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Memo to Trump: Trade Bolton for Tulsi – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on June 28, 2019

Can Ryan really be that dumb?

In a fiery exchange, Congressman Tim Ryan of Ohio countered that America cannot disengage from Afghanistan: “When we weren’t in there they started flying planes into our buildings.”

“The Taliban didn’t attack us on 9/11,” Gabbard replied, “Al-Qaida attacked us on 9/11. That’s why I and so many other people joined the military, to go after al-Qaida, not the Taliban.”

Can Ryan really be that dumb?

Ryan is typical of those that run this country. They chose to espouse the government’s own liars press. It is easy, you don’t have to think, and most of all, that is what brings in the money.

Can Ryan really be that dumb?

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2019/06/patrick-j-buchanan/memo-to-trump-trade-bolton-for-tulsi/

By

…“For too long our leaders have failed us, taking us into one regime change war after the next, leading us into a new Cold War and arms race, costing us trillions of our hard-earned tax payer dollars and countless lives. This insanity must end.”

Donald Trump, circa 2016?

Nope. That denunciation of John Bolton interventionism came from Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii during Wednesday night’s Democratic debate. At 38, she was the youngest candidate on stage.

Gabbard proceeded to rip both the “president and his chickenhawk cabinet (who) have led us to the brink of war with Iran.”

In a fiery exchange, Congressman Tim Ryan of Ohio countered that America cannot disengage from Afghanistan: “When we weren’t in there they started flying planes into our buildings.”

“The Taliban didn’t attack us on 9/11,” Gabbard replied, “Al-Qaida attacked us on 9/11. That’s why I and so many other people joined the military, to go after al-Qaida, not the Taliban.”

When Ryan insisted we must stay engaged, Gabbard shot back:

“Is that what you will tell the parents of those two soldiers who were just killed in Afghanistan? ‘Well, we just have to be engaged.’ As a solider, I will tell you, that answer is unacceptable. … We are no better off in Afghanistan that we were when this war began.”

By debate’s end, Gabbard was the runaway winner in both the Drudge Report and Washington Examiner polls and was far in front among all the Democratic candidates whose names were being searched on Google.

Though given less than seven minutes of speaking time in a two-hour debate, she could not have used that time more effectively. And her performance may shake up the Democratic race.

If she can rise a few points above her 1-2% in the polls, she could be assured a spot in the second round of debates.

If she is, moderators will now go to her with questions of foreign policy issues that would not have been raised without her presence, and these questions will expose the hidden divisions in the Democratic Party.

Leading Democratic candidates could be asked to declare what U.S. policy should be — not only toward Afghanistan but Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Jared Kushner’s “Deal of the Century,” and Trump’s seeming rejection of the two-state solution.

If she makes it into the second round, Gabbard could become the catalyst for the kind of globalist vs. nationalist debate that broke out between Trump and Bush Republicans in 2016, a debate that contributed to Trump’s victory at the Cleveland convention and in November…

Be seeing you

 

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Rand Corporation: How to Destroy Russia – Global ResearchGlobal Research – Centre for Research on Globalization

Posted by M. C. on May 31, 2019

Rand Corporation

This is the future that is planned out for us by the Rand Corporation, the most influential think tank of the Deep State – in other words the underground centre of real power gripped by the economic, financial, and military oligarchies – which determines the strategic choices not only of the USA, but all of the Western world.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/rand-corp-how-destroy-russia/5678456

By Manlio Dinucci

Force the adversary to expand recklessly in order to unbalance him, and then destroy him. This is not the description of a judo hold, but a plan against Russia elaborated by the Rand Corporation, the most influential think tank in the USA. With a staff of thousands of experts, Rand presents itself as the world’s most reliable source for Intelligence and political analysis for the leaders of the United States and their allies.

The Rand Corp prides itself on having contributed to the elaboration of the long-term strategy which enabled the United States to win the Cold War, by forcing the Soviet Union to consume its own economic resources in the strategic confrontation. It is this model which was the inspiration for the new plan, Overextending and Unbalancing Russia, published by Rand [1].

According to their analysts, Russia remains a powerful adversary for the United States in certain fundamental sectors. To handle this opposition, the USA and their allies will have to pursue a joint long-term strategy which exploits Russia’s vulnerabilities. So Rand analyses the various means with which to unbalance Russia, indicating for each the probabilities of success, the benefits, the cost, and the risks for the USA.

Rand analysts estimate that Russia’s greatest vulnerability is that of its economy, due to its heavy dependency on oil and gas exports. The income from these exports can be reduced by strengthening sanctions and increasing the energy exports of the United States. The goal is to oblige Europe to diminish its importation of Russian natural gas, and replace it by liquefied natural gas transported by sea from other countries.

