I don’t know why everyone’s so hard on Putin these days. I mean, the Russian president is so kind and considerate that he waited until ex-spy Sergei Skripal had been strategically irrelevant for many years before poisoning him, and did so in a way that both failed to kill the target and strongly indicated that Russia was responsible for the attack. While other nations use highly trained killers to assassinate critical targets and make it look like a suicide, the Kremlin had the decency to use an attack that was simultaneously both ineffectual and the forensic equivalent of issuing a press release on RT saying “Yeah we totally poisoned that guy” for no conceivable benefit to itself.
You can’t buy that kind of charity from other western regime change targets. This is why Australians don’t like Brits; they’re such ungrateful whingers.
@aaronjmate
UK police announce they have found Vladimir Putin's wallet at the scene of the spy poisoning crime. He must've dropped it. Plus Assad's wallet and the wallets of the entire Iranian Supreme Council. @MaxBlumenthal @LeeCamp @jimmy_dore @caitoz @JulianAssange— Garland Nixon (@GarlandNixon) March 13, 2018
The furor over the alleged Skripal poisoning has fit snugly into the pattern we’ve come to expect in the western empire’s continual campaign to psyop the public into believing that escalations with a nuclear superpower are in their best interests. We’re seeing the typical lack of evidence for the accusation, the typical one-sided reporting from all mass media outlets collaborating to weave the illusion of unanimous agreement about the accusation, and the typical escalation in cold war tensions as diplomats are thrown out, communications cut off, and European Union collaboration sought for tougher action against the Russian Federation.
As always, the official story is riddled with gaping plot holes. As always, anyone urging caution in plunging into new cold war escalations is branded a Kremlin collaborator, with Jeremy Corbyn seeing his image superimposed on the BBC over a red-colored Kremlin skyline wearing clothing selected (and arguably photoshopped) to look as Soviet-like as possible.
The foot is on the gas, pushing the pedal to the metal toward dangerous and ever-increasing escalations, and anyone who makes a move for the emergency brake gets slapped down.
As we discussed recently, the US-centralized empire is rapidly approaching post-primacy and needs to act fast to move some major chess pieces into place so it can prevent the rise of a multipolar world. The goal is to quickly manufacture a global coalition to cut Russia out of the global stage, and this new dance with the UK and the EU is just the latest step toward that direction. Not even the most psychopathic imperialists want a hot conflict with Russia if they can avoid it, but they will gamble with all our lives very close to the edge in an extremely dangerous cold war, because that’s what the empire needs to do to survive.
Even the Council on Foreign Relations, easily the closest thing you’re ever going to get to the voice of the empire, is now openly admitting that the “United States is currently in a second Cold War with Russia.” Wikipedia currently defines the term cold war as “a state of conflict between nations that does not involve direct military action but is pursued primarily through economic and political actions, propaganda, acts of espionage or proxy wars waged by surrogates,” and that is exactly what we are seeing today. Intelligence agencies, think tanks and the mass media are all working together to advance economic and political agendas using propaganda, acts of espionage and proxy wars to try and shove Russia out of the way without engaging it in direct military action.
In 1917 a Republican Senator named Hiram W Johnson coined the phrase, “The first casualty when war comes is truth,” meaning that wartime is always accompanied by lies and deception. Today, the fifteenth anniversary of the Iraq invasion, is surely a reminder of that fact. In cold war, which relies so heavily on propaganda, espionage, and manipulating the opinions of the public to advance global economic and political actions, this is even more true.
The people who control the international alliances which comprise the western empire are liars and killers, as evidenced by its actions in Iraq, Libya, Vietnam, and Syria . In a cold war, we can expect them to tell more lies, not less. Don’t give them the benefit of the doubt.
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7 responses to “Truth Is The First Casualty In War. Especially In Cold War.”
Hmmm
As usual the primary reason the US illegally invaded Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, etc., etc., despite the fact there was NEVER any evidence that any of those countries were responsible for 9-11 is never even mentioned, let alone discussed in detail. In other words, who or what has been the driving force behind US Middle Eastern Policy since 9-11 remains in the shadows. The reason it is never mentioned is because Israel is the driving force behind US Middle Eastern Policy since it staged the 9-11 false flag attack to drag the US into war.
