Yesterday the news broke that Swamp Monster-In-Chief John Bolton has been pushing President Trump to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, the 1988 arms control agreement between the US and the Soviet Union eliminating all missiles of a specified range from the arsenals of the two nuclear superpowers. Today, Trump has announced that he will be doing exactly as Bolton instructed.
This would be the second missile treaty between the US and Russia that America has withdrawn from since it abandoned the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002. John Bolton, an actual psychopath who Trump hired as his National Security Advisor in April, ran point on that move as well back when he was part of the increasingly indistinguishable Bush administration.
This is why John Bolton shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near US foreign policy. This would undo decades of bipartisan arms control dating from Reagan. We shouldn’t do it. We should seek to fix any problems with this treaty and move forward. https://t.co/xj5FqyCyS6 #FoxNews
— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) October 20, 2018
“This is why John Bolton shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near US foreign policy,” tweeted Senator Rand Paul in response to early forecasts of the official announcement. “This would undo decades of bipartisan arms control dating from Reagan. We shouldn’t do it. We should seek to fix any problems with this treaty and move forward.”
“This is the most severe crisis in nuclear arms control since the 1980s,” Malcolm Chalmers, the deputy director general of the Royal United Services Institute, told The Guardian. “If the INF treaty collapses, and with the New Start treaty on strategic arms due to expire in 2021, the world could be left without any limits on the nuclear arsenals of nuclear states for the first time since 1972.”
“A disaster for Europe,” tweeted Russia-based journalist Bryan MacDonald. “The treaty removed Cruise & Pershing missiles, and Soviet ss20’s from the continent. Now, you will most likely see Russia launch a major build up in Kaliningrad & the US push into Poland. So you’re back to 1980, but the dividing line is closer to Moscow.”
“Russia has violated the agreement. They’ve been violating it for many years and I don’t know why President Obama didn’t negotiate or pull out,” Trump told reporters in Nevada. “We’re not going to let them violate a nuclear agreement and do weapons and we’re not allowed to. We’re the ones that have stayed in the agreement and we’ve honored the agreement but Russia has not unfortunately honored the agreement so we’re going to terminate the agreement, we’re going to pull out.”
What Trump did not mention is that the US has indeed been in violation of that agreement due to steps it began taking toward the development of a new ground-launched cruise missile last year. The US claims it began taking those steps due to Russian violations of the treaty with its own arsenal, while Russia claims the US has already been in violation of multiple arms control, nonproliferation, and disarmament agreements.
https://twitter.com/RusEmbUSA/status/943237894684266502
So, on the one front where cooler heads prevailing is quite literally the single most important thing in the world, the exact opposite is happening. Hotter, more impatient, more violent, more hawkish heads are prevailing over diplomacy and sensibility, potentially at the peril of the entire world should something unexpected go wrong as a result. This is of course coming after two years of Democratic Party loyalists attacking Trump on the basis that he has not been sufficiently hawkish toward Russia, and claiming that this is because he is Putin’s puppet.
In response to this predictable escalation the path for which has been lubricated by McResistance pundits and their neoconservative allies, those very same pundits are now reacting with horror that Putin’s puppet is now dangerously escalating tensions with Putin.
“BREAKING: Trump announces that the United States will pull out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty that the US has been in for 31 years,” exclaimed the popular Russiagater Brian Krassenstein in a tweet that as of this writing has over 5,000 shares. “Welcome back to the Cold War. This time it’s scarier And no, It’s not Obama, or Hillary or the Democrat’s fault. It’s ALL TRUMP!”
“Hilarious to listen to all this alarmed screaming about US withdrawal from INF Treaty emanating from those who for 2 years have been demanding that Trump get tough with Russia,” tweeted George Szamuely of the Global Policy Institute. “Now that they’ve got their arms race I hope they are pleased with themselves.”
