SPECIAL REPORT. Obama and Clinton push entangling alliances as keystones of U.S. foreign policy By Wayne Madsen Report

SPECIAL REPORT. Obama and Clinton push entangling alliances as keystones of U.S. foreign policy By Wayne Madsen Report
George Washington warned America against them. Thomas Jefferson was not keen on them. However, Barack Obama, in the last commencement speech he gave under his lackluster eight-year term as president, urged the graduating class of the Air Force Academy to support all the foreign treaties and alliance of the United States. And in a campaign speech in San Diego, Hillary Clinton, who hopes to succeed Obama in office, echoed him by stressing that America's foreign alliances have kept the country "safe."

Obama's hailing of America's foreign alliances, which Washington warned were "entangling," came a week after he spoke in Hiroshima, Japan of the value of America's alliance with Japan. Obama's words were clearly directed against China. Although the Cold War-era Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), the alliance that helped plunge America into the Indochina War quagmire, no longer exists, Obama is trying to recreate it with his military "pivot to Asia." Obama is beefing up U.S. military ties with Australia, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Philippines, Singapore, Brunei, Thailand, India, and Vietnam. In essence, Obama is clearing the path for Hillary Clinton to pursue a military confrontation with China.

Although the "punditocracy" claims that Obama and Clinton were responding to Donald Trump's isolationist signals, their message was more deep-seated. The Clinton Doctrine will be the Obama Doctrine on steroids. Trump is no panacea either. The real estate mogul has criticized Obama for reneging on America's "alliance" with Israel. That comment came after uber-Zionist casino mogul Sheldon Adelson dangled a $100 million campaign contribution in front of Trump in exchange for the presumptive GOP candidate's everlasting commitment to Israel, the only nation that Adelson cares about.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the only U.S.-led Cold War military alliance that continues to entangle the United States, received a shot in the arm from both Obama and Clinton. They see NATO has the spearhead for a U.S. military confrontation with Russia during a Clinton administration. NATO just welcomed Montenegro, a one-time loyal Slavic ally of Russia, into NATO. In addition, former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the pathetic neoconservative ex-Danish prime minister who committed Danish troops to the Bush-Cheney disaster in Iraq, just signed on as a foreign policy adviser to the corrupt American-installed Ukrainian President, Petro Poroshenko. Rasmussen joins the wanted fugitive ex-President of Georgia, the George Soros acolyte Mikheil Saakashvili, as a member of the joint neo-Nazi/Zionist government of Ukraine.

Obama, in his zeal to support for the new right-wing governments of Argentina and Brazil, installed with the help of Soros and the CIA, has propped up the old Organization of American States (OAS), another Cold War relic that was used to justify the economic blockade of Cuba and U.S. military invasions of the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Panama. 

With Venezuela in the  of Obama and his old CIA pals, the U.S. saw to it that another Soros acolyte, Luis Almagro of Uruguay, was installed as the Secretary General of the OAS. Almagro is the U.S.-designated Latino puppet who has been organizing opposition -- especially from the right-wing fascist governments of Argentina and Brazil -- to Venezuela's beleaguered socialist government. Almagro was silent when Brazil's President, Dilma Rousseff, was ousted in a right-wing "constitutional" coup. Almagro now hopes to see the same action take place in Venezuela with a right-wing National Assembly-sponsored recall vote of President Nicolas Maduro. 


OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro not only takes his orders from the CIA and Soros.

Meanwhile, Soros has been rubbing his hands and licking his fangs over the prospect of extending, for the first time, International Criminal Court indictments into Latin America by targeting the Venezuelan leadership after it is forced from office. For Soros, these phony "war crimes" indictments have been used to imprison or threaten to imprison CIA and Rothschild banking family foes in Serbia, the Srpska Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kenya, Ivory Coast, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Libya, Sudan, Eritrea, Syria, and Chad.

As president, Clinton will surely continue NATO's "drang nach osten" -- the "long march east" coined by Adolf Hitler -- until Ukraine, Georgia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Serbia, Sweden, Kazakhstan (where Hillary's despicably crooked and perverted husband* has brokered lucrative uranium export deals with the county's dictator), Finland, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, and Mongolia become full-fledged members of the "North Atlantic" Treaty Organization. The "North Atlantic" euphamism is now a joke, NATO only exists to protect the interests of U.S. war contractors (the term "defense industry" is also a joke) and the House of Rothschild and its front man Soros. The Rothschilds, through their influential puppet Soros, invested millions in Obama and Mrs. Clinton in order to carry out what a one-time recipient of Rothschild donations -- the short former Austrian corporal in the German Army with the short mustache -- could not do, namely conquer the Eurasian land mass and join it to European and North American overseers.

There is a reason why such neocons as Robert Kagan (married to Mrs. Clinton's war-mongering Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland who crafted the Ukrainian coup), Max Boot, and John Podhoretz are supporting Hillary over The Donald. Mrs. Clinton will plunge America into a major world war much sooner than Trump can be blackmailed into one.


---------------
Bill Clinton does not have a monopoly on sexual perversion. WMR has been informed by a very good source in Manhattan that Trump, while sitting next to his underage daughter Ivanka at the Trump Grill in Manhattan's Trump Tower, was witnessed by waiters on a number of occasions with his hand under her dress and fondling her genitalia. Some of these waiters have stated they would swear out affidavits about what they saw. After Ivanka became of age, Trump told Playboy magazine, ". . .if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her." Eventually Ivanka married Jared Kushner of the very wealthy Orthodox Jewish and ultra-Zionist Kushner real estate family of New York. 