The current Russia/China vilification tactic is just one more in a long line of schemes designed to ensure the American people don’t focus on the real bad guys that are waging war against America and Americans. And that country is Israel. The “cold war” is just distraction, nothing more. If the US wants peace and prosperity for the citizenry it should cease all current military operations in the Middle East. The US most force Israel back to its legally proscribed original 1948 boundaries and ensure they stop attacking all their neighbors. Given that Israel is the only nuclear power in the region they have not been under any real threat to their survival since the end of the 1973 war when the world became aware of those nuclear weapons.
We should immediately cut the US defense budget in half.Withdraw the majority of troops home and focus on US security and rebuilding our military. We can start that rebuilding by ripping up every single existing contract the Pentagon has with private vendors and replace them with honest contracts that protect the tax payer and give a fair return on our money. We must end the FED and repudiate all its debt and take back our gold. We must cancel all treaties with any country that is one sided including Israel because they are dangerous to US National Security. We must stop further direct funding of
Israel. The border walls must be built and our borders sealed. Immigration must return to pre-1965 levels until such time as US the real US unemployment rate drops from 20+ back down to 5%. Only then can legal immigration slowly inch upwards. The practice of issuing millions of foreign work visas must also stop during this rebuilding period. I could go on, but in truth none of this is rocket science. All that is required is a patriot with reasonable intelligence, a strong dose of critical thinking a some common sense. ( in other words it can’t be any politician currently in Washington DC) One final point; the law regarding dual citizens working for the US government must change to reflect the ever growing threat:. NO dual citizen, or Americans who have been citizens for less than 5 years can work for the US government period. There is no such thing as a “loyal” dual citizen people.
I respectfully disagree with much of what you say here, though I consider myself “a patriot with reasonable intelligence, a strong dose of critical thinking a some common sense.”
I have no reason to believe that you have made any incorrect statements in this post. However, I don’t see what I can do with this information. It’s easy enough to disbelieve the current US administration; indeed, it’s hard to believe ANYTHING they say. And I’ve consumed enough alternative media to know the limitations and biases of the MSM, even Rachel Maddow. How can I trust anyone, including you?
I know that you and Glenn Greenwald agree on some of what you’ve said–he’s been saying that there is still no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. I tend to trust him, having seen and heard him often, saying sensible though controversial things on alt media, but it seems that there are no guarantees.
I feel like I did after reading Mark Lane’s Rush to Judgment about the Kennedy (JFK) assassination. The official story didn’t hang together, but I still had no story to believe. My decision eventually came down to this: I’ll see who goes to prison.
So where does all this leave me? I have no special insights or expertise, just a naturally (or acquired) skeptical mind which I’ve had as long as I can remember. I have no interest in devoting my life to doing my own investigative journalism–I’ll be 71 this month and have other fish to fry in my (presumably) few remaining good years.
All of which amounts to nothing more than useless whining. Thanks for listening (or not listening), and thanks for your efforts, which I do value, though they sometimes leave me feeling pretty hopeless about the current situation.
Alan Carl Nicoll
Alan ,
I can relate to your dilemma about who to trust and when. I also don’t blame you for not wanting to spend your remaining days doing first-hand research. My suggestion : Find two other sources that you “tend to trust” , like Greenwald , and just read those three about the issues of the day. If there’s a consensus , you’ll feel pretty confident that you’re getting the truth about as well as it can be known by us mere mortals. If not , you’ll have some doubts , but that’s unavoidable. Don’t bother with the MSM , ever.
Caitlin would be a good choice to be among your three , I think , and maybe a site like Consortium News as well , as they have a very good reputation for unbiased reporting.
Reading those three sites over time , you’ll begin to notice other trusted sources are repeatedly mentioned , either by them , or by commenters. Then , if you feel the need , you can add a new site or substitute one for another , as your intuition dictates.
Just my two cents , FWIW. Good luck.
This is good advice. I do trust Noam Chomsky, but don’t get a lot of current material from him. I trust Rachel Maddow while recognizing that she fails to cover a range of issues that MSM in general don’t cover, or cover badly. I trust The Nation, but found it too dull and expensive to subscribe to. I trust Howard Zinn, but he’s dead. I trust Michael Moore…I should see if he has a web site. Glenn Greenwald and Caitlin are so far out of mainstream that it will take me a while to learn to trust them. I pretty much trust Greg Palast based on his Armed Madhouse. No doubt there are others.
