Tag: russia

US to modernize nuclear arsenal in Europe

The US has brought forward delivery of upgraded B61-12 air-dropped unguided nuclear bombs to NATO bases in Europe, Politico reported on Wednesday, citing a US diplomatic cable and two people familiar with the matter.

According to the report, the change originally planned for next spring is now scheduled for this December.

US officials were said to have relayed the news to NATO allies during a closed-door meeting in Brussels, Belgium this month.

In an emailed comment to Politico, Pentagon spokesman Brigadier General Patrick Ryder declined to discuss the details of the US nuclear arsenal, but said that the replacement of the older-generation B61 bombs for the B61-12 version is “part of a long-planned and scheduled modernization effort.” 

“It is in no way linked to current events in Ukraine and was not sped up in any way,” Ryder added.

The B61 is a family of nuclear bombs originally developed in the 1960s. The upgraded version is equipped with a modern tail kit for greater accuracy, according to the US Department of Energy. The weapon is designed to be carried by a number of Western aircraft, including B-2 and B-21 bombers, as well as F-15, F-16, F-35, and Tornado jet fighters.

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Dem Congressman Says Arming Ukraine is About Protecting Woke Values

Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin has issued a statement saying ongoing military aid to Ukraine is essential because Russia is mean to gay and transgender people.

Yes, really.

Raskin released the statement after 30 “progressive” Democrats watered down their call for peace talks in a letter to Joe Biden.

Raskin (D-MD) is apparently concerned that any slide in support for Ukraine represents an abandonment of woke values

“Moscow right now is … a world center of antifeminist, antigay, anti-trans hatred, as well as the homeland of replacement theory for export,” said the statement.

Calling Vladimir Putin an “imperialist” and a “colonizer,” Raskin went on to demonize the entire country.

“Moscow right now is a hub of corrupt tyranny, censorship, authoritarian repression, police violence, propaganda, government lies and disinformation, and planning for war crimes … In supporting Ukraine, we are opposing these fascist views, and supporting the urgent principles of democratic pluralism. Ukraine is not perfect, of course, but its society is organized on the radically different principles of democracy and freedom,” the statement said.

As we have previously highlighted, the bizarre intersection of sending advanced weaponry to foreign conflicts in the name of defending far-left identity politics reared its head right at the start of the war.

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Worthless House Progressives Retract Mild Peace Advocacy Under Pressure From Warmongers

The Congressional Progressive Caucus has retracted an extremely mild, toothless letter its members had written to President Biden politely asking him to consider adding a little diplomacy into the mix to help end the conflict in Ukraine. The retraction followed a deluge of public outrage against their slight deviation from the official imperial narrative.

If you actually read the original letter signed by House progressives including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib, Jamaal Bowman and Ro Khanna, you will quickly see that it’s as innocuous and anodyne as any statement could possibly be while still containing words. It opens with effusive praise for Biden’s interventionism in Ukraine and condemns the Russian government unequivocally throughout, offering only the humble suggestion that he “pair the military and economic support the United States has provided to Ukraine with a proactive diplomatic push, redoubling efforts to seek a realistic framework for a ceasefire.” Its authors make it abundantly clear that they support making sure such diplomacy is agreeable to Ukraine at every step of the way.

This impotent nothing salad was bizarrely spun by The Washington Post as a call on Biden to “dramatically shift his strategy on the Ukraine war,” despite nothing that could be remotely construed as “dramatic” existing anywhere in the body of the text. The letter received backlash from warmongers in both parties, including from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. It was personally slammed by Bernie Sanders, the pope of American progressivism. Trolls and warmongers swarmed the social media notifications of every account which posted the letter in an official capacity, mindlessly bleating the words “appeasement” and “Chamberlain” in unison.

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Russia calls for UN Security Council probe of alleged biological labs in Ukraine

Russia has drafted a United Nations Security Council resolution that would investigate Moscow’s claims that the U.S. and Ukraine are violating prohibitions on biological weapons through work at Ukrainian biological laboratories, The Associated Press reported.

Moscow for months has levied the allegations, which were previously condemned as “classic” Russian propaganda by U.S. intelligence officials, who say Ukraine operates just over a dozen biolabs for public health and biodefense purposes with U.S. assistance.

The Associated Press, citing a copy it obtained of the draft resolution, reported that Russia is filing a complaint under the Biological Weapons Convention, which was signed in 1972 to ban the development and use of biological and toxin weapons.

The resolution would create a 15-member commission authorized by the Security Council to investigate the claims, the outlet reported.

The Associated Press reported that the commission would report to the Security Council by Nov. 30 and establish a review conference in Geneva, Switzerland from Nov. 28 through Dec. 16.

The U.S. publicly acknowledges its support for Ukrainian biolabs but notes that they were developed as part of the biological threat reduction program, which seeks to improve abilities to detect and report outbreaks of dangerous pathogens before they cause major threats.

Russia, however, began accusing the two countries of developing biological weapons in the early days of Russia’s invasion.