This photo of Trump with his 15-year old daughter was taken while sitting on a statute of two copulating parrots at Trump's Mar Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida. Mr. Trump's hand appears to be starting a journey that some waiters witnessed it complete during numerous table interludes at the Trump Grill in New York.

What lurid secrets were rampant under the table cloths at the Trump Grill?
It is now well known that Bill Clinton feared that the Mossad possessed tapes of his salacious phone calls with Monica Lewinsky. Mossad was in a commanding position to blackmail Clinton. One can only wonder what evidence Mossad currently possesses of Donald Trump's incestuous pederasty with his 15-year old daughter. George Washington could have never dreamed of such "entanglements" when he warned about "entangling" foreign alliances.

In the coming EW war between the U.S. and Russia, the Americans will lose and lose badly. by Wayne Madsen

In the coming EW war between the U.S. and Russia, the Americans will lose and lose badly.

by Wayne Madsen

The latest neocon war proposal oozing forth from the right-wing think tanks in Washington is that there are serious discussions within the Pentagon, talks that include Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, to stymie Russia's Middle East military operations by waging an electronic warfare (EW) campaign against Russian air, naval, and ground forces in Syria. If Moscow approves Iraq's request for intervention in that country, the neocons want the U.S. EW campaign, which would include cyber-attacks, extended to Iraq, as well.

The neocons may want to engage Russia on the electronic battlefield but, according to National Security Agency insiders, the U.S. ability to wage an effective EW campaign is severely handicapped by former NSA director General Michael Hayden's decision to distribute NSA functions to various regional NSA facilities around the United States. This move was originally undertaken by Hayden's TRAILBLAZER project, a program that was eventually canceled after $1.2 was wasted on it.

NSA's main electronic warfare emitter signature databases, one code named KILTING and the other known as the Emitter Parameter List (EPL), were, as part of the NSA distribution of functions, split up between NSA Washington in Fort Meade, Maryland, and NSA Colorado in Aurora and NSA Texas in San Antonio. This distribution of NSA's operations has, according to the insiders, resulted in incorrect and outdated emitter data from databases maintained on Russian radar systems, avionics, telemetry, and other signal sources. Much of the KILTING data involves emitter data from Soviet military systems no longer used by the Russian military.

The Russians, on the other hand, have deployed to Syria advanced EW systems capable of jamming U.S. radar and electronic warfare, electronic surveillance, and electronic countermeasure systems. These systems are deployed on platforms like the IL-20 surveillance aircraft; the mobile Krashuka-4 land-based electronic warfare system that, among other things, can disrupt low-Earth orbit satellites and jam signals in a 250-square mile area; drones outfitted with EW pods, and Navy ships capable of waging technologically-advanced EW and signals intelligence collection. These systems would be devastating against NATO air units, including "stealth" aircraft, that are ordered to come to the assistance of the Saudi- and Qatari-funded jihadist rebels by enforcing a NATO "no-fly zone" over Syria.

The fact that the Russians, who spend only one-tenth of what the United States spends on defense, are able to outmaneuver the United States on the electronic battlefield, is a testament to the graft and corruption in the U.S. military-industrial complex, with companies like Lockheed Martin and SAIC enriching themselves with little or nothing in the Pentagon's quiver of electronic weapons to show for it.


NATO forces will be no match against Russian EW systems like the Krasukha-4 [above]. NATO EW systems rely on outdated emitter data from the NSA that is over 30 years old.

In 2005, WMR detailed the weaknesses of U.S. EW capabilities. The situation, according to our sources, has not greatly improved in the last 10 years:

Operators in U.S. electronic warfare aircraft rely on NSA to provide accurate electronic intelligence (ELINT) data in order to program their radar warning receivers and jamming pods. However, NSA data, provided from two databases known as EPL (Emitter Parameter List) and "Kilting." 70 percent of NSA's ELINT data is 30 years old. NSA management has forced field operators to use raw ELINT intercept data, culled from a database called "Wrangler," to program their ELINT systems. NSA operations and software engineers believe this function should be handled by NSA and not the "warfighters."  Updated ELINT data is handled by ELINT Technical Reports or "ELTs." In 2003, the year the Iraq war started, there were 938 ELTs submitted on new emitter data. However, there were only 200 updates made to the ELINT databases.

The failure to update the ELINT databases may have had disastrous consequences in Iraq. For example, EPL and Kilting do not contain data on air traffic control radars and microwave communications links. Because current ELINT systems cannot differentiate between commercial signals and hostile target tracking emitters, U.S. forces in Iraq have launched attacks on non-threat targets in the belief they were hostile. NSA sources report that many of the cases of fratricide in Iraq has been due to faulty or old ELINT data. For example, the failure by NSA to update ELINT data and provide emitter parameter data to warfighting units led to the accidental shoot down by a Patriot missile of a British Royal Air Force Tornado fighter in March 2003 near the Iraqi-Kuwaiti border at the outset of the Iraq campaign. Two British crew members were killed. The ELINT data used by the Patriot misidentified the Tornado as an enemy missile and the U.S. Army blamed the British crew for the mistake, claiming they failed to switch on its Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) equipment. NSA insiders claim that allegation was false. They claim that "blue signals" (friendly) are not adequately included in the emitter data sent to field units by NSA and that claims by the Pentagon that the Tornado was shot down due to pilot error were false.