“Are those who have spent the past two years warning of a Trump-Kremlin conspiracy & cheering confrontation w/ Russia ready to shut the fuck up yet?” asked Aaron Maté, who has been among the most consistently lucid critics of the Russiagate narrative in the US.
Are those who have spent the past two years warning of a Trump-Kremlin conspiracy & cheering confrontation w/ Russia ready to shut the fuck up yet? https://t.co/SnOCgKS8vb
— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) October 20, 2018
Are they ready to shut the fuck up? That would be great, but this is just the latest escalation in a steadily escalating new cold war, and these blithering idiots didn’t shut the fuck up at any of the other steps toward nuclear holocaust. They didn’t shut the fuck up after Trump’s capitulation to the longstanding neoconservative agenda to arm Ukraine against Russia. They didn’t shut the fuck up after Americans killed Russians in Syria as part of their regime change occupation of that country. They didn’t shut the fuck up when this administration adopted a Nuclear Posture Review with greatly increased aggression toward Russia and blurred lines between when nuclear strikes are and are not appropriate. They didn’t shut the fuck up when Trump started sending war ships into the Black Sea “to counter Russia’s increased presence there.” They didn’t shut the fuck up when this administration forced RT and Sputnik to register as foreign agents. They didn’t shut the fuck up when this administration helped expand NATO with the addition of Montenegro, at the assigning of Russia hawk Kurt Volker as special representative to Ukraine, at the shutting down of a Russian consulate in San Francisco and throwing out Russian diplomats in August of last year, when Trump threw out dozens more diplomats in response to shaky claims about the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal, or when he implemented aggressive sanctions on Russian oligarchs. Why would they shut the fuck up now?
As signs point to Mueller’s investigation wrapping up in the near future without turning up a single shred of evidence that Trump colluded with the Russian government, it’s time for everyone who helped advance this toxic, suicidal anti-Russia narrative to ask themselves one question: was it worth it? Was it worth it to help mount political pressure on a sitting president to continually escalate tensions with a nuclear superpower and loudly screaming that he’s a Putin puppet whenever he takes a step toward de-escalation? Was it worth it to help create an atmosphere where cooler heads don’t prevail in the one area where it’s absolutely essential for everyone’s survival that they do? Or is it maybe time to shut the fuck up for a while and rethink your entire worldview?
This is the top response under a tweet by @krassenstein about how Trump is escalating nuclear tensions with Putin. You know you've hit peak conspiracy theory when the evidence disproving the conspiracy theory is interpreted as proof of the conspiracy theory. https://t.co/IFLMZ9n30t
— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) October 21, 2018
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28 responses to ““Putin’s Puppet” Advances Nuclear Missile Escalations Against Putin”
Nuclear weapons need to be outlawed outright globally!
Adolf Hitler has written in his autobiography:
“Unless you have enemies, you cannot become a great leader.
Even if you don’t have enemies, create the fiction that your country is in danger, because when people are afraid they are ready to become slaves.
When people are afraid they are ready to follow politicians.”
Although he was an insane person, once in a while he made statements which are very significant.
He has said, “The greatest leaders of humanity are born in times of war.”
So unless there is a great war, you cannot be a great leader; just to fulfill the desire of being a great leader, you have to kill millions of people.
And he is right: in days of peace, people don’t need to follow; people don’t make the leader almost a god, so that his word becomes the law.
In your fear is their power.
The more they make you afraid, the more powerful they are.
Outside the country they go on creating fictions, and inside the country they also continue.
Until they remove all of your freedoms.
Politicians are legal constitutional criminals.
They forget completely that they are servants of the people; they start behaving as if they are the masters of the people.
They are the most unqualified people in the world.
Their only quality is that they can manage to befool the poor masses.
The politicians’ power, is in your unawareness.
Rather than being in power, they should be behind bars.
If the world wants to be at peace, politicians should disappear entirely from this planet.
They are the enemies of humanity.
Politicians talk of stopping wars, stopping the killings, but they don’t mean it.