Another way of destabilising the Russian economy in the long run is to encourage the emigration of qualified personnel, particularly young Russians with a high level of education.

In the ideological and information sectors, it would be necessary to encourage internal contestation and at the same time, to undermine Russia’s image on the exterior, by excluding it from international forums and boycotting the international sporting events that it organises.

In the geopolitical sector, arming Ukraine would enable the USA to exploit the central point of Russia’s exterior vulnerability, but this would have to be carefully calculated in order to hold Russia under pressure without slipping into a major conflict, which it would win.

In the military sector, the USA could enjoy high benefits, with low costs and risks, by increasing the number of land-based troops from the NATO countries working in an anti-Russian function.

The USA can enjoy high probabilities of success and high benefits, with moderate risks, especially by investing mainly in strategic bombers and long-range attack missiles directed against Russia.

Leaving the INF Treaty and deploying in Europe new intermediate-range nuclear missiles pointed at Russia would lead to high probabilities of success, but would also present high risks.

By calibrating each option to gain the desired effect – conclude the Rand analysts – Russia would end up by paying the hardest price in a confrontation, but the USA would also have to invest huge resources, which would therefore no longer be available for other objectives. This is also prior warning of a coming major increase in USA/NATO military spending, to the disadvantage of social budgets.

This is the future that is planned out for us by the Rand Corporation, the most influential think tank of the Deep State – in other words the underground centre of real power gripped by the economic, financial, and military oligarchies – which determines the strategic choices not only of the USA, but all of the Western world.

The “options” set out by the plan are in reality no more than variants of the same war strategy, of which the price in sacrifices and risks is paid by us all.

*

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This article was originally published on Il Manifesto. Translated by Pete Kimberley.

Manlio Dinucci is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

Featured image is from Zero Hedge

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What’s Behind Bolton’s Attacks on the ‘Troika of Tyranny’? – Antiwar.com Original

Posted by M. C. on April 26, 2019

https://original.antiwar.com/feffer/2019/04/25/whats-behind-boltons-attacks-on-the-troika-of-tyranny/

by

If you’re in the market for a troika of tyranny, Donald Trump, John Bolton, and Mike Pompeo certainly fit the bill. Or, if you’d rather focus on countries not individuals, you might single out Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Egypt as the three most likely candidates. Perhaps, if you’re in a confessional mood, how about Christian fundamentalism, Jewish extremism, and Salafist Wahhabism?

A troika, for those who haven’t read any 19th-century Russian novels recently, is a carriage drawn by three horses. So, the ultimate troika of tyranny, from the point of view of the planet as a whole, would feature the three horsemen of the ongoing apocalypse: climate change, nuclear proliferation, and global pandemic.

But no, that’s not what National Security Advisor John Bolton had in mind when he talked last week of a “troika of tyranny.” In a rehash of a speech he gave in November in Miami, Bolton declared last week that the “troika of tyranny – Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua – is beginning to crumble.” Further laying on the insults, Bolton called Cuba’s Miguel Díaz-Canel, Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, and Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega “the three stooges of socialism.”

Ever since George W. Bush included Iraq, Iran, and North Korea in an “axis of evil,” speechmakers have been in search of the holy grail of geopolitical matchmaking (for instance, Condoleezza Rice’s “outposts of tyranny”)…

Bolton’s more alliterative phrase suffers from the same conceptual problems. Worse, it revives an anti-Communist crusade that could easily expand to include North Korea, China, and any left-leaning country (New Zealand?) that makes the mistake of looking at Bolton funny.

A New Monroe Doctrine?

Trump understands the world in terms of three types of leaders. There are the autocrats he like. There are the autocrats he doesn’t like. And then there are all the rest: the democrats he doesn’t respect…

Bolton never liked Cuba. When he was undersecretary of state for arms control in the George W. Bush administration, Bolton accused the country of making biological weapons. This accusation came only two months after Bush had inaugurated the “axis of evil,” and Bolton was eager to shoehorn Cuba into the new group. But his efforts to designate the Caribbean island a “terrorist threat” – and prepare the ground for yet another US invasion – foundered when a congressional investigation turned up no evidence of a biological weapons program in the country.

Now Bolton is excited to have a second chance to group Cuba with two other countries that have fallen afoul of the United States: Venezuela and Nicaragua.