In other incidents, the radar warning receivers (RWRs) on U.S. F-16s flying over Iraq have either evaded or fired AMRAAM (Advanced Medium-Range, Air-to-Air) missiles on microwave communications towers because the microwave signals were identified as threat emitters from hostile aircraft. U.S. jammers are also adversely affected by the failure to update ELINT data.With aviation fire control systems so automated by the use of computers, incorrect or outdated emitter data may continue to have disastrous effects on the battlefield, including the recent unprovoked U.S. attack on a Doctors Without Borders hospital in the northern Afghan city of Kunduz.

The Pentagon recognizes that it is behind the eight ball when it comes to facing off against Russia on an electronic warfare battle. The Defense Department's planned
Multi-Function Electronic Warfare system (MFEW), the closest platform that matches Russia's Krasukha-4, is not expected to become fully operational until 2027.

Wesley Clark calls for U.S. internment camps by Wayne Madsen

Wesley Clark calls for U.S. internment camps by Wayne Madsen
Retired General Wesley Clark, who once commanded NATO forces and who is a longtime darling of the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party, told MSNBC that he favors the establishment of World War II-style internment camps in the United States for what he termed "radicalized Americans." Clark, who campaigned for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination, said, "We have got to identify the people who are most likely to be radicalized. We’ve got to cut this off at the beginning . . . I do think on a national policy level we need to look at what self-radicalization means because we are at war with this group of terrorists." During World War II, the U.S. interned Japanese-Americans in camps and also imprisoned German- and Italian-Americans believed to have had ties to the Axis camp. Clark also said he believed Britain, Germany, and France should consider establishing detention camps.

Clark made his statement in reference to the shooting attack on an Armed Forces recruiting center in Chatanooga by a suspected Islamist radical. However, in his statement, Clark broadened his call for the unconstitutional detention of American citizens from Muslims to all "radicalized Americans."

In 2003, this editor called out Clark for his neo-conservative policies in an article for CounterPunch titled "Wesley Clark for President? Another Con Job from the Neo-Cons." The article has since been deleted from the CounterPunch website. Although CounterPunch deleted most articles by this editor, that did not stop the website from publishing an article that lifted heavily, without attribution, from my article on the operations and motives of Israeli art students and movers and 9/11. CounterPunch was accused of steering blame for 9/11 away from Israel. The pulled CounterPunch article on Clark follows:

September 18, 2003 Wesley Clark for President? Another Con Job from the Neo-Cons By WAYNE MADSEN

Let it never be said the neo-conservatives are not persistent. That's why they must be rounded up by the FBI and charged with violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) statutes. But let's save that issue for another time. The latest trick of the neo-cons is running retired General Wesley Clark for President as a Democrat. But not just any Democrat -- a "New Democrat." The same bunch that are pushing Joe Lieberman's candidacy are obviously hedging on their bets and want to have Clark in the race as a potential vice presidential candidate (to ensure their continued influence in a future Democratic administration of Howard Dean, John Kerry, or Dick Gephardt) or as a "go-to" candidate in the event that Lieberman stumbles badly in the first few Democratic primaries next year. The "New Democrats" (neo-cons) are as much masters at the perception management (lying) game as their GOP counterparts (Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, and Donald Rumsfeld). Clark's presidential candidacy announcement in Little Rock is one warning sign. This city is a sort of "Mecca" for the neo-con Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) and its main nurturers, Al From and Bruce Reed. It was from Little Rock where the DLC propelled a little known governor named Bill Clinton into the White House. And although Clinton did not turn out exactly as conservative as the DLC hoped for, his support for globalization and selected use of U.S. military power abroad were neo-con keystone successes. Now enter "Arkansan" Wesley Clark. Like Hillary Clinton, Clark is a Chicago transplant to Little Rock. And he is about as power driven as the former First Lady. According to Pentagon insiders, when Clark was Commander of the US Southern Command in Panama from June 1996 to July 1997, he was fond of "ordering" Latin American military commanders and defense ministers to appear before him. Some of the Latin American officials, particularly those from Brazil, Argentina, and Chile, refused to be bullied by Clark, whose personality is said to be acerbic. From his pro-consul position in Panama, Clark supported with US military advisers and American mercenaries, continued warfare against anti-oligarchic movements in Colombia, Peru, Guatemala, Mexico, and Bolivia. Fast forward to the Kosovo wars when Clark was NATO commander. Not only did Clark lord over the first unprovoked aerial bombardment of a major European city (Belgrade) since Adolf Hitler's Luftwaffe pounded virtually defenseless European cities, but he almost got into a shooting war with Russian peacekeeping troops in Kosovo. It was only the intervention of the British government, Defense Secretary William Cohen, and Joint Chiefs Chairman General Hugh Shelton that prevented Clark from starting World War III. When Clark ordered British Lt. Gen. Michael Jackson to forcibly block Kosovo's Pristina Airport to prevent Russian planes from landing, the Briton replied, "Sir, I'm not starting World War III for you." Jackson was backed up all the way to Number 10 Downing Street. Clark was forced to back down. Eventually, Cohen fired Clark as NATO commander three months before his term was to expire. Before becoming NATO Commander, Clark was the Director for Strategic Plans and Policy within the Joint Chiefs of Staff. From this vantage point, Clark was well aware of and likely supported the arming of the Bosnian government by accepting contributions from various deep-pocketed Muslim countries, including Saudi Arabia, Iran, Malaysia, Brunei, Jordan, and Egypt. Via something called the Bosnia Defense Fund, these countries deposited millions of dollars into U.S. coffers to buy weapons for the Bosnians and train them in their use through the use of private military contractors like Military Professional Resources, Inc. (MPRI). And when some of the weapons and cash for the Bosnians became "unaccounted for," where did some of the guns and cash wind up? In the hands of Al Qaeda and Iranian Pasdaran (Revolutionary Guard) units in Bosnia. More interestingly is how General Clark's Bosnia strategy ultimately goes full circle. According to Washington K Street sources, the law firm that established the Bosnia Defense Fund was none other than Feith and Zell, the firm of current Pentagon official and leading neo-con Douglas Feith. Feith's operation at Feith and Zell was assisted by his one-time boss and current member of Rumsfeld's Defense Policy Board, Richard Perle. Both Feith and Perle advised the Bosnian delegation during the 1995 Dayton Peace talks. The chief U.S. military negotiator in Dayton was Wesley Clark. A long time ago, the French, tired of war, turned to a short general named Napoleon to lead them to peace and prosperity. Instead, Napoleon seized imperial power and ensured the French would have more war. After four years of Bush, the neo-con Fifth Column in the Democratic Party is trying to convince us that Clark is the "anti-war" candidate. Tell that to the people of Serbia, Kosovo, and Montenegro. Tell that to the coca farmer in Bolivia or Colombia who is trying to feed his family. Let's not fall for the deception and tricks of the neo-cons again. If you are tired of Bush, Cheney, and the neo-cons and their phony wars, Clark is certainly not the answer. He has been, and remains part of, the great deception of the American people.

