when something of consequence appeared out of the blue. Dec. 11, 2014, is one of the few times I regret not being in Congress to have the ability to oversee the process.

The Russia Sanctions bill that passed “unanimously,” with no scheduled debate, at 10:23:55 p.m. on Dec. 11, 2014, includes: 1. Sanctions of Russia’s energy industry, including Rosoboronexport and Gazprom.

  1. Sanctions of Russia’s defense industry, with respect to arms sales to Syria.
  2. Broad sanctions on Russians’ banking and investments.
  3. Provisions for privatization of Ukrainian infrastructure, electricity, oil, gas and renewables, with the help of the World Bank and USAID.
  4. Fifty million dollars to assist in a corporate takeover of Ukraine’s oil and gas sectors.
  5. Three hundred and fifty million dollars for military assistance to Ukraine, including anti-tank, anti-armor, optical, and guidance and control equipment, as well as drones.
  6. Thirty million dollars for an intensive radio, television and Internet propaganda campaign throughout the countries of the former Soviet Union.
  7. Twenty million dollars for “democratic organizing” in Ukraine.
  8. Sixty million dollars, spent through groups like the National Endowment for Democracy, “to improve democratic governance, and transparency, accountability [and] rule of law” in Russia. What brilliant hyperbole to pass such a provision the same week the Senate’s CIA torture report was released.
  9. An unverified declaration that Russia has violated the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, is a nuclear “threat to the United States” and should be held “accountable.”
  10. A path for the U.S. withdrawal from the INF Treaty, which went into force in 1988. The implications of this are immense. An entire series of arms agreements are at risk of unraveling. It may not be long before NATO pushes its newest client state, Ukraine, to abrogate the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which Ukraine signed when it gave up its nuclear weapons, and establish a renewed nuclear missile capability, 300 miles from Moscow.
  11. A demand that Russia verifiably dismantle “any ground launched cruise missiles or ballistic missiles with a range of between 500 and 5,500 kilometers …”—i.e., 300 and 3,300 miles.

Read the legislation, which Congress apparently didn’t.

As reported on GlobalSecurity.org, earlier that same day in Kiev, the Ukrainian parliament approved a security plan that will:

  1. Declare that Ukraine should become a “military state.”
  2. Reallocate more of its approved 2014 budget for military purposes.
  3. Put all military operating units on alert.
  4. Mobilize military and national guard units.
  5. Increase military spending in Ukraine from 1 percent of GDP to 5 percent, increasing military spending by $3 billion over the next few years.
  6. Join NATO and switch to NATO military standards.

Under the guise of democratizing, the West stripped Ukraine of its sovereignty with a U.S.-backed coup, employed it as a foil to advance NATO to the Russian border and reignited the Cold War, complete with another nuclear showdown.

The people of Ukraine will be less free, as their country becomes a “military state,” goes into hock to international banks, faces structural readjustments, privatization of its public assets, decline of social services, higher prices and an even more severe decline in its standard of living.

In its dealings with the European Union, Ukraine could not even get concessions for its citizens to find work throughout Europe. The West does not care about Ukraine, or its people, except for using them to seize a strategic advantage against Russia in the geopolitical game of nations.

Once, with the help of the West, Ukraine fully weighs in as a “military state” and joins the NATO gun club, its annual defense budget will be around $3 billion, compared with the current defense budget of Russia, which is over $70 billion.

Each Western incitement creates a Russian response, which is then given as further proof that the West must prepare for the very conflict it has created, war as a self-fulfilling prophecy.

That the recent Russia sanctions bill was advanced, “unanimously,” without debate in the House, portends that our nation is sleepwalking through the graveyards of history, toward an abyss where controlling factors reside in the realm of chance, what Thomas Hardy termed “crass casualty.” Such are the perils of unanimity.

——————————————————————-
Here is the chain of events and the speeches made:

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/R?r113:FLD001:H60307

UKRAINE FREEDOM SUPPORT ACT OF 2014 — (House of Representatives – December 11, 2014)

[Page: H10305] GPO’s PDF

—

Mr. ROYCE. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the Committees on Foreign Affairs, Financial Services, Oversight and Government Reform, and the Judiciary be discharged from further consideration of the bill (H.R. 5859) to impose sanctions with respect to the Russian Federation, to provide additional assistance to Ukraine, and for other purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

The Clerk read the title of the bill.

The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mrs. Wagner). Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from California?

Mr. ENGEL. Madam Speaker, reserving the right to object, although I don’t intend to object, this is a very important measure. We need to send this measure to the President’s desk, and we need to do so tonight. I am delighted that we are doing so.

It is clear that Russia is not only fomenting separatism in Ukraine, it is actively supporting the uprising and sending troops to back it up. This is an invasion, plain and simple.

I am concerned that the Kremlin’s designs don’t stop with Ukraine. Putin is already putting substantial pressure on our NATO allies and our European friends. We must not bow to his aggression.

If we don’t act now, where will we be in 6 months? Where will we be in 2 years? Where will we be in a decade?

Since the Cold War, a vision has emerged of a Europe whole, free, and at peace. That reality is within reach. Putin’s aggression puts that future in dire jeopardy. We cannot let that hope die.

We need to let President Putin know loudly and clearly we will not stand for his blatant disregard of international law, we will not abandon our friends, and, as the United States, we remain the world’s champion of freedom, democracy, and the dignity of all people.

Madam Speaker, I would like to commend the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for sending the House this bill so that we can stand as one in the face of Russia’s aggression. In the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Chairman Royce and I, as ranking member, have worked together to say that we will not stand for Putin’s aggression.

I think this is a very, very important thing to do, very important bill to pass.

With that, I withdraw my reservation of objection.

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from California?

Ms. KAPTUR. Madam Speaker, reserving the right to object, though I don’t intend to object, I would like to stand this evening and say, as cochair of the Ukranian Caucus, along with my dear colleagues, Jim Gerlach of Pennsylvania, and the ranking member of the full committee, Congressman Eliot Engel of New York, I stand in strong support of H.R. 5859, a measure that allows America to shine the hope of liberty to the distant land of Ukraine, a measure that we hope to send to the President’s desk very soon, and we need to move it tonight.

It is clear that Russia is actively fomenting upheaval and propagandizing in the West about its illegal invasion. It is an invasion, plain and simple, of a sovereign nation. The Kremlin’s designs don’t stop with Ukraine, and we see substantial pressure being placed on our NATO allies and other European friends. Liberty cannot bow to Putin’s aggression.

Six months ago, when Russia invaded Ukraine, 4,000 more Ukrainian lives were existing and have been taken. Just according to the U.N. 1,000 additional lives have been lost since the cease-fire that was negotiated in September, and approximately 13 lives per day are being lost.

Since the cold war, a vision has emerged of a Europe whole, free, and at peace, and that reality is within reach. Putin’s reckless aggression cannot stand. The United States cannot let the hope of liberty die, surely, in a land where its people have historically suffered more than any other place on Earth. The ravages of World War II still sting their memory and ours, and motivate our actions here tonight.

By approving H.R. 5859, America sends a clear signal to the world that we are the standard bearer of liberty at home and abroad. I am very pleased to join my colleagues this evening.

I thank the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for sending the House this bill.

With that, I withdraw my reservation of objection.

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from California?

There was no objection.