Cold War 2.0

[TsarSamuil]

Hold on Pepe, S-500 don't exist yet..

Why NATO is terrified of Russia.

Pepe Escobar is the roving correspondent for Asia Times/Hong Kong, an analyst for RT and TomDispatch, and a frequent contributor to websites and radio shows ranging from the US to East Asia.

RT.com
May 01, 2015 06:07

The twin-pronged attack - oil price war/raid on the ruble – aimed at destroying the Russian economy and place it into a form of Western natural resource vassalage has failed.

Natural resources were also essentially the reason for reducing Iran to a Western vassalage. That never had anything to do with Tehran developing a nuclear weapon, which was banned by both the leader of the Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini, and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei.

The ‘New Great Game’ in Eurasia was always about control of the Eurasian land mass. Minor setbacks to the American elite project do not mean the game will be restricted to a mere “war of attrition”. Rather the contrary.

All about PGS

In Ukraine, the Kremlin has been more than explicit there are two definitive red lines. Ukraine won’t join NATO. And Moscow won’t allow the popular republics of Donetsk and Lugansk to be crushed.

We are coming closer to a potentially explosive deadline – when EU sanctions expire in July. An EU in turmoil but still enslaved to NATO – see the pathetic “Dragoon Ride” convoy from the Baltics to Poland or the “Atlantic Resolve” NATO show-off exercise - may decide to expand them, and even try to exclude Russia from SWIFT.

Only fools believe Washington is going to risk American lives over Ukraine or even Poland. Yet let’s plan a few steps ahead. If it ever comes to the unthinkable – a war between NATO and Russia in Ukraine – Russian defense circles are sure of conventional and nuclear superiority on sea and land. And the Pentagon knows it. Russia would reduce NATO forces to smithereens in a matter of hours. And then would come Washington’s stark choice: accept ignominious defeat or escalate to tactical nuclear weapons.

The Pentagon knows that Russia has the air and missile defense capabilities to counter anything embedded in the US Prompt Global Strike (PGS). Simultaneously though, Moscow is saying it would rather not use these capabilities.

Major General Kirill Makarov, Russia’s Aerospace Defense Forces’ deputy chief, has been very clear about the PGS threat. Moscow’s December 2014 new military doctrine qualifies PGS as well as NATO’s current military buildup as the top two security threats to Russia.

Unlike non-stop Pentagon/NATO bragging/demonizing, what Russian defense circles don't need to advertise is how they are now a couple of generations ahead of the US in their advanced weaponry.

The bottom line is that while the Pentagon was mired in the Afghanistan and Iraq quagmires, they completely missed Russia’s technological jump ahead. The same applies to China’s ability to hit US satellites and thus pulverize American ICBM satellite guidance systems.

The current privileged scenario is Russia playing for time until it has totally sealed Russia’s air space to American ICBMs, stealth aircraft and cruise missiles – via the S-500 system.

This has not escaped the attention of the British Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) – as it gamed sometime ago whether Washington might launch a first strike against Russia.

According to the JIC, Washington might go rogue if "a) an extreme government were to take over in the United States, b) and there was increased lack of confidence by the United States in some if not all of her Western allies owing to political developments in their countries, c) and there was some sudden advance in the USA in the sphere of weapons, etc. that the counsels of impatience may get the upper hand."

US ‘Think Tankland’ spinning that Russian military planners should take advantage of their superiority to launch a first strike nuclear attack against the US is bogus; the Russian doctrine is eminently defensive.

Yet that does not exclude Washington doing the unthinkable the next time the Pentagon thinks of itself to be in the position Russia is now in.

SWIFT changes

The whole game used to be about who ruled the waves – the geopolitical gift the US inherited from Great Britain. Control of the seas meant the US inheriting five empires; Japan, Germany, Great Britain, France, the Netherlands. All those massive US carrier task forces patrolling the oceans to guarantee “free trade” – as the hegemonic propaganda machine goes – could be turned against China in a flash. It’s a mechanism similar to the carefully choreographed “leading from behind” financial op to simultaneously crash the ruble/launch an oil war and thus smash Russia into submission.

Washington’s master plan remains deceptively simple; to “neutralize” China by Japan, and Russia by Germany, with the US backing its two anchors, Germany and Japan. Russia is the de facto only BRICS nation blocking the master plan.

This was the case until Beijing launched the New Silk Road(s), which essentially mean the linking of all Eurasia into a “win-win” trade/commerce bonanza on high-speed rail, and in the process diverting freight tonnage overland and away from the seas.

So NATO’s non-stop Russia demonizing is in fact quaint. Think about NATO picking a fight against the constantly evolving, complex Russia-China strategic partnership. And in a not so remote future, as I indicated here, Germany, Russia and China have what it takes to be the essential pillars of a fully integrated Eurasia.

As it stands, the key shadow play is Moscow and Beijing silently preparing their own SWIFT system while Russia prepares to seal its air space with S-500s. Western Ukraine is doomed; leave it to the austerity-ravaged EU – which, by the way, doesn’t want it. And all this while the same EU tries to handicap the US commercially with a rigged euro that still doesn’t allow it to penetrate more US markets.

As for an irrelevant NATO, all it can do is cry, cry, cry.