It is good business.
They don’t want to stop the wars that they have created, because otherwise who are they going to sell all of their weapons to which amount to trillions of dollars annually?
Why should such unconscious people have access to so much destructiveness, that a single nation could destroy the whole earth?
Just a few bad people have been ruling the whole of humanity, and millions of good people, seeing destructiveness, seeing violence, seeing criminality, just remain silent.
They don’t want to get involved in any trouble.
What are you doing to prevent the calamity that is coming closer every day?
This is in response to JRKRIDEAU’s reply to my first comment below, in which he/she blames the incompetence of previous administrations’ “negotiating teams in the last 50 years” for the trade deal with China, NAFTA and the Universal Postal Union. What follows is my response.
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It was the decision by US corporations to exercise their beloved “freedom” to move their manufacturing facilities to China, Malaysia, Bangladesh, etc., in order to exploit slave labor and maximize profit, that resulted in “things” like the Universal Postal Union and FTA and NAFTA in the first place, NOT the incompetence of previous presidents’ negotiating teams.
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These “negotiating teams” did exactly what they were ordered to do BY those same corporations, in order to maximize those same US corporations profit, most importantly, to the absolute horrifying detriment of US workers.
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In short, blame the previous administrations’ elected officials, NOT their negotiating teams’ incompetence. Those previous administrations, both R and D, got for those corporations exactly what those corporations wanted.
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During the campaign leading up to the 2016 presidential election, a large part of the US electorate was unemployed or underemployed, or had stopped looking for a job. The so-called TBTF banks had been bailed out, dollar for dollar, in ’08 -’09 BY FUTURE UN-BORN TAXPAYERS while millions of LIVING taxpayers lost their jobs, their homes, their life savings, etc.
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Again, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II and O’bomb’em had ALL allowed US corporations to move all manufacturing to China, etc. in order to maximize their profit. However, the politically-immaculate-conception Trump fully understood that this decades old phenomenon was extremely unfair to US workers, which is why he said during his campaign “if you sell it in America, you’ll have to make it in America”. That phrase “struck a chord” in many Americans’ heads and that, along with his suggestions to make nice with Russia and stop his predecessors’ regime change operations, won him enough votes to win the presidency.
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However, Trump now blaming this situation on “something unfair” that China did is dead wrong. Once again with feeling, it was US corporate CEOs’ greed over literally decades that caused the present wildly unfair situation to US workers for the benefit of US corporations. But Trump simply CAN NOT SPEAK THIS TRUTH. Such a statement of reality would be too unfriendly to US corporations and might ignite a bit too much free thinking in the bewildered herd of voters.
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Therefore, the one and only tool Agent Orange has to force manufacturing and jobs back to the US is to impose tariffs, sanctions, etc., and the one and only way he can justify that to fair-minded average Americans is to blame China, etc. for “unfair” trade practices that US corporations wanted and demanded in order to maximize profit and reduce the cost of Chinese-manufactured goods, with US names attached, in Walmart, etc. stores IN the US.
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Even IF, and that’s a very big IF, Orange can force some jobs back to the US, he will NOT be able to turn the clock back to the way things were for the average US worker after WWII, when US manufacturers and workers supplied rest of the world with EVERYTHING. China and Russia and the nations of the EU can manufacture their own high quality stuff for their own people quite nicely, thank you. Here is the conundrum that the human race has to face head-on and solve, ASAP.
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ALL of the individual national economies of the world must NOT depend upon either exporting or importing stuff — whether that stuff is TVs or weapon systems or terrestrial resources or food. The ironclad logic of this recommendation is easier to understand if one thinks of the entire world as only ONE SINGLE nation with only ONE SINGLE economy. Looking at the world in this unique way, if importing and exporting is vitally necessary for ANY economy (including the aforementioned macro-economy) in order to survive and thrive, to and from just exactly WHOM would this true macro-economy “export” and “import” — the people of Mars?!