Clark tried to cash in on the Bush administration's zealous desire to collect and mine personal meta-data on the American people. WMR reported the following on March 23, 2006:
"Retired General Wesley Clark has once again enmeshed himself in the military-industrial complex. Yesterday, Viaspace, a firm that bills itself as transforming 'proven space and defense technologies from NASA and the Department of Defense into hardware and software solutions' for homeland security and sensor technology, named Clark as a member of its board of directors. Clark said, 'Viaspace is leveraging previous NASA and DOD investment at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to develop new generations of energy and security products.'

After he announced his candidacy for president in 2004, Clark resigned from the board of Arkansas-based Acxiom, a data mining firm. While working for Acxiom, Clark personally lobbied Vice President Dick Cheney, the CIA, Justice Department, and Transportation Department to sell the Bush administration on an Acxiom system that would serve as the basis for the 'No Fly List' and other terrorist watch databases. A 2005 privacy study undertaken of a sample of Acxiom personal data reports found that their reports were 100 percent inaccurate -- with even the genders of data subjects being erroneous."

Clark told Democracy Now's Amy Goodman in 2007 that after 9/11, he was at the Pentagon and shown a memo stating that the Bush administration was going to "take out seven countries in five years." The countries were Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran. Clark never once told Goodman that he was opposed to this neocon plan, merely that he was shown the memo by an anonymous Pentagon staffer. Clark said the plan to take out Iran was a "bad one," insisting that the Iranian government are not "good guys," however, he was completely mum on the plan to wage war on the other six nations.

Clark, whose father was Benjamin Jacob Kanne, a descendant from a long line of Belarusian kohanim (rabbis), is and always has been a neocon in the truest sense of the word. Clark's full name is Wesley Kanne Clark. Clark, who became a Baptist, has always expressed his admiration for his kohanim ancestry. That, alone, is a ticket for entrance into the neocon cabal that has nurtured his fellow travelers, including Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Richard Perle, the Kagan family (including Victoria Nuland), Scooter Libby, Elliot Abrams, the Kristols, the Pipes, the Podhoretzes, and the rest. Clark's call for internment camps for "radicalized Americans" has earned him an extra knish and blintz at the next neocon banquet.

Kiev becomes the new center for mercenaries and brigands

Kiev becomes the new center for mercenaries and brigands 

by Wayne Madsen

Just as Bangkok became a nexus for U.S. special forces and other ne'er-do-wells during the Indochina War and San Jose, Costa Rica and Tegucigalpa, Honduras (called "Tegu City" by American mercenaries and special forces) were focal points for the covert U.S. contra war against the Sandinstas in Nicaragua, Kiev has joined their ranks by attracting a motley crew of U.S. and NATO active duty personnel, Western intelligence operatives, mercenaries from private military contractors, and neo-Nazis from across Europe.

In an exclusive report to WMR, one hangout for these soldiers of fortune and social misfits is located just a five minute walk from Maidan Square, where Assistant Secretary of State fort European Affairs Victoria Nuland handed out rolls during the U.S.-backed "Euromaidan" revolt against the democratically-elected president Viktor Yanukovych. Part of the reason the pub attracts international military and mercenary personnel is its close proximity to the Hyatt Regency Hotel, where many U.S. and Western military personnel on temporary duty, reside. The free Wi-Fi also attracts Westerners eager to read their e-mail  from abroad. This tidbit should be of interest to the Russian external security service, the SVR.