[TsarSamuil]

G.Friedman: Pressekonferenz beim Chicago Council on Global Affairs.

newscan
Mar 17, 2015



Beim Chicago Council on Global Affairs hielt Stratfor Chef George Friedman einen Vortrag zu seinem neuen Buch: Flashpoints. The Emerging Crisis in Europe.

[TsarSamuil]

USA: Carly Fiorina recalls her meeting with Putin.

RuptlyTV
May 9, 2015



Republican presidential contender and former CEO of Hewlett Packard recalled her meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin while speaking at the South Carolina Freedom Summit in Greenville on Saturday.

Meanwhile in 'Murica!

[TsarSamuil]

Obama acknowledges he can’t isolate Russia – senior Duma MP.

RT.com
May 15, 2015 13:09

The international participation in Russia’s Victory Day commemorations proves that the US policy of maximum political isolation for Moscow has failed, claims State Duma’s Foreign Relations chief.

“After the 70th anniversary of the Great Victory [in WWII] it has become evident that the policy of maximum political isolation of Russia is not yielding the expected results,” Aleksey Pushkov said at the lower house plenary session on Friday.

“If today, after May 9, Obama would again claim that he had isolated Russia he would simply be laughed at,” he added.

Pushkov told fellow lawmakers that it was impossible to talk about isolation when in just three days Moscow was visited by the leaders of China, India, Egypt, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Vietnam, Germany, the Czech Republic, Cyprus, Slovakia and many other states.

He noted that Barack Obama himself “could not stand his own isolation” and sent Secretary of State John Kerry to Russia very soon after the celebrations. “By doing this Obama practically recognized that it is impossible to isolate such countries as Russia, that by trying to isolate Russia one can be left on the side of the political process and get deprived of leverage in international politics.”

At the same time the MP noted that he did not expect the United States to immediately abandon their policies towards Russia or stop using all available resources in this struggle. “But this definitely means that the attempt of cavalry charge on our positions has failed.”

Pushkov also said in his Duma speech that the strengthening alliance between Russia and China was a joint reaction to the “Western policy of threats, pressure and sanctions.” He noted that this alliance was Barack Obama’s greatest failure in all his years in office.

“In reply to the pressure Russia has not curled in some remote geopolitical corner, but started to actively use its wide possibilities and found support of a number of states, most importantly from such a great power as the People’s Republic of China,” he stated.

The address echoes the April statement of Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, who told senior members of the majority United Russia party that the events of the past year proved that the Russian community and authorities can jointly withstand any political or economic pressure from abroad.

In early March, President Vladimir Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov said that the continued pressure from Obama and his administration would never affect Moscow’s foreign policy. He also called the sanctions “a double-edged sword” that, although causing certain discomfort to the Russian economy, was also hurting businesses in the countries that had introduced them, not to mention the world economy as a whole.

[TsarSamuil]

Rant from the economist, Russophobe

Russia is a Marginal Power.

ForaTv
May 28, 2015

library.fora.tv/2014/03/12/Russia_is_a_Marginal_Power



Disarming Syria. Asylum for Edward Snowden. Arming Iran. Is Vladimir Putin flexing his muscles while our own president fades into the background of world politics or is it all a global game of smoke and mirrors.

[TsarSamuil]

US won't accept idea of global ‘spheres of influence’ – Biden.

RT.com
May 28, 2015 03:47

The US rejects the idea of any nation claiming a sphere of influence, Vice President Joe Biden told a Washington think tank, arguing that the crisis in Ukraine was about the principles and values of the West and international order.

"We will not recognize any nation having a sphere of influence,” the vice president said during a speech at the Brookings Institution on Wednesday. It remained unclear whether the remark applied to US influence around the globe, or referred only to Russia, China and other countries.

Asked by AP diplomatic correspondent Matt Lee to clarify the remark, State Department spokesman Jeff Rathke did not quite know how.

“What we see when we look around the world are places where we desire to improve our contacts with countries,” Rathke said, acknowledging that other countries might do the same. “What is important is that those relations develop on the basis of mutual interest, mutual respect, without coercion, and to the benefit of the peoples of the countries involved.”

“I don’t really think the description of that as a ‘sphere of influence’ is particularly apt in those kinds of cases,” Rathke added.

Biden described the conflict in Ukraine as crucial to the future of NATO, the EU and the West in general, something that called for leadership “the kind our parents and grandparents’ generation delivered.”

Allowing the Kremlin to establish a “fiefdom” in Ukraine, he said, would only fan the flames of Russian ambition.

Biden blamed any humanitarian issues in Ukraine on Russia, reiterating US support for the government in Kiev. He has traveled to Ukraine three times over the past year, he said, and talks to President Poroshenko and Prime Minister Yatsenyuk about once a week, on average.

According to the vice president, the US has provided $470 million to Kiev in economic assistance, not counting the billions in loan guarantees if Kiev “continues on the path of reforms” they promised to deliver.

The US needs a Ukraine that “cannot be bribed, coerced or intimidated,” Biden said, one that would someday serve as an example to Russians of what Western values and institutions can accomplish.

In the Vice President’s narrative, the US tried to be a friend to Russia and bring it into the “world of responsible nations” through institutions such as the World Trade Organization and the NATO-Russia Partnership. He said that process was going well between 2009 and 2012, during the Medvedev presidency, but blamed President Vladimir Putin for setting Russia on a different course since.

