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From Cold to “Hot War”? Operation Barbarossa II: U.S. military buildup in eastern Europe, the Yanks in their armoured parade

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By Christopher Black
Global Research, January 18, 2017
New Eastern Outlook 18 January 2017
usa tank russia

I stated some months ago, while assembling a criminal dossier against the NATO powers for the ultimate war crime of aggression, that the build-up of NATO forces in Eastern Europe, particularly American, concentrated on the Baltic states and Ukraine, presaged hybrid war operations against Russia leading to a general war. This build up of forces and ancillary developments I termed Operation Barbarossa II in light of the remarkable similarities to the build up of forces by Nazi Germany for the invasion of the USSR in 1941 which the Germans code-named Operation Barbarossa. Events have only confirmed my views.

The degradation of American democracy continues before our eyes with the incessant hysterical allegations against Russia generally and the manipulation of Donald Trump as a device to put out even more sensational allegations, a campaign which serves two purposes; the first, to build up anti-Russian feeling in the west to war levels by accusing Russia of cyber attacks and attacks on “democracy,” the second to either justify the removal of Trump as a factor in the presidency or to force him to toe the line of the war faction and drop any conciliatory rhetoric towards Russia.

It appears that this strategy is working. At his recent press conference Trump not only adopted the “Russia did it” theme but went further and stated that if people thought Hilary Clinton was going to be tough on Russia, they would soon see that he will be tougher than she ever could be. The hopes by some in the United States that Trump was going to open a new policy of dialogue with Russia have been completely shattered. But this should have been no surprise with his immediate insult to China the day after his election and with his cabinet choices and their various testimonies before Congress the past days, as they are vetted for their posts, that show his administration will use war to dominate the world just as enthusiastically as the outgoing administration.

Trump has said that it is better to have good relations with Russia and that only fools would reject that idea. But this statement is part of the general line that if Russia does not do what the US dictates then, of course, force will be used instead. On the PBS Newshour on Thursday July 12 a “former” senior CIA officer, when asked whether Trump had a point in wanting good relations with Russia, laughed and said,

“The United States should not look for good relations with any country. We should strive for one thing only, the advancement of American national interests, and if diplomacy does not work then coercion must be used.”

This is the talk of gangsters.

The world is fatigued with the circus that is the struggle for power taking place between the ruling factions in the United States. There is clearly little to separate these factions ideologically regarding foreign policy and very little regarding domestic policy. It’s just a gang war.

The use of lurid allegations against Trump to portray him as not only a willing dupe of Russia but also a target of blackmail, which allegations appear to originate with a “former” senior MI6 agent named Christopher Steele, smacks of the MI5 and MI6 plot to bring down British Prime Minister Harold Wilson in the 1970s, as they had brought down the Labour government in 1924 with the production and distribution in the press of a forged letter from Zinoviev to the British Communist Party calling for a mass insurrection in Britain. In Wilson’s case too, forged documents were put out by MI5 and MI6 with the help of the CIA, through a compliant media, to smear him as a Russian agent and he later stated that he knew of two planned military coups against him. John Kennedy was assassinated in the coup d’état of 1963 in a poisonous atmosphere generated by allegations he was “soft on communism,” that is, once again, the Russians.

Frankly, whether Trump is ousted in a coup, or by impeachment later, as the Washington Post suggested could happen, or is allowed to stay in office as a compliant front man as the other presidents have been since Kennedy was murdered, matters not; the result is the same, the continuation of a permanent war regime in the United States, that lives for, by and through a permanent state of war. The American people were brainwashed into tolerating and accepting the coup of 1963 and it would hardly be surprising if another one is carried out and tolerated when intelligence agencies, political enemies, the media and Hollywood celebrities are openly calling for a coup to be staged. Democracy? The vote? Who cares? Civil unrest? A price to pay. The result is that the preparations for war continue, and are amplified by the Trump election, which the intelligence services are using to intensify the propaganda attack on Russia and President Putin.