O'Brien's Irish Pub is the place to go if one wants to associate with ex-military and police from around Europe and the United States now employed in "security" positions in Ukraine. There have been credible reports that as few as 300 and as many as 500 mercenaries of the private military company Academi, the former Blackwater, are in Ukraine fighting for the Western-backed government. Russian news reports claim the Academi mercenaries are actually paid by Greystone, Ltd., a Barbados-based subsidiary of Academi that was used by Blackwater founder Erik Prince to dodge corporate reporting requirements in the United States, as well as U.S. taxes.

The service and food at O'Brien's are poor but good service and the "English-style" baked beans, which are actually red kidney beans doused in ketchup, are definitely not the reason for going there. Like Rick's Café in Casablanca, O'Brien's is a favorite smoke-filled gathering place for Kiev's new international cadre of mercenaries and active duty types, most of whom appear to have never served a day of combat in their lives. Televised football matches attract a number of British soccer fans who have the appearance of "military types."


The Western-initiated civil war in Ukraine has attracted a number of mercs and other dodgy types to Kiev. Many hang out at Western-style pubs like O'Brien's [above].

The general impression is that if the "green" soldiers of fortune who belt down pints of Guinness at O'Brien's ever encountered the seasoned Russian-speaking separatist armies of the eastern Donbas region the Western amateur soldiers would be easily slaughtered.

And for turning Kiev into Eastern Europe's version of Bangkok or Tegu City, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. What is even more astounding is that the nomination came from the U.S. chargé d'affaires in Oslo, Julie Furuta-Toy. Below is the May 29, 2015, letter from the Zionist chairman of the Ukrainian parliament (Rada) Volodymyr Groysman to Furuta-Toy thanking her for her nomination of Poroshenko.

Obama helping neo-Nazis re-write history of World War II by Wayne Madsen

Obama helping neo-Nazis re-write history of World War II by Wayne Madsen

By refusing an invitation to attend the May 9 celebration marking the victory of the Allies, and specifically, the Soviet Red Army, over Nazi Germany -- what the Russians call the Great Patriotic War -- President Obama has made common cause with neo-Nazis and Axis revanchists from Kiev and Berlin to Tallinn and Warsaw who are attempting to erase the USSR and its immense sacrifices in the war against fascism from the history books and various 70th anniversary commemorations of the war's milestones.

The George Soros and neo-conservative snubbing of Russia in commemorating World War II began with the Polish foreign ministry's refusal to invite Russian President Vladimir Putin to mark the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp from the Nazis. Although it was the Soviet Red Army that liberated the death camp, Poland not only decided to snub Putin but it invited Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who has a number of neo-Nazis serving in his country's government, armed forces, and intelligence services, to the Auschwitz ceremony. A number of Ukrainians were allied with the Nazi SS in fighting against the Red Army. Their sons and grandsons, known as "Banderists" for Ukrainian Nazi leader Stepan Bandera, now rally around the Ukrainian nationalist and fascist cause in support of Ukraine's genocidal war against Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the Donbass region.

Polish foreign minister Grzegorz Schetyna attempted to re-write history by claiming Ukrainians, not Russians, liberated Auschwitz. Russia's Foreign Ministry responded to Schetyna by stating, "It's common knowledge that Auschwitz was liberated by the Red Army, in which all nationalities heroically served," adding that Poland was making a "mockery" of history.

Putin has said that there is a coordinated attempt by the West to belittle Russia's role in World War II. The latest attempt to diminish Russia's sacrifices in World War II have come with the announcement by many Western leaders that they will boycott the 70th Moscow anniversary commemoration of the end of the Great Patriotic War. Critics of the decision of the Western leaders to boycott the Victory Day ceremony note that by their actions Obama, Britain's David Cameron, France's Francois Hollande, Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, Georgian President Giorgi Margvelashvili, and others are trying to negate the deaths of 27 million Soviet citizens who died during the Second World War.

Donald Tusk, the President of the European Council and an ardent Polish nationalist and anti-Russian, announced that he would not be representing the European Union at the Moscow ceremony. Poland is hoping to lure those leaders boycotting Moscow to its own ceremony marking the end of World War II.

While Obama and his friends in NATO will not be in Moscow, Greece's Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, who has demanded war reparations from Germany for his country, will buck the NATO boycott and attend the ceremony on Red Square. He will be joined by North Korea's Kim Jong Un in his first trip outside of North Korea since assuming power. Kim's grandfather, Kim Il Sung, was a Communist partisan leader against the Japanese occupiers in Korea.

Another NATO leader who will bolt from the Western military bloc and go to Moscow is Milos Zeman, the Czech president. Right-wing members of the Czech Civic Democrats Party are attempting to deny financing of Zeman's trip to Moscow. Zeman, if he does make it to Moscow, will reportedly be joined by Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico. Slovakia is also a member of NATO. Slovakia's President Andrej Kiska, who has links to the Church of Scientology, refused Russia's invitation to attend the Victory Day event. Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades will buck the wishes of other European Union leaders and be in Moscow.

Nicos Anastasiades

Also joining other leaders in Moscow who are ignoring the West's boycott of the May 9 event are Chinese President Xi Jinping, Indian President Shri Pranab Mukherjee, South African President Jacob Zuma, Cuban President Raul Castro, Vietnamese President Truong Tan Sang, Serbian PresidentTomislav Nikolic, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Mongolian President Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj, Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliev, Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko, Kazakshtan President Nursultan Nazarbayev, Armenian President Serzh Sarsyan, Tajikistan PresidentEmomalii Rahmon, and Kyrgyzstan President Almazbek Atambaev.

