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"content": "<a href=\"https://telegra.ph/No-More-Double-Standards-and-Impunity-West-Provokes-Russia-Result-Nukes-in-Belarus-on-NATOs-Borders-04-01\" target=\"_blank\">https://telegra.ph/No-More-Double-Standards-and-Impunity-West-Provokes-Russia-Result-Nukes-in-Belarus-on-NATOs-Borders-04-01</a><br /><br />No More Double Standards and Impunity. West Provokes Russia. Result: Nukes in Belarus on NATO’s Borders<br /><br />EDITORIAL<br />April 01, 2023<br /><br />The Anglo-American-led NATO alliance has no longer the presumption of impunity. The decades of unchecked aggression from NATO expansionism and criminal Anglo-American subterfuges in foreign countries are over.<br /><br />The historic – and unacceptable – deployment of U.S. nuclear weapons in several European NATO states as well as the recent announcement by Britain of supplying depleted uranium weapons to Ukraine is the prologue to Russia’s decision to place tactical nukes in Belarus. The Western outcry following Russia’s decision is absurd and hypocritical.<br /><br />The pattern is familiar and speaks of incorrigible arrogance. The United States and its NATO allies make reckless escalatory moves that are unprecedented in their aggression toward Russia; then Moscow makes a reciprocal move, and yet the Western governments and their dutiful news media become apoplectic with rage over Russia’s “threatening conduct” and nuclear blackmail.<br /><br />Maybe one day, Western leaders will eventually choke on their own illogical apoplexy.<br /><br />This week there was frothing and fuming in the West about Moscow’s decision to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, despite the move being fully in accord with the Minsk government, a longtime ally of Russia and fellow member of the Collective Security Treaty Organization. The CSTO is organically comparable with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), having a shared defense commitment between allied states that were formerly members of the Soviet Union.<br /><br />In ratifying the deployment, Russian President Vladimir Putin was accused by Western powers of jeopardizing international security, threatening European neighbors and violating the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Belarus borders three NATO members: Poland, Lithuania and Latvia.<br /><br />But the decision by Russia to install tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus (which Moscow would reportedly retain control over) was in response to the NATO move to supply its anti-Russian Kiev proxy with depleted uranium (DU) weapons. Britain announced last week that Challenger 2 battlefield tanks sent to Ukraine would be equipped with DU shells. It is understood that the United States is also ready to supply depleted uranium armor-piercing munitions to Ukraine with its Abrams tanks. Video footage from London’s Ministry of Defence shows Ukrainian troops being trained by British and American officers in handling DU shells.<br /><br />Depleted uranium is a high-density metal – much denser than lead – which can penetrate modern armor. It ignites after penetration and turns into vapor at extreme temperature. While DU shells are not explosively fissile and do not cause nuclear blasts, they do release harmful radioactive contamination into the environment. Arguably, the munitions are therefore a form of nuclear weapon in the same manner as a low-yield “dirty bomb”.<br /><br />The United States and Britain fired tonnes of depleted uranium shells during their decade-long illegal war in Iraq. NATO forces also used DU weapons in their war of aggression against former Yugoslavia. In both cases, the resultant radioactive contamination was correlated with high rates of cancer and birth defects in the civilian populations.<br /><br />The Americans and British have never been held to account for their war crimes. That impunity partly explains their arrogance in regard to pumping weapons into Ukraine against Russia and in particular the latest iteration of radioactive uranium shells.<br /><br />For the British regime to claim that DU weapons are “normal” munitions and acceptable to deploy potentially for hitting Russian territory is a demonstration of its depraved deception and utter lawlessness. It also shows that London and its NATO partners are willing to recklessly escalate the conflict in Ukraine against Russia by breaching a dangerous threshold regarding nuclear weapons.<br /><br />Under Russia’s defense doctrine, it may use nuclear weapons if its national security is threatened by either nuclear forces or conventional forces. The U.S.-led NATO alliance is pushing the envelope in a way that is seemingly incorrigible, or tantamount to psychopathic behavior.<br /><br />Perversely, this abysmal situation is distorted as somehow Russia taking a provocative step in placing tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.<br /><br />What Moscow is demonstrating is that the Anglo-American-led NATO alliance has no longer the presumption of impunity. The decades of unchecked aggression from NATO expansionism and criminal Anglo-American subterfuges in foreign countries are over. Moscow offered a diplomatic channel to create a security treaty in Europe, but that was haughtily dismissed by the arrogant imperialist powers. The result was the military-technical measures that Russia undertook with its intervention in Ukraine on February 24, 2022.<br /><br />Arguably, Russia could take additional reciprocal measures that go further. The involvement of NATO members in massively arming the NeoNazi Kiev regime should, it could be contended, be met with military defensive action to destroy supply chains entering Ukraine.<br /><br />This is the perspective for a proper understanding of the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus. It is not Russia upping the ante to jeopardize security and peace. It is NATO powers that are erasing the boundaries in a way that they are accustomed to doing for several decades.<br /><br />Let’s recall that it is the United States that has rescinded several arms-control treaties including the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty, and the Open Skies treaty, and it is Washington that has chronically undermined the last-existing one, the New START governing strategic weapons.<br /><br />There is also the existing anomaly of the United States storing nuclear weapons on the territory of five NATO members. They are Belgium, Germany, Italy, Netherlands and Turkey. These countries are signatories to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, so arguably the basing of nuclear weapons in these states is a gross violation of the NPT, which is what the West is accusing Russia of in regard to Belarus.<br /><br />Last year, too, Poland offered to house American nuclear weapons on its soil. That offer was not taken up but is presumably still on the table. Why is there not an outcry over that egregious destabilizing of arms control?<br /><br />As usual there is a surfeit of Western double-think to go along with rank hypocrisy. The illogical mentality is a product of arrogance and hubris.<br /><br />Furthermore, two NATO members Britain and France have their own national nuclear arsenals supposedly separate from Washington’s command. These two powers are actively hostile toward Russia through their arming of the Kiev regime.<br /><br />Additionally, all 30 members of the NATO alliance are committed to assisting the United States in deploying nuclear forces with their conventional militaries under the alliance’s provision called Support of Nuclear Operations With Conventional Air Tactics (SNOWCAT).<br /><br />In sum, clearly, the issue of arms control and security is badly out of balance, but it is the conduct of the United States and its NATO partners that has led to the imbalance. The arrogant presumption of impunity held by Washington and London in particular is a destabilizing factor that creates double standards that are completely unacceptable in a world supposedly under the rule of international law and the United Nations Charter.<br /><br />The conflict in Ukraine can be solved if Western powers were to abide by international law and halt the weaponizing of the Kiev regime. Going forward, Ukraine must be a neutral state and NATO must halt its aggressive expansion. A serious policy of nuclear arms control must involve the withdrawal of such weapons from European NATO member states and the inclusion of British and French arsenals as part of a wider detente framework. Note, however, that the conditionalities for peace are in large part an onus on Washington and its Western allies to do the right and reasonable things. The disturbing question is though, can Washington and its imperialist lackeys be reasonable?<br /><br />Until enlightened conduct prevails, Russia is quite correct to be intolerant of any double standards that the Americans, British and their NATO minions presume. Every aggressive move must be boldly and smartly reciprocated. Without that countervailing action, there is impunity, which is even more dangerous.<br /><br />Holding Western powers to account is a powerful weapon of attrition because it exposes their corruption and fraud, their duplicity, and their fatal arrogance. Increasingly, the Western public is seeing the endemic bankruptcy of their supposed rulers.<br /><br />Original article: <a href=\"https://strategic-culture.org/news/2023/03/31/no-more-double-standards-and-impunity-west-provokes-russia-result-nukes-in-belarus-on-natos-borders/\" target=\"_blank\">https://strategic-culture.org/news/2023/03/31/no-more-double-standards-and-impunity-west-provokes-russia-result-nukes-in-belarus-on-natos-borders/</a><br /><br /><br />",
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"content": "https://telegra.ph/No-More-Double-Standards-and-Impunity-West-Provokes-Russia-Result-Nukes-in-Belarus-on-NATOs-Borders-04-01\n\nNo More Double Standards and Impunity. West Provokes Russia. Result: Nukes in Belarus on NATO’s Borders\n\nEDITORIAL\nApril 01, 2023\n\nThe Anglo-American-led NATO alliance has no longer the presumption of impunity. The decades of unchecked aggression from NATO expansionism and criminal Anglo-American subterfuges in foreign countries are over.\n\nThe historic – and unacceptable – deployment of U.S. nuclear weapons in several European NATO states as well as the recent announcement by Britain of supplying depleted uranium weapons to Ukraine is the prologue to Russia’s decision to place tactical nukes in Belarus. The Western outcry following Russia’s decision is absurd and hypocritical.\n\nThe pattern is familiar and speaks of incorrigible arrogance. The United States and its NATO allies make reckless escalatory moves that are unprecedented in their aggression toward Russia; then Moscow makes a reciprocal move, and yet the Western governments and their dutiful news media become apoplectic with rage over Russia’s “threatening conduct” and nuclear blackmail.\n\nMaybe one day, Western leaders will eventually choke on their own illogical apoplexy.\n\nThis week there was frothing and fuming in the West about Moscow’s decision to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, despite the move being fully in accord with the Minsk government, a longtime ally of Russia and fellow member of the Collective Security Treaty Organization. The CSTO is organically comparable with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), having a shared defense commitment between allied states that were formerly members of the Soviet Union.\n\nIn ratifying the deployment, Russian President Vladimir Putin was accused by Western powers of jeopardizing international security, threatening European neighbors and violating the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Belarus borders three NATO members: Poland, Lithuania and Latvia.\n\nBut the decision by Russia to install tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus (which Moscow would reportedly retain control over) was in response to the NATO move to supply its anti-Russian Kiev proxy with depleted uranium (DU) weapons. Britain announced last week that Challenger 2 battlefield tanks sent to Ukraine would be equipped with DU shells. It is understood that the United States is also ready to supply depleted uranium armor-piercing munitions to Ukraine with its Abrams tanks. Video footage from London’s Ministry of Defence shows Ukrainian troops being trained by British and American officers in handling DU shells.\n\nDepleted uranium is a high-density metal – much denser than lead – which can penetrate modern armor. It ignites after penetration and turns into vapor at extreme temperature. While DU shells are not explosively fissile and do not cause nuclear blasts, they do release harmful radioactive contamination into the environment. Arguably, the munitions are therefore a form of nuclear weapon in the same manner as a low-yield “dirty bomb”.\n\nThe United States and Britain fired tonnes of depleted uranium shells during their decade-long illegal war in Iraq. NATO forces also used DU weapons in their war of aggression against former Yugoslavia. In both cases, the resultant radioactive contamination was correlated with high rates of cancer and birth defects in the civilian populations.\n\nThe Americans and British have never been held to account for their war crimes. That impunity partly explains their arrogance in regard to pumping weapons into Ukraine against Russia and in particular the latest iteration of radioactive uranium shells.\n\nFor the British regime to claim that DU weapons are “normal” munitions and acceptable to deploy potentially for hitting Russian territory is a demonstration of its depraved deception and utter lawlessness. It also shows that London and its NATO partners are willing to recklessly escalate the conflict in Ukraine against Russia by breaching a dangerous threshold regarding nuclear weapons.\n\nUnder Russia’s defense doctrine, it may use nuclear weapons if its national security is threatened by either nuclear forces or conventional forces. The U.S.-led NATO alliance is pushing the envelope in a way that is seemingly incorrigible, or tantamount to psychopathic behavior.\n\nPerversely, this abysmal situation is distorted as somehow Russia taking a provocative step in placing tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.\n\nWhat Moscow is demonstrating is that the Anglo-American-led NATO alliance has no longer the presumption of impunity. The decades of unchecked aggression from NATO expansionism and criminal Anglo-American subterfuges in foreign countries are over. Moscow offered a diplomatic channel to create a security treaty in Europe, but that was haughtily dismissed by the arrogant imperialist powers. The result was the military-technical measures that Russia undertook with its intervention in Ukraine on February 24, 2022.\n\nArguably, Russia could take additional reciprocal measures that go further. The involvement of NATO members in massively arming the NeoNazi Kiev regime should, it could be contended, be met with military defensive action to destroy supply chains entering Ukraine.\n\nThis is the perspective for a proper understanding of the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus. It is not Russia upping the ante to jeopardize security and peace. It is NATO powers that are erasing the boundaries in a way that they are accustomed to doing for several decades.\n\nLet’s recall that it is the United States that has rescinded several arms-control treaties including the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty, and the Open Skies treaty, and it is Washington that has chronically undermined the last-existing one, the New START governing strategic weapons.\n\nThere is also the existing anomaly of the United States storing nuclear weapons on the territory of five NATO members. They are Belgium, Germany, Italy, Netherlands and Turkey. These countries are signatories to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, so arguably the basing of nuclear weapons in these states is a gross violation of the NPT, which is what the West is accusing Russia of in regard to Belarus.\n\nLast year, too, Poland offered to house American nuclear weapons on its soil. That offer was not taken up but is presumably still on the table. Why is there not an outcry over that egregious destabilizing of arms control?\n\nAs usual there is a surfeit of Western double-think to go along with rank hypocrisy. The illogical mentality is a product of arrogance and hubris.\n\nFurthermore, two NATO members Britain and France have their own national nuclear arsenals supposedly separate from Washington’s command. These two powers are actively hostile toward Russia through their arming of the Kiev regime.\n\nAdditionally, all 30 members of the NATO alliance are committed to assisting the United States in deploying nuclear forces with their conventional militaries under the alliance’s provision called Support of Nuclear Operations With Conventional Air Tactics (SNOWCAT).\n\nIn sum, clearly, the issue of arms control and security is badly out of balance, but it is the conduct of the United States and its NATO partners that has led to the imbalance. The arrogant presumption of impunity held by Washington and London in particular is a destabilizing factor that creates double standards that are completely unacceptable in a world supposedly under the rule of international law and the United Nations Charter.\n\nThe conflict in Ukraine can be solved if Western powers were to abide by international law and halt the weaponizing of the Kiev regime. Going forward, Ukraine must be a neutral state and NATO must halt its aggressive expansion. A serious policy of nuclear arms control must involve the withdrawal of such weapons from European NATO member states and the inclusion of British and French arsenals as part of a wider detente framework. Note, however, that the conditionalities for peace are in large part an onus on Washington and its Western allies to do the right and reasonable things. The disturbing question is though, can Washington and its imperialist lackeys be reasonable?\n\nUntil enlightened conduct prevails, Russia is quite correct to be intolerant of any double standards that the Americans, British and their NATO minions presume. Every aggressive move must be boldly and smartly reciprocated. Without that countervailing action, there is impunity, which is even more dangerous.\n\nHolding Western powers to account is a powerful weapon of attrition because it exposes their corruption and fraud, their duplicity, and their fatal arrogance. Increasingly, the Western public is seeing the endemic bankruptcy of their supposed rulers.\n\nOriginal article: https://strategic-culture.org/news/2023/03/31/no-more-double-standards-and-impunity-west-provokes-russia-result-nukes-in-belarus-on-natos-borders/\n\n\n",