Meanwhile, as the media and Obama regime keep the people off-balance with the Trump scandal US military forces continue their deployments against Russia and China. The machine is in motion. In Europe the Americans have just added to the pressure on Russia with the placement of the 3rd Armoured Brigade in Poland, right on Russia’s doorstep, which Russia rightly considers a threat to its security. This is a unit that was involved as an assault force in the Normandy landings in 1944 and was used to invade Iraq in 2003. The unit is noted for its speed of attack. These forces will fan out from Poland to cover a wide front from Estonia and Latvia to Romania with tank, artillery and armoured mobile infantry units. These are not garrison or occupation troops, these are assault troops.

US Army General Scaparrotti, commander of US forces in Europe and NATO supreme allied commander in Europe, stated that the movement of this force to Poland “marks a significant moment in European deterrence and defence.” He stated,

“The European infrastructure and integrated support has enabled our forces to rapidly be ready and postured should they need to deter Russian aggression.”

Since there is no Russian “aggression” and since the Americans are continually stating that they expect Russia to engage in hybrid, that is unconventional warfare against Eastern Europe, we can be sure that these forces themselves and their specialised units will engage in false flag attacks and provocations to make it look like Russia is taking hostile action to justify the use against Russia of these and allied European forces. It is just a matter of time unless a diplomatic breakthrough occurs which appears highly unlikely, despite Russia’s diligent efforts.

At the same time it was reported on Friday the 13th that Trump’s appointed foreign minister. Mr. Tillerson stated to Congress on the 11th of January, that the US should deny Beijing access to its islands in the South China Sea. China state media responded that any such attempt would lead to large-scale war. Yet, on January 5th, just a few days before Tillerson’s statement the Pentagon announced that “ships and units from the USS Carrier Carl Vinson strike group will soon depart San Diego for the western Pacific” where US strategic B1 and B2 bombers have already been deployed on Guam, capable of carrying nuclear armed cruise missiles.

And lastly, on the propaganda front, the recent illegal seizure of investigatory material by Dutch police from Dutch journalists returning from Donetsk once again adds to the evidence that the shoot down of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 with 298 people on board in July 2014 was an action of the Kiev regime with US knowledge. I recently stated in an essay on that subject that it was a Kiev military jet that shot down the airliner, and referred to a Sukhoi 25 being used but I since been shown evidence that it was in fact a Kiev Mig-29 that was used. In any event, the NATO powers have colluded in covering up this fact in order to keep up their propaganda the Russia was behind it.

The situation is grave and the doomsday clock must be knocking on the door of midnight. Many of us have called for the anti-war and peace movements to mobilise but they are nowhere to be seen. Many of them, especially in the United States have been co-opted into supporting these wars, and the left, that is supposed to be against imperialist wars, whether the hard or the soft left, appears to be too weak to make itself felt. It seems there are too few of us in the west any more who give a damn.

But we better act now and make people give a damn or else it will be too late because as my friend, Harold Pinter, so well put it to me once at dinner in London, the world is faced with a people in love with themselves who don’t seem to care about anything or anybody except themselves and think they can commit any crime and get away with it. I can’t express the disgust so well as Harold did in a poem he once sent me that he found difficult to get published, one of several, but which is now in a short collection of his poems called War. Perhaps if there were more like him, more poems like this, read widely enough, more voices speaking out, people would react, wake up, stiffen up, get back their sense of decency and backbone. I don’t know. But I offer it to you here in the hope, perhaps naïve, that it has an effect.