There are also high-level government delegations expected in Moscow from the Netherlands, which is surprising considering the fact that Malaysian Airlines flight 17 departed from Amsterdam before it was shot down over eastern Ukraine. Although the Ukrainian regime has tried to lay blame for the shoot down on Russian-backed separatists, there has been no final conclusion as to the perpetrators. However, given reports from the Netherlands that crash investigators believe that the plane was shot down by air-to-air gunfire from Ukrainian air force warplanes, the presence of a Dutch delegation in Moscow implies that the Netherlands authorities may be aware of Kiev's culpability in the attack.
In what can only be considered a diplomatic slap at the Kiev regime and its Western supporters, the leaders of the self-declared people's republics of Donetsk and Lugansk in eastern Ukraine will be in the same Red Square viewing stand as the leaders from 30 other countries, including China, India, and South Africa, a fact that will confer a semblance of de facto international recognition of their status. In addition, the leaders of the republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia will also be present, constituting a diplomatic defeat for the authorities in Georgia who view the republics as integral parts of their state.
 
Kiev authorities, supported by ex-U.S. ambassadors, push for their own May 9 ceremony rivaling that planned in Moscow to celebrate victory over Nazism. Ironic, since the Kiev regime is backed by neo-Nazis who support Adolf Hitler and his Ukrainian henchman Stepan Bandera [left].  Baltic leaders boycott Moscow Victory Day event while their capitals host vigils for Nazi SS veterans. [right]. The U.S. embraces these proto-Nazi governments as allies.

The Obama administration is applying intense pressure on South Korean President 
Park Geun-hye and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to refuse Moscow's invitation to the participate in the May 9 event. Venezuela, Brazil, and Nicaragua are expected to send high-level delegations to Moscow.

The leaders of the Baltic nations, where there have been recent ceremonies honoring the military veterans of their nations who fought alongside Adolf Hitler's troops, will not be in Moscow.

The leaders gathered in Moscow will witness troops from at least 10 nations marching alongside their Russian counterparts. Some Russian troops will be clad in the World War II uniforms of the Soviet Red Army. German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced that she will skip the May 9 ceremony in Moscow but show up the following day, likely to apply further pressure on Putin over the Ukraine situation. Three former U.S. ambassadors to Ukraine, John Herbst, Steven Pifer, and William Taylor, have called on world leaders to attend a Victory Day ceremony in Kiev and not Moscow. Such a move would be awkward considering the number of neo-Nazis embedded in Ukrainian military, police, and militia units.

The Future Gaddafi Foresaw Libya, ISIS and the Unaffordable Luxury of Hindsight

The Future Gaddafi Foresaw
Libya, ISIS and the Unaffordable Luxury of Hindsight

By Ahmad Barqawi

March 09, 2015 "ICH" - "Counterpunch"

- Who are you?” the late Muammar Gaddafi once rhetorically asked in a famous speech of his towards the end of his reign; (rightly) questioning the legitimacy of those seeking to over-throw his government at the time, calling them extremists, foreign agents, rats and drug-addicts. He was laughed at, unfairly caricatured, ridiculed and incessantly demonized; a distasteful parody video poking fun at the late Libyan leader even went viral on social media; evidently the maker of the video, an Israeli, thought the Libyan colloquial Arabic word “Zenga” (which means an Alleyway) sounded funny enough that he extracted it from one of Gaddafi’s speeches, looped it on top of a hip-hop backing track and voila… he got himself a hit video which was widely (and shamefully) circulated with a “revolutionary” zeal in the Arab world. We shared, we laughed, he died.

But the bloody joke is on all of us; Gaddafi knew what he was talking about; right from the get-go, he accused the so-called Libyan rebels of being influenced by Al-Qaeda ideology and Ben Laden’s school of thought; no one had taken his word for it of course, not even a little bit. I mean why should we have? After all, wasn’t he a vile, sex-centric dictator hell-bent on massacring half of the Libyan population while subjecting the other half to manic raping sprees with the aid of his trusted army of Viagra-gobbling, sub-Saharan mercenaries? At least that’s what we got from the visual cancer that is Al Jazeera channel and its even more acrid Saudi counterpart Al-Arabiya in their heavily skewed coverage of NATO’s vicious conquest of Libya. Plus Gaddafi did dress funny; why would anyone trust a haggard, weird-looking despot dressed in colorful rags when you have well-groomed Zionists like Bernard Henry Levy, John McCain and Hillary Clinton at your side, smiling and flashing the victory sign in group photo-ops, right?

Gaddafi called them drug-addicted, Islamic fundamentalists; we know them as ISIS… it doesn’t seem much of a joke now, does it? And ISIS is what had been in store for us all along; the “revolutionary” lynching and sodomization of Muammar Gaddafi amid manic chants of “Allahu Akbar”, lauded by many at the time as some sort of a warped triumph of the good of popular will (read: NATO-sponsored mob rule) over the evil of dictatorship (sovereign state), was nothing but a gory precursor for the future of the country and the region; mass lynching of entire populations in Libya, Syria and Iraq and the breakup of key Arab states into feuding mini-statelets. The gruesome video of Colonel Gaddafi’s murder, which puts to shame the majority of ISIS videos in terms of unhinged brutality and gore, did not invoke the merest of condemnations back then, on the contrary; everyone seemed perfectly fine with the grotesque end of the Libyan “tyrant”… except that it was only the beginning of a new and unprecedented reign of terror courtesy of NATO’s foot-soldiers and GCC-backed Islamic insurgents.