Like the original members of the “axis of evil,” they don’t have much in common with one another. Cuba is avowedly Marxist in orientation, with a Third World agrarian spin. Venezuela, on the other hand, is a corrupt petro-state led by a leader who calls himself socialist but is really just a klutzy kleptocrat. Then there’s Daniel Ortega, who was once a socialist revolutionary but has transformed himself into a Catholic dictator along the lines of Francisco Franco.

None of these countries poses even the remotest threat to the United States. They have dismal human rights records, but that hasn’t been a concern for the Trump administration anywhere else in the world.

So, why is Bolton bothering to waste his rhetorical flourishes on the trio? The national security advisor claims that Cuba is propping up Maduro. He hints that Ortega’s days are numbered. Is Bolton campaigning to revive what had once been the traditional US approach to Latin America: invasion, occupation, regime change?…

In the end, Bolton is after nothing short of a new Cold War.

Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua are small countries with no desire or means to attack the United States. North Korea with its nuclear weapons, China with the world’s second largest military, and Russia with its geopolitical ambitions, on the other hand, are much worthier adversaries.

Prolonged conflict with these three will keep militarists like Bolton in business for decades. As importantly, Bolton can use these larger confrontations to unravel all international institutions, all forms of international cooperation, in fact anything that smacks of an international community.

With all eyes focused these days on Trump and his myriad crimes, John Bolton’s speeches are a reminder that even worse options are waiting in the wings.

Be seeing you

endless war

 

 

 

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Trump Should Close – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on April 2, 2019

Yet none of the nations admitted to NATO in two decades was ever regarded as worth a war with Russia by any Cold War U.S. president.

When did insuring the sovereignty and borders of these nations suddenly become vital interests of the United States?

And if they are not vital interests, why are we committed to go to war with a nuclear-armed Russia over them, when avoidance of such a war was the highest priority of our eight Cold War presidents?

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2019/04/patrick-j-buchanan/trump-should-close-nato-membership-rolls/

By

When Donald Trump meets with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg today, the president should give him a direct message:

The roster of NATO membership is closed. For good. The United States will not hand out any more war guarantees to fight Russia to secure borders deep in Eastern Europe, when our own southern border is bleeding profusely.

And no one needs to hear this message more than Stoltenberg.

In Tblisi, Georgia, on March 25, Stoltenberg declared to the world: “The 29 allies have clearly stated that Georgia will become a member of NATO.”

As for Moscow’s objection to Georgia joining NATO, Stoltenberg gave Vladimir Putin the wet mitten across the face:

“We are not accepting that Russia, or any other power, can decide what (NATO) members can do.”

Yet what would it mean for Georgia to be brought into NATO?

The U.S. would immediately be ensnared in a conflict with Russia that calls to mind the 1938 and 1939 clashes over the Sudetenland and Danzig that led straight to World War II.

In 2008, thinking it had U.S. backing, Georgia rashly ordered its army into South Ossetia, a tiny province that had broken away years before.

In that Georgian invasion, Russian peacekeepers were killed and Putin responded by sending the Russian army into South Ossetia to throw the Georgians out. Then he invaded Georgia itself.

“We are all Georgians now!” roared uber-interventionist John McCain. But George W. Bush, by now a wiser man, did nothing…

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NATO

 

 

 

 

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The long history of US-Russian ‘meddling’ (by Stephen Cohen) — RT Op-ed

Posted by M. C. on March 17, 2019

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/453267-russiagate-meddling-us-collusion/

by Stephen Cohen

The two governments have repeatedly interfered in each other’s domestic politics during the past 100 years – and it’s not all bad.

Even though the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee found “no direct evidence of a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia,” Russiagate allegations of “collusion” between candidate and then President Donald Trump and the Kremlin have poisoned American politics for nearly three years.  They are likely to continue to do so for the foreseeable future, and due not only to the current subpoena-happy Democratic chairs of House “investigative” committees.

At the core of the Russiagate narrative is the allegation that the Kremlin “meddled” in the 2016 US presidential election. The word “meddle” is nebulous and could mean most anything, but Russiagate zealots deploy it in the most ominous ways, as a war-like “attack on America,” a kind of “Pearl Harbor.” They also imply that such meddling is unprecedented when in fact both the United States and Russia have interfered repeatedly in the other’s internal politics, in one way or another, certainly since the 1917 Russian Revolution.

 

For context, recall that such meddling is an integral part of Cold War and that there have been three Cold Wars between America and Russia during the past one hundred years. The first was from 1917 to 1933, when Washington did not even formally recognize the new Soviet government in Moscow. The second is, of course, the best known, the forty-year Cold War from about 1948 to 1988, when the US and Soviet leaders, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, declared it over. And then, by my reckoning, the new, ongoing Cold War began in the late 1990s, when the Clinton administration initiated the expansion of NATO towards Russia’s borders and bombed Moscow’s longtime Slav and political ally Serbia.