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"content": "<a href=\"https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2023/03/30/does-america-have-a-future-3/\" target=\"_blank\">https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2023/03/30/does-america-have-a-future-3/</a><br /><br />Does America Have a Future?<br /><br />March 30, 2023 <br /><br />Paul Craig Roberts<br /><br />In this article I explain why I think nuclear war is in the cards. I know that most do not want to hear this. But if no one knows, there is even less chance of preventing it.<br /><br />The headline yesterday (March 29) is “US To Withhold Nuclear Weapons Data From Russia As Last Treaty Collapses.” <a href=\"https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/us-withhold-nuclear-weapons-data-russia-last-treaty-collapses\" target=\"_blank\">https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/us-withhold-nuclear-weapons-data-russia-last-treaty-collapses</a> <br /><br />Washington’s propagandists, of course, blame Russia. This succeeds with patriots who wrap themselves in the flag, but it doesn’t succeed with the Kremlin. The Kremlin sees Washington taking another step toward war to obliterate the Russian obstacle to Washington’s world hegemony.<br /><br />Looking at Russia’s puzzling conduct of its conflict with Ukraine, and now with NATO and the US, I have been seeking an explanation that makes sense. Why, as readers know I have been asking, does the Kremlin refuse to use the force to quickly end the conflict before Washington and its NATO puppets become too involved to let go? It made no sense until I realized that the Kremlin has been convinced by Washington’s neoconservatives that war with the US is inevitable, which, of course, means nuclear war.<br /><br />The Kremlin is likely concerned that if Russia uses the conventional force at her disposal to knock out Ukraine, the result could be a US/NATO direct intervention prior to Russia having in place larger numbers of its hypersonic nuclear missiles and its S-500 and S-550 air defense systems which have the ability to intercept and destroy Washington’s nuclear missiles. Unlike Russia’s hypersonic missiles that randomly change course and cannot be intercepted, Washington’s technically inferior missiles can be downed.<br /><br />My conclusion is that the Kremlin, convinced by Washington’s neoconservatives and their domination of every US government in the 21st century that the US intends the destruction of Russia, is preparing for nuclear war. Several times Putin has made the public statement that it is clear that the West intends Russia’s destruction. It is incomprehensible that Washington is so reckless, so irresponsible, so utterly stupid as to have convinced the Kremlin that Washington intends Russia’s destruction. It is extraordinary that Putin’s statements produced no reassurances from the White House.<br /><br />When Russia is prepared, the US and the capitals of its NATO puppets face annihilation.<br /><br />Try to comprehend the enormous failure of US foreign policy to have led Russia to such a desperate conclusion. Here you can see the consequence of the hubris and arrogance, of which I have written at length, of the totally unrealistic neoconservatives who have control of US policy.<br /><br />I don’t see any way out of this. The neoconservatives have control of all the principal agencies of government–the National Security Council, the Pentagon, the Department of State. They control the US media, the think tanks, and the foundations. Not even the Republicans oppose them. Republican Senator Jim Risch, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, declared on March 29 that “I’m all in for escalation” of the conflict in Ukraine. If the US doesn’t escalate, Risch says, we will lose. It is about winning or losing, not about surviving. Clearly Risch indicates that Congress has no concept of the real risk in the situation. <a href=\"https://sputniknews.com/20230329/us-senator-risch-says-he-supports-us-escalation-with-russia-to-win-ukraine-conflict-1108938498.html\" target=\"_blank\">https://sputniknews.com/20230329/us-senator-risch-says-he-supports-us-escalation-with-russia-to-win-ukraine-conflict-1108938498.html</a> <br /><br />The Kremlin has sized it up and is preparing to eliminate the enemy that intends the destruction of Russia. <br /><br />What can be done? The Kremlin no longer believes or trusts Washington, so no assurances that this is all a mistake, even if forthcoming, would be believed by the Russians. <br /><br />Perhaps if every neoconservative was fired from the government, Russophobic think tanks closed, and the military/security complex permitted a president to be elected who immediately went to Moscow, agreed to the restoration of all the broken agreements and pulled NATO off of Russian borders, nuclear war could be prevented.<br /><br />But can you imagine Washington doing such a thing? It would require leadership that Americans have not seen for a very long time. It would require comprehension in Congress and in the public, and there is no media or experts to instill comprehension.<br /><br />Enjoy your life. Quit worrying about the future. The neoconservatives have assured that you don’t have one.<br /><br />",
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"content": "https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2023/03/30/does-america-have-a-future-3/\n\nDoes America Have a Future?\n\nMarch 30, 2023 \n\nPaul Craig Roberts\n\nIn this article I explain why I think nuclear war is in the cards. I know that most do not want to hear this. But if no one knows, there is even less chance of preventing it.\n\nThe headline yesterday (March 29) is “US To Withhold Nuclear Weapons Data From Russia As Last Treaty Collapses.” https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/us-withhold-nuclear-weapons-data-russia-last-treaty-collapses \n\nWashington’s propagandists, of course, blame Russia. This succeeds with patriots who wrap themselves in the flag, but it doesn’t succeed with the Kremlin. The Kremlin sees Washington taking another step toward war to obliterate the Russian obstacle to Washington’s world hegemony.\n\nLooking at Russia’s puzzling conduct of its conflict with Ukraine, and now with NATO and the US, I have been seeking an explanation that makes sense. Why, as readers know I have been asking, does the Kremlin refuse to use the force to quickly end the conflict before Washington and its NATO puppets become too involved to let go? It made no sense until I realized that the Kremlin has been convinced by Washington’s neoconservatives that war with the US is inevitable, which, of course, means nuclear war.\n\nThe Kremlin is likely concerned that if Russia uses the conventional force at her disposal to knock out Ukraine, the result could be a US/NATO direct intervention prior to Russia having in place larger numbers of its hypersonic nuclear missiles and its S-500 and S-550 air defense systems which have the ability to intercept and destroy Washington’s nuclear missiles. Unlike Russia’s hypersonic missiles that randomly change course and cannot be intercepted, Washington’s technically inferior missiles can be downed.\n\nMy conclusion is that the Kremlin, convinced by Washington’s neoconservatives and their domination of every US government in the 21st century that the US intends the destruction of Russia, is preparing for nuclear war. Several times Putin has made the public statement that it is clear that the West intends Russia’s destruction. It is incomprehensible that Washington is so reckless, so irresponsible, so utterly stupid as to have convinced the Kremlin that Washington intends Russia’s destruction. It is extraordinary that Putin’s statements produced no reassurances from the White House.\n\nWhen Russia is prepared, the US and the capitals of its NATO puppets face annihilation.\n\nTry to comprehend the enormous failure of US foreign policy to have led Russia to such a desperate conclusion. Here you can see the consequence of the hubris and arrogance, of which I have written at length, of the totally unrealistic neoconservatives who have control of US policy.\n\nI don’t see any way out of this. The neoconservatives have control of all the principal agencies of government–the National Security Council, the Pentagon, the Department of State. They control the US media, the think tanks, and the foundations. Not even the Republicans oppose them. Republican Senator Jim Risch, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, declared on March 29 that “I’m all in for escalation” of the conflict in Ukraine. If the US doesn’t escalate, Risch says, we will lose. It is about winning or losing, not about surviving. Clearly Risch indicates that Congress has no concept of the real risk in the situation. https://sputniknews.com/20230329/us-senator-risch-says-he-supports-us-escalation-with-russia-to-win-ukraine-conflict-1108938498.html \n\nThe Kremlin has sized it up and is preparing to eliminate the enemy that intends the destruction of Russia. \n\nWhat can be done? The Kremlin no longer believes or trusts Washington, so no assurances that this is all a mistake, even if forthcoming, would be believed by the Russians. \n\nPerhaps if every neoconservative was fired from the government, Russophobic think tanks closed, and the military/security complex permitted a president to be elected who immediately went to Moscow, agreed to the restoration of all the broken agreements and pulled NATO off of Russian borders, nuclear war could be prevented.\n\nBut can you imagine Washington doing such a thing? It would require leadership that Americans have not seen for a very long time. It would require comprehension in Congress and in the public, and there is no media or experts to instill comprehension.\n\nEnjoy your life. Quit worrying about the future. The neoconservatives have assured that you don’t have one.\n\n",
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"content": "<a href=\"https://telegra.ph/Arresting-Putin--Or-Arresting-All-Out-Western-Public-Revolt-03-18\" target=\"_blank\">https://telegra.ph/Arresting-Putin--Or-Arresting-All-Out-Western-Public-Revolt-03-18</a><br /><br />Arresting Putin – Or Arresting All-Out Western Public Revolt?<br /><br />March 18, 2023<br /><br />By Finian Cunningham<br /><br />If there were any genuine principles of justice, Biden should be in the dock facing war crime charges in connection with America’s illegal wars.<br /><br />Western propaganda outlets (also known as “news media”) are suddenly full of reports that The Hague-based International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin. The over-the-top coverage (that is, orchestration) is intended to give the ridiculous legal ploy an impression of gravitas and significance when in reality the so-called arrest warrant is meaningless and oozes with kitsch politicized theater.<br /><br />Along with Putin, the Russian Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova is also named as a wanted person to face “war crimes” prosecution. The alleged crimes are in connection with the supposed deportation of children to Russia during Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine conducted since February 2022.<br /><br />The basis for the ICC move is as flimsy as an errant weather balloon. It is also an audacious distortion of reality. Russia has evacuated thousands of civilians, including children, from the regions formerly of eastern Ukraine that are now part of the Russian Federation for the precise reason of taking them out of harm’s way from the NATO-backed Nazi regime in Kiev whose forces have been indiscriminately shelling the Donbass and other areas.Ukraine<br /><br />If anyone should be facing prosecution for war crimes it is Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky and his Nazi-adulating commanders, as well as their sponsors: American, European, and NATO leaders.<br /><br />The Kiev regime has been shelling the Donbass for nine years since the CIA coup brought to power this fascist junta. NATO trained the Azov Battalion and other Waffen SS-style paramilitaries which are firing U.S.-supplied HIMARS rockets with the help of American, British, French, German, Canadian, and Polish mercenaries. Russia intervened in Ukraine last year to put an end to the genocide that Washington and Europe along with their Western media are complicit in. Not a word of this is reported in so-called bastions of journalism, the New York Times and BBC. They’re too busy selling propaganda about the ICC and Russia.<br /><br />Is this the best case that the ICC and its Western handlers can really find against Russia? Kidnapping children? What about all the other allegations about Russia shelling apartment blocks and civilians? If there were any truth to these widely peddled claims in Western media then why haven’t those allegations been cited for prosecution? They haven’t because there is so little evidence. In fact, the NATO-backed Kiev regime is guilty of using apartment blocks and civilian human shields. Hence, the fallback on an emotively appealing issue of alleged child kidnapping. The cringe-worthy sense alone tells you it is a fit-up.<br /><br />But the tenuousness of it all only makes the Western claims and the ICC look even more absurd than they already do.<br /><br />In any case, the ICC has no jurisdiction over Russia, so the arrest warrants are dead letters. They’re not meant to be taken seriously anyway. This is all political theater aimed at smearing Moscow.<br /><br />Neither has the court jurisdiction over the United States. Just as well, it might be said, because if there were any genuine principles of justice, U.S. President Joe Biden should be in the dock facing multiple war crime charges in connection with America’s illegal wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, and Yemen among other countries.<br /><br />On more recent crimes, Biden and his NATO crime partners should be in dock over the blowing up of the Nord Stream gas pipelines.<br /><br />Or for sponsoring and weaponizing the Israeli regime’s renewed war crimes against Palestinians.<br /><br />Or for persecuting and torturing publisher Julian Assange because he dared to reveal the truth about American and British war crimes.<br /><br />The astounding hypocrisy and double standards are another proof – if such proof were needed – that the latest ICC maneuver against Russia is a cheap political stunt to bolster badly needed authority for the United States and its Western minions.<br /><br />This week, as American and British leaders hail the ICC indictments on Russia, also marks the 20th anniversary of the U.S.-led war in Iraq. A war that killed as many as one million civilians and destroyed a nation, based on outright fabricated lies, lies that Biden as a then-senator helped to promote. The main architects of those crimes, George W Bush and Tony Blair have never been mentioned even in passing by lawyers at the ICC. Why is that? Because the ICC is a Kangaroo Court and a political plaything that Western imperialism uses to pursue political enemies.