
Your tax dollars at work…


The war in Ukraine is basically about the US-NATO’s long-term plan to destroy Russia’s rise as a major player on the world stage. In 2019, The Rand Corporation published ‘Overextending and Unbalancing Russia: Assessing the Impact of Cost-Imposing Options’ which recommended several measures that would essentially disrupt Russia’s inevitable rise.
The Rand Corporation’s measures are extremely dangerous and irresponsible, in fact, one of the measures that has been already implemented since the war began between Russia and Ukraine has resulted in serious consequences that can lead the world into a nuclear war:
“Providing lethal aid to Ukraine would exploit Russia’s greatest point of external vulnerability. But any increase in U.S. military arms and advice to Ukraine would need to be carefully calibrated to increase the costs to Russia of sustaining its existing commitment without provoking a much wider conflict in which Russia, by reason of proximity, would have significant advantages”
The other measure that would be a direct threat to Russia which would have allowed NATO to place all sorts of military weapons in Ukrainian territory and that is something Russia would not allow close to its borders,
“Reposturing bombers within easy striking range of key Russian strategic targets has a high likelihood of success and would certainly get Moscow’s attention and raise Russian anxieties.”
Lastly, deploying tactical nuclear weapons pointing at Russia as a measure would be an open invitation to a nuclear war between the West and Russia,
“deploying additional tactical nuclear weapons to locations in Europe and Asia could heighten Russia’s anxiety enough to significantly increase investments in its air defenses.”
To the West, it seems like a risk they are willing to take,
“In conjunction with the bomber option, it has a high likelihood of success, but deploying more such weapons might lead Moscow to react in ways contrary to U.S. and allied interests.”
The death of Queen Elizabeth II, where the BBC dropped programming to run endless, wall-to-wall coverage, has underlined the fact to many Britons that the network is far from impartial, but the voice of the state.
The BBC website draped itself in black, printing stories such as “Death of Queen Elizabeth II: The moment history stops,” while BBC News presenter Clive Myrie explicitly dismissed the cost of living and energy crisis wracking the country as “insignificant” compared to the news.
But even before the monarch’s death, the BBC’s reputation was in crisis. Between 2018 and 2022, the number of Britons saying they trusted its coverage dropped from 75% to just 55%. Yet it still remains a giant in media; more than three-quarters of the U.K. public rely on the network as a news source.
However, this investigation will reveal that the BBC has always been consciously used as an arm of the state, with the broadcaster openly collaborating with the U.K. military, the intelligence services and with NATO, all in an effort to shape British and world public opinion.
Portugal’s General Staff of the Armed Forces (EMGFA) has been targeted by a “prolonged and unprecedented” cyber attack, resulting in the leak of a raft of secret NATO documents, local media outlets reported on Thursday.
According to Diario de Noticias newspaper, the Portuguese government was not even aware of the attack until the US informed it of the breach, which has been classified by the nation’s authorities as “extremely serious.”
The outlet’s sources claim that it was the US intelligence community that found “hundreds” of confidential or secret NATO documents put up for sale on the dark web. According to the report, the notice on the discovery was sent directly to Antonio Costa, the nation’s prime minister, last August.
A spokesperson for the US embassy in Lisbon would neither confirm nor deny the report, saying they do not comment on intelligence matters.
“In meetings with senior Ukrainian officials, Blinken said the Biden administration had notified Congress of its intent to provide $2 billion in long-term Foreign Military Financing to Ukraine and 18 of its neighbors, including NATO members and regional security partners,” the Associated Press writes.
The nearby countries “at risk” from Russian aggression were listed by the State Dept as follows:
Pending expected congressional approval, about $1 billion of that will go to Ukraine and the rest will be divided among Albania, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Greece, Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia, the State Department said.
Earlier in the day, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin announced a freshly approved military assistance package to Ukraine of of $675 million.