No. This one-economy-world (the one we are actually living in right now, even though we do/can not see it this way because of our 24/7 brainwashing) will at some point HAVE to figure out how to “go it alone”. NOT having accepted that this is necessary is IMO exactly why “the world” is going through what it is going through today. And this is why all of the individual national economies of the world should IMMEDIATELY, DELIBERATELY start “figuring out” and then implement the design of an economic system in which each individual nations is able to, at first, anyway, “go it alone” while providing a decent standard of living for their own citizens.
One might argue that a “fully globalized” world of individual nations importing from, or exporting to, each other would, in the end, be better prepared to go it alone “as a whole”. But all we have to do is look around at the real, fully-globalized world that is already in existence today to see how well that is going and the likely-horrible next steps in its evolution — war, more war and even more war.
To sum up, an economic system’s design that REQUIRES imports, exports, slave labor, as well as perpetual war; while at the same time “just happens” to make its citizens “unable to afford” to pay each other a living wage to produce the things and provide ALL the services that all citizens vitally need (including taking care of the sick, elderly or infirmed, and allowing senior citizens to retire with some basic necessities of life provided before they drop dead at their jobs) is fatally flawed.
Even though we at the grassroots level have been carefully taught to find collective discussion of an alternative to the present economic design (in which a microscopic percentage of the population owns the vast majority of wealth and capital equipment for their own astronomical profit) repulsive, that is precisely what we are going to have to do. THERE IS NO WAY AROUND IT! We are going to have to stop bitching to each other and begging the Elite to behave better, and start discussing what the “foundation stone” of a better economic system should be. If the ultimate outcome of that discussion is that “greed is good” and “growth is God” (when the already-unsustainable human population is 7.6 billion living/consuming individuals), all we have to do is stop talking and hold on tight to the design we’ve got right now, because those are exactly its “core beliefs”.
I do not trust the DOD, but the report this past year or so that the u.s. Empire is falling seems correct. Karma is a bitch. Have a nice day or night. Power to the People…BDS…Next up with Andrea Mitchell and Husband, “Could a Nuclear War stop global warming and help Israel” Do the five eyes have tapes of the House of Saud BS, or does NATO partner Turkey? Next Tuesday’s release by Turkey hopefully will be Truth I hope, but will a false flag, or hit happen before. If Assange had info, he would release it for TRUTH, and all to decide and the D and R’s Corporate Pigs would squeal Traitor. We want Truth or get the fuck out of the way. Vote for a D or R? Grow up People. Peace…Kill your Television you fools. Educate, Agitate…etc..Here is a conpiracy thought…does a country in the ME control the U.S. Media, and influence U.S. Elections, and by the way, BUY elections? Are we here at this point because of Russia, or the DNC fixing things for profiteers? Help all People.
sorry for double post!
I do not trust the DOD, but the report this past year or so that the u.s. Empire is falling seems correct. Karma is a bitch. Have a nice day or night. Power to the People…BDS…Next up with Andrea Mitchell and Husband, “Could a Nuclear War stop global warming and help Israel” Do the five eyes have tapes of the House of Saud BS, or does NATO partner Turkey? Next Tuesday’s release by Turkey hopefully will be Truth I hope, but will a false flag, or hit happen before. If Assange had info, he would release it for TRUTH, and all to decide ,but the D and R’s Corporate Pigs would squeal Traitor. We want Truth, or get the fuck out of the way. Vote for a D or R? Grow up People. Peace…Kill your Television you fools. Educate, Agitate…etc..Here is a conspiracy thought…does a country in the ME control the U.S. Media, and influence U.S. Elections, have nukes and is part of NO treaty, and by the way, BUY elections? Are we here at this point because of Russia, or the DNC fixing things for profiteers? Help all People. BDS. Stop funding the House of Saud and Israel and others who commit War Crimes, U.S. taxpayers.