<br /><br />Meanwhile, in other news…<br /><br />We have more reports confirming previous allegations of Joe Biden and his family having received illegal payments worth millions of dollars from Chinese businesses. Biden and his drug-addict son Hunter (who was banging the widow of his dead brother) are up to their eyes in corruption from shady wheeling and dealing using “the big guy’s” political office as collateral. The same scam routine was used in Biden’s unofficial business dealings with Ukraine after the CIA coup in 2014.<br /><br />Meanwhile, the past week has seen the U.S. banking system teetering on another historic collapse following the implosion of indebted Silicon Valley Bank and others. To prop up the coming financial avalanche across the entire financial sector, the Biden administration is once again throwing hundreds of billions of taxpayers’ money to bail out Wall Street.<br /><br />Meanwhile, in the U.S. and across Europe millions of workers are taking to the streets in unprecedented strikes and protests against corrupt capitalist regimes. The revolutionary conditions are at boiling point in France where the elitist President Emmanuel Macron (a Louis the XVI figure if ever there was one) is ramming through public spending cuts by decree, deliberately bypassing the parliamentary process (well, it is a sham anyway). But all across Europe and the United States the public mood is becoming increasingly intolerant and contemptuous of so-called governments that are spending hundreds of billions on sponsoring an insane proxy war in Ukraine against nuclear-powered Russia while at the same time, these same Western elite rulers are demanding more economic austerity on the suffering public. This is while inequality, deprivation, homelessness, hunger, and poverty are crushing societies.<br /><br />Meanwhile, we get supposedly upbeat Western media reports this week that the U.S.-led NATO axis is now moving to send warplanes to the Kiev regime on top of previous moves to supply Leopard, Abrams, Leclerc, and Challenger battle tanks – craziness that will lead to all-out war with Russia. The dissonance among Western elites and their media echo chambers is so gulf-like it is courting revolutionary anger, à la Marie-Antoinette, and her reputed let-them-eat-cakes remark.<br /><br />The charge list goes on of daily mounting anger and disgust over the collapse of the corrupt Western racket otherwise called Western capitalist democracy, otherwise known as the dictatorship of billionaires and warmongers.<br /><br />Biden, Macron, von der Leyen, Stoltenberg, Trudeau, Sunak, Scholz & Co (fill in your clown’s name here) aren’t actually concerned about arresting Putin. They are shitting themselves to arrest the mounting public revolt against the Western capitalist clown show.<br /><br />Original article: <a href=\"https://strategic-culture.org/news/2023/03/18/arresting-putin-or-arresting-all-out-western-public-revolt/\" target=\"_blank\">https://strategic-culture.org/news/2023/03/18/arresting-putin-or-arresting-all-out-western-public-revolt/</a><br /><br />",
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"content": "https://telegra.ph/Arresting-Putin--Or-Arresting-All-Out-Western-Public-Revolt-03-18\n\nArresting Putin – Or Arresting All-Out Western Public Revolt?\n\nMarch 18, 2023\n\nBy Finian Cunningham\n\nIf there were any genuine principles of justice, Biden should be in the dock facing war crime charges in connection with America’s illegal wars.\n\nWestern propaganda outlets (also known as “news media”) are suddenly full of reports that The Hague-based International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin. The over-the-top coverage (that is, orchestration) is intended to give the ridiculous legal ploy an impression of gravitas and significance when in reality the so-called arrest warrant is meaningless and oozes with kitsch politicized theater.\n\nAlong with Putin, the Russian Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova is also named as a wanted person to face “war crimes” prosecution. The alleged crimes are in connection with the supposed deportation of children to Russia during Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine conducted since February 2022.\n\nThe basis for the ICC move is as flimsy as an errant weather balloon. It is also an audacious distortion of reality. Russia has evacuated thousands of civilians, including children, from the regions formerly of eastern Ukraine that are now part of the Russian Federation for the precise reason of taking them out of harm’s way from the NATO-backed Nazi regime in Kiev whose forces have been indiscriminately shelling the Donbass and other areas.Ukraine\n\nIf anyone should be facing prosecution for war crimes it is Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky and his Nazi-adulating commanders, as well as their sponsors: American, European, and NATO leaders.\n\nThe Kiev regime has been shelling the Donbass for nine years since the CIA coup brought to power this fascist junta. NATO trained the Azov Battalion and other Waffen SS-style paramilitaries which are firing U.S.-supplied HIMARS rockets with the help of American, British, French, German, Canadian, and Polish mercenaries. Russia intervened in Ukraine last year to put an end to the genocide that Washington and Europe along with their Western media are complicit in. Not a word of this is reported in so-called bastions of journalism, the New York Times and BBC. They’re too busy selling propaganda about the ICC and Russia.\n\nIs this the best case that the ICC and its Western handlers can really find against Russia? Kidnapping children? What about all the other allegations about Russia shelling apartment blocks and civilians? If there were any truth to these widely peddled claims in Western media then why haven’t those allegations been cited for prosecution? They haven’t because there is so little evidence. In fact, the NATO-backed Kiev regime is guilty of using apartment blocks and civilian human shields. Hence, the fallback on an emotively appealing issue of alleged child kidnapping. The cringe-worthy sense alone tells you it is a fit-up.\n\nBut the tenuousness of it all only makes the Western claims and the ICC look even more absurd than they already do.\n\nIn any case, the ICC has no jurisdiction over Russia, so the arrest warrants are dead letters. They’re not meant to be taken seriously anyway. This is all political theater aimed at smearing Moscow.\n\nNeither has the court jurisdiction over the United States. Just as well, it might be said, because if there were any genuine principles of justice, U.S. President Joe Biden should be in the dock facing multiple war crime charges in connection with America’s illegal wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, and Yemen among other countries.\n\nOn more recent crimes, Biden and his NATO crime partners should be in dock over the blowing up of the Nord Stream gas pipelines.\n\nOr for sponsoring and weaponizing the Israeli regime’s renewed war crimes against Palestinians.\n\nOr for persecuting and torturing publisher Julian Assange because he dared to reveal the truth about American and British war crimes.\n\nThe astounding hypocrisy and double standards are another proof – if such proof were needed – that the latest ICC maneuver against Russia is a cheap political stunt to bolster badly needed authority for the United States and its Western minions.\n\nThis week, as American and British leaders hail the ICC indictments on Russia, also marks the 20th anniversary of the U.S.-led war in Iraq. A war that killed as many as one million civilians and destroyed a nation, based on outright fabricated lies, lies that Biden as a then-senator helped to promote. The main architects of those crimes, George W Bush and Tony Blair have never been mentioned even in passing by lawyers at the ICC. Why is that? Because the ICC is a Kangaroo Court and a political plaything that Western imperialism uses to pursue political enemies.\n\nMeanwhile, in other news…\n\nWe have more reports confirming previous allegations of Joe Biden and his family having received illegal payments worth millions of dollars from Chinese businesses. Biden and his drug-addict son Hunter (who was banging the widow of his dead brother) are up to their eyes in corruption from shady wheeling and dealing using “the big guy’s” political office as collateral. The same scam routine was used in Biden’s unofficial business dealings with Ukraine after the CIA coup in 2014.\n\nMeanwhile, the past week has seen the U.S. banking system teetering on another historic collapse following the implosion of indebted Silicon Valley Bank and others. To prop up the coming financial avalanche across the entire financial sector, the Biden administration is once again throwing hundreds of billions of taxpayers’ money to bail out Wall Street.\n\nMeanwhile, in the U.S. and across Europe millions of workers are taking to the streets in unprecedented strikes and protests against corrupt capitalist regimes. The revolutionary conditions are at boiling point in France where the elitist President Emmanuel Macron (a Louis the XVI figure if ever there was one) is ramming through public spending cuts by decree, deliberately bypassing the parliamentary process (well, it is a sham anyway). But all across Europe and the United States the public mood is becoming increasingly intolerant and contemptuous of so-called governments that are spending hundreds of billions on sponsoring an insane proxy war in Ukraine against nuclear-powered Russia while at the same time, these same Western elite rulers are demanding more economic austerity on the suffering public. This is while inequality, deprivation, homelessness, hunger, and poverty are crushing societies.\n\nMeanwhile, we get supposedly upbeat Western media reports this week that the U.S.-led NATO axis is now moving to send warplanes to the Kiev regime on top of previous moves to supply Leopard, Abrams, Leclerc, and Challenger battle tanks – craziness that will lead to all-out war with Russia. The dissonance among Western elites and their media echo chambers is so gulf-like it is courting revolutionary anger, à la Marie-Antoinette, and her reputed let-them-eat-cakes remark.\n\nThe charge list goes on of daily mounting anger and disgust over the collapse of the corrupt Western racket otherwise called Western capitalist democracy, otherwise known as the dictatorship of billionaires and warmongers.\n\nBiden, Macron, von der Leyen, Stoltenberg, Trudeau, Sunak, Scholz & Co (fill in your clown’s name here) aren’t actually concerned about arresting Putin. They are shitting themselves to arrest the mounting public revolt against the Western capitalist clown show.\n\nOriginal article: https://strategic-culture.org/news/2023/03/18/arresting-putin-or-arresting-all-out-western-public-revolt/\n\n",
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"content": "<a href=\"https://telegra.ph/Troubling-Questions-Over-US-Drone-Crash-Near-Crimea-An-Inevitable-Collision-Made-in-Washington-03-17\" target=\"_blank\">https://telegra.ph/Troubling-Questions-Over-US-Drone-Crash-Near-Crimea-An-Inevitable-Collision-Made-in-Washington-03-17</a><br /><br />Troubling Questions Over U.S. Drone Crash Near Crimea… An Inevitable Collision Made in Washington<br /><br />Editorial March 17, 2023<br /><br />A $32 million drone buried unceremoniously at sea says a lot about a failing empire.<br /><br />A U.S. spy drone operating 8,000 kilometers from Washington on Russia’s borders, helping a Nazi regime at war against Russia, crashes into the Black Sea – and yet, insanely, Moscow is arraigned for taking defensive action?<br /><br />One has to be amazed by the total dissonance among American politicians and media over the incident this week when an unmanned U.S. military aircraft crashed into the Black Sea near Russian territory. The righteous indignation speaks of ineffable double-think and hypocrisy.<br /><br />Russia was condemned for “reckless” and “unlawful” conduct after two of its fighter jets intercepted an MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). The Reaper is deployed both as a surveillance aircraft and as an attack weapon capable of firing missiles. This drone was detected approaching airspace that Moscow has designated off-limits in connection with its special military operation in Ukraine.<br /><br />The Pentagon claimed that one of the Russian Su-27 jets collided with the drone causing damage to one of its propellers. The U.S. Air Force says its operators brought down the Reaper which crashed in international waters. Why was a $32 million UAV so readily ditched?<br /><br />For its part, Russia claims that its fighter jets buzzed the American drone causing it to make sharp maneuvers whereupon the UAV lost aeronautical control and crashed into the sea. Moscow has put the blame on the United States for creating a provocation and called on the U.S. to halt hostile flights near its borders. An effort to recover the drone debris is underway by Russia. Sensitive flight data may show what kind of mission the UAV was really undertaking. Was it gathering offensive targeting coordinates, as many such American UAVs have been doing over the past year to enable the Kiev regime?<br /><br />A short video released by the Pentagon apparently from the Reaper before it crashed shows the Russian jets making close passes and dumping fuel on the UAV. The video feed is interrupted momentarily but resumes to apparently show a propeller bent out of shape. If the drone was continuing to fly despite the damaged propeller why did its operators decide to bring it down, if that is what really happened?<br /><br />It stretches credulity and the laws of physics to believe that such a collision could take place without causing a mid-air explosion of both aircraft, especially considering that the American drone had been drenched in aviation fuel before the alleged high-speed hit.<br /><br />In any case, pondering the minutiae of the incident loses sight of the bigger picture which is far more important. U.S. and NATO drones are flying thick and fast around Russia’s borders since the beginning of the conflict in Ukraine a year ago.<br /><br />These drones and other surveillance platforms are providing targeting information for the Kiev regime to attack Russia. There has been an uptick in air strikes on Russia’s pre-conflict territory, including attacks on nuclear airbases and energy infrastructure. Clearly, the United States and its NATO allies are a de facto party to the war.<br /><br />In the latest incident, the American Reaper was approaching Russia’s air security zone with its transponder turned off. That covert mode of flight contradicts the Pentagon’s claim that its aircraft was carrying out a “routine” mission. The inference here is “routine” means “innocent”. There is nothing “innocent” about NATO drones spying on Russian territory while supplying offensive weapons and targeting information to a Kiev regime whose soldiers glorify Nazis and the killing of Russians.<br /><br />Indeed, it’s incredible that Russia is obliged to expend effort in justifying its actions to interdict the American drone. Russia’s ambassador to the U.S., Anatoly Antonov, was summoned in Washington for a rebuke. Antonov apparently gave his American interlocutors short shrift and told them they were the ones creating provocations.<br /><br />Given the wider circumstances of NATO arming the Kiev regime to the teeth – the latest development being the supply of MiG-29 fighter jets from Poland and Slovakia – arguably it should be a legal right for Russia to not merely intercept but to blast enemy drones out of the sky.<br /><br />Can it be imagined how the U.S. would react if Russian drones were flying near its territory with their transponders off? We don’t have to imagine. Only a few weeks ago, President Joe Biden ordered F-16s to fire $500,000 Sidewinder missiles to shoot down a Chinese weather balloon and other balloons that had accidentally strayed into North American airspace.<br /><br />The danger here is that Washington is a hyper-militarized, hyper-hostile rogue regime that is unhinged from its own delusional sense of righteousness and hubris. The American regime wantonly declares Russia and China to be geopolitical enemies and yet expects to fly and sail its warplanes and warships wherever it pleases as a matter of “routine”.<br /><br />To some vague degree, it seems, Washington senses the danger of a potential conflagration with a nuclear power. Following the drone incident, the U.S. military top brass quickly contacted their Russian counterparts in an apparent effort to avoid escalation. Nevertheless, the Pentagon chiefs repeated their presumed “right” to continue sending drones near Russian airspace. The same arrogant attitude applies towards China and the unrelenting deployment of warships in so-called “freedom of navigation” exercises in tone-deaf dismissal of Beijing’s warnings.<br /><br />A fundamental problem is one of deep irrationality among American leaders. They want to have their imperial cake and eat it too. This exceptionalism has been going on for decades. In 1960, a CIA U2 spy plane was shot down over Soviet airspace provoking a hue and cry by the Americans for Moscow to have the audacity to do so.<br /><br />The current situation is even more absurd. Washington is all but at war against Russia – despite its risible assertions about not being involved – and yet when a hostile aircraft is forced down there is laughable outrage and hyperventilating by the Americans.<br /><br />Here’s the most straightforward way to avoid a disastrous confrontation. Washington and its allies need to stop arming the Kiev regime and take their military forces out of the Black Sea altogether. Not only the Black Sea, but the Baltic, Barents, South China Sea, and other regions where they are loitering as a global threat.<br /><br />The American rulers say they don’t want a conflict with Russia or China. Fine. Well, then they should take the necessary actions to de-escalate. The troubling question, however, is that the imperialist self-appointed global masters seem incapable of even understanding why, how, and what it means to de-escalate.<br /><br />The peril of world war – and nuclear annihilation – stems from the imperial arrogance in Washington and its Western satraps who seem to think that they have a divine right to rule the world as they see fit. There was a time when these criminals could fly drones with impunity over defenseless nations like Afghanistan and Iraq blowing up wedding parties and murdering civilians. Those days are over as the Black Sea incident demonstrates.<br /><br />A $32 million drone buried unceremoniously at sea says a lot about a failing empire.<br /><br />Original article: <a href=\"https://strategic-culture.org/news/2023/03/17/troubling-questions-over-us-drone-crash-near-crimea-an-inevitable-collision-made-in-washington/\" target=\"_blank\">https://strategic-culture.org/news/2023/03/17/troubling-questions-over-us-drone-crash-near-crimea-an-inevitable-collision-made-in-washington/</a><br /><br /><br />",