But this doesn’t really get to the heart of the matter. If you can’t trust the government, and I can’t, then… I don’t know how to finish that sentence. It just sucks. I guess I haven’t trusted the government since I read Mark Lane’s Rush to Judgment, re the JFK assassination, and this has only increased over the next 50 years, largely fueled by reading lots of Noam Chomsky and listening to KPFK radio in Los Angeles (available at KPFK.org).. The icing on the cake was Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine, which is just the most horrifying book I’ve ever read.
So I have pursued the Censored News and so on, and am finally reading Karl Marx, but so what? I don’t know what comes next, and have never known. Except that I’ve written a book, yet to be published, a small part of which expresses my political thinking, and I have a blog and am on twitter and I help the homeless (a little) in my immediate neighborhood. I wanted to march on 3/24/18, but my probation officer has nixed that. Can’t run for office and don’t really trust any Republican or Democratic politician. Voted for Ralph Nader and was registered Green until my incarceration in 2006. So what? So I’m a not-very-unusual “white liberal.”
Well.
A short statement of the reasons why the British are now staging the Skripal provocation can be found in a March 14 London Sunday Telegraph call to arms by Allister Heath, who rants:
“We need a new world order to take on totalitarian capitalists in Russia and China… Such an alliance … would dramatically shift the global balance of power, and allow the liberal democracies finally to fight back. It would endow the world with the sorts of robust institutions that are required to contain Russia and China… Britain needs a new role in the world; building such a network would be our perfect mission.”
Across the pond, as they say, a similar foundational statement was made by 68 former Obama Administration officials who have formed a group called National Security Action, aimed at securing Trump’s impeachment and attacking Russia and China.
As visitors to the LaRouchePAC website know, Russia and China have embarked on a massive infrastructure building project in Eurasia, the center of all British geopolitical fantasies since the time of Halford MacKinder. Moreover, China’s Belt and Road Initiative now encompasses more than 140 nations in the largest infrastructure-building project ever undertaken in human history. This project is a true economic engine for the future, while neo-liberal economies continue to see their productive potentials sucked dry by the massive mound of debt they have created since the 2008 financial collapse. This debt is now on a hair trigger for implosion. It is estimated by banking insiders that the City of London is sitting on a derivatives powderkeg of $700 trillion with over-the-counter derivatives accounting for another $570 trillion. The City of London will bear the major impact of the derivatives collapse.
In this strategic geometry, President Trump’s support of peaceful collaboration with Russia during the campaign and his personal friendship with President Xi, marked him for the relentless coup against him waged by the British and their U.S. friends.
On top of that, President Putin delivered a mammoth strategic shock on March 1, showing new Russian weapons systems based on new physical principles which render present U.S. ABM systems and much of current U.S. war-fighting doctrine obsolete, together with the vaunted first strike capacity with which NATO has surrounded Russia. Not only is the West sitting on a new financial collapse; its vaunted military superiority has just been flanked.
More: https://larouchepac.com/20180318/perfidious-albion-fatally-wounded-british-beast-lashes-out
While I completely agree the one thing that we continue to overlook in all of this is the Triad – Iran, China and Russia. In 2008 right about the time that an Iran sympathizer and China shmoozer came into office promises of uranium was made with Russia.Now, isn’t it at all possible that the poisoning was yet another cover-up and blame the most obvious guy in the same way that there has been time and time again? How about this? What if the information that the ex-KGB held had nothing to do with Russia at all? In July of 2008 Russia was buying up prime real estate in the US. Newsweek issue 7/25/08 asked if Russia could save the sagging housing market. At the same time the US was turning to China to save its sorry backside for bad investments and failures. You see Iran, Russia and China all need something from each other if they are going to continue to increase and save their own people. China is now stripping the earth of precious metals in every continent on earth. Russia and Iran provide the materials and energy. The one thing that stand in the way of free flowing natural gas is Syria. Let’s call this episode. “A Gas Line Runs Through It!” There is no cold war, this is a slow and steady take over and Clinton Foundation and the soon to be Obama Foundation delivered it on a silver platter. I wrote a blog about the Triad in 2008 after reading a very enlightening article by Fast Company.