God Bless America

Here they go again,

The Yanks in their armoured parade…

Christopher Black is an international criminal lawyer based in Toronto. He is known for a number of high-profile war crimes cases and recently published his novel “Beneath the Clouds. He writes essays on international law, politics and world events, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”

The original source of this article is New Eastern Outlook
Copyright © Christopher Black, New Eastern Outlook, 2017
http://www.globalresearch.ca/from-cold-to-hot-war-operation-barbarossa-ii-us-military-buildup-in-eastern-europe-the-yanks-in-their-armoured-parade/5569332

Chris Hedges: The real purpose of the U.S. National Intelligence Report on alleged hacking by Russia

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By Chris Hedges
Global Research, January 12, 2017
Truthdig 8 January 2017

Some thoughts on “Russia’s Influence Campaign Targeting the 2016 US Presidential Election,” the newly released declassified report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

1. The primary purpose of the declassified report, which offers no evidence to support its assertions that Russia hacked the U.S. presidential election campaign, is to discredit Donald Trump. I am not saying there was no Russian hack of John Podesta’s emails. I am saying we have yet to see any tangible proof to back up the accusation. This charge—Sen. John McCain has likened the alleged effort by Russia to an act of war—is the first salvo in what will be a relentless campaign by the Republican and Democratic establishment, along with its corporatist allies and the mass media, to destroy the credibility of the president-elect and prepare the way for impeachment.

A detail of a page in the declassified report. (Jon Elswick / AP)

The allegations in the report, amplified in breathtaking pronouncements by a compliant corporate media that operates in a non-fact-based universe every bit as pernicious as that inhabited by Trump, are designed to make Trump look like Vladimir Putin’s useful idiot. An orchestrated and sustained campaign of innuendo and character assassination will be directed against Trump. When impeachment is finally proposed, Trump will have little public support and few allies and will have become a figure of open ridicule in the corporate media.

2. The second task of the report is to bolster the McCarthyist smear campaign against independent media, including Truthdig, as witting or unwitting agents of the Russian government. The demise of the English programming of Al-Jazeera and TeleSur, along with the collapse of the nation’s public broadcasting, designed to give a voice to those not beholden to corporate or party interests, leaves RT America and Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now! as the only two electronic outlets with a national reach that are willing to give a platform to critics of corporate power and imperialism such as Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, Ralph Nader, Medea Benjamin, Cornel West, Kshama Sawant, myself and others.

Seven pages of the report were dedicated to RT America, on which I have a show called “On Contact.” The report vastly inflated the cable network’s reach and influence. It also included a few glaring errors, including the statement that “RT introduced two new shows—‘Breaking the Set’ on 4 September and ‘Truthseeker’ on 2 November—both overwhelmingly focused on criticism of the US and Western governments as well as the promotion of radical discontent.” “Breaking the Set,” with Abby Martin, was taken off the air two years ago. It could hardly be tarred with costing Hillary Clinton the election.

The barely contained rage of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper at the recent Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on foreign cyber threats was visible when he spat out that RT was “promoting a particular point of view, disparaging our system, our alleged hypocrisy about human rights, et cetera.” His anger was a glimpse into how the establishment seethes with hatred for dissidents. Clapper has lied in the past. He perjured himself in March 2013 when, three months before the revelations of wholesale state surveillance leaked by Snowden, he assured Congress that the National Security Agency was not collecting “any type of data” on the American public. After the corporate state shuts down RT, it will go after Democracy Now! and the handful of progressive sites, including this one, that give these dissidents space. The goal is censorship.

3. The third task of the report is to justify the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization beyond Germany, a violation of the promise Ronald Reagan made to the Soviet Union’s Mikhail Gorbachev after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Expanding NATO in Eastern Europe opened up an arms market for the war industry. It made those businesses billions of dollars. New NATO members must buy Western arms that can be integrated into the NATO arsenal. These sales, which are bleeding the strained budgets of countries such as Poland, are predicated on potential hostilities with Russia. If Russia is not a threat, the arms sales plummet. War is a racket.

4. The final task of the report is to give the Democratic Party plausible cover for the catastrophic election defeat it suffered. Clinton initially blamed FBI Director James Comey for her loss before switching to the more easily demonized Putin. The charge of Russian interference essentially boils down to the absurd premise that perhaps hundreds of thousands of Clinton supporters suddenly decided to switch their votes to Trump when they read the leaked emails of Podesta. Either that or they tuned in to RT America and decided to vote for the Green Party.