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"content": "https://telegra.ph/Troubling-Questions-Over-US-Drone-Crash-Near-Crimea-An-Inevitable-Collision-Made-in-Washington-03-17\n\nTroubling Questions Over U.S. Drone Crash Near Crimea… An Inevitable Collision Made in Washington\n\nEditorial March 17, 2023\n\nA $32 million drone buried unceremoniously at sea says a lot about a failing empire.\n\nA U.S. spy drone operating 8,000 kilometers from Washington on Russia’s borders, helping a Nazi regime at war against Russia, crashes into the Black Sea – and yet, insanely, Moscow is arraigned for taking defensive action?\n\nOne has to be amazed by the total dissonance among American politicians and media over the incident this week when an unmanned U.S. military aircraft crashed into the Black Sea near Russian territory. The righteous indignation speaks of ineffable double-think and hypocrisy.\n\nRussia was condemned for “reckless” and “unlawful” conduct after two of its fighter jets intercepted an MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). The Reaper is deployed both as a surveillance aircraft and as an attack weapon capable of firing missiles. This drone was detected approaching airspace that Moscow has designated off-limits in connection with its special military operation in Ukraine.\n\nThe Pentagon claimed that one of the Russian Su-27 jets collided with the drone causing damage to one of its propellers. The U.S. Air Force says its operators brought down the Reaper which crashed in international waters. Why was a $32 million UAV so readily ditched?\n\nFor its part, Russia claims that its fighter jets buzzed the American drone causing it to make sharp maneuvers whereupon the UAV lost aeronautical control and crashed into the sea. Moscow has put the blame on the United States for creating a provocation and called on the U.S. to halt hostile flights near its borders. An effort to recover the drone debris is underway by Russia. Sensitive flight data may show what kind of mission the UAV was really undertaking. Was it gathering offensive targeting coordinates, as many such American UAVs have been doing over the past year to enable the Kiev regime?\n\nA short video released by the Pentagon apparently from the Reaper before it crashed shows the Russian jets making close passes and dumping fuel on the UAV. The video feed is interrupted momentarily but resumes to apparently show a propeller bent out of shape. If the drone was continuing to fly despite the damaged propeller why did its operators decide to bring it down, if that is what really happened?\n\nIt stretches credulity and the laws of physics to believe that such a collision could take place without causing a mid-air explosion of both aircraft, especially considering that the American drone had been drenched in aviation fuel before the alleged high-speed hit.\n\nIn any case, pondering the minutiae of the incident loses sight of the bigger picture which is far more important. U.S. and NATO drones are flying thick and fast around Russia’s borders since the beginning of the conflict in Ukraine a year ago.\n\nThese drones and other surveillance platforms are providing targeting information for the Kiev regime to attack Russia. There has been an uptick in air strikes on Russia’s pre-conflict territory, including attacks on nuclear airbases and energy infrastructure. Clearly, the United States and its NATO allies are a de facto party to the war.\n\nIn the latest incident, the American Reaper was approaching Russia’s air security zone with its transponder turned off. That covert mode of flight contradicts the Pentagon’s claim that its aircraft was carrying out a “routine” mission. The inference here is “routine” means “innocent”. There is nothing “innocent” about NATO drones spying on Russian territory while supplying offensive weapons and targeting information to a Kiev regime whose soldiers glorify Nazis and the killing of Russians.\n\nIndeed, it’s incredible that Russia is obliged to expend effort in justifying its actions to interdict the American drone. Russia’s ambassador to the U.S., Anatoly Antonov, was summoned in Washington for a rebuke. Antonov apparently gave his American interlocutors short shrift and told them they were the ones creating provocations.\n\nGiven the wider circumstances of NATO arming the Kiev regime to the teeth – the latest development being the supply of MiG-29 fighter jets from Poland and Slovakia – arguably it should be a legal right for Russia to not merely intercept but to blast enemy drones out of the sky.\n\nCan it be imagined how the U.S. would react if Russian drones were flying near its territory with their transponders off? We don’t have to imagine. Only a few weeks ago, President Joe Biden ordered F-16s to fire $500,000 Sidewinder missiles to shoot down a Chinese weather balloon and other balloons that had accidentally strayed into North American airspace.\n\nThe danger here is that Washington is a hyper-militarized, hyper-hostile rogue regime that is unhinged from its own delusional sense of righteousness and hubris. The American regime wantonly declares Russia and China to be geopolitical enemies and yet expects to fly and sail its warplanes and warships wherever it pleases as a matter of “routine”.\n\nTo some vague degree, it seems, Washington senses the danger of a potential conflagration with a nuclear power. Following the drone incident, the U.S. military top brass quickly contacted their Russian counterparts in an apparent effort to avoid escalation. Nevertheless, the Pentagon chiefs repeated their presumed “right” to continue sending drones near Russian airspace. The same arrogant attitude applies towards China and the unrelenting deployment of warships in so-called “freedom of navigation” exercises in tone-deaf dismissal of Beijing’s warnings.\n\nA fundamental problem is one of deep irrationality among American leaders. They want to have their imperial cake and eat it too. This exceptionalism has been going on for decades. In 1960, a CIA U2 spy plane was shot down over Soviet airspace provoking a hue and cry by the Americans for Moscow to have the audacity to do so.\n\nThe current situation is even more absurd. Washington is all but at war against Russia – despite its risible assertions about not being involved – and yet when a hostile aircraft is forced down there is laughable outrage and hyperventilating by the Americans.\n\nHere’s the most straightforward way to avoid a disastrous confrontation. Washington and its allies need to stop arming the Kiev regime and take their military forces out of the Black Sea altogether. Not only the Black Sea, but the Baltic, Barents, South China Sea, and other regions where they are loitering as a global threat.\n\nThe American rulers say they don’t want a conflict with Russia or China. Fine. Well, then they should take the necessary actions to de-escalate. The troubling question, however, is that the imperialist self-appointed global masters seem incapable of even understanding why, how, and what it means to de-escalate.\n\nThe peril of world war – and nuclear annihilation – stems from the imperial arrogance in Washington and its Western satraps who seem to think that they have a divine right to rule the world as they see fit. There was a time when these criminals could fly drones with impunity over defenseless nations like Afghanistan and Iraq blowing up wedding parties and murdering civilians. Those days are over as the Black Sea incident demonstrates.\n\nA $32 million drone buried unceremoniously at sea says a lot about a failing empire.\n\nOriginal article: https://strategic-culture.org/news/2023/03/17/troubling-questions-over-us-drone-crash-near-crimea-an-inevitable-collision-made-in-washington/\n\n\n",
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"content": "<a href=\"https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2023/03/16/does-putin-want-nuclear-war/\" target=\"_blank\">https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2023/03/16/does-putin-want-nuclear-war/</a><br /><br />Does Putin Want Nuclear War?<br /><br />March 16, 2023 <br /><br />Paul Craig Roberts<br /><br />US senator wants ‘nuclear war’ – Moscow<br /><br />American politicians are inciting an “apocalyptic conflict,” Russia’s envoy has warned <br /><br />What is the point of these endless Russian complaints? Will the Kremlin ever understand that it is the Kremlin’s failure to use sufficient force to terminate a conflict whose ever-widening character threatens to end in nuclear war? Why does the Kremlin refuse to understand an obvious situation? Where is the Russian Army? <br /><br /><a href=\"https://www.rt.com/russia/573046-antonov-graham-planes-threat/\" target=\"_blank\">https://www.rt.com/russia/573046-antonov-graham-planes-threat/</a> <br /><br />How many times have senior Russian officials noted incidents that “confirm US involvement in the Ukraine conflict”? Why does the Kremlin embarrass itself by pointing out incidents that it does nothing about? The drone was obviously a provocation. Washington’s intention was to produce a Russian response to a drone headed into Russian territory. Will the drone incident be the excuse for sending F-16s to Ukraine? <a href=\"https://www.rt.com/russia/573036-russia-us-drone-search/\" target=\"_blank\">https://www.rt.com/russia/573036-russia-us-drone-search/</a> <br /><br />The Kremlin is again sitting on its butt, as it did for 8 years from 2014 until 2022, while the West restores and upgrades Ukraine’s military capability. Meanwhile, the Kremlin prepares more troubles for itself by refusing to acknowledge that it is at war, not conducting a “limited military operation” in Donbass. The Kremlin’s inability to understand the dangers in an ever-widening war is inexplicable.<br /><br />Why does the Kremlin expect Russians to fight a war that the Kremlin shows no signs of intention to win? Soldiers don’t want to die for the purpose of their government negotiating a settlement. Has the Russian Army refused to fight a war that Putin has no intention of winning?<br /><br />Precisely as I predicted from the beginning, the longer this conflict continues, the more involved Washington becomes. The more Washington is involved, the more dangerous the conflict becomes. How can such an obvious fact escape the Kremlin? And Washington?<br /><br />",
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"content": "https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2023/03/16/does-putin-want-nuclear-war/\n\nDoes Putin Want Nuclear War?\n\nMarch 16, 2023 \n\nPaul Craig Roberts\n\nUS senator wants ‘nuclear war’ – Moscow\n\nAmerican politicians are inciting an “apocalyptic conflict,” Russia’s envoy has warned \n\nWhat is the point of these endless Russian complaints? Will the Kremlin ever understand that it is the Kremlin’s failure to use sufficient force to terminate a conflict whose ever-widening character threatens to end in nuclear war? Why does the Kremlin refuse to understand an obvious situation? Where is the Russian Army? \n\nhttps://www.rt.com/russia/573046-antonov-graham-planes-threat/ \n\nHow many times have senior Russian officials noted incidents that “confirm US involvement in the Ukraine conflict”? Why does the Kremlin embarrass itself by pointing out incidents that it does nothing about? The drone was obviously a provocation. Washington’s intention was to produce a Russian response to a drone headed into Russian territory. Will the drone incident be the excuse for sending F-16s to Ukraine? https://www.rt.com/russia/573036-russia-us-drone-search/ \n\nThe Kremlin is again sitting on its butt, as it did for 8 years from 2014 until 2022, while the West restores and upgrades Ukraine’s military capability. Meanwhile, the Kremlin prepares more troubles for itself by refusing to acknowledge that it is at war, not conducting a “limited military operation” in Donbass. The Kremlin’s inability to understand the dangers in an ever-widening war is inexplicable.\n\nWhy does the Kremlin expect Russians to fight a war that the Kremlin shows no signs of intention to win? Soldiers don’t want to die for the purpose of their government negotiating a settlement. Has the Russian Army refused to fight a war that Putin has no intention of winning?\n\nPrecisely as I predicted from the beginning, the longer this conflict continues, the more involved Washington becomes. The more Washington is involved, the more dangerous the conflict becomes. How can such an obvious fact escape the Kremlin? And Washington?\n\n",
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"content": "<a href=\"https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2023/03/12/what-is-going-on-inside-the-kremlins-head/\" target=\"_blank\">https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2023/03/12/what-is-going-on-inside-the-kremlins-head/</a><br /><br />What Is Going on Inside the Kremlin’s Head?<br /><br />March 12, 2023 <br /><br />Paul Craig Roberts<br /><br />The Russian Ministry of Defense announced that “a massive retaliatory strike [consisting of] high-precision long-range air, sea and land-based precision weapons, including the Kinzhal hypersonic missile system, hit key elements of Ukraine’s military infrastructure, enterprises of the military-industrial complex, as well as energy facilities providing them with power.” <a href=\"https://sputniknews.com/20230309/russian-military-conducts-massive-retaliatory-strike-in-ukraine-in-response-to-bryansk-terror-1108210949.html\" target=\"_blank\">https://sputniknews.com/20230309/russian-military-conducts-massive-retaliatory-strike-in-ukraine-in-response-to-bryansk-terror-1108210949.html</a> <br /><br />The Ministry of Defense said that the attack was in retaliation for an Ukrainian terror attack on civilians in a Russian town situated on Ukraine’s border.<br /><br />The question that jumps to mind is why is a terrorist incident needed for Russia to attack the war-fighting capability of the government with which Russia is at war? Why wasn’t the Ukrainian military infrastructure taken out long ago in order to get the conflict over before it spins out of control?<br /><br />The statement of the Russian Foreign Ministry makes no sense either. “The Russian Foreign Ministry warned that the use of NATO-provided weapons in the Bryansk attacks raised questions about the West’s culpability for the acts of terrorism.” What does the Foreign Ministry mean “raised questions about the West’s culpability?” It is obvious from the weapons used that the West is culpable. What does it mean “warned”? The Kremlin never does anything about its warnings, so why issue them?<br /><br />The conflict is now in its 13th month, and the Russian Army is still not involved. It is a war conducted by a private para-military organization, the Wagner Group, and the Donbass militias. Although it is called a “Russian invasion,” it most certainly isn’t. The Kremlin has done little to hamper Ukraine’s war-fighting capability, limiting its force to villages and towns in the Russian populated areas of eastern and southern Ukraine.<br /><br />The Wagner Group and the Donbass militias are slowly forcing the Ukrainians out of Donbass, but the slow process does not limit the conflict, as Putin’s “limited military operation” intends. Instead, it has greatly expanded the conflict by giving Washington/NATO plenty of time to become involved in the conflict. Common sense should tell the Kremlin that to avoid a wider war, a quick victory is necessary before the growing involvement of Washington and NATO spin the conflict out of control.<br /><br />The Kremlin’s foolishness is brewing more potential “Ukraines” for Russia. Washington has taken advantage of the Kremlin’s preoccupation with Ukraine to cause disturbances in the former Russian province of Georgia ( <a href=\"https://southfront.org/no-right-for-georgia-to-strengthen-its-sovereignty/\" target=\"_blank\">https://southfront.org/no-right-for-georgia-to-strengthen-its-sovereignty/</a> ), and in Transnistria where Russia has 1,500 troops guarding a Soviet-era arms cache ( <a href=\"https://www.rt.com/russia/572675-transnistria-ukraine-terrorist-attack/\" target=\"_blank\">https://www.rt.com/russia/572675-transnistria-ukraine-terrorist-attack/</a> ). <br /><br />Wars that linger tend not to have good outcomes, as in Washingtons war in Vietnam and Afghanistan. Yet the Kremlin has gratuitously allowed the Ukrainian conflict to linger and linger, while the Kremlin withholds the force to bring it to a quick end. Little wonder Washington removed its bans on supplying Ukraine with tanks, long-range missiles, and soon perhaps jet fighters and troops. <br /><br />Putin’s failure as a war leader has put the world on the path to nuclear war.<br /><br />",