U.S. and Western officials have long accused Russia of making false accusations and staging “false flag” operations to justify its invasion of Ukraine.

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Ukrainian ‘Dirty Bomb’ Threat is Real, Up to West Whether They Want to Believe It or Not: Kremlin

On Sunday, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu warned his French, UK, US, and Turkish counterparts that Kiev may be preparing a false flag dirty bomb attack on its own territory to accuse Moscow of using weapons of mass destruction. Western officials and officials in Kiev have dismissed the warning.

The threat of Ukraine using a “dirty bomb” is real, and it’s up to Western countries whether they want to believe in the danger or not, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said.

“The fact that they do not trust the information which was provided by the Russian side does not mean that the threat of the use of such a dirty bomb ceases to exist. The threat is present. This information was brought to the attention of the [Russian] defense minister’s interlocutors. It’s up to them whether they want to believe it or not,” Peskov told journalists in a briefing Monday.

Separately on Monday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov indicated that Moscow was preparing to raise the issue of Kiev’s possible preparations to use a dirty bomb at the United Nations. The Russian top diplomat emphasized that Moscow’s information on this matter is not an empty claim, and that the Foreign Ministry has information on Ukraine-based institutes capable of creating such arms.

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Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

I have covered enough wars to know that once you open that Pandora’s box, the many evils that pour out are beyond anyone’s control. War accelerates the whirlwind of industrial killing. The longer any war continues, the closer and closer each side comes to self-annihilation.  Unless it is stopped, the proxy war between Russia and the U.S. in Ukraine all but guarantees direct confrontation with Russia and, with it, the very real possibility of nuclear war.

 Joe Biden, who doesn’t always seem to be quite sure where he is or what he is supposed to be saying, is being propped up in the I-am-a-bigger-man-than-you contest with Vladimir Putin by a coterie of rabid warmongers who have orchestrated over 20 years of military fiascos. They are salivating at the prospect of taking on Russia, and then, if there is any habitation left on the globe, China. Trapped in the polarizing mindset of the Cold War — where any effort to de-escalate conflicts through diplomacy is considered appeasement, a perfidious Munich moment — they smugly push the human species closer and closer toward obliteration. Unfortunately for us, one of these true believers is Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

“Putin is saying he is not bluffing. Well, he cannot afford bluffing, and it has to be clear that the people supporting Ukraine and the European Union and the Member States, and the United States and NATO are not bluffing neither,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell warned. “Any nuclear attack against Ukraine will create an answer, not a nuclear answer but such a powerful answer from the military side that the Russian Army will be annihilated.”

Annihilated. Are these people insane?

You know we are in trouble when Donald Trump is the voice of reason.

“We must demand the immediate negotiation of a peaceful end to the war in Ukraine, or we will end up in world war three” the former president said. “And there will be nothing left of our planet — all because stupid people didn’t have a clue … They don’t understand what they’re dealing with, the power of nuclear.”

 I dealt with many of these ideologues — David Petraeus, Elliot Abrams, Robert Kagan, Victoria Nuland — as a foreign correspondent for The New York Times. Once you strip away their chest full of medals or fancy degrees, you find shallow men and women, craven careerists who obsequiously serve the war industry that ensures their promotions, pays the budgets of their think tanks and showers them with money as board members of military contractors. They are the pimps of war. If you reported on them, as I did, you would not sleep well at night. They are vain enough and stupid enough to blow up the world long before we go extinct because of the climate crisis, which they have also dutifully accelerated.

If, as Joe Biden says, Putin is “not joking” about using nuclear weapons and we risk nuclear “Armageddon,” why isn’t Biden on the phone to Putin? Why doesn’t he follow the example of John F. Kennedy, who repeatedly communicated with Nikita Khrushchev to negotiate an end to the Cuban missile crisis? Kennedy, who unlike Biden served in the military, knew the obtuseness of generals. He had the good sense to ignore Curtis LeMay, the Air Force Chief of Staff and head of the Strategic Air Command, as well as the model for General Jack D. Ripper in “Dr. Strangelove,” who urged Kennedy to bomb the Cuban missile bases, an act that would have probably ignited a nuclear war. Biden is not made of the same stuff.

Why is Washington sending $50 billion in arms and assistance to sustain the conflict in Ukraine and promising billions more for “as long as it takes”? Why did Washington and Whitehall dissuade Vladimir Zelensky, a former stand-up comic who has been magically transformed by these war lovers into the new Winston Churchill, from pursuing negotiations with Moscow, set up by Turkey? Why do they believe that militarily humiliating Putin, whom they are also determined to remove from power, won’t lead him to do the unthinkable in a final act of desperation?

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‘Star Wars’ Actor Mark Hamill Sends Ukraine 500 Drones to Use Against the ‘Evil Empire’

Actor Mark Hamill has seen the fighting in Ukraine from afar and decided to pitch in and help. To that end he has put his hand in his pocket to send funds to buy 500 drones for Kyiv, destined to take on a variety of military and civil tasks against invading Russian forces he says represent the “evil empire.”