The Democratic Party leadership cannot face, and certainly cannot publicly admit, that its callous betrayal of the working and middle class triggered a nationwide revolt that resulted in the election of Trump. It has been pounded since President Barack Obama took office, losing 68 seats in the House, 12 seats in the Senate and 10 governorships. It lost more than 1,000 elected positions between 2008 and 2012 nationwide. Since 2010, Republicans have replaced 900 Democratic state legislators. If this was a real party, the entire leadership would be sacked. But it is not a real party. It is the shell of a party propped up by corporate money and hyperventilating media.

The Democratic Party must maintain the fiction of liberalism just as the Republican Party must maintain the fiction of conservatism. These two parties, however, belong to one party—the corporate party. They will work in concert, as seen by the alliance between Republican leaders such as McCain and Democratic leaders such as Sen. Chuck Schumer, to get rid of Trump, silence all dissent, enrich the war industry and promote the farce they call democracy.

Welcome to our annus horribilis.

Green Party VP candidate: Trump’s Neo-Fascism will be built on Neo-Fascism of Obama and Democrat Party

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By Ajamu Baraka
Global Research, January 04, 2017
Black Agenda Report 3 January 2017

Late on the evening of December 23, when the attention of the public was fixed on the consumerist excesses of the holiday season, President Obama signed into law the Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Like the other NDAAs that President Obama signed into law during his administration, this one further strengthened the repressive capacities of the state.

Buried deep in the provisions of the NDAA was language from a bill introduced by Sen. Rob Portman ostensibly to protect the public from the effects of “foreign propaganda.” As previously reported by Black Agenda Report, the bill, originally introduced last March, was passed by the Senate on December 8 as the “Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act”and then inserted into the NDAA.

According to Senator Portman, the intent of the law is to “…improve the ability of the United States to counter foreign propaganda and disinformation from our enemies by establishing an interagency center housed at the State Department to coordinate and synchronize counter-propaganda efforts throughout the U.S. government. To support these efforts, the bill also creates a grant program for NGOs, think tanks, civil society and other experts outside government.”

For Senator Portman, the U.S. is the innocent victim of ruthless propaganda efforts on the part of foreign governments to slander and discredit the altruistic objectives of U.S. global activities.

In the face of the Neo-McCarthyism represented by this legislation and the many other repressive moves of the Obama administration to curtail speech and control information — from the increased surveillance of the public to the use of the espionage act to prosecute journalists and whistleblowers — one would reasonably assume that forces on the left would vigorously oppose the normalization of authoritarianism, especially in this period of heightened concerns about neo-fascism.

Unfortunately, the petit-bourgeois “latte left” along with their liberal allies have been in full collaboration with the state for the past eight years, with the predictable result that no such alarm was issued, nor has any critique or even debate been forthcoming.

So there has been very little “mainstream” liberal/left discussion around the fact that, as the political blog Zero Hedge noted, “long before ‘fake news’ became a major media topic, the US government was already planning its legally-backed crackdown on anything it would eventually label ‘fake news.’ ”

As Black Agenda Report publisher Glen Ford framed it, “When the narrative at the heart of a system of rule falls apart, when the flow of history runs counter to the story told by those in power, then we know the entire edifice is crumbling under the weight of its own contradictions. The political crisis arrives when the people sense that the prevailing order is built on a foundation of oppressions and lies. The rulers panic, scrambling to reweave the matrix of fables and myths that justify their waning supremacy. At such points in history, the truth is up for grabs – and a change of regime is in the offing.”

The dangerous and cynical moves by the Clinton campaign during the presidential campaign to paint Trump as an agent of a foreign government in order to project Hillary as the real, tough alternative, has morphed into a commonsense narrative that has a dual purpose.

First, it is meant to weaken the incoming administration by attempting to split it from its Republican legislative arm. The liberal, transnational financial and corporate rulers are especially concerned by Trump’s economic and social base that is demanding an alteration of the neoliberal order in favor of small, mid-size and large business interests still dependent on the U.S. domestic market. They see this demand as a threat to the neoliberal logic that has been largely unquestioned in the West over the last three decades.