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"content": "https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2023/03/12/what-is-going-on-inside-the-kremlins-head/\n\nWhat Is Going on Inside the Kremlin’s Head?\n\nMarch 12, 2023 \n\nPaul Craig Roberts\n\nThe Russian Ministry of Defense announced that “a massive retaliatory strike [consisting of] high-precision long-range air, sea and land-based precision weapons, including the Kinzhal hypersonic missile system, hit key elements of Ukraine’s military infrastructure, enterprises of the military-industrial complex, as well as energy facilities providing them with power.” https://sputniknews.com/20230309/russian-military-conducts-massive-retaliatory-strike-in-ukraine-in-response-to-bryansk-terror-1108210949.html \n\nThe Ministry of Defense said that the attack was in retaliation for an Ukrainian terror attack on civilians in a Russian town situated on Ukraine’s border.\n\nThe question that jumps to mind is why is a terrorist incident needed for Russia to attack the war-fighting capability of the government with which Russia is at war? Why wasn’t the Ukrainian military infrastructure taken out long ago in order to get the conflict over before it spins out of control?\n\nThe statement of the Russian Foreign Ministry makes no sense either. “The Russian Foreign Ministry warned that the use of NATO-provided weapons in the Bryansk attacks raised questions about the West’s culpability for the acts of terrorism.” What does the Foreign Ministry mean “raised questions about the West’s culpability?” It is obvious from the weapons used that the West is culpable. What does it mean “warned”? The Kremlin never does anything about its warnings, so why issue them?\n\nThe conflict is now in its 13th month, and the Russian Army is still not involved. It is a war conducted by a private para-military organization, the Wagner Group, and the Donbass militias. Although it is called a “Russian invasion,” it most certainly isn’t. The Kremlin has done little to hamper Ukraine’s war-fighting capability, limiting its force to villages and towns in the Russian populated areas of eastern and southern Ukraine.\n\nThe Wagner Group and the Donbass militias are slowly forcing the Ukrainians out of Donbass, but the slow process does not limit the conflict, as Putin’s “limited military operation” intends. Instead, it has greatly expanded the conflict by giving Washington/NATO plenty of time to become involved in the conflict. Common sense should tell the Kremlin that to avoid a wider war, a quick victory is necessary before the growing involvement of Washington and NATO spin the conflict out of control.\n\nThe Kremlin’s foolishness is brewing more potential “Ukraines” for Russia. Washington has taken advantage of the Kremlin’s preoccupation with Ukraine to cause disturbances in the former Russian province of Georgia ( https://southfront.org/no-right-for-georgia-to-strengthen-its-sovereignty/ ), and in Transnistria where Russia has 1,500 troops guarding a Soviet-era arms cache ( https://www.rt.com/russia/572675-transnistria-ukraine-terrorist-attack/ ). \n\nWars that linger tend not to have good outcomes, as in Washingtons war in Vietnam and Afghanistan. Yet the Kremlin has gratuitously allowed the Ukrainian conflict to linger and linger, while the Kremlin withholds the force to bring it to a quick end. Little wonder Washington removed its bans on supplying Ukraine with tanks, long-range missiles, and soon perhaps jet fighters and troops. \n\nPutin’s failure as a war leader has put the world on the path to nuclear war.\n\n",
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"content": "<a href=\"https://telegra.ph/The-Empire-of-Lies-Strikes-Back-Extraordinary-Cover-Up-of-Nord-Stream-Terrorism-03-10\" target=\"_blank\">https://telegra.ph/The-Empire-of-Lies-Strikes-Back-Extraordinary-Cover-Up-of-Nord-Stream-Terrorism-03-10</a><br /><br />The Empire of Lies Strikes Back… Extraordinary Cover-Up of Nord Stream Terrorism<br /><br />EDITORIALMarch 10, 2023<br /><br />Western news outlets pompously claim to be pinnacles of journalism and defenders of public interest and democracy. They are nothing but the propaganda ministry for Washington – the Empire of Lies.<br /><br />The New York Times and other Western news media ran with clumsy and blatantly diversionary claims this week, which in the end only serve to draw even more attention to the guilt of the United States in blowing up the Nord Stream gas pipelines.<br /><br />Not only is the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden even more indictable over the criminal act; the absurd cover-up attempt this week exposes the Western media as nothing but a ministry of propaganda masquerading as journalism.<br /><br />Four weeks ago, the eminent independent American journalist, Seymour Hersh, published a blockbuster investigative report that revealed how President Biden and senior White House staff ordered the explosive detonation of the natural gas pipelines connecting Russia to the European Union via the Baltic Sea and Germany. The legendary Hersh has an impeccable record of groundbreaking stories, from the My Lai massacre committed by U.S. troops in Vietnam in 1968 to the Abu Ghraib prison torture in Iraq under American occupation to the operation of ratlines to funnel weapons and mercenaries from Libya to Syria to fight Washington’s proxy war for regime change in Damascus.<br /><br />In his seminal report on the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines, Hersh relied on insider Washington sources. He published claims that the United States carried out the covert operation using a team of U.S. Navy divers under the cover of NATO war maneuvers known as BALTOPS 22 last summer. Explosives were planted on the seabed during the exercises held in June 2022 and then later detonated on September 26 with the help of Norwegian military aircraft.<br /><br />The convincing aspect of Hersh’s report was not just the credible detail of the operation, but that it confirmed what many independent observers had already concluded from strong circumstantial evidence about who had the motive and means to conduct the sabotage. Readers are referred to a recent editorial by Strategic Culture Foundation which compiles the background of why the United States is deemed to be the culprit.<br /><br />Now here is a curious thing. While Hersh’s report provoked shockwaves around the world, Western governments and the mainstream media chose to ignore his report. In a weird parallel universe sort of way, they pretended that Hersh’s resounding revelations did not exist.<br /><br />One would think that given Hersh’s reputation for world-news-breaking scoops, and given that his latest report revealed a rock-solid plausible account of how a major civilian infrastructure project was sabotaged, and further given that the implication of this report was the inculpation of the United States and its president and his senior staff in ordering an act of terrorism – one would think that, maybe, just maybe, the Western media would be obliged to give some reportage on that matter. No, far from it, they unanimously kept schtum. In a way that is quite shocking and a travesty.<br /><br />The charade of silence was maintained for a month until this week when the New York Times published a report claiming an alternative explanation for the Nord Stream explosions. As if on cue, there then followed a rash of other Western media reports regurgitating or spinning the same story.<br /><br />Laughably, the New York Times claimed its report was “the first significant known lead about who was responsible for the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines”. This after a month of pointedly ignoring and effectively censoring from the public any knowledge of the spellbinding Hersh article.<br /><br />The thrust of this week’s “reports” (if they could be called that) are that the sabotage was carried out by “pro-Ukrainian groups” which may have involved Ukrainian or Russian nationals. The source of the claims was anonymous US officials citing purported “new intelligence”. It was also claimed that a private yacht owned by Ukrainians was used and that the CIA had tipped off German intelligence about the impending attack months before it happened.<br /><br />The information reported is so vague as to be impossible to verify, or frankly to even merit credibility. We are led to believe that a sophisticated, highly technical military operation on the Baltic seabed was somehow carried off by a group of unknown paramilitaries. The New York Times and other Western media outlets published stories that on their face are outlandish. This is gutter press stuff.<br /><br />Furthermore, from the way the reports are formulated it is obvious that they are meant to serve as a rebuttal to the Hersh report without actually properly acknowledging the Hersh report. Thus, the United States denies any involvement in a criminal act that it barely refuses to acknowledge. This double-think is itself indicative of guilt in the Empire of Lies.<br /><br />The problem for the Western propaganda peddlers – besides sheer implausibility – is the further burden of having to provide an alibi for the Kiev regime. The U.S. and its NATO allies need to distract from Washington as the obvious author of the crime, but they also cannot afford to implicate the Kiev regime because that could inflame European and American public antipathy towards the NATO-sponsored junta. This is why the New York Times & Co appear to be involved in a tortuous balancing act of blaming Ukrainian militants for the Nord Stream blasts but also claiming that these intrepid militants managed to do so without the knowledge of President Vladimir Zelensky and his cabal. Which again makes the narrative doubly ridiculous.<br /><br />There is also an important element of timing to all these Western media shenanigans. Last week, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was hosted in the White House by Joe Biden on March 3 in what was a bizarrely private meeting. Their conversations behind closed doors were not disclosed. Both leaders stonewalled reporters about their discussions. It can be fairly speculated that Scholz was pleading with Biden for some political cover because of the mounting anger among the German public about the economic consequences of America’s policy over Ukraine and Russia. Germany’s industry and export-led economy have been ravaged by the loss of Russia’s traditional natural gas supply. Scholz and his government are seen to be behaving treacherously by going along with what appears to be American vandalism of the German economy. For the Hersh report to go unanswered is causing massive public pressure on the Berlin government. Hence this week, we saw attempts to divert public attention with a concerted Western media campaign about who supposedly blew up Nord Stream. The aim is to absolve Washington and its lackeys in Berlin.<br /><br />Another timing issue was the sudden appearance of Ukrainian and Russian fascist commandoes who carried out the terrorist attack in Russia’s Bryansk region on March 2 last week. Two adults were killed and a young boy was badly injured in what was a gratuitous atrocity that made international headlines. That daring raid, however, brought to public attention the existence of pro-Ukrainian militants who appear to act as lone wolves in international operations. This is the very kind of profile that the New York Times and other Western media outfits attributed to the Nord Stream sabotage. That begs the reasonable question: was the Bryansk terror attack enabled by Western military intelligence handlers in order to promote the subsequent media disinformation effort concerning the Nord Stream pipelines?<br /><br />Let’s cut to the chase. The Western media disinformation campaign is a crude joke. It can’t distract from the glaring facts that the United States and its NATO allies carried out an act of international terrorism against European companies and governments, and an act of war against Russia as the main owner of the 1,200-kilometer Nord Stream pipelines worth at least $20 billion to construct. That criminal act was plausibly ordered by an American president and his White House aides. The geopolitical motives are overwhelming as are the self-indicting admissions by Biden and his aides before and after the odious event.<br /><br />The cack-handed attempts this week to cover up by the Western media only serve to further incriminate the United States and its NATO crime partners. In addition, the Western media are exposed more than ever as being complicit in propagandizing war crimes. The New York Times and other Western news outlets pompously claim to be pinnacles of journalism and defenders of public interest and democracy. They are nothing but the propaganda ministry for Washington – the Empire of Lies.<br /><br />Original article: <a href=\"https://strategic-culture.org/news/2023/03/10/the-empire-of-lies-strikes-back-extraordinary-cover-up-of-nord-stream-terrorism/\" target=\"_blank\">https://strategic-culture.org/news/2023/03/10/the-empire-of-lies-strikes-back-extraordinary-cover-up-of-nord-stream-terrorism/</a><br /><br />",