However, Biden also said that all politics was personal, and that the US would continue working with the Russian leadership wherever Moscow’s help could benefit US interests, citing the example of nuclear talks with Iran.

“We’re not looking for regime change, or any fundamental alteration of circumstances inside Russia,” Biden said. “We’re looking for [Putin] to, in our view, act rationally.”

Meanwhile, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg addressed the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, where he accused Russia of “nuclear saber-rattling” he called “unjustified, destabilizing and dangerous.”

“Russia is a global actor that is asserting its military power,” Stoltenberg said. “We regret that Russia is taking this course. Because when might becomes right, the consequences are grave.”

The remarks come just two weeks after Secretary of State John Kerry met with his Russian counterpart in Sochi and urged the leadership in Kiev to “think twice” before re-igniting hostilities, frozen by a ceasefire arranged in February at the Belorussian capital of Minsk.

Forces loyal to the government in Kiev have since resumed artillery attacks on civilians in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, in territories that have refused to recognize their authority since May 2014.

State Department’s Rathke insisted that “overwhelming majority of the ceasefire violations” were committed by “Russian [sic] and separatist forces,” but that he was “not familiar” with reports of civilians killed by Ukrainian shelling.

[TsarSamuil]

Why we must return to the US-Russian parity principle - Prof. Stephen Cohen.

RT.com
June 04, 2015 15:44

The US is now in a new Cold War with Russia over the Ukrainian crisis largely because Washington rejected the parity principle. Unless the idea of détente is embraced by both sides, the situation could escalate into actual war.

In June 2014, I warned that the Ukrainian crisis was the worst US-Russian confrontation in many decades. It had already plunged us into a new (or renewed) Cold War potentially even more perilous than its forty-year US-Soviet predecessor because the epicenter of this one was on Russia’s borders; because it lacked the stabilizing rules developed during the preceding Cold War; and because, unlike before, there was no significant opposition to it in the American political-media establishment. I also warned that we might soon be closer to actual war with Russia than we had been since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

I regret to say that today the crisis is even worse. The new Cold War has been deepened and institutionalized by transforming what began, in February last year, as essentially a Ukrainian civil war into a US/NATO-Russian proxy war; by a torrent of inflammatory misinformation out of Washington, Moscow, Kiev and Brussels; and by Western economic sanctions that are compelling Russia to retreat politically, as it did in the late 1940s, from the West. Still worse, both sides are again aggressively deploying their conventional and nuclear weapons and probing the other’s defenses in the air and at sea. Diplomacy between Washington and Moscow is being displaced by resurgent militarized thinking, while cooperative relationships nurtured over many decades, from trade, education, and science to arms control, are being shredded. And yet, despite this fateful crisis and its growing dangers, there is still no effective political opposition to the US policies that have contributed to it—not in the administration, Congress, mainstream media, think tanks, or on campuses—but instead mostly uncritical political, financial, and military boosterism for the increasingly authoritarian Kiev regime, hardly a bastion of “democracy and Western values.”

Indeed, the current best hope to avert a larger war is being assailed by political forces, especially in Washington and in US-backed Kiev, that seem to want a military showdown with Russia’s unreasonably vilified president, Vladimir Putin. In February, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande brokered in Minsk a military and political agreement with Putin and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko that, if implemented, would end the Ukrainian civil war. Powerful enemies of the Minsk accord—again, in both Washington and Kiev—denounced it as appeasement of Putin while demanding that President Obama send $3 billion of weapons to Kiev. Such a step would escalate the war in Ukraine, sabotage the ceasefire and political negotiations agreed upon in Minsk, and provoke a Russian military response with unpredictable consequences. While Europe is splitting over the crisis, and with it perhaps shattering the vaunted transatlantic alliance, this recklessness in Washington is fully bipartisan, urged on by four all-but-unanimous votes in Congress. (We must therefore honor the 48 House members who voted against the warfare resolution on March 23, even if their dissent was too little, too late.)

Above all, because Washington gradually acknowledged that Soviet Russia was a co-equal great power with comparable legitimate national interests in world affairs. This recognition was given a conceptual basis and a name: “parity.”

It is true that “parity” began as a grudging recognition of the US-Soviet nuclear capacity for “mutually assured destruction” and that, due to their different systems (and “isms”) at home, the parity principle (as I termed it in 1981 in a New York Times op-ed) did not mean moral equivalence. It is also true that powerful American political forces never accepted the principle and relentlessly assailed it. Even so, the principle existed—like sex in Victorian England, acknowledged only obliquely in public but amply practiced—as reflected in the commonplace expression “the two superpowers,” without the modifier “nuclear.”

Most important, every US president returned to it, from Eisenhower to Reagan. Thus, Jack Matlock Jr., a leading diplomatic participant in and historian of the Reagan-Gorbachev-Bush détente, tells us that for Reagan, “détente was based on several logical principles,” the first being “the countries would deal with each other as equals.”