The rapid proliferation of trigger-happy terrorist groups and Jihadi factions drenched in petrodollars in Libya was not some sort of an intelligence failure on the part of western governments or a mere by-product of the power vacuum left by a slain Gaddafi; it was a deliberate, calculated policy sought after and implemented by NATO and its allies in the Gulf under the cringe-inducing moniker “Friends of Libya” (currently known as the International Coalition against ISIS) to turn the north-African country into the world’s largest ungovernable dumpster of weapons, al-Qaida militants and illegal oil trading.

So it is safe to say that UNSC resolution 1973, which practically gave free rein for NATO to bomb Libya into smithereens, has finally borne fruit… and it’s rotten to its nucleus, you can call the latest gruesome murder of 21 Egyptian fishermen and workers by the Libyan branch of the Islamic State exhibit “A”, not to mention of course the myriad of daily killings, bombings and mini-civil wars that are now dotting the entire country which, ever since the West engineered its coup-d’etat against the Gaddafi government, have become synonymous with the bleak landscape of lawlessness and death that is “Libya” today. And the gift of NATO liberation is sure to keep on giving for years of instability and chaos to come.

In an interview with the western media misinformation collective that is the BBC, ABC and the Sunday Times in February 2011; the late Muammar Gaddafi told his condescending interviewers; “have you seen the Al Qaeda operatives? Have you heard all these Jihadi broadcasts? It is Al Qaeda that is controlling the cities of Al Baida and Darnah, former Guantanamo inmates and extremists unleashed by America to terrorize the Libyan people…”. Darnah is now the main stronghold for ISIS in Libya.

In a bizarre coincidence (or some sort of cosmic irony); the date on which ISIS chose to release its video of the beheading of Egyptian captives, thereby officially declaring its presence in the war-torn country with three oil fields under its control, (appropriately) marked the 4th anniversary of the start of the so-called Libyan revolution on February 15^th, 2011; a more apt “tribute” to commemorate the Western instigated regime-change debacle in Libya could not have been made.

But even long before ISIS became the buzzword, the acrid nature of a “revolutionary” Libya showed in full, sickening splendor almost instantly right after the old regime fell, everything the late Gaddafi was falsely accused of doing was literally perfected to a chilling degree by the so-called rebels; massacres, indiscriminate shelling of residential areas, car-bombings, mass arrests, torture, theft of oil and national resources… the whole lot. In 2013; two British pro-Palestine activists, on their way to Gaza with an aid convoy, got to experience first-hand the rotten fruits of the Libyan chapter of the so-called Arab Spring when they were abducted by a motely crew of Libyan revolutionaries-turned-warlords in the city of Benghazi and gang raped in front of their father.

Proponents of Humanitarian Interventions must be patting themselves on the back these days; now that Libya has completed its democratic makeover from a country with the highest standard of living in Africa under Gaddafi’s rule into a textbook definition of a failed state; a godless wasteland of religious fanaticism, internal bloodletting and wholesale head-chopping, in fact Libya became so “democratic” that there are now two parliaments and two (warring) governments; each with its own (criminal) army and supported with money and caches of weapons from competing foreign powers, not to mention the myriad of secessionist movements and militias which the illegal coup against Gaddafi has spawned all over the country while free health care, education and electricity, which the Libyans took for granted under Gaddafi’s regime, are all now but relics of the past; that’s the “Odyssey Dawn” the Libyans were promised; a sanitized version of Iraq sans the public outrage, neatly re-packaged in a “responsibility to protect” caveat and delivered via aerial bombing campaigns where even the West’s overzealous Gulf Co-conspirators Club (GCC), driven by nothing beyond petty personal vendettas against Gaddafi, got to test the lethality of its rusted, American-made military aircrafts alongside NATO on the people of Tripoli and Sirte.

This is what Gaddafi had predicted right from the get-go and then some; the ephemeral euphoria of the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions was just too potent and too exhilarating for us to read the fine print; was it a conspiracy or a true revolutionary spirit gone awry? It doesn’t really matter now that ISIS has become the true legacy of Tahrir Square; “they will turn Libya into another Afghanistan, another Somalia, another Iraq… your women won’t be allowed out, they will transform Libya into an Islamic Emirate and America will bomb the country under the pretext of fighting terrorism”, the late Libyan leader had said in a televised speech on February 22^nd, 2011, and more prophetic words were never spoken.

America’s “clean war” Libyan prototype proved to be such a success that it was replicated with a wanton abandon in Syria; Paul Bremer’s “Blackwater” death squads of old, which reigned terror all over Iraq, are back… with an Islamic twist; bearded, clad in black and explosives from head to toe and mounting convoys of Toyota Land Cruiser trucks with an ever-expanding, seemingly borderless Islamic Caliphate (that somehow leaves the Zionist regime unencumbered in its occupation of Palestine) set in their sights.

Everyday the Arab World is awakened to a new-videotaped atrocity; steeped in gore and maniacal terror courtesy of ISIS (or IS or ISIL), and countless of other “youtubeless”, albeit more heinous crimes courtesy of America’s very own ever-grinding, one-sided drone warfare; the entire region seesaws between machete beheadings and hellfire missile incinerations. Death from above… as well as below; the War on Terror rears its ugly head once again; to bring in line those nasty terrorists that the West itself funded and sponsored in the name of democracy to destabilize “unsavory” regimes; an unrelenting Groundhog Day that starts with the Responsibility to Protect and ends with the War on Terror, with thousands of innocent lives, typically chalked up to collateral damage, crushed in the process.