That’s approximately eighty-five years of US-Russian Cold War in a hundred years of relations and, not surprisingly, a lot of meddling on both sides, even leaving aside espionage and spies. The meddling has taken various forms….

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Has Russia Given Up on the West? – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on September 21, 2018

the McCain wing of the Republican Party has sought to bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO, which would make the containment of Russia America’s policy in perpetuity.

“Hero” McCain has left US more than the POW coverup.

U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley is berating Russia…

Nikki Haley is dangerously stupid.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2018/09/patrick-j-buchanan/has-russia-given-up-on-the-west/

By 

By the end of his second term, President Ronald Reagan, who had called the Soviet Union an “evil empire,” was strolling through Red Square with Russians slapping him on the back.

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive.

And how have we husbanded the fruits of our Cold War triumph?

This month, China’s leader-for-life Xi Jinping stood beside Vladimir Putin as 3,000 Chinese troops maneuvered with 300,000 Russians, 1,000 planes and 900 tanks in Moscow’s largest military exercise in 40 years.

An uncoded message to the West from the East.

Richard Nixon’s great achievement in bringing Peking in from the cold, and Reagan’s great achievement of ending the Cold War, are history.

Bolshevism may be dead, but Russian nationalism, awakened by NATO’s quick march to Russia’s ancient frontiers, is alive and well. Read the rest of this entry »

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Schmucks of the World, Unite – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on July 9, 2018

Schmucks of the World, Unite

By 

`We are the schmucks’ thundered President Donald Trump, using a favorite New York City Yiddish term for penis.   The object of Trump’s wrath at his  Make America Great Again’  rally in Great Falls, Montana was the craven, stingy European members of NATO,  only 16 of 22 members are on budget for their US-commanded military spending.  Trump wants them to spend much more. Read the rest of this entry »

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Marine Le Pen: I know the EU is waging a Cold War against Russia – Here’s Why – RussiaFeed

Posted by M. C. on March 26, 2018

I suspect Marine Le Pen was France’s last best chance for survival.

Any chance the UK and Europe have surviving a confrontation with Russia, military or otherwise, consists of US military lives and US tax dollars. Remember that when you hear European leaders talking big.

http://russiafeed.com/marine-le-pen-i-know-the-eu-is-waging-a-cold-war-against-russia-heres-why/

“I believe that the current events may have far more significant implications,” Le Pen said.

“It’s a strategy of building a wall separating Russia and the European Union. I know from my own experience of work in the European Parliament that the European Union is conducting a real Cold War against Russia,” Le Pen said.

Le Pen isn’t the only French citizen tired of this Cold War against Russia. The French Ambassador spoke explaining to the US that France does not wish to be a part of the US-Russia exterritorial sanctions regime. The US sanctions Russia, and expects France to obey the US sanctions, in betrayal of their own interest. Read the rest of this entry »

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When Washington Assured Russia NATO Would Not Expand | The American Conservative

Posted by M. C. on December 22, 2017

 

If we are God’s choice to rule the world, as many in Washington will tell you, His plan certainly is mysterious.

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/when-washington-assured-russia-nato-would-not-expand/

For Washington, London, and Paris, the solution was obvious: keep the Germans in a warm but firm embrace. Ensuring that a united Germany remained part of NATO would reduce the likelihood of it choosing at some future date to strike an independent course.

To make that prospect palatable, the Bush administration assured the Soviets that they had nothing to fear from a Western alliance that included a united Germany. NATO no longer viewed the USSR as an adversary. Apart from incorporating the territory of the former East Germany, the alliance was going to stay put. Washington was sensitive to and would respect Russia’s own security interests. So at least U.S. officials claimed. Read the rest of this entry »

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COLD WAR Half-naked South Korean and US Marines hold snow drills to prepare for Winter Olympics attack

Posted by M. C. on December 19, 2017

This is the KOREAN games, right?  Why is the US bearing the burden?

Are the games are limited to just US participants. How about telling other countries no soldiers, no compete.

How about forgetting the whole thing.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5170396/south-korea-and-us-marines-hurl-snow-during-a-joint-winter-drill-in-olympics/

The three-week exercise began on December 4 at the Mount Hwangbyeong training camp as part of the Korea Marine Exercise Program, the Yonhap news agency reports.

It involves more than 220 South Korean Marines and some 220 U.S. Marines, normally stationed in Okinawa, Japan… Read the rest of this entry »

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