Three elements of US-Soviet parity were especially important. First, both sides had recognized spheres of influence, “red lines” that should not be directly challenged. This understanding was occasionally tested, even violated, as in Cuba in 1962, but it prevailed. Second, neither side should interfere excessively, apart from the mutual propaganda war, in the other’s internal politics. This too was tested—particularly in regard to Soviet Jewish emigration and political dissidents—but generally negotiated and observed. And third, Washington and Moscow had a shared responsibility for peace and mutual security in Europe, even while competing economically and militarily in what was called the Third World. This assumption was also tested by serious crises, but they did not negate the underlying parity principle.

The primary cause of this fateful crisis has been US policy since the 1990s, not “Russian aggression.” But I did so here 10 months ago and subsequently published those remarks (“Patriotic Heresy vs. The New Cold War,” September 15, 2014). Instead, I want to look back briefly to the US-Soviet Cold War, as well as ahead, in order to ask, perhaps quixotically: Even if negotiations over the Ukrainian civil war proceed, how do we sustain them and avoid another prolonged, more perilous Cold War with post-Soviet Russia?

The answer is through a new détente between Washington and Moscow. For this, we must relearn a fundamental lesson from the history of the 40-year US-Soviet Cold War and how it ended, a history largely forgotten, distorted, or unknown to many younger Americans. Simply recalled, détente, as an idea and a policy, meant expanding elements of cooperation in US-Soviet relations while diminishing areas of dangerous conflict, particularly, though not only, in the existential realm of the nuclear arms race. In this regard, détente had a long, always embattled, often defeated but ultimately victorious history.

Leaving aside the first détente of 1933, when Washington officially recognized Soviet Russia after fifteen years of diplomatic non-recognition (the first Cold War), latter-day détente began in the mid-1950s under President Dwight Eisenhower and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. It was soon disrupted by Cold War forces and events on both sides. The pattern continued for thirty years: under President John Kennedy and Khrushchev, after the Cuban Missile Crisis; under President Lyndon Johnson and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, in the growing shadow of Vietnam; under President Richard Nixon and Brezhnev in the 1970s, the most expansive era of détente; and briefly under Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, also with Brezhnev. Each time, détente was gravely undermined, intentionally and unintentionally, and abandoned as Washington policy, though not by its determined American proponents. (Having been among them in the 1970s and ’80s, I can testify on their behalf.)

Then, in 1985, the seemingly most Cold War president ever, Ronald Reagan, began with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev a renewed détente so far-reaching that both men, as well as Reagan’s successor, President George H.W. Bush, believed they had ended the Cold War. How did détente, despite three decades of repeated defeats and political defamation, remain a vital and ultimately triumphant (as it seemed at the time to most observers) American policy?

Those tenets of parity prevented a US-Soviet hot war during the long Cold War. They were the basis of détente’s great diplomatic successes, from symbolic bilateral leadership summits, arms control agreements, and the 1975 Helsinki Accords on European security, based on sovereign equality, to many other forms of cooperation now being discarded. And in 1985-89, they made possible what both sides declared to be the end of the Cold War.

We are in a new Cold War with Russia today, and specifically over the Ukrainian confrontation, largely because Washington nullified the parity principle. Indeed, we know when, why, and how this happened.

The three leaders who negotiated an end to the US-Soviet Cold War said repeatedly at the time, in 1988-90, that they did so “without any losers.” Both sides, they assured each other, were “winners.” But when the Soviet Union itself ended nearly two years later, in December 1991, Washington conflated the two historic events, leading the first President Bush to change his mind and declare, in his 1992 State of the Union address, “By the grace of God, America won the Cold War.” He added that there was now “one sole and pre-eminent power, the United States of America.” This dual rejection of parity and assertion of America’s pre-eminence in international relations became, and remains, a virtually sacred US policymaking axiom, one embodied in the formulation by President Bill Clinton’s secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, that “America is the world’s indispensable nation,” which was echoed in President Obama’s 2014 address to West Point cadets, in which he said, “The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation.”

This official American triumphalist narrative is what we have told ourselves and taught our children for nearly twenty-five years. Rarely is it challenged by leading American politicians or commentators. It is a bipartisan orthodoxy that has led to many US foreign policy disasters, not least in regard to Russia.

For more than two decades, Washington has perceived post-Soviet Russia as a defeated and thus lesser nation, presumably analogous to Germany and Japan after World War II, and therefore as a state without legitimate rights and interests comparable to America’s, either abroad or at home, even in its own region. Anti-parity thinking has shaped every major Washington policy toward Moscow, from the disastrous crusade to remake Russia in America’s image in the 1990s, ongoing expansion of NATO to Russia’s borders, non-reciprocal negotiations known as “selective cooperation,” double-standard conduct abroad, and broken promises to persistent “democracy-promotion” intrusions into Russia’s domestic politics.

Two exceedingly dangerous examples are directly related to the Ukrainian crisis. For years, US leaders have repeatedly asserted that Russia is not entitled to any “sphere of influence,” even on its own borders, while at the same time enlarging the US sphere of influence, spearheaded by NATO, to those borders—by an estimated 400,000 square miles, probably the largest such “sphere” inflation ever in peacetime. Along the way, the US political-media establishment has vilified Putin personally in ways it never demonized Soviet Communist leaders, at least after Stalin, creating the impression of another policy orientation antithetical to parity—the delegitimization and overthrow of Russia’s government.