Nobody cares about our “sacred Constitution” nor the presidential oath to defend it and secure the faithful enforcement of the Law. The “Constitution,” supposedly, is “the Supreme Law of the Land.” Treaties ratified by the Senate also are stated in that “sacred Constitution” to be part of that “Supreme Law.” The “sacred Constitution” gives no authority whatever to the “Executive” (the president) to change any law or to do anything other than to “faithfully” enforce it. Yet Trump, and Bush (and how many others before him?) blithely “withdraw,” without the slightest authority, from Treaties enacted as “The Supreme Law of the Land.” If there were the slightest doubt about the Constitutional procedure for abrogating a treaty (which obviously requires a vote by the same body, and by the same majority, Constitutionally prescribed for its ratification) surely somebody, sometime, would have tabled an Amendment clearing up any supposed “ambiguity,” n’est-ce-pas?
Impeach a president for blatant violation of his Oath? What nonsense!
Obviously Trump is no longer President…
The Obama administration started putting new and more nuclear weapons in Europe so we really should not be too surprised that the next step is pulling out of the INF.
In the 1990’s it became apparent that the US was aiding and abetting fascists, nazis, and jihadis in multiple regions, started the NATO expansion in violation of the agreement with Russia, and engineered a trap on Saddam to get a war on Iraq.
After 911 the US pulled out of the ABM treaty, invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, and moved NATO to Russia’s borders.
The Obama administration engineered the fascist coup in Ukraine (a CIA dream since the end of WW2) and is using Ukraine intelligence facilities to hack back into the US (like the Propornot operation).
Since the end of Cold War v1 the US has emerged an overt fascist rogue state and now is pushing forward its Cold War v2 operation. We are in phase 2 repression of alternative opinions in social media on the Internet. Nest to come is shutting access to websites in the West (better get familiar with a VPN).
The antiwar movement is barely alive on life support. There is not much we can do in the West that is hell bent on its warmonger march. My hope is that the West that is already checkmated by the Russia/ China alliance will run up against that reality before they launch the catastrophe they hunger for.
Here is what IMO might possibly be Orange’s angle in leaving the INF treaty:
https://www.rt.com/news/441846-trump-withdrawal-symptom-inf/
From the above:
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“The United States would rather pull out because of China. Right now it cannot develop new intermediate-range missiles to confront China, even though China is not a signatory to that agreement,” former Pentagon official Michael Maloof said, after Donald Trump announced the US intention to scrap the INF treaty.
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“The US is engaged in an arms race with China in the Pacific Ocean, and China has a whole bunch of those missiles that are not covered,” Iranian political scientist Kaveh Afrasiabi added, calling Trump’s announcement a “giant leap backward to the Cold War era.”
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Let’s hope that that is indeed Orange’s angle rather than another step to an inevitable, all-out war with Russia.
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The countries of the EU see that the US pulling out of the INF is going to probably allow/”require” the US to install intermediate-range nuclear missiles onto their soil. This may or may not be seen as a good thing in a contemporary world in which so-called “communism” is no longer the economic system in either Russia or China, although the Chinese communist party still essentially controls the so-called “free market” economic system in China. For example, the US demanding that Europe purchase US LNG (etc. etc. etc., the list of demands is literally never-ending) rather than much less expensive Russian natural gas may not be appreciated by those same European nations.
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The US already has a mutual defense pact with NATO nations and certain other individual nations like IsraHell. Years ago the US renounced its post-WWII policy of no first use of nuclear weapons. (This is significant because the entire world knows that the US is the one and the only nation to ever drop nuclear WMDs on civilian targets in Japan, even though it knew that it would win the war in a short period of time, especially after Russia began its assault on Japanese conquests/”interests” in China, etc.) So the nations outside of the US know with absolute certainty that the US WILL use nuclear weapons if it feels that using them will benefit the US in the end (“save lives”, etc.). The question is whether the US will use those weapons, NOT to “defend” itself, but solely in order to maintain its DOMINANCE of the world. In other words, will the US “settle” for a MULTI-polar world over which it does NOT have Full Spectrum Dominance, or will it nuke the world into submission to its corporate interests?