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"content": "https://telegra.ph/The-Empire-of-Lies-Strikes-Back-Extraordinary-Cover-Up-of-Nord-Stream-Terrorism-03-10\n\nThe Empire of Lies Strikes Back… Extraordinary Cover-Up of Nord Stream Terrorism\n\nEDITORIALMarch 10, 2023\n\nWestern news outlets pompously claim to be pinnacles of journalism and defenders of public interest and democracy. They are nothing but the propaganda ministry for Washington – the Empire of Lies.\n\nThe New York Times and other Western news media ran with clumsy and blatantly diversionary claims this week, which in the end only serve to draw even more attention to the guilt of the United States in blowing up the Nord Stream gas pipelines.\n\nNot only is the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden even more indictable over the criminal act; the absurd cover-up attempt this week exposes the Western media as nothing but a ministry of propaganda masquerading as journalism.\n\nFour weeks ago, the eminent independent American journalist, Seymour Hersh, published a blockbuster investigative report that revealed how President Biden and senior White House staff ordered the explosive detonation of the natural gas pipelines connecting Russia to the European Union via the Baltic Sea and Germany. The legendary Hersh has an impeccable record of groundbreaking stories, from the My Lai massacre committed by U.S. troops in Vietnam in 1968 to the Abu Ghraib prison torture in Iraq under American occupation to the operation of ratlines to funnel weapons and mercenaries from Libya to Syria to fight Washington’s proxy war for regime change in Damascus.\n\nIn his seminal report on the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines, Hersh relied on insider Washington sources. He published claims that the United States carried out the covert operation using a team of U.S. Navy divers under the cover of NATO war maneuvers known as BALTOPS 22 last summer. Explosives were planted on the seabed during the exercises held in June 2022 and then later detonated on September 26 with the help of Norwegian military aircraft.\n\nThe convincing aspect of Hersh’s report was not just the credible detail of the operation, but that it confirmed what many independent observers had already concluded from strong circumstantial evidence about who had the motive and means to conduct the sabotage. Readers are referred to a recent editorial by Strategic Culture Foundation which compiles the background of why the United States is deemed to be the culprit.\n\nNow here is a curious thing. While Hersh’s report provoked shockwaves around the world, Western governments and the mainstream media chose to ignore his report. In a weird parallel universe sort of way, they pretended that Hersh’s resounding revelations did not exist.\n\nOne would think that given Hersh’s reputation for world-news-breaking scoops, and given that his latest report revealed a rock-solid plausible account of how a major civilian infrastructure project was sabotaged, and further given that the implication of this report was the inculpation of the United States and its president and his senior staff in ordering an act of terrorism – one would think that, maybe, just maybe, the Western media would be obliged to give some reportage on that matter. No, far from it, they unanimously kept schtum. In a way that is quite shocking and a travesty.\n\nThe charade of silence was maintained for a month until this week when the New York Times published a report claiming an alternative explanation for the Nord Stream explosions. As if on cue, there then followed a rash of other Western media reports regurgitating or spinning the same story.\n\nLaughably, the New York Times claimed its report was “the first significant known lead about who was responsible for the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines”. This after a month of pointedly ignoring and effectively censoring from the public any knowledge of the spellbinding Hersh article.\n\nThe thrust of this week’s “reports” (if they could be called that) are that the sabotage was carried out by “pro-Ukrainian groups” which may have involved Ukrainian or Russian nationals. The source of the claims was anonymous US officials citing purported “new intelligence”. It was also claimed that a private yacht owned by Ukrainians was used and that the CIA had tipped off German intelligence about the impending attack months before it happened.\n\nThe information reported is so vague as to be impossible to verify, or frankly to even merit credibility. We are led to believe that a sophisticated, highly technical military operation on the Baltic seabed was somehow carried off by a group of unknown paramilitaries. The New York Times and other Western media outlets published stories that on their face are outlandish. This is gutter press stuff.\n\nFurthermore, from the way the reports are formulated it is obvious that they are meant to serve as a rebuttal to the Hersh report without actually properly acknowledging the Hersh report. Thus, the United States denies any involvement in a criminal act that it barely refuses to acknowledge. This double-think is itself indicative of guilt in the Empire of Lies.\n\nThe problem for the Western propaganda peddlers – besides sheer implausibility – is the further burden of having to provide an alibi for the Kiev regime. The U.S. and its NATO allies need to distract from Washington as the obvious author of the crime, but they also cannot afford to implicate the Kiev regime because that could inflame European and American public antipathy towards the NATO-sponsored junta. This is why the New York Times & Co appear to be involved in a tortuous balancing act of blaming Ukrainian militants for the Nord Stream blasts but also claiming that these intrepid militants managed to do so without the knowledge of President Vladimir Zelensky and his cabal. Which again makes the narrative doubly ridiculous.\n\nThere is also an important element of timing to all these Western media shenanigans. Last week, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was hosted in the White House by Joe Biden on March 3 in what was a bizarrely private meeting. Their conversations behind closed doors were not disclosed. Both leaders stonewalled reporters about their discussions. It can be fairly speculated that Scholz was pleading with Biden for some political cover because of the mounting anger among the German public about the economic consequences of America’s policy over Ukraine and Russia. Germany’s industry and export-led economy have been ravaged by the loss of Russia’s traditional natural gas supply. Scholz and his government are seen to be behaving treacherously by going along with what appears to be American vandalism of the German economy. For the Hersh report to go unanswered is causing massive public pressure on the Berlin government. Hence this week, we saw attempts to divert public attention with a concerted Western media campaign about who supposedly blew up Nord Stream. The aim is to absolve Washington and its lackeys in Berlin.\n\nAnother timing issue was the sudden appearance of Ukrainian and Russian fascist commandoes who carried out the terrorist attack in Russia’s Bryansk region on March 2 last week. Two adults were killed and a young boy was badly injured in what was a gratuitous atrocity that made international headlines. That daring raid, however, brought to public attention the existence of pro-Ukrainian militants who appear to act as lone wolves in international operations. This is the very kind of profile that the New York Times and other Western media outfits attributed to the Nord Stream sabotage. That begs the reasonable question: was the Bryansk terror attack enabled by Western military intelligence handlers in order to promote the subsequent media disinformation effort concerning the Nord Stream pipelines?\n\nLet’s cut to the chase. The Western media disinformation campaign is a crude joke. It can’t distract from the glaring facts that the United States and its NATO allies carried out an act of international terrorism against European companies and governments, and an act of war against Russia as the main owner of the 1,200-kilometer Nord Stream pipelines worth at least $20 billion to construct. That criminal act was plausibly ordered by an American president and his White House aides. The geopolitical motives are overwhelming as are the self-indicting admissions by Biden and his aides before and after the odious event.\n\nThe cack-handed attempts this week to cover up by the Western media only serve to further incriminate the United States and its NATO crime partners. In addition, the Western media are exposed more than ever as being complicit in propagandizing war crimes. The New York Times and other Western news outlets pompously claim to be pinnacles of journalism and defenders of public interest and democracy. They are nothing but the propaganda ministry for Washington – the Empire of Lies.\n\nOriginal article: https://strategic-culture.org/news/2023/03/10/the-empire-of-lies-strikes-back-extraordinary-cover-up-of-nord-stream-terrorism/\n\n",
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"content": "Russian Military Deploys Kinzhals in Massive Strikes in Ukraine in Retaliation to Bryansk Terror<br /><br /><a href=\"https://sputniknews.com/20230309/russian-military-conducts-massive-retaliatory-strike-in-ukraine-in-response-to-bryansk-terror-1108210949.html\" target=\"_blank\">https://sputniknews.com/20230309/russian-military-conducts-massive-retaliatory-strike-in-ukraine-in-response-to-bryansk-terror-1108210949.html</a><br /><br />Russian Military Deploys Kinzhals in Massive Strikes in Ukraine in Retaliation to Bryansk Terror<br /><br />Two civilians were killed and a ten-year-old boy injured last week after a group of saboteurs penetrated the Russian-Ukrainian border in Russia's Bryansk region and opened fire on civilian vehicles and infrastructure. NATO-provided weapons were found at the crime scenes. Russian President Vladimir Putin called the incident a \"terrorist attack.\"<br /><br />Russia carried out massed missile strike on targets inside Ukraine in retaliation to last week's terrorism in Bryansk region, the Russian Ministry of Defense has announced.<br /><br />\"In response to the terrorism organized by the Kiev regime on March 2 in Bryansk region, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation delivered a massive retaliatory strike. High-precision long-range air, sea and land-based precision weapons, including the Kinzhal hypersonic missile system, hit key elements of Ukraine's military infrastructure, enterprises of the military-industrial complex, as well as energy facilities providing them with power,\" MoD spokesman Igor Konashenkov said in a briefing Thursday.<br /><br />All of the designated targets were hit, the officer said, with the strikes said to have destroyed sites hosting Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles, knocked out railway infrastructure involved in the transfer of foreign weapons, and disabled facilities involved in the production of ammunition and the repair of military equipment.<br /><br />Two people were killed and a 10-year-old boy injured last week after saboteurs infiltrated the Russian-Ukrainian border and seemingly randomly opened fire on residents, vehicles and local infrastructure using small arms, drones, and other weapons. Russia's Federal Security Service announced Monday that the March 2 attacks were organized by militants from the 'Russian Volunteer Corps', a neo-Nazi militia fighting for Ukraine.<br /><br />The Russian Foreign Ministry warned last week that the use of NATO-provided weapons in the Bryansk attacks raised questions about the West's culpability for the acts of terrorism. Russian and American military and international affairs experts told Sputnik that the Bryansk attacks may have been designed to provoke Russia into launching a premature new offensive in Ukraine amid growing frustration about the situation on the front, and as a pretext for Kiev to demand more weapons from the West.<br /><br />The Kinzhal (lit. 'Dagger') is a new Russian air-launched, nuclear-capable hypersonic missile with a range of over 2,000 km, designed to overcome any existing or prospective air defenses, and to launch attacks on foreign warships, including carriers. The missile has been used in Ukraine repeatedly over the past year. President Biden, Kiev's main sponsor in NATO's proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, characterized the Kinzhal as a \"consequential weapon\" that's \"almost impossible to stop.\"<br /><br />",
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"content": "Russian Military Deploys Kinzhals in Massive Strikes in Ukraine in Retaliation to Bryansk Terror\n\nhttps://sputniknews.com/20230309/russian-military-conducts-massive-retaliatory-strike-in-ukraine-in-response-to-bryansk-terror-1108210949.html\n\nRussian Military Deploys Kinzhals in Massive Strikes in Ukraine in Retaliation to Bryansk Terror\n\nTwo civilians were killed and a ten-year-old boy injured last week after a group of saboteurs penetrated the Russian-Ukrainian border in Russia's Bryansk region and opened fire on civilian vehicles and infrastructure. NATO-provided weapons were found at the crime scenes. Russian President Vladimir Putin called the incident a \"terrorist attack.\"\n\nRussia carried out massed missile strike on targets inside Ukraine in retaliation to last week's terrorism in Bryansk region, the Russian Ministry of Defense has announced.\n\n\"In response to the terrorism organized by the Kiev regime on March 2 in Bryansk region, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation delivered a massive retaliatory strike. High-precision long-range air, sea and land-based precision weapons, including the Kinzhal hypersonic missile system, hit key elements of Ukraine's military infrastructure, enterprises of the military-industrial complex, as well as energy facilities providing them with power,\" MoD spokesman Igor Konashenkov said in a briefing Thursday.\n\nAll of the designated targets were hit, the officer said, with the strikes said to have destroyed sites hosting Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles, knocked out railway infrastructure involved in the transfer of foreign weapons, and disabled facilities involved in the production of ammunition and the repair of military equipment.\n\nTwo people were killed and a 10-year-old boy injured last week after saboteurs infiltrated the Russian-Ukrainian border and seemingly randomly opened fire on residents, vehicles and local infrastructure using small arms, drones, and other weapons. Russia's Federal Security Service announced Monday that the March 2 attacks were organized by militants from the 'Russian Volunteer Corps', a neo-Nazi militia fighting for Ukraine.\n\nThe Russian Foreign Ministry warned last week that the use of NATO-provided weapons in the Bryansk attacks raised questions about the West's culpability for the acts of terrorism. Russian and American military and international affairs experts told Sputnik that the Bryansk attacks may have been designed to provoke Russia into launching a premature new offensive in Ukraine amid growing frustration about the situation on the front, and as a pretext for Kiev to demand more weapons from the West.\n\nThe Kinzhal (lit. 'Dagger') is a new Russian air-launched, nuclear-capable hypersonic missile with a range of over 2,000 km, designed to overcome any existing or prospective air defenses, and to launch attacks on foreign warships, including carriers. The missile has been used in Ukraine repeatedly over the past year. President Biden, Kiev's main sponsor in NATO's proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, characterized the Kinzhal as a \"consequential weapon\" that's \"almost impossible to stop.\"\n\n",
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"content": "<a href=\"https://telegra.ph/Dumb-and-Dumber-Scholz-and-Macron-Have-a-Plan-to-Bring-Peace-to-Ukraine-03-05\" target=\"_blank\">https://telegra.ph/Dumb-and-Dumber-Scholz-and-Macron-Have-a-Plan-to-Bring-Peace-to-Ukraine-03-05</a><br /><br />Dumb and Dumber. Scholz and Macron Have a Plan to Bring Peace to Ukraine<br /><br />By Martin JayMarch 05, 2023<br /><br />Scholz and Macron have a plan to bring peace to Ukraine, but Putin can’t stop laughing as it's so stupid, Martin Jay writes.<br /><br />Scholz and Macron have a plan to bring peace to Ukraine, but Putin can’t stop laughing as it's so stupid. And why would Russia quit now when Europe is on the back foot anyway?<br /><br />Hollywood has a new double act which it can make a sequel to the comedy starring Jim Carey and Jeff Daniels ‘Dumb and Dumber’. Emmanuel Macron and Olaf Scholz could easily play these roles now, given their gob-smacking stupidity recently in attempting to reign in President Zelensky, who recently in London managed to break his own record at a live press conference for sniffing or touching his nose in an odd manner.<br /><br />Zelensky is, and always has been, the real stumbling block when it comes to kickstarting peace talks. And nothing much has changed of late, except that Biden is starting to panic in Washington as it is clear the obscene amount of money which was previously shovelled to Ukraine is going to slow down in 2023, due largely to congress now having the Republicans controlling the House and an election race kicking off. Biden and his cronies have warned Zelensky that time is running out and this latest tranche of cash has to get real results. Their thinking is that if he can make more gains on the battlefield, this will stand him in good stead for negotiating later on. The nightmare scenario for Biden is that U.S. elections are fought on a single issue – Ukraine – and that this will reinstate Trump or Haley.<br /><br />But it’s more of a nightmare for Macron and Scholz whose mishandling of Zelensky is laughable. Recently these two knuckleheads spoke with Zelensky and urged him to begin peace talks with Putin. His response, according to social media, was “there’s nothing to negotiate and no one in Moscow to negotiate with..”. Vexed by this recalcitrant attitude, the spoilt brat was offered an incentive which, when viewed in a clear light, gives analysts and observers a clue as to how the West managed to lower itself into this sack of angry scorpions in the first place, where Western sanctions actually punish EU citizens more than Russians.<br /><br />Scholz and Macron offered to supply Zelensky with even more weapons plus a guilt-edged offer of some kind of NATO membership if he starts peace talks with Putin. Yep, you read correctly. Given the rank stupidity of the rationale behind this offer one wonders whether the Ukrainian leader’s recreational habits with the Colombian Panadol Extra in powder form has extended to these buffoons. What drugs are Scholz and Macron taking if they think these incentives are going to help negotiate peace with Putin? That’s like going round to your neighbour’s house to complain to him about the noise he is making from beating his wife and offering him your baseball bat as an incentive to stop.<br /><br />And given Putin’s position now, it would take a miracle anyway to negotiate with Zelensky with or without these ‘incentives’. For Ukraine, even if we are to humour the west in its optimism, there is a window of opportunity to make a small impact on the battlefield perhaps at the end of summer if the 100 tanks promised will arrive. But this is a very optimistic viewpoint, given that even the tank crews will be rookies and the 2000 km ‘border’ between Russian forces and Ukrainian ones is too large for these tanks to have any real impact. The truth about the tanks sexed-up story, is that they will be used in a defensive capacity only. And that’s even if they arrive as some analysts are very sceptical that Biden will even send the 30 or so M1 Abrams. Many believe it is just one more lie by the American president who knows that this latest batch of military aid is probably the last that will be sent.<br /><br />Given that, Putin’s generals will no doubt seize the window of opportunity to go ahead with a spring offensive with new tanks rolling off the production lines. Key fact about tanks: West has a shortage and a long delivery period. Russia doesn’t. And now with China and Iran piling in with military hardware to add to Putin’s arsenal it’s little wonder why there is a certain panic setting in both from the U.S. and EU leaders. Macron and Scholz are waiting for the first card to fall on the continent which will almost certainly be the UK when the present Prime Minister Rishi Sunak will have to scale back spending on Ukraine before the next winter sets in, in the UK around November time this year. Around about the same time, western leaders will be struggling to explain to voters how poor people are going to get it in the neck even more as the tank plan has backfired big time, when Russia showcases its ‘tank buster’ robotic mini tanks which are already arriving in Donbass ready for the shooting match.<br /><br />It is a sad reality of life that the international arms business needs wars to accelerate sales of new products. Russia is going to make a killing with new orders for these unmanned tank busters when they have their first victories in Ukraine. It’s going to be one more ‘k-ching’ moment of the sound of western sanctions filling the pockets of Russians. Again.<br /><br />And for the Leopard IIs and Challenger tanks? Who will buy them after this PR disaster? More money and jobs lost in the West. Dumb and Dumber needs a third remake.<br /><br />Original article: <a href=\"https://strategic-culture.org/news/2023/03/04/dumb-and-dumber-scholz-and-macron-have-plan-bring-peace-ukraine/\" target=\"_blank\">https://strategic-culture.org/news/2023/03/04/dumb-and-dumber-scholz-and-macron-have-plan-bring-peace-ukraine/</a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />",