The 71-year-old American screen veteran, best known for his role as Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars franchise, confirmed his donations to the embattled European nation while appearing on an episode of Bloomberg Radio’s Sound On.

Hamill told host Joe Mathieu he only sent the equipment to Ukraine because they desperately need it, the Sun reports.

“Very simply: Ukraine needs drones. They define war outcomes, they protect their land, their people, they monitor the border, they’re eyes in the sky,” Hamill outlined in the radio interview published Thursday.

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Rhetoric in Ukraine has reinforced the fallacy of limited nuclear exchange

Since the end of the Cold War, Russia, the United States, France, and China have continued to possess and develop nuclear weapons below the strategic level of land-based and submarine-launched intercontinental-range ballistic missiles. The long-touted rationale for this was simple: non-strategic (or tactical) nuclear weapons are necessary to give the decision-maker more options and provide a credible proportionate deterrence response to the use of similar weapons by an adversary.

The rationale continues by implying that such nuclear weapons use would occupy a third and separate strategic conflict space between conventional war and all-out strategic nuclear exchange. It is necessary, it has been argued, to occupy that space to deter at all levels.

The profound implication of this line of reasoning is that this “limited nuclear exchange” space is both distinct and separate from conventional war below and nuclear Armageddon above, and that transitions between the spaces can be controlled. This is at best unproven conjecture.

For many years, opponents to the continued existence of such tactical weapons in nuclear arsenals—including these authors—have argued to the contrary. Rather than being controlled, these transitions are simultaneously enabled, increased in probability, and accelerated by the very existence of such weapons.

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The Profoundly Stupid Narrative That Nuclear Brinkmanship Is Safety And De-Escalation Is Danger

Of all the face-meltingly stupid narratives that have been circulated about the US proxy war in Ukraine, the dumbest so far has got to be the increasingly common claim that aggressively escalating nuclear brinkmanship is safety and de-escalation is danger.

We see a prime example of this self-evidently idiotic narrative in a new Business Insider article titled “Putin’s nuclear threats are pushing people like Trump and Elon Musk to press for a Ukraine peace deal. A nuclear expert warns that’s ‘dangerous.’”

“An understandable desire to avoid a nuclear war could actually make the world more dangerous if it means rushing to implement a ‘peace’ in Ukraine that serves Russian interests,” writes reliable empire apologist Charles Davis.

“Such a move, which some influential figures have called for, risks setting a precedent that atomic blackmail is the way to win wars and take territory troops can’t otherwise hold, a model that could be copycatted by even the weakest nuclear-armed states, and may only succeed at delaying another war.”

Davis’ sole source for his article is the UN Institute for Disarmament Research’s Pavel Podvig, who is very openly biased against Russia.

“The West supports Ukraine with weapons and financial and moral and political support. Giving that up and saying that, ‘Well, you know, we are too afraid of nuclear threats and so we just want to make a deal’ — that would certainly set a precedent that would not be very positive,” says Podvig. “If you yield to this nuclear threat once, then what would prevent Russia in the future — or others — to do the same thing again?”

Like other empire apologists currently pushing the ridiculous “de-escalation actually causes escalation” line, Davis and Podvig argue as though nuclear weapons just showed up on the scene a few days ago, as if there haven’t been generations of western policies toward Moscow which have indeed involved backing down and making compromises at times because doing so was seen as preferable to risking a nuclear attack. We survived the Cuban Missile Crisis because Kennedy secretly acquiesced to Khrushchev’s demands that the US remove the Jupiter missiles it had placed in Turkey and Italy, which was what provoked Moscow to move nukes to Cuba in the first place.

Throughout the cold war the Soviet Union insisted on a sphere of influence that US strategists granted a wide berth to, exactly because it was a nuclear superpower. Even as recently as the Obama administration the US president maintained that “Ukraine, which is a non-NATO country, is going to be vulnerable to military domination by Russia no matter what we do.”

Nevertheless we’re seeing this new “escalation is safety and de-escalation is danger” narrative pushed with increasing forcefulness by imperial spinmeisters, because it would take a lot of force indeed to get people to accept something so self-evidently backwards and nonsensical.

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Adam Kinzinger continues support for Ukrainian ‘meme army,’ despite neo-Nazi ties

Over the past couple of months, the corporate press has inundated itself with endless articles celebrating a pro-Ukraine “meme army” called NAFO (short for the North Atlantic Fellas Organization), which has helped to raise money for a shadowy, unaccountable foreign organization to support Ukraine’s fight against Russia. The NAFO keyboard warriors, which label themselves the “fellas,” operate as internet attack dogs (who sport Shiba Inu logos) in the information war against Russia.

Over the weekend, however, NAFO ran into major controversy. Internet sleuths and researchers discovered that the founder of NAFO, a man named Kamil Dyszewski, identifies politically with neo-Nazi ideology, as an avowed antisemite, Hitler admirer, and Holocaust denier.

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