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Therefore, if I were Putin, Xi, Assad, Rouhani, Díaz-Canel, Maduro, Ortega and Kim Jung Un, “I” would get together in secret and negotiate a mutual-defense pact similar to that of NATO+ in which any attack by any outsider on any of the signatories would be met by a full-scale retaliatory attack by all on the aggressor. After negotiating such a pact, I would go to the UN general assembly podium and announce this pact to the world and offer to any other nation of the world that has been victimized by the US Deep State over the decades the opportunity to join that pact.
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Let the other nations of the world decide for themselves whether they want to remain slaves to feed forever US corporate interests. Needless to say, whomever is the US’s UN ambassador at that time is certainly going to be “taking names” of those who chose to leave the US corral.
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If the US wants to raise another Iron Curtain around its current corral of vassal states, let it do so. Unfortunately for the US corporate-controlled nation/government/economy, the vassals within its corral will not be able to provide those corporations the ever-increasing profit, the ever-increasing population and the ever-increasing growth that those corporations absolutely REQUIRE. This EXACTLY why the US Empire has to constantly EXPAND. If the Empire is suddenly reigned in, the empire will collapse under its own fatally-flawed economic system in which a microscopic percentage of the population owns or controls the vast majority of wealth and large-scale capital equipment for their own profit, and, therefore, one which must dominate other nations in order for its parasitic corporations to literally extort from these nations their products, resources, etc. by its use of printed-out-of-thin-air USD that are “backed” only by the US’s military forces (which are, quite ironically, ALSO funded solely by those very same printed-out-of-thin-air USD). BTW, if you think that the US is EVER going to “run out” of USD, you are wrong. All Fed chairman Powell has to do is hold down his computer’s zero key and a literally INFINITE number of USD can/will be conjured up in just a few seconds.
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(If you don’t believe me, just hit your computer’s “$” key, then hit the “1” key, and then HOLD DOWN the zero key and you’ll know exactly how long it takes Mr. Powell, AKA “The Wizard of Oz”, to “print” one trillion “US dollars”. After those three or possibly four seconds of hard work, Mr. Powell will tell Mr. Mnuchin to tell Agent Orange to tell Mr. Mattis that all he’s got to do is put a gun, or a nuclear weapon, to some national leaders’ heads and tell them that they must “trade” all their real stuff for Powell’s USD or Mr. Mattis will either replace them with someone who will, or blow their brains out and tell US corporations to just steal what they want. See, this “economy thing” is a lot more simple than you thought it was, right?)
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Yes, that’s how bad things really are, folks. THIS is “The Matrix” that we all just happened to be born into a relatively few years ago.
Russia is our neighbor, we should treat it as one.
Has Israel (that nuclear base and so called Demockracy Apartheid State) withdrawn from any treaty? BDS
I think that Caitlin’s conspiracy antenna has failed her a bit. Let’s say, I can think of a nice alternative narrative. So Russia has been pushing the bounds of the treaty a little over the last few years. What better solution for Vladimir than to ask his good friend Donald to pull out of the Treaty (making the US look bad, rather than Russia), thereby forcing Europe to make a choice about whether to stick with its old ally and make itself a target by hosting US missiles, or to appease the Bear by refusing. Whichever way it goes, it cannot fail to exacerbate European/NATO rifts…
Russia/Putin have little to lose and much to gain. Admittedly, the Russian economy is weak, so a new arms race is going to be tough. But Putin has plenty of domestic support as well as close to total control over all the organs of state, so it is perfectly feasible. Conversely, the US/Trump gains nothing by it, at least not in any geostrategic sense, though I suppose that being seen to be “getting tough” may bring some electoral dividend.