Moscow has repeatedly protested this US sphere creep, loudly after it resulted in a previous proxy war in another former Soviet republic, Georgia, in 2008, but to deaf or defiant ears in Washington. Inexorably, it seems, Washington’s anti-parity principle led to today’s Ukrainian crisis, and Moscow reacted as it would have under any established national leader, and as any well-informed observer knew it would.

Unless the idea of détente is fully rehabilitated, and with it the essential parity principle, the new Cold War will include a growing risk of actual war with nuclear Russia. We must therefore strive for a new détente. Time may not be on our side, but reason is.

To those who say this is “appeasement” or “Putin apologetics,” we reply, no, it is American patriotism, not only because of the risk of a larger war but because real US national security on many vital issues and in many critical regions—from nuclear proliferation and international terrorism to the Middle East and Afghanistan—requires a partner in the Kremlin.

To those who insist that an American president must never enter into such a partnership with the demonized Putin, we explain that his vilification is largely without facts or logic. We also point out that NATO expansion eastward since the 1990s willfully excluded Russia from Europe’s post-Soviet “security order,” which Putin is now accused of betraying, while that expansion betrayed the West’s earlier promise to Moscow of a “Common European Home.”

To those triumphalists who insist that Russia is not entitled to any “sphere of influence,” we answer that the issue is not nineteenth-century imperialism but a reasonable zone of security on its borders free of US or NATO military power—in Ukraine and Georgia, to take the most pressing examples. And we ask: If the United States is entitled to such zones of security not only in Canada and Mexico but throughout the Western Hemisphere, according to Washington’s Monroe Doctrine, why is not Russia so entitled regarding its neighbors? (To those who answer that any country that formally qualifies has a right to NATO membership, we say, no, NATO is a security organization, not a charity or the AARP, and indiscriminate NATO expansion has not truly enhanced any nation’s security but only discouraged diplomacy, as the Ukrainian crisis demonstrates.)

To those who say Russia lacks such equal entitlements because Moscow lost the 40-year Cold War, we explain how it actually ended.

And to those who maintain that America must pursue “democracy promotion,” even regime change, in today’s Russia, we answer, as I did in Congressional testimony in 1977: “We do not have the wisdom or the power, or the right, to try directly to shape change inside the Soviet Union. Any foreign government that becomes deeply involved in Soviet internal politics…will do itself and others more harm than good. What the United States can and should do is influence Soviet liberalization indirectly by developing a long-term American foreign policy, and thereby an international environment, that will strengthen reformist trends and undermine reactionary ones inside the Soviet Union.… In short, détente.”

That truth was confirmed by events less than a decade later, and then forgotten. It is no less applicable to Russia, and to US-Russian relations, today, beginning with the application of the parity principle to Ukraine. This means both sides agreeing to an independent but militarily non-aligned Ukraine with a fair degree of home rule for those regions fighting to preserve their historical affinities with Russia and for those seeking fuller relations with the West. Implementing the embattled Minsk accords would be a major step in this direction, as its enemies understand. Others say it is too late for such a détente, that too much blood has been shed in Ukraine. But consider the alternatives.

[TsarSamuil]

‘Obama zombies’: Americans sign prankster’s petition to nuke Russia (VIDEO)

RT.com
June 09, 2015 14:33

US journalist Mark Dice has asked the people of San Diego to sign President Barack Obama’s “plan” to nuke Russia to “maintain America’s superiority.” The majority of beachgoers didn’t appear to get the joke, and signed the fake petition.

The “experiment” was recorded on video, whichMark Dice thenshared on his Twitter, YouTube and Facebook accounts.

“We just need a couple more signatures to support President [Barack] Obama’s new plan to deal with Russia,” Dice tell a random man whom he stops. “We are going to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike.”

The man, who does not seem to be much familiar with the issue, cuts off Dice in mid-sentence, and says: “I’ll sign it for you.”

Dice encouraged people to sign the petition, saying that by signing it they are going to “support a nuclear strike against Russia.”

“This is the one way we can maintain our superiority,” Dice says.

“You know how Russia has been threatening United States lately,” he tells an apparent anti-Russian American patriot, who replies: “Yeah!”

“I have been American all my life,” says the man who is signing the petition, “Let’s hope he doesn’t disappoint me,” he added, apparently referring to Obama.

There was just one couple who refuse to sign the petition, after they heard it was to support Obama’s plan to “launch the preemptive nuclear demonstration against Russia.”

Another couple asked Dice if he was really thinking that the US was “going to” nuke Russia.

“I don’t think we are going to,” a woman says.

Despite seeming mistrustful, they signed the petition, however.

Dice seems to be surprised by the results of his experiment, saying that the test results “are disturbing.”

The “test” was conducted amid growing tensions between Russia and the West.

AP reported last week that Washington was considering withdrawing from a Cold War-era treaty with Moscow and returning nuclear-capable medium-range missiles to Europe in an effort to counter what it calls "Russian aggression."

Cited by AP, the plan that it was penned by the office of US General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, contained several contingencies for a scenario in which a key missile treaty between US and Russia fails.

Following the G7 summit in Germany, the leaders of the member states said they were ready to impose additional sanctions on Russia, if the situation in Ukraine worsens.

“There were discussions over additional steps,” if Russia “doubles the aggression on Ukraine,” President Obama said.