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"content": "https://telegra.ph/Dumb-and-Dumber-Scholz-and-Macron-Have-a-Plan-to-Bring-Peace-to-Ukraine-03-05\n\nDumb and Dumber. Scholz and Macron Have a Plan to Bring Peace to Ukraine\n\nBy Martin JayMarch 05, 2023\n\nScholz and Macron have a plan to bring peace to Ukraine, but Putin can’t stop laughing as it's so stupid, Martin Jay writes.\n\nScholz and Macron have a plan to bring peace to Ukraine, but Putin can’t stop laughing as it's so stupid. And why would Russia quit now when Europe is on the back foot anyway?\n\nHollywood has a new double act which it can make a sequel to the comedy starring Jim Carey and Jeff Daniels ‘Dumb and Dumber’. Emmanuel Macron and Olaf Scholz could easily play these roles now, given their gob-smacking stupidity recently in attempting to reign in President Zelensky, who recently in London managed to break his own record at a live press conference for sniffing or touching his nose in an odd manner.\n\nZelensky is, and always has been, the real stumbling block when it comes to kickstarting peace talks. And nothing much has changed of late, except that Biden is starting to panic in Washington as it is clear the obscene amount of money which was previously shovelled to Ukraine is going to slow down in 2023, due largely to congress now having the Republicans controlling the House and an election race kicking off. Biden and his cronies have warned Zelensky that time is running out and this latest tranche of cash has to get real results. Their thinking is that if he can make more gains on the battlefield, this will stand him in good stead for negotiating later on. The nightmare scenario for Biden is that U.S. elections are fought on a single issue – Ukraine – and that this will reinstate Trump or Haley.\n\nBut it’s more of a nightmare for Macron and Scholz whose mishandling of Zelensky is laughable. Recently these two knuckleheads spoke with Zelensky and urged him to begin peace talks with Putin. His response, according to social media, was “there’s nothing to negotiate and no one in Moscow to negotiate with..”. Vexed by this recalcitrant attitude, the spoilt brat was offered an incentive which, when viewed in a clear light, gives analysts and observers a clue as to how the West managed to lower itself into this sack of angry scorpions in the first place, where Western sanctions actually punish EU citizens more than Russians.\n\nScholz and Macron offered to supply Zelensky with even more weapons plus a guilt-edged offer of some kind of NATO membership if he starts peace talks with Putin. Yep, you read correctly. Given the rank stupidity of the rationale behind this offer one wonders whether the Ukrainian leader’s recreational habits with the Colombian Panadol Extra in powder form has extended to these buffoons. What drugs are Scholz and Macron taking if they think these incentives are going to help negotiate peace with Putin? That’s like going round to your neighbour’s house to complain to him about the noise he is making from beating his wife and offering him your baseball bat as an incentive to stop.\n\nAnd given Putin’s position now, it would take a miracle anyway to negotiate with Zelensky with or without these ‘incentives’. For Ukraine, even if we are to humour the west in its optimism, there is a window of opportunity to make a small impact on the battlefield perhaps at the end of summer if the 100 tanks promised will arrive. But this is a very optimistic viewpoint, given that even the tank crews will be rookies and the 2000 km ‘border’ between Russian forces and Ukrainian ones is too large for these tanks to have any real impact. The truth about the tanks sexed-up story, is that they will be used in a defensive capacity only. And that’s even if they arrive as some analysts are very sceptical that Biden will even send the 30 or so M1 Abrams. Many believe it is just one more lie by the American president who knows that this latest batch of military aid is probably the last that will be sent.\n\nGiven that, Putin’s generals will no doubt seize the window of opportunity to go ahead with a spring offensive with new tanks rolling off the production lines. Key fact about tanks: West has a shortage and a long delivery period. Russia doesn’t. And now with China and Iran piling in with military hardware to add to Putin’s arsenal it’s little wonder why there is a certain panic setting in both from the U.S. and EU leaders. Macron and Scholz are waiting for the first card to fall on the continent which will almost certainly be the UK when the present Prime Minister Rishi Sunak will have to scale back spending on Ukraine before the next winter sets in, in the UK around November time this year. Around about the same time, western leaders will be struggling to explain to voters how poor people are going to get it in the neck even more as the tank plan has backfired big time, when Russia showcases its ‘tank buster’ robotic mini tanks which are already arriving in Donbass ready for the shooting match.\n\nIt is a sad reality of life that the international arms business needs wars to accelerate sales of new products. Russia is going to make a killing with new orders for these unmanned tank busters when they have their first victories in Ukraine. It’s going to be one more ‘k-ching’ moment of the sound of western sanctions filling the pockets of Russians. Again.\n\nAnd for the Leopard IIs and Challenger tanks? Who will buy them after this PR disaster? More money and jobs lost in the West. Dumb and Dumber needs a third remake.\n\nOriginal article: https://strategic-culture.org/news/2023/03/04/dumb-and-dumber-scholz-and-macron-have-plan-bring-peace-ukraine/\n\n\n\n\n",
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"content": "<a href=\"https://asiatimes.com/2023/03/a-coming-wider-war-with-crimea-in-us-sights/\" target=\"_blank\">https://asiatimes.com/2023/03/a-coming-wider-war-with-crimea-in-us-sights/</a><br /><br />A coming wider war with Crimea in US sights<br /><br />US-NATO response to fall of Bakhmut is likely an assault on Crimea, which in turn will spark Russian attacks on Eastern Europe<br /><br />By STEPHEN BRYENMARCH 4, 2023<br /><br />Ukrainian forces are pulling out of Bakhmut and the battle for the small Donetsk city is nearly finished. So what happens next?<br /><br />There appear to be two stages to the Bakhmut pullout. The first started perhaps a month ago, though that isn’t certain. The troops pulled out comprised foreign fighters and Yellow Armband troops.<br /><br />The Russians say they have not seen any foreign fighters for about a month. Most of these were said to be from Georgia and Abkhazia. (Abkhazia is the area in Georgia carved out by the Russians and declared an independent entity.)<br /><br />The Yellow Armband troops are professional and well-trained Ukrainian “heavy” military units. They have mostly been used on the flanks protecting the city of Bakhmut, trying to stop the Russian encirclement.<br /><br />Within the city are so-called Green Armband troops. They are not well trained and are mostly recent conscripts. Mainly they carry small arms, which they fire from buildings and other covered positions. Many of them are underage or, alternatively, overage.<br /><br />According to Yevgeny Prighozin, head of the Wagner Group paramilitary organization, the Green Armbands are starting to leave the city, having already pulled out from most of the eastern parts. Reports say they are either using a country road or walking across farm fields.<br /><br />As it now stands, the end of the battle is at most a few days away, although the Ukrainians have launched a counteroffensive to the west and south of a town called Ivanivske. The operation may be meant to hold off a wider encirclement of Ukrainian forces that the Russians appear to have launched.<br /><br />The Yellow Armband Ukrainian forces trying to relieve Ivanivske are deploying a number of infantry fighting vehicles, but so far few if any tanks. Whether Ukraine’s army can actually hold off a wider Russian operation remains to be seen.<br /><br />But the Ukrainians are low on soldiers and ammunition, so it isn’t clear they can sustain a hard hit if that’s what the Russians intend to launch.<br /><br />Up next: Crimea<br /><br />The US and NATO likely see the handwriting on the wall if the Ukrainians continue to try and hold territory in the Donbas region. <br /><br />While the US thinks that Russia failed to succeed in its original objectives in the Donbas and in forcing a governmental change in Kiev, the long-term picture looks troublesome as the Russians have not only improved their tactics but also appear willing to pay the price and grind down Ukraine’s army.<br /><br />Likewise, it is by now clear that it will take more than a few years in the US and Europe to rebuild ammunition and equipment stocks, while the Russians seem to have put their defense manufacturing on a full-time, day-and-night basis to bring supplies to the front.<br /><br />There are two key signals of a possible US-NATO change in strategy that are perceptible if we understand that NATO, at least so far, does what the US says it needs to do.<br /><br />New deliveries of special types of long-range ammunition to Kiev are the first signal. The second is the publicized switch by Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland to favoring a refocus on retaking Crimea in a new Ukrainian offensive.<br /><br />“[W]e will support Ukraine for as long as it takes. Ukraine is fighting for the return of all of its land within its international borders. We are supporting them, including in preparing a next hard push to regain their territory…Crimea must be—at a minimum, at a minimum—demilitarized.”<br /><br />US UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR POLITICAL AFFAIRS VICTORIA NULAND<br /><br />Nuland’s view is not supported fully by the State Department or the Pentagon, largely because of concern Russia may choose to attack Western supply lines in retaliation, leading to a broader war in Eastern Europe, starting with Poland and Romania.<br /><br />Both Poland and Romania, one should recall, are historical Russian stomping grounds. Joseph Stalin decided to support the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact in August 1939 because the Soviet leader saw it as giving him part of Poland and Romania’s oil fields.<br /><br />There is a famous story that circulated during the Cold War about a Polish soldier facing an invasion by Russian tanks on one axis and German tanks on the other. Standing there with one antitank weapon, what should he choose? Deciding to fire on the Russian tanks, the Polish soldier supposedly says, “Business before pleasure.”<br /><br />Fast forward to the present, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is known to worry about a wider conflict but may well have lost out to Nuland, a major proponent of the Ukraine war who wants at a minimum regime change in Moscow.<br /><br />The evidence that Nuland has won the argument starts with the fact Biden has announced a new long-range weapons program for Ukraine and is also sending mobile bridging equipment that could help the Ukrainian army attack Russian forces in a Crimea offensive.<br /><br />Such an operation itself would start with long-range glide bombs – joint direct attack munitions (JADAM), HIMARS with long-range, ground-launched, small-diameter bombs (GLDSB) and artillery strikes. It would then develop into a land offensive against Crimea. <br /><br />The operational problem is that this scenario would require fighter planes that can fly to high altitudes of around 30,000 feet before launching JDAMS, kits that fit on “iron” bombs to give them GPS guidance. But a bomb glides to its target, so to achieve standoff range high-flying aircraft are required.<br /><br />This would require Ukraine to use its MIG-29s, but it has few of the fighters left. Thus the latest arms deliveries may include, in some form or another, Western aircraft probably flown by NATO pilots.<br /><br />This would amount to a direct declaration of war, as both Blinken (who is against it) and Nuland (who is for it) understand. To launch such an offensive, for example as soon as this May, there’s no alternative to using Western aircraft.<br /><br />There is bipartisan Congressional support for F-16s for Ukraine, although that support is for Ukrainians to fly them, which is unlikely in the next three months.<br /><br />The Nuland threat to Crimea appears more and more to be a foregone conclusion: a US policy with existential implications for Europe and perhaps also for America.<br /><br />The issue was decided by the new arms shipments (two separate announcements as late as March 3 US time). While no published decision has been made and Biden has been silent, the equipment being sent could only be intended for Nuland’s offensive on Crimea.<br /><br />If there were a public announcement of a decision supporting Nuland, Blinken would likely have a heart attack – but the US is sending long-range bombs and artillery as well as bridging equipment essential to attack Crimea. If such an attack is not envisioned, the Ukrainians don’t need this kit.<br /><br />Meanwhile, there seems to be very little coherent US opposition to the unfolding scenario of what could quickly become a general war in Europe.<br /><br />",