I don’t claim that this is a correct interpretation, but simply that it fits the facts as well as any other. It certainly does not run counter to the Russiagate narrative.
John, “…the US/Trump gains nothing by it…”
The question is Does the MIC NWO benefit? The answer is obviously yes.
Russia’s nuclear arsenal has been reduced by more than 85% as compared to the peak of the Cold War, as was required by the treaty.
Meanwhile, the US is CURRENTLY installing nuclear launching facilities in Romania and Poland – right at the time when Trump is blabbering about Russia’s supposed violations of the agreements. Can your antennas catch this life-threatening BS? And I mean your life, too.
I say tomartoes you say tomaytoes… There are no “white hats” in this story. I am content to accept your figure of 85% for Russian reductions. The claimed figure for the US is 87%. Let us say that I would not be astonished to find either side cheating. For example, NATO has unquestionably reneged on Clinton’s promises regarding expansion. On the other hand, NATO has never, to the best of my knowledge, invaded and occupied a European country, while Russia/USSR occupied a significant chunk of Europe for 45 years (including Poland, where my origins on my mother’s side lie), the current Russian leader makes no mystery of his nostalgia for that imperial past, and has recently annexed a segment of Ukraine while systematically denying he was doing it. If Russia understandably fears NATO incursions, many former vassal states have good reason to fear Russia’s.
In any case, I think you have misunderstood my point, which was simply that Trump’s withdrawal from the treaty tells us nothing about whether or not he is a “Russian asset” (or Putin’s puppet), since the withdrawal is not to Russia’s (or Putin’s) disadvantage, despite the appearance of “getting tough with Russia”.
I think that abandoning restrictions on development & production of nukes is extremely dangerous for all of us. This rehashing of grievances against a country (with a strong ideological bend, I agree) which itself later condemned them and apologized for them; & has been gone (along with its ideology) for almost 30 years by now, is disingenuous. Besides, Russian parliament also issued a number of resolutions denouncing, for example, occupation of the Baltic countries by the USSR before WWII, etc. I agree with Caitlin here: those who are so dead set on pushing fantastic speculations about Trump for their political advantage have lost all sense of reality, which is this: the next war won’t be fought in Russia, it will be global, and you, too, along with the rest of us, will be affected. Think about that.
Big Ben, If you want me to say that this is VERY BAD, I entirely agree. Though your last line, “and you, too, along with the rest of us, will be affected. Think about that.” made me smile. I now live in Ethiopia, but spent a few years in a village called Aldermaston, in the Berkshire countryside in the UK. It is a picture postcard English village, but also home to the “AWE”, the Aldermaston Weapons Establishment, in other words the place where the UK designs and builds its nuclear weapons. We used to receive regular circulars from AWE telling us what measures to take in the event of a nuclear “incident” (close doors and windows, stay inside, cover yourself with a wet blanket and hide under a table – we were, to say the least, sceptical).
A few miles away was “Greenham Common”, now once again a public recreation area, but in the 1980s the site of a US cruise missile base, famously picketed for many years by a “women’s peace camp”. We fully expected to be incinerated at some stage, whether through accident or design.
I was five years old at the time of the “Cuban Missile Crisis”. One of our neighbours had a World War II bomb shelter in their backyard: it was stocked with canned food and we practised what to do when the inevitable happened… My generation watched the film “Dr Strangelove” practically as a documentary. So the idea of being exhorted to “think about that” is grimly amusing.
I have no argument with Caitlin’s fear of nuclear Armageddon, and am deeply depressed that we are back here again so soon, only this time the “free world” seems to be led by a man with diminished thinking skills and possibly a narcissistic personality disorder… I suspect that he is itching to press that button.
However, to reiterate my point for the last time, it was not about whether withdrawal from the Treaty is a good thing – it clearly isn’t – but simply that it provides no evidence for Caitlin’s conviction that Russiagate is a fake, and is arguably evidence to the contrary, since it favours a clear (and understandable) Russian strategy to undermine the unity of the west in every way possible. It is curious, let us say, that Trump seems to be pursuing a similar strategy, though he justifies his position on the grounds that the US is being screwed over by its allies.