Secondly, by narrowing the scope of acceptable political discourse in relation to U.S. global strategies that are heavily dependent on militarism and the strategic commitment to suppress regional capitalist rivals, the neocons and liberal interventionists can expect to avoid mass opposition to continued imperialist adventures. Similar to the McCarthyite period when the ideological commitment to containment abroad required the destruction of any domestic opposition, the neo-McCarthyism of today is geared toward ideological conformity. In this sense, Trumpism is becoming a useful tool for enforcing neoliberal ideological consensus.

The potential danger of the unfolding order is not lost on those of us who take a consistent oppositional stance to the bi-partisan games being played on the people. The set-up piece that ran in the Washington Post that supposedly identified news outlets that were supposed to be involved in questionable or outright “fake news” included a number of outlets to which I contribute, including Counterpunch and the only all-black outlet on the list, Black Agenda Report.

When you have supposedly respectable liberal outlets pushing this kind of madness, we are not expecting much support from liberals or even left forces when the repressive knives are sharpened.

The American Prospect’s Robert Kuttner has even suggested that Trump is guilty of treasonbecause of what he calls the President-elect’s “dalliance” with Vladimir Putin.

With the left’s attention fixed on Trump and its fear of the “new” authoritarianism that he is supposed to introduce, it has failed to confront or even be aware of the fact that the foundation for any kind of “neo-fascism” that might emerge in the U.S. was constructed over the last 15 years of the combined Bush and Obama administrations.

But even more dangerous for authentic oppositional forces in the U.S., collaboration from the left with the new McCarthyism is providing an opening for the isolation and repression of those of us who represent and are part of oppressed communities/peoples who were going to have to fight no matter who would have been elected.

This is not a new situation for us. When the repressive apparatus of the state focused on radical black organizations like the National Negro Congress and Civil Rights Congress, and on such individuals as Paul Robeson, W.E. B. Dubois, William Patterson and Claudia Jones, to the systematic assault on the radical Black Liberation Movement in the 1960s and ‘70s, we were largely required to fend for ourselves against the state after being abandoned by white liberals and significant numbers of white leftists. I fully expect that to happen again.

Neo-fascism is not a new existential phenomenon for us or for people around the world who have suffered from the racist, arrogant assaults of this criminal state to maintain the Pan-European colonial/capitalist project. So save your hysterical concerns about Trump for others and either commit yourself to building a revolutionary movement or get out of the way.

Ajamu Baraka was the 2016 candidate for vice president on the Green Party ticket. He is an editor and contributing columnist for the Black Agenda Report. His latest publications include contributions to Killing Trayvons: An Anthology of American Violence (Counterpunch Books, 2014), Imagine: Living in a Socialist USA (HarperCollins, 2014) and Claim No Easy Victories: The Legacy of Amilcar Cabral ( CODESRIA, 2013). He can be reached at www.AjamuBaraka.com

The original source of this article is Black Agenda Report
Copyright © Ajamu Baraka, Black Agenda Report, 2017
http://www.globalresearch.ca/trumps-neo-fascism-will-be-built-on-neo-fascism-of-obama-and-democrat-party/5566461

Former Trump foreign policy adviser: Ukraine, Crimea coverage is example of ‘fake news’

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From RT

December 10, 2016

https://www.rt.com/news/369828-russia-america-relations-trump-advisor/video/
FILE PHOTO Carter Page © Anton Denisov / Sputnik

Carter Page, a businessman who advised Donald Trump on foreign policy matters during his presidential campaign, has arrived in Moscow to discuss strengthening business ties and normalizing relations between Russia and the United States.

Page, who arrived in Moscow on Thursday, said he would be in the city until December 13 to meet with “business leaders and thought leaders.” In an interview with RIA Novosti, Page said he believes it is extremely important to address the narratives that led to the sanctions stemming from the Ukraine crisis, and normalize relations between Russia and the West.