This brings US aid to Ukraine to $14+ billion, given that at the end of last month the Pentagon issued a statement saying security assistance to Ukraine since January 2021 has totaled $13.5 billion. At the end of August, the Pentagon reported that since January 2021, the United States has provided Ukraine with more than $13.5Bln in security assistance. Some reports are currently tallying the total at $15.2BN.
Staffed by NATO military officers and former government ministers and notorious for training the West’s top spies, the Department of War Studies at King’s College London is also providing the workforce for many of the largest social media companies. This includes Facebook, TikTok, Google, and Twitter.
A MintPress study of professional databases and employment websites reveals a wide network of War Studies alumni holding many of the most influential jobs in media, constituting a silent army of individuals who influence what the world sees (and does not see) in its social media feeds.
Set in an imposing building near the banks of the River Thames in Central London, the Department of War Studies is at the heart of the British establishment. Current staff includes the former Secretary General of NATO, former U.K. Minister of Defense, and a host of military officers from NATO and NATO-aligned countries.
It is also a favored training ground for the secret services. A 2009 report published by the CIA described how beneficial it is to “use universities as a means of intelligence training,” writing that “exposure to an academic environment, such as the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, can add several elements that may be harder to provide within the government system,” also mentioning that the department’s faculty have “extensive and well-rounded intelligence experience.”
At the end of its annual summit in Madrid in late June, NATO adopted a new strategic concept. The guidance document is the eighth of its kind since the founding of the alliance in 1949. It radically breaks with the three previous post-Cold War security briefs, however, which observed that “the Euro-Atlantic area is at peace” because “the threat of a conventional attack against NATO territory is low.” In the eyes of NATO, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has changed that calculus, claiming that the military organization can no longer discount the possibility of an assault on sovereign NATO states. Continuing the same cryptic language, the new strategic concept concludes that the Euro-Atlantic area now is “not at peace,” in spite of no NATO member being in a state of war with Russia.
Behind this word play, a more dangerous policy change has been codified in the document. Since the adoption of the Harmel Report in 1967, NATO has always officially included diplomacy in one form or another (with political dialogue and strategic partnership being interchangeable labels) as one of its “core” or “fundamental” tasks. The “NATO 2030” report from November 2020, for instance, unequivocally stated that “NATO should continue the dual-track approach of deterrence and dialogue with Russia.”
In the new strategic concept, the core tasks have been purged of the need for diplomacy, except for one or two throw-away lines about “meaningful and reciprocal political dialogue” about arms control issues buried in the middle of the text. Rather, in addition to its original function of deterrence and defense, NATO now fully embraces “crisis prevention and management,” which it has spearheaded since the 1990s with its legally dubious and morally questionable interventions in the Balkans, Afghanistan, and Libya; and “cooperative security,” referring to NATO’s enlargement in Eastern Europe and its Partnership for Peace cooperation with countries in ever further-away regions, including the Black Sea, the Middle East, North Africa, and even the Indo-Pacific, which the British have been pushing to include in a “global NATO.”
Russia was the first country to sign up for the Partnership for Peace program back in 1994. The new NATO doctrine, however, states that Russia can no longer be considered a partner “in light of its hostile policies and actions.” The strategic concept ignores the fact that NATO’s enlargement and new core tasks, which the alliance adopted after the Cold War in an effort to justify its continued existence, have likewise long been seen as hostile in Moscow, nor does it offer any reflection on how the new policies might have contributed to the current unpeaceful “strategic environment.” Instead, it hails the “historic success” of NATO’s expansion in terms of space and substance and insists that the alliance “does not seek confrontation and poses no threat to the Russian federation.”
NATO is a military alliance that was established in 1949 to guard Western Europe against a Soviet invasion.
Along with the U.S. and Canada, most European countries are members – the exceptions being Ireland, Switzerland, Austria, Serbia, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Finland and Sweden. Shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the latter two countries applied for membership, and are currently awaiting Turkey’s permission to join.