Dice, the author of several popular books on secret societies and conspiracies, is also known for other “social experiments” making fun of Americans.

He previously asked San Diego, where he is based, to sign an "I Support Illiteracy" petition to "spread illiteracy" in America.

A week ago, he approached beachgoers, asking them to repeat after him “I am a Zombie Who Does What I’m Told, Without Thinking.” Dice shared the results on social media.

Three months ago, he targeted Michele’s Obama lunch program when he asked students in San Diego to sign a petition to “add Soylent Green (Human Flesh) on School Menus.”

In 2013, he asked California beachgoers if they would sign a petition to support Barack Obama’s plan to repeal the Bill of Rights.

[Deleted]

Sometimes one doesn't know whether to laugh, be upset or weep out of pity.

[TsarSamuil]

The movie idiocracy doesn't seem so far off anymore..

[TsarSamuil]

US Would 'Stand Up' to Russian Revival of Soviet Sphere of Influence.

POLITICS 07:12 23.06.2015

The United States is not going to make an enemy out of Russia, but will counter any effort by Moscow to reestablish the Soviet sphere of influence, US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said in a speech at the Atlantik Brucke (Atlantic Bridge) conference in Berlin.

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — The Defense Secretary claimed Russia had flouted international law, and destabilized the European security order by annexing Crimea and allegedly supporting continuing violence in eastern Ukraine.

“We do not seek a cold, let alone a hot war with Russia. We do not seek to make Russia an enemy. But make no mistake, we will defend our allies… We will stand up to Russia's actions and their attempts to reestablish a Soviet-era sphere of influence.”

Carter further claimed that Russia had also violated the UN Charter, the Helsinki Accords, the NATO-Russia Founding Act and the 1994 Budapest Memorandum.

Since Crimea’s reunification with Russia, Carter asserted, the United States, NATO and the European Union (EU) “have made clear to Russia that its aggressive actions have no place in today's world.”

Russia, however, contends NATO has relentlessly expanded eastward breaking solemn commitments given by US leaders before the collapse of the Soviet Union, increasing the threat-level on its borders.

Moscow has pointed out it is the United States and the European Union that supported the violent coup toppling Ukraine’s democratically-elected President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014, and this set off the secession of Ukraine’s two eastern provinces of Lugansk and Donetsk.

Since then, the Kiev successor regime of President Petro Poroshenko, backed by Washington, has used heavy artillery and air attacks against cities and villages in Eastern Ukraine.

Moreover, Russia has pointed out that more than 90 percent of Crimea’s voters chose to reunify with Russia through a democratic referendum.

[TsarSamuil]

Russia pictured as monster with claws on cartoon map for schoolkids causes stir in Netherlands.

RT.com
June 24, 2015 09:50

A picture in a Dutch social studies textbook for 16-year-olds portrays Russia as a monster with claws and fangs trying to devour Ukraine, while Europe extends a helping hand.

Another image in the same text book also characterizes Russia as a ‘non-free’ country.

This picture, first published in a Dutch newspaper in early 2014, is placed in textbook’s Chapter 7 titled ‘Countries without democracy’. Pupils are asked to describe what's happening in the cartoon.

One of the questions students are asked is: “What is Russia doing, and what is Europe doing in this picture?”

The schoolbook is called ‘Themes in Social Studies 1’ and is intended for 15- to 16-year-old pupils’ ‘preparatory middle-level vocational education’. This textbook is updated on an annual basis, with the 2014-2015 version carrying, among others, pictures of President Barack Obama, the Pope and the winner of Eurovision 2014, Conchita Wurst.

The textbook also gives children a helping hand in understanding what countries are good or bad on a global scale, presenting a map where countries are painted in accordance with the ‘degree of freedom’. Countries like Russia and China are painted as ‘non-free’, while the EU member states and the US are pictured as the most liberated countries.

“I think it is highly biased from the Western point of view,” activist Ancilla Tilia told RT. “It is absolutely anti-Russian propaganda, which is ironic, because Russia is often accused of inspiring propaganda, but it seems that we’re not able to recognize that we are also being propagandized.”

The images in the textbook went viral after one angry citizen shared it online.

“Since the end of the Second World War, anti-Russian propaganda in the Netherlands has been huge. Since the fall of the so-called Iron Curtain, it has shrunk a little,” Michel Philipsen, the man who posted the book's content online, told RT.

All Dutch news media share the same “anti-Putin, anti-Russia, anti-Communist bias, as if Russia was still a Communist country today,” he added.

The 'evil' Russia images triggered strong reactions on the Internet.

Some complained the propaganda is so blunt that it makes even the most gullible people suspicious.

While others suggested that anti-Russian propaganda in European textbooks is nothing new.

Some parents were also concerned that this kind of material could become more widespread.

Tilia believes the images in the school book are biased and not backed by facts.

“I think it’s definitely a way of demonizing Russia in this conflict, which is not new at all,” Tilia said.

A Sott.net article written by Amari Roos claims that regarding Russia ‘devouring’ Ukraine, “the truth is opposite to what Dutch children are being taught.”

While Russia sends tens of thousands of tons of humanitarian aid to the war-torn Donbass region of Ukraine, Europe sells Kiev authorities military supplies and arms – obviously to “prolong the 'devouring’ of Ukraine.”