“The recent history of Ukraine in general and Crimea in particular over the past several years may be among the most egregious examples of ‘fake news’ in recent memory,” he told RIA Novosti.

“The level of misinformation which has guided related decisions by outside actors and their impact on this country is tragic. I am confident that there will be new possibilities to resolve these misperceptions and the wrong direction it has created for Ukraine.”

“It is my firm belief that the opportunities for private sector cooperation in the Russian economy have never been as great as they will be in the coming years. Although the failures of many hostile western policies as well as the inevitable, logical responses from Moscow have constrained such possibilities throughout recent decades, the possibilities today are unparalleled.”

Page also said he was keen for the Russian market to reopen for American investors who had been stopped from doing business by sanctions.

“US and European companies are very interested in returning to the Russian market,” he said. “Their interest cuts across a vast array of sectors.”

“The hostile efforts to punish Rosneft and their senior management team through western sanctions have primarily hurt western companies, rather than their intended target.”

Page, who claimed that he was no longer “directly involved” in any transition activities, nevertheless told RIA that according to his contacts in Washington, the process to mend Russo-American relations was going “exceptionally well.”

As an outsider with little political experience, Page, who has worked in Russia before on a number of business projects, is very much in the mold of Donald Trump. However, his close ties to Russia raised suspicions in some circles about supposed links between Trump’s campaign and the Russian government, as well as sanctioned individuals such as Igor Sechin. When the allegations surfaced, Page denied meeting with Russian officials but nevertheless took a leave of absence from the election campaign.

“This is in the best interests of the candidate,” he told Washington Post journalist Josh Rogin in September. When asked to comment on Page’s remarks, despite the apparent optimism Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov took a more measured approach.

“Moscow will continue to appreciate the official statements of Barack Obama and his administration until the end of January,” Peskov told RIA.

Carter Page is, most significantly, a businessman, who like Donald Trump, says there are “plenty of opportunities in Russia that should be pursued by Americans,” Daniel McAdams, the executive director at the Ron Paul Peace Institute told RT.

“On a pragmatic level, and I think Trump, if anything, is a pragmatic person. He understands that the people that are getting hurt are the American business people not allowed to do business with Russia,” McAdams said.

https://www.rt.com/news/369828-russia-america-relations-trump-advisor/

 

NATO mulls worst-case scenario in case Trump pulls US troops out of Europe – report

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From RT

November 12, 2016

NATO strategists are reportedly planning for a scenario in which Trump orders US troops out of Europe, as the shock result of the US presidential election sinks in, spreading an atmosphere of uncertainty.

According to Spiegel magazine, strategists from NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg’s staff have drafted a secret report which includes a worst-case scenario in which Trump orders US troops to withdraw from Europe and fulfills his threat to make Washington less involved in European security.

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Soldiers of the U.S. Army 2nd Cavalry Regiment deployed in Estonia as a part of the U.S. military's Operation Atlantic Resolve, during the
German defense minister says Trump should be firm with Russia as NATO stood by US after 9/11

“For the first time, the US exit from NATO has become a threat” which would mean the end of the bloc, a German NATO officer told the magazine.

During his campaign, Trump repeatedly slammed NATO, calling the alliance “obsolete.” He also suggested that under his administration, the US may refuse to come to the aid of NATO allies unless they“pay their bills” and “fulfill their obligations to us.”

“We are experiencing a moment of the highest and yet unprecedented uncertainty in the transatlantic relationship,” said Wolfgang Ischinger, former German ambassador in Washington and head of the prominent Munich Security Conference. By criticizing the collective defense, Trump has questioned the basic pillar of NATO as a whole, Ischinger added.

The president-elect therefore has to reassure the European allies that he remains firm on the US commitment under Article 5 of the NATO charter prior to his inauguration, the top diplomat stressed.

Earlier this week, Stoltenberg lambasted Trump’s agenda, saying: “All allies have made a solemn commitment to defend each other. This is something absolutely unconditioned.”