Most commentators, including myself, would argue that NATO played a vital role in deterring Soviet aggression during the Cold War. (For those who are interested, I wrote a short paper on this.) Today, however, the organisation’s purpose is less clear, and some people say it should have been disbanded after the fall of communism.
Indeed, NATO has been the subject of intense debate since the outbreak of the war in the Donbas in 2014, and even more so since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Some commentators, such as the political scientist John Mearsheimer, argue that NATO’s policy vis-a-vis Ukraine was a key factor behind Russia’s invasion. Others, such as Mearsheimer’s long-time debate opponent Michael McFaul, dispute this – claiming Putin would have invaded regardless of what NATO did.
Among the evidence that NATO policy was a key factor behind Russia’s invasion is the fact that Putin repeatedly mentioned the alliance in his pre-invasion speeches. (Of course, this evidence is by no means dispositive, and we shouldn’t take what Putin says at face value – as with any world leader.)
In response, NATO released a bizarre video that purports to debunk “false myths” and to “set the record straight”. The video deals with two “myths” in particular.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and the arms industry that depends on it for billions in profits, has become the most aggressive and dangerous military alliance on the planet. Created in 1949 to thwart Soviet expansion into Eastern and Central Europe, it has evolved into a global war machine in Europe, the Middle East, Latin America, Africa and Asia.
NATO expanded its footprint, violating promises to Moscow, once the Cold War ended, to incorporate 14 countries in Eastern and Central Europe into the alliance. It will soon add Finland and Sweden. It bombed Bosnia, Serbia and Kosovo. It launched wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya, resulting in close to a million deaths and some 38 million people driven from their homes. It is building a military footprint in Africa and Asia. It invited Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea, the so-called “Asia Pacific Four,” to its recent summit in Madrid at the end of June. It has expanded its reach into the Southern Hemisphere, signing a military training partnership agreement with Colombia, in December 2021. It has backed Turkey, with NATO’s second largest military, which has illegally invaded and occupied parts of Syria as well as Iraq. Turkish-backed militias are engaged in the ethnic cleansing of Syrian Kurds and other inhabitants of north and east Syria. The Turkish military has been accused of war crimes – including multiple airstrikes against a refugee camp and chemical weapons use – in northern Iraq. In exchange for President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s permission for Finland and Sweden to join the alliance, the two Nordic countries have agreed to expand their domestic terror laws making it easier to crack down on Kurdish and other activists, lift their restrictions on selling arms to Turkey and deny support to the Kurdish-led movement for democratic autonomy in Syria.
It is quite a record for a military alliance that with the collapse of the Soviet Union was rendered obsolete and should have been dismantled. NATO and the militarists had no intention of embracing the “peace dividend,” fostering a world based on diplomacy, a respect of spheres of influence and mutual cooperation. It was determined to stay in business. Its business is war. That meant expanding its war machine far beyond the border of Europe and engaging in ceaseless antagonism toward China and Russia.
NATO sees the future, as detailed in its “NATO 2030: Unified for a New Era,” as a battle for hegemony with rival states, especially China, and calls for the preparation of prolonged global conflict.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg may have said the quiet part out loud on Wednesday when he revealed to reporters that NATO’s push into Eastern Europe since 2014 was done specifically with Russia in mind.
“The reality is also that we have been preparing for this since 2014,” he said. “That is the reason that we have increased our presence in the eastern part of the alliance, why NATO allies have started to invest more in defense, and why we have increased [our] readiness.”
The NATO chief went on to insist that Russia has been “using force in the eastern Donbass since 2014.”
What he neglected to mention, though, was the role Western powers played in the outbreak of civil violence in Kiev on February 24, 2013 that led to the Maidan coup and, ultimately, to the current situation. The US and its influence on the ground in Ukraine, channelled through “civil society” groups it bankrolled, was largely responsibility for that mess.
Even Victoria ‘F**k the EU’ Nuland (then-US assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs) admitted as much in April 2014 when she said Washington had invested $5 billion dollars into “spreading democracy” in Ukraine – apparently because such efforts worked so well before.
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