For years, Russia has been warning the US that it would have to up its defenses if the US adopts Ashton Carter’s doctrine of ‘winnable’ nuclear war. Anti-nuke Obama ignored Russia’s warnings, embraced ‘we-can-nuke-them-&-survive’ fantasy, & , instead of really improving healthcare, committed the following administration to development of the so called low-yield nuclear warhead by pumping sweet TRILLION dollars into this program.
As a result (& quite predictably) – already back in 2011 – his admin was informed by Russia about its plans to develop ICBM of a Topol class – which IS not covered by the INF Treaty (as its range is over 5,500 kilometers). So the treaty isn’t technically violated, although the nuclear arms race has been restarted.
Today, there is only one superpower who sees ‘the first strike’ as a viable nuclear posture – & it endangers the whole planet. The first step towards reducing the risk of total destruction would be a treaty, sighed by all nuclear powers (including Israel) condemning ‘the first strike’ doctrine. Everything else is secondary.
The USA will have to pay for this new batch of weapons, yet another nail in the coffin.
Notice that what Agent Orange said about the INF treaty was almost identical to what he said about the JCPOA when he broke the US’s promise on that carefully negotiated agreement.
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What’s alarming is that what the US has been doing since Clinton was in office– marching NATO toward the Russian border — is exactly what it would do if it intended to attack Russia, most likely immediately after some false flag operation like the Gulf of Tonkin incident, or a purported chemical weapon attack. How does Mr. Putin know that this is NOT precisely what Orange intends to do? Actions speak a lot louder than words. I know what I would do if I were Mr. Putin. What would YOU do?
Seems to me that Cadet Bonespurs said pretty much the same thing about NAFTA, trade with China and the Universal Postal Union. I am sure I am missing many others.
It is amazing just how incompetent every US negotiating team in the last 50 years has been.
Hi,
I think this article gives a really good perspective on Trump and why he does what he does.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-10-18/how-elizabeth-warren-got-trolled-trump
“You can’t out-troll a world-class troll. And Trump is the most successful troll in recorded history. Not the kind of troll that lives under bridges and can be tricked by billy goats.
A troll is someone who puts on a straight face and says whatever he needs to in order to get a reaction from his target. A good troll will take a position he may not actually believe in order to make those who actually believe it look ridiculous.”
As in the selfsame people screaming “Trump is a Putin puppet!” and “Trump is going to start World war 3.” If this was a math problem it would = Putin is suicidal and instead of being just a pilot crashing a plane full of passengers Putin wants to take the whole world with him.
Anyway, we live in really interesting times, when what you read in different media is diametrically opposed.
At the confirmation herrings for Kavanaugh:
Bloomberg: Ms. Ford is a wise brave women who gave impassioned testimony. She would be a great supreme court justice.
Zero Hedge: She gave testimony in a fake squeaky little girl voice and was totally unbelievable.
What is truth? I don’t know. I didn’t listen to them. I believe that a large problem particularly with American’s is that they believe that reality is whatever they believe. And, I am an American.
Bloomberg
Less those say civilization is war machines and Walls Street leaching, I beg to differ.
https://theculturetrip.com/north-america/usa/articles/top-10-young-composers-who-are-redefining-classical-music/
Sorry,I meant this clip.
This post is not related to this article except for the aside that we need to keep our hearts open and up with music, inorder to keep us grounded amongst all the current bullshit chaos separating us from connecting with each other’s humanity.
This is the Intermediate Ballistic Missle Treaty that Trump is cancelling. This leaves Europe in the crosshairs . Now, will the europeans refuse to host those missles and avoid being a first strike target or will they keep up with the war mongering and be willing to die first? Tick tock you war hawk cucks.