Fearing that Trump would not appear in Brussels even after his inauguration, NATO has re-scheduled its summit – expected to take place in early 2017 – to next summer, Spiegel said.

The report might reflect current moods within the EU establishment as well, as Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission, has called on the member states to establish Europe’s own military.

Washington “will not ensure the security of the Europeans in the long term… we have to do this ourselves,” he argued on Thursday.

If Trump is serious about reducing the number of US troops stationed in Europe, large NATO countries like Germany have little to offer, Spiegel said. Even major member states’ militaries lack units able to replace the Americans, which in turn may trigger debate on strengthening NATO’s nuclear arm, a sensitive issue in most European countries for domestic reasons.

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© Jonathan Ernst / Vincent Kessler
EU Commission president wants clarity from Trump on NATO, trade

Still, an increase in defense spending has already been approved by the Europeans following pressure from the outgoing US administration. Over the past few days in Brussels, representatives of NATO states have been working on the so-called “Blue Book,” a secret strategy paper which stipulates each member’s contribution in the form of troops, aircraft, warships, and heavy armor until 2032, Spiegel reported.

The document stipulates an increase in each NATO members’ military spending by one percent of each nation’s GDP, in addition to the current two percent.

Uncertainty over Trump’s NATO policy seems to be taking its toll; Germany, one of the largest military powers in Europe, plans to allocate 130 billion euros ($140bn) to military expenditures by 2030, but the remarkable figure may be a drop in the ocean.

“No one knows yet if the one percent more would be enough,” the German NATO officer told Spiegel.

Nevertheless, the US is continuing to deploy troops to eastern Europe, justifying the move with the need to protect the region from “assertive Russia.” Earlier this week, the largest arms shipment yet, 600 containers, arrived in Germany to supply the US armored and combat aviation brigades, expected to deploy in Europe by January 2017.

https://www.rt.com/news/366668-trump-us-support-nato/

‘US foreign policy is a marketing strategy for selling weapons’ – Jill Stein

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From RT

July 31, 2017

Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein © Dominick Reuter
Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein © Dominick Reuter / Reuters
Democrats and Republicans are controlled by banks, oil giants, insurance companies and war profiteers, says Green Party presidential candidate, Dr. Jill Stein. Her party, she claims, gets no money from corporations and has liberty to really address problems.
As the two major US political parties have officially selected their nominees for president, Chris Hedges, host of RT’s On Contact program, discussed with the Green Party candidate for president, Dr. Jill Stein, what could be an alternative way forward.

According to Dr Stein, in the current presidential race, the American public is “clamoring for something else at unprecedented levels”.

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Activists hold a banner against Hillary Clinton amid protest outside the Wells Fargo Center on the final day of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S., July 28, 2016 © Dominick ReuterLeaked emails, rigged elections, media blackout: Welcome to democracy, American-style

“People have rejected not only both of these parties, which are minority parties by actual polling…Their candidates are running at record levels, all time highest for people disliking the Democratic and Republican candidates,” she said.

“The American people and the people all over the world are being thrown under the bus by this political system…in which both parties are basically funded by and controlled by predatory banks, by fossil-fuel giants, by war-profiteers, the health insurance industry – the usual suspects who are calling the shots from behind the closed doors,” Stein says.

Stein says that since her campaign and the Green Party “are the only candidates and party” that do not take money from corporations and lobbyists, and do not have super PACs, they have “the liberty to address the crises” that the US people are facing.

‘What Trump says has already been done by Clinton’

Speaking about the frontrunners, the Green Party candidate noted that if you “look at the track record, the terrible things that Donald Trump says – which are truly reprehensible and horrific – have actually been done by Hillary Clinton”.

For example, she said, “on immigrants, xenophobia and hate mongering, we’ve learned that Trump and the Republicans are the party of hate and fear”. But, Stein went on, “the Democrats are the party of deportation, detentions, and night raids”.