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"content": "https://asiatimes.com/2023/03/a-coming-wider-war-with-crimea-in-us-sights/\n\nA coming wider war with Crimea in US sights\n\nUS-NATO response to fall of Bakhmut is likely an assault on Crimea, which in turn will spark Russian attacks on Eastern Europe\n\nBy STEPHEN BRYENMARCH 4, 2023\n\nUkrainian forces are pulling out of Bakhmut and the battle for the small Donetsk city is nearly finished. So what happens next?\n\nThere appear to be two stages to the Bakhmut pullout. The first started perhaps a month ago, though that isn’t certain. The troops pulled out comprised foreign fighters and Yellow Armband troops.\n\nThe Russians say they have not seen any foreign fighters for about a month. Most of these were said to be from Georgia and Abkhazia. (Abkhazia is the area in Georgia carved out by the Russians and declared an independent entity.)\n\nThe Yellow Armband troops are professional and well-trained Ukrainian “heavy” military units. They have mostly been used on the flanks protecting the city of Bakhmut, trying to stop the Russian encirclement.\n\nWithin the city are so-called Green Armband troops. They are not well trained and are mostly recent conscripts. Mainly they carry small arms, which they fire from buildings and other covered positions. Many of them are underage or, alternatively, overage.\n\nAccording to Yevgeny Prighozin, head of the Wagner Group paramilitary organization, the Green Armbands are starting to leave the city, having already pulled out from most of the eastern parts. Reports say they are either using a country road or walking across farm fields.\n\nAs it now stands, the end of the battle is at most a few days away, although the Ukrainians have launched a counteroffensive to the west and south of a town called Ivanivske. The operation may be meant to hold off a wider encirclement of Ukrainian forces that the Russians appear to have launched.\n\nThe Yellow Armband Ukrainian forces trying to relieve Ivanivske are deploying a number of infantry fighting vehicles, but so far few if any tanks. Whether Ukraine’s army can actually hold off a wider Russian operation remains to be seen.\n\nBut the Ukrainians are low on soldiers and ammunition, so it isn’t clear they can sustain a hard hit if that’s what the Russians intend to launch.\n\nUp next: Crimea\n\nThe US and NATO likely see the handwriting on the wall if the Ukrainians continue to try and hold territory in the Donbas region. \n\nWhile the US thinks that Russia failed to succeed in its original objectives in the Donbas and in forcing a governmental change in Kiev, the long-term picture looks troublesome as the Russians have not only improved their tactics but also appear willing to pay the price and grind down Ukraine’s army.\n\nLikewise, it is by now clear that it will take more than a few years in the US and Europe to rebuild ammunition and equipment stocks, while the Russians seem to have put their defense manufacturing on a full-time, day-and-night basis to bring supplies to the front.\n\nThere are two key signals of a possible US-NATO change in strategy that are perceptible if we understand that NATO, at least so far, does what the US says it needs to do.\n\nNew deliveries of special types of long-range ammunition to Kiev are the first signal. The second is the publicized switch by Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland to favoring a refocus on retaking Crimea in a new Ukrainian offensive.\n\n“[W]e will support Ukraine for as long as it takes. Ukraine is fighting for the return of all of its land within its international borders. We are supporting them, including in preparing a next hard push to regain their territory…Crimea must be—at a minimum, at a minimum—demilitarized.”\n\nUS UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR POLITICAL AFFAIRS VICTORIA NULAND\n\nNuland’s view is not supported fully by the State Department or the Pentagon, largely because of concern Russia may choose to attack Western supply lines in retaliation, leading to a broader war in Eastern Europe, starting with Poland and Romania.\n\nBoth Poland and Romania, one should recall, are historical Russian stomping grounds. Joseph Stalin decided to support the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact in August 1939 because the Soviet leader saw it as giving him part of Poland and Romania’s oil fields.\n\nThere is a famous story that circulated during the Cold War about a Polish soldier facing an invasion by Russian tanks on one axis and German tanks on the other. Standing there with one antitank weapon, what should he choose? Deciding to fire on the Russian tanks, the Polish soldier supposedly says, “Business before pleasure.”\n\nFast forward to the present, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is known to worry about a wider conflict but may well have lost out to Nuland, a major proponent of the Ukraine war who wants at a minimum regime change in Moscow.\n\nThe evidence that Nuland has won the argument starts with the fact Biden has announced a new long-range weapons program for Ukraine and is also sending mobile bridging equipment that could help the Ukrainian army attack Russian forces in a Crimea offensive.\n\nSuch an operation itself would start with long-range glide bombs – joint direct attack munitions (JADAM), HIMARS with long-range, ground-launched, small-diameter bombs (GLDSB) and artillery strikes. It would then develop into a land offensive against Crimea. \n\nThe operational problem is that this scenario would require fighter planes that can fly to high altitudes of around 30,000 feet before launching JDAMS, kits that fit on “iron” bombs to give them GPS guidance. But a bomb glides to its target, so to achieve standoff range high-flying aircraft are required.\n\nThis would require Ukraine to use its MIG-29s, but it has few of the fighters left. Thus the latest arms deliveries may include, in some form or another, Western aircraft probably flown by NATO pilots.\n\nThis would amount to a direct declaration of war, as both Blinken (who is against it) and Nuland (who is for it) understand. To launch such an offensive, for example as soon as this May, there’s no alternative to using Western aircraft.\n\nThere is bipartisan Congressional support for F-16s for Ukraine, although that support is for Ukrainians to fly them, which is unlikely in the next three months.\n\nThe Nuland threat to Crimea appears more and more to be a foregone conclusion: a US policy with existential implications for Europe and perhaps also for America.\n\nThe issue was decided by the new arms shipments (two separate announcements as late as March 3 US time). While no published decision has been made and Biden has been silent, the equipment being sent could only be intended for Nuland’s offensive on Crimea.\n\nIf there were a public announcement of a decision supporting Nuland, Blinken would likely have a heart attack – but the US is sending long-range bombs and artillery as well as bridging equipment essential to attack Crimea. If such an attack is not envisioned, the Ukrainians don’t need this kit.\n\nMeanwhile, there seems to be very little coherent US opposition to the unfolding scenario of what could quickly become a general war in Europe.\n\n",
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"content": "<a href=\"https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2023/03/06/does-the-kremlin-desire-the-conflict-in-ukraine-to-spin-out-of-control/\" target=\"_blank\">https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2023/03/06/does-the-kremlin-desire-the-conflict-in-ukraine-to-spin-out-of-control/</a><br /><br />Does the Kremlin Desire the Conflict in Ukraine to Spin Out of Control?<br /><br />March 6, 2023 <br /><br />Paul Craig Roberts<br /><br />As I have explained correctly in a number of articles, there was NO RUSSIAN INVASION OF UKRAINE. It was, as Putin said, an operation limited to ejecting Ukrainian and neo-Nazi forces out of Donbass, historically, like Crimea, a part of Russia herself and populated with ethnic Russians. These historically Russian territories were transferred for political and administrative reasons from Russia to Ukraine by Soviet officials. As Ukraine itself was historically part of Russia for centuries, and as both were part of the USSR along with Georgia and Central Asia, the transfer was understood as adjustment of state boundaries as in the US within the same country. Ukraine did not exist as an independent country until about 30 years ago when the USSR was broken up. So the claim that Donbass and Crimea are part of Ukraine has been true for about 30 years, whereas they have been a part of Russia along with Ukraine for centuries.<br /><br />Putin had no choice. The Minsk Agreement that he had devised, to which Ukraine agreed and Germany and France agreed to enforce, kept Donbass in Ukraine and gave the people semi-autonomy in order to protect them from abuse by Ukraine. Both the German and French leaders who signed the agreement recently admitted that they used the Minsk Agreement to deceive Putin while the US and NATO built and equipped a large Ukrainian army capable of conquering the two self-declared independent republics in Donbass. When Putin saw the large Ukrainian armed force ready to invade Donbass, part of which was already occupied by Ukrainian armed forces and neo-Nazi militias, he realized that he had been deceived by the West and had no other option but force to protect the Donbass Russians.<br /><br />Eviction of Ukraine military forces from Donbass was his only aim.<br /><br />This eviction has depended not on the Russian Army but on a private para-military force known as the Wagner Group and on the militias of the two Donbass independent republics. Belatedly, Putin mobilized some Russian Army forces, but has not committed them to the conflict. Instead, he continues to rely on the Wagner Group and Donbass militias to evict the US/NATO trained and equipped Ukrainians forces.<br /><br />As I have made clear in many columns, Putin’s approach was a military blunder. He played completely into Washington’s hands. As the fighting is in territory occupied by ethnic Russian people, Putin handicapped his limited forces with strict rules against the use of highly destructive weapons in civilian areas. The consequence has been a war that is a slow step-by-step process. No Blitzkrieg. Russian restraint has been misinterpreted by the West as Russian inability.<br /><br />The consequence of this and Putin’s go-slow-war is that Putin gave Washington/NATO confidence and enormous time to get involved in the conflict to Russia’s disadvantage. Ukrainians now have more effective and longer range weapons, intelligence on Russian positions, and targeting information on Russian positions. Considering the incremental ways Washington gets into wars, boots on the ground will eventually result. <br /><br />Recently, the power behind the Washington War Scene, neoconservative hate-Russia-at-all-cost Victoria Nuland, Undersecretary of State, has committed Washington to the liberation of Crimea. This seems impossible. The Ukrainians would have to break through the Russian forces in southern Ukraine in order to reach Crimea, the site of the Russian Black Sea Naval Base. The Kremlin would never accept the loss of their warm water port even if it meant nuclear war.<br /><br />In other words, Washington is insane. Nuland’s words demonstrate the insanity — “We will support Ukraine for as long as it takes. Ukraine is fighting for the return of all of its land within its international borders. We are supporting them, including in preparing a next hard push to regain their territory…Crimea must be—at a minimum, at a minimum—demilitarized.”<br /><br />Demilitarized is short-hand for no Black Sea Russian Naval Base.<br /><br />Insouciant American policymakers and clearly the insane Nuland do not recognize that their arrogant hubris is a declaration of nuclear war.<br /><br />The Asian Times believes that Nuland has won the argument. The Biden regime has announced a new long-range weapons program for Ukraine, is sending mobile bridging equipment that is only useful for a Ukrainian offensive against Russian forces in Crimea, and is reconsidering the ban of F-16s for Ukraine. Thus the conflict is spinning out of control. <a href=\"https://asiatimes.com/2023/03/a-coming-wider-war-with-crimea-in-us-sights/\" target=\"_blank\">https://asiatimes.com/2023/03/a-coming-wider-war-with-crimea-in-us-sights/</a> <br /><br />Still Putin sits on his butt, doing nothing. Is Putin going to wait until the entire armaments of the West are in Ukraine to be used to kill Russians?<br /><br />What is preventing Putin from using sufficient force to end this conflict before it spins into nuclear war? Does Putin want the nuclear war that will result from the continuation of the conflict? Why does Putin refuse to use the conventional force that would quickly end the conflict?<br /><br />",
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"content": "https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2023/03/06/does-the-kremlin-desire-the-conflict-in-ukraine-to-spin-out-of-control/\n\nDoes the Kremlin Desire the Conflict in Ukraine to Spin Out of Control?\n\nMarch 6, 2023 \n\nPaul Craig Roberts\n\nAs I have explained correctly in a number of articles, there was NO RUSSIAN INVASION OF UKRAINE. It was, as Putin said, an operation limited to ejecting Ukrainian and neo-Nazi forces out of Donbass, historically, like Crimea, a part of Russia herself and populated with ethnic Russians. These historically Russian territories were transferred for political and administrative reasons from Russia to Ukraine by Soviet officials. As Ukraine itself was historically part of Russia for centuries, and as both were part of the USSR along with Georgia and Central Asia, the transfer was understood as adjustment of state boundaries as in the US within the same country. Ukraine did not exist as an independent country until about 30 years ago when the USSR was broken up. So the claim that Donbass and Crimea are part of Ukraine has been true for about 30 years, whereas they have been a part of Russia along with Ukraine for centuries.\n\nPutin had no choice. The Minsk Agreement that he had devised, to which Ukraine agreed and Germany and France agreed to enforce, kept Donbass in Ukraine and gave the people semi-autonomy in order to protect them from abuse by Ukraine. Both the German and French leaders who signed the agreement recently admitted that they used the Minsk Agreement to deceive Putin while the US and NATO built and equipped a large Ukrainian army capable of conquering the two self-declared independent republics in Donbass. When Putin saw the large Ukrainian armed force ready to invade Donbass, part of which was already occupied by Ukrainian armed forces and neo-Nazi militias, he realized that he had been deceived by the West and had no other option but force to protect the Donbass Russians.\n\nEviction of Ukraine military forces from Donbass was his only aim.\n\nThis eviction has depended not on the Russian Army but on a private para-military force known as the Wagner Group and on the militias of the two Donbass independent republics. Belatedly, Putin mobilized some Russian Army forces, but has not committed them to the conflict. Instead, he continues to rely on the Wagner Group and Donbass militias to evict the US/NATO trained and equipped Ukrainians forces.\n\nAs I have made clear in many columns, Putin’s approach was a military blunder. He played completely into Washington’s hands. As the fighting is in territory occupied by ethnic Russian people, Putin handicapped his limited forces with strict rules against the use of highly destructive weapons in civilian areas. The consequence has been a war that is a slow step-by-step process. No Blitzkrieg. Russian restraint has been misinterpreted by the West as Russian inability.\n\nThe consequence of this and Putin’s go-slow-war is that Putin gave Washington/NATO confidence and enormous time to get involved in the conflict to Russia’s disadvantage. Ukrainians now have more effective and longer range weapons, intelligence on Russian positions, and targeting information on Russian positions. Considering the incremental ways Washington gets into wars, boots on the ground will eventually result. \n\nRecently, the power behind the Washington War Scene, neoconservative hate-Russia-at-all-cost Victoria Nuland, Undersecretary of State, has committed Washington to the liberation of Crimea. This seems impossible. The Ukrainians would have to break through the Russian forces in southern Ukraine in order to reach Crimea, the site of the Russian Black Sea Naval Base. The Kremlin would never accept the loss of their warm water port even if it meant nuclear war.\n\nIn other words, Washington is insane. Nuland’s words demonstrate the insanity — “We will support Ukraine for as long as it takes. Ukraine is fighting for the return of all of its land within its international borders. We are supporting them, including in preparing a next hard push to regain their territory…Crimea must be—at a minimum, at a minimum—demilitarized.”\n\nDemilitarized is short-hand for no Black Sea Russian Naval Base.\n\nInsouciant American policymakers and clearly the insane Nuland do not recognize that their arrogant hubris is a declaration of nuclear war.\n\nThe Asian Times believes that Nuland has won the argument. The Biden regime has announced a new long-range weapons program for Ukraine, is sending mobile bridging equipment that is only useful for a Ukrainian offensive against Russian forces in Crimea, and is reconsidering the ban of F-16s for Ukraine. Thus the conflict is spinning out of control. https://asiatimes.com/2023/03/a-coming-wider-war-with-crimea-in-us-sights/ \n\nStill Putin sits on his butt, doing nothing. Is Putin going to wait until the entire armaments of the West are in Ukraine to be used to kill Russians?\n\nWhat is preventing Putin from using sufficient force to end this conflict before it spins into nuclear war? Does Putin want the nuclear war that will result from the continuation of the conflict? Why does Putin refuse to use the conventional force that would quickly end the conflict?\n\n",
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