“If I was a parent, I'd take a critical look at my children's study material and inform them of what truly goes on on this planet. The school system doesn't allow students to think critically, and rather spoon-feeds 'information' that is not backed up with facts,” concludes Roos.

Roos also remembers historic dialogue between the Dutch Prime Minister Rutte and President Vladimir Putin regarding liberties in Russia.

“Indeed, just imagine an organization appearing in Russia that supports pedophilia?! If that'd be the case, I think that in certain areas of the Russian Federation, people would get some guns...,” Putin said.

[TsarSamuil]

‘US would like Russia to cease to exist as a country’ – Russia’s top security official.

RT.com
June 22, 2015 12:39

Russia’s extreme wealth doesn’t allow the US to rest, prompting Washington to invent a putative “Russian threat” and scheming against Moscow through the Ukrainian crisis, the head of Russia’s Security Council, Nikolay Patrushev, told Kommersant daily.

The US is not a universal evil, yet Washington takes the decision whom to appoint as such, says Patrushev, who has been Security Council chief since 2008. Today Washington names Russia as one of the greatest threats to the world, along with the terrorists of Islamic State and the deadly Ebola virus.

There are a great deal of examples of Russia fruitfully cooperating with the US in many aspects, including such burning issues as countering terrorism and reaching a deal on the Iranian nuclear program, Patrushev said. But under the far-fetched pretext of the “Russian aggression in Ukraine” Washington has suspended such contacts, he said.

The US is forcing EU member states to impose anti-Russian sanctions and policies, Patrushev said.

“If it were not for the US, [Europeans] would not pursue such policies,” he said, stressing that even the much argued-over issue of the Crimea Peninsula’s reunification with Russia would have spent itself already.

“The West does realize that everything that took place in Crimea was legitimate, there was a referendum and so on. They don’t have specific objections to Crimea developments,” said Patrushev, adding that with the time the issue will “blow over.”

American influence over EU countries is “massive,” says the head of Russia’s Security Council, recalling multiple cases of the European politicians changing their plans to visit Russia after Americans applied pressure on them.

“Europeans are quite flaccid, whereas the Americans are men of spirit,” Patrushev said.

“The Americans strive to dominate the world. This is the aim they are targeting in their doctrines. So far they succeed: they dominate despite the changing world,” said the top security official.

Russia is following very closely the “color revolutions’ trend, in particularly the developments in neighboring Ukraine, he said.

“It’s clear that the hidden agenda of destabilization of this country is creating an instrument to radically weaken Russia,” Patrushev said, stressing that it was the US who initiated the Ukrainian crisis.

Although the term of the legitimately elected President Viktor Yanukovich was coming to an end and the Ukrainian people would have never re-elected him, the US opted to oust him by coup. Without this there would have been no war in Donbass and Crimea would have remained a part of Ukraine, he said.

The violent power shift in Ukraine was a “political mistake” by the US, said the Security Council secretary.

The US is not bothered with the worsening economic situation in Ukraine, “all they need is applying pressure on Russia and this is exactly what the US is doing,” Patrushev said.

The Americans declare that they are interested in maintaining the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, yet the US has “no interest in Ukraine whatsoever, they are interested in Russia.”

“They would like very much to see Russia cease to exist as a country,” said Patrushev, who was director of the FSB (Federal Security Service) from 1999 to 2008.

While Russia possesses incalculable natural resources, the Americans believe that Russians own their wealth “illegitimately and undeservingly,” because in Washington’s opinion Russians use their wealth in a wrong way, Patrushev said.

The reason for expansions of “instability zones” in the Middle East, North Africa and in Ukraine is “persistent aspiration of the west to tackle their problems at expense of others,” Patrushev said.

Destabilization of the world is under way and terror organizations such as Islamic State (formerly ISIS/ISIL), Al Qaeda and others are playing a leading role in this process, the security official said.

It is true that the US is calling on other countries to consolidate their efforts against international terrorism, said Patrushev, yet “in reality, the antiterrorist coalitions are being created for coercive intervention into affairs of sovereign states.”

Terrorism cannot be defeated single-handedly or by separate groups of countries, Patrushev said, adding that Russia is always open for any kind of counter-terrorism cooperation.

[TsarSamuil]

Polish Academic Asks: When Does Being Anti-Russian Become Simply Racist?

Sputnik
POLITICS 18:20 01.07.2015

In a recent article for academic journal Nowa Europa Wschodnia, Polish political scientist Kuba Benedyczak points out that while Europe formally wages a struggle against racial prejudice and stereotyping, Russia and Russians seem to be the exception to the rule.

In the article, entitled 'Russophobia or Racism?', Benedyczak notes that while Europe wages an oft-tedious "but absolutely correct" battle against the negative stereotyping of minorities, when it comes to Russia, Polish commentators, analysts, experts and scholars seem to get a free pass.

"A few days ago, Center for Eastern Studies military expert Andrzej Wilk gave an interview for [popular Polish daily] Rzeczpospolita," Benedyczak notes. "When asked about the weak points of the Russian army, Wilk answered: 'The weak point of Russia is that it is Russia. There, regardless of someone's plans or efforts, everything eventually turns into a mess. There one will always find someone who will begin drinking, or sell something 'under the table'. Corruption among Russians is practically in their genes. Therefore the weak point here is the human factor.'"