And the night-raiding is carried out against the women and children “who are feeling the violence that Hillary Clinton herself gave the thumbs up to with this horrific corporate coup in Honduras”.

US policies very much promoted by “Clinton herself are generating these refugees, which she then, and the Democrats, are criminalizing when they get here and sending them back,” says Stein.

Speaking about security issues – “finger on nuclear button”, as she put it, the Green Party candidate noted that Trump makes “irresponsible statements” and Clinton advocates the enforcing of a no-fly zone over Syria “against a nuclear armed country that is Russia.”

Clinton has already been antagonizing Russia by surrounding it with missile bases and soldiers, Stein said. “How would we feel if Russian troops were amassing on the border of Mexico and Canada?” she added.

Trump – product of economic misery created by Clintons

Dr Stein has called Donald Trump “a product” of economic misery, which created vulnerability, fear, and sense of dread on behalf of the American worker and middle class, “to whom adversity is somewhat new”.

“They become very vulnerable to demagoguery, to wishful memory about ‘how we can recreate a powerful America of the past’,” she said. But not much is being asked about what caused this misery. In Stein’s opinion, this goes back to Wall Street deregulation “and the economic crash” that resulted in disappearance of millions of jobs, “stole five million homes out from under home owners, and to NAFTA which basically allowed a million jobs and more to be sent overseas and for wages to be pushed downward.”

The Wall Street deregulation passed by Bill Clinton was advocated for and celebrated by Hillary Clinton, she said.

“So, putting another Clinton in the White House – that’s not a solution; that was the problem, that is only going to fan the flames of right-wing extremism,” Stein said.

‘We bailed out crooks, time to bail out their victims’

The real solution would be economic investments in a form of a Green New Deal like the one that got the US out of the Great Depression and job-creation, the Green Party candidate said.

“This is not a kind of pie in the sky that we can fix this. The real solution here is economic investment; it’s job creation; it’s not wish fulfilment about how Donald Trump is going to cut a better deal for us. Donald Trump leaves a lake of bankruptcies and lawsuits behind him from workers who’ve been cheated, and jobs that have been sent overseas. So, Big Daddy is not the Big Daddy that we need,” she said.

The Green Party, she insists, can grow the economy in a just and sustainable way. Her campaign suggests cancelling the student debt that affected about 40 million people “like we cancelled the debt for the Wall Street crooks who crashed the economy.”

“If we bailed out the crooks, it’s time to bail out their victims through the same tool of quantitative easing that doesn’t cost taxpayers a thing…” Jill Stein said.

Demilitarizing foreign policy

The US spends a trillion dollars a year on its military, says Jill Stein. If that budget is cut it in half, the American economy will have the money it needs at home to provide for free public higher education, insure any health costs that aren’t covered already and work with other countries to address the problem of climate change – which remains one of the crucial problems globally, she believes.

“Few people know what we pay for this catastrophic military which shoots first and asks questions later. In fact, what we have is a foreign policy which is essentially a marketing strategy for selling weapons,” she said. “We’ve had these wars for oil – which are opportunities to sell weapons and to come and dear other people’s fossil fuel resources, which is basically what our military is doing. Why do we have a thousand bases for a hundred countries around the world?  This isn’t something that other countries do.”

The reason why the US keeps doing so is to safeguard its energy supplies and their routes of transportation, Stein says.

“This can no longer be justified – it’s all obsolete when we have a Green New Deal, which will reach 100 percent wind, water and sun clean renewable energy entirely by 2030. So, we can begin phasing down this network and stop stealing other people’s oil right now,” she said.

The US spent six trillion dollars on wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – both of which failed, the presidential candidate said.

The US killed a million people in Iraq alone, “not winning the hearts and minds of people in the Middle East to say the least. And what do we have for it? Failed states, mass refuge migrations that are tearing apart Europe as well as the Middle East, and creating worse terrorist threats,” she added.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

https://www.rt.com/op-edge/354079-jill-stein-green-us-elections/