Benedyczak notes that "all sorts of Polish commentators, analysts, experts and scholars allow themselves to make similar remarks with extraordinary ease. The true essence of such statements can be understood if we substitute [in the place of Russians] Senegalese, Indonesians, Congolese, or even Ukrainians; only then does it become clear just how chauvinistic such an approach is."

The young political scientist notes that "if we had substituted the peoples above in the place of Russians in the expert's remarks, we could assume that following the interview, an avalanche of harsh criticism would have rained down on the professor, forcing him to (at least temporarily) disappear from the public spotlight."

Furthermore, in Benedyczak's view, "the essence of such racist statements does not change even if we take into account the context of the Russian-Polish conflict or the Russian state's policy toward Ukraine."

Unfortunately, according to Benedyczak, "the case of Andrzej Vilk is indicative of Poles' relations toward Russians. Almost every day in our media we read or hear about how someone in Russia drank themselves to death, how once again a woman has been raped, or that 90 percent of the country is comprised of nationalists, who have state television in their brains in place of gray matter. We are constantly told about how someone took a large bribe, while authorities executed another opposition figure on Red Square."

'Hate' Level Imbalance

Benedyczak notes that while Russian media also "thinks up all sorts of rubbish about the European Union and the United States," Poland, "in spite of our egoistical and megalomaniacal preconceptions," receives very "little 'hate', since we are not so important to the Russians as we might think."

Ultimately, the expert notes that as a democratic country, Poland must do more to "adhere to higher standards, rather than to engage in Russophobic escapades, approaching, as in the case above, to outright chauvinism and racism."

[TsarSamuil]

New US military strategy: ‘Russia, China - threat to unipolar domination fantasy’

RT.com
July 02, 2015 12:27

The Pentagon’s new military strategy proposes that Russia is a major US adversary, that there might be a war between the two countries, and that the US is losing its military technology supremacy, says Brian Becker from the anti-war Answer Coalition.

The Pentagon has released a new National Military Strategy listing of the greatest threats to the US. It includes states such as Russia, Iran and North Korea, and groups, particularly ‘violent extremist organizations’ (VEO) such as Islamic State and the Taliban.

RT: The United States does have a track record of entering conflicts without international approval. So judging by this new strategy should we expect more of the same?

Brian Becker: I think the new strategy is emblematic of what is going on in the past and as you’ve mentioned the US, when it can, gets UN or international acquiescence for what is essentially a US military operation, but if that support is lacking as it was in Iraq or in the Libya campaign the US just does it anyway. Certainly you can see that in Syria. So what we have is a situation - if you step back - the US violates international law routinely; it says always that it’s the great upholder of international law. But I think when you look at this new report what’s most outstanding is that compared to 2011 (it’s a quadrennial report) where Russia was barely mentioned, now the US government postulates 1) that Russia is a major adversary, 2) that there is a possibility of a major interstate war with a major power meaning Russia and 3) the US is losing its supremacy in military technology, signaling as it did in the 1950s a new arms race. And I think that’s what this report shows.

RT: The document concedes that "some of our comparative military advantage has begun to erode" - how do you think the US will try to claw back this advantage?

BB: I don’t think there is a loss of advantage; I think that this is usually a political signal largely for domestic public consumption in the US. Americans are being told that there is no money for hospitals, schools and many other vitally needed social programs, but suddenly we will have a clarion call that the US must catch up and must not let its adversaries – Russia or China – become superior to the US. This is precisely what triggered the advanced arms race in the 1950s. So I think the language is political, it shows the US is a defensive party, it’s a possible victim of aggression, it must not allow itself to become the victim of aggression and it can only deter it by adding more money to the arms budget. It signals that. But also we see a new generation of nuclear weapons being built and a new deployment strategy of military forces especially in the Arctic and that’s the challenge Russia and to a lesser degree China and I think this [report] shows where this is really moving.

RT: Why are Russia and China mentioned when the Middle East is in chaos?

BB: The US realizes that its dream of a unipolar world, the dream that started to become an operational doctrine for the US following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, that that dream has turned into an impossible goal, that in fact Russia is back on its feet, it’s asserting its own interests. China is growing, it’s trying to grow peacefully and rise peacefully and become a medium range power. But the US sees that Russia, China, Iran and other countries in the world including South Africa, Brazil and India are unwilling to be just victims of the US hegemony, that they are asserting the wrong national interests, and so I think the US sees that now as a threat to its fantasy of unipolar domination following the collapse of the USSR.

RT: The US apparently wants to "support China's rise" but also resist Beijing's efforts to expand its regional control. Aren't these two goals incompatible?

BB: They are not compatible. In fact if you look at what the US is doing, not what it says in this sort of carefully worded military doctrine, the pivot towards Asia is a pivot of containment. The new military strategy which is to take all the non-Chinese republics and nations of the Asia-Pacific region and forge them into a US-led military alliance can’t be perceived in China as anything but a great threat to Chinese national interest in China’s own backyard, in its own territory, in the East China Sea and South China Sea and right up to the Chinese border. So deeds here say a great deal more than words. I think it’s carefully worded, but clearly the Chinese know that the pivot towards Asia is a pivot against China and not with China.