This is exactly what Gaddafi foresaw; a Libya mired in utter chaos, civil conflict and western diktats; a breeding ground for Jihadi fundamentalism and extremists… too bad we just laughed his warnings off to an Israeli-made parody tune.

Ahmad Barqawi, freelance columnist and writer.

Redacted Pentagon report on Israel's H-bomb released by Wayne Madsen

Redacted Pentagon report on Israel's H-bomb released

The federal government decided to release in a heavily-redacted form a 1987 Pentagon-commissioned report on Israel's and NATO nation's critical military technology. The move came after a litigation brought about by a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy three years ago and a law suit filed for the release of the report in September 2014.

The 386-page report, prepared by the Pentagon think tank, Institute for Defense Analysis (IDA), states that Israel's key nuclear weapons facilities were similar to those at Oak Ridge and Los Alamos National Laboratories. Specifically, the report states at the Soreq Nuclear Research Center, near Yavne, and the Dimona/Beer Sheva facilities are equivalent of Oak Ridge and Los Alamos and that Soreq had access to the same technologies developed at the American nuclear laboratories. This is a clear indication that U.S. nuclear technology was being provided by the U.S. to Israel either willingly or through espionage, or possibly, both. Soreq was also said to resemble the nuclear facilities at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory.

The report states: "The capability of SOREQ to support SDIO [Strategic Defense Initiative Operations] and nuclear technologies [emphasis added] is almost an exact parallel of the capability currently existing at our National Laboratories."

Furthermore, the report states: "They [the Israelis] use the same types of Lagrangian hydrodynamic codes using elastic-plastic deformation as are used by the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy. These, of course, find utility in studying the implosion of nuclear devices as well as studying spallation."

The report states that in 1987, Israel was at the same stage of fission nuclear weapons development where the United States was between 1955 and 1960 and that they were developing fusion or hydrogen bomb capabilities but still lacked the necessary codes and calculations to produce H-bombs.

It is noteworthy that while information on critical weapons technology of Italy, France, West Germany, and other NATO countries is redacted in the released report, Israeli technology did not receive as much blacked out paragraphs by military censors.

This editor, while working for the National Security Agency in 1987, discovered that Israel's Mossad targeted a number of sensitive NSA and other military operations, including the U.S. Navy's Trident submarine communications suite, for espionage. A number of American Jewish engineers at RCA, Raytheon, and various sub-contractors were discovered to have been sharing sensitive compartmented information (SCI) with Israeli "engineers" working on other signals intelligence projects outside of the NSA-DoD SCI framework. However, the FBI chose not to prosecute any of the Jewish engineers becase of the threat of being charged with "anti-Semitism." With the exception of Jonathan Pollard, no other Jewish spies for Israel were pursued by the FBI in the 1980s, including, as the 1987 IDA report indicates, those who were passing U.S. nuclear secrets to the Israelis from Oak Ridge, Los Alamos, and Lawrence Livermore.

Read the IDA report here.

Ukraine's "Flying Dutchman" Weapons Transport Makes Its Rounds by Wayne Madsen

Ukraine's "Flying Dutchman" Weapons Transport Makes Its Rounds

In a repeat of the Central Intelligence Agency's globe hopping weapons transport cargo planes of the Iran-Contra scandal and the more recent Libyan rebel supply caper to overthrow Muammar Qaddafi, a Ukrainian Antonov AN-124 (tail number UR-82072) heavy lifter military transport plane, denoted as an "International Cargo Transport" and belonging to the "Antonov Transport Bureau," astonished residents around Belgrade's Nikola Tesla International Airport in Serbia when it landed there on January 28, 2015. The Ukrainian plane, the world's largest aircraft, was a rare sight at an airport in a country that generally supports Russia in its conflict with Kiev.

In September of last year, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said that a number of NATO countries have agreed to deliver weapons to Ukrainian forces, which consist not only of regular Ukrainian troops but irregular battalions supported by billionaire Ukrainian-Israeli warlord Ihor Kolomoisky consisting of neo-Nazis, U.S. and other private military forces, and ex-Israel Defense Force personnel. At the time of the September 2014 NATO summit in Wales, Ukrainian presidential adviser Yuri Lutsenko said that the United States, France, Poland, Norway and Italy had agreed to supply weapons to Ukraine and Canada later revealed that it had also commenced weapons transfers to the Kiev putschist regime.

Ukraine's military forces have received so much NATO military aid and assistance and personnel, Russian President Vladimir Putin recently said that the Ukrainian Army is acting as NATO's "foreign legion." There are also credible reports that NATO has supplied the Kiev regime with deadly cluster bombs that are being used against the largely Russian-speaking civilian population of the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine.


Antonov AN-124 (UR-82072) military transport plane suspected of ferrying weapons to Kiev seen on January 29, 2015 at Belgrade airport.

The AN-124 that landed in Belgrade appears to have been ferrying weapons from a number of known NATO air terminals used for such purposes. After arriving in Bucharest, Romania on January 23, 2015 from the Italian island of Lampedusa, off the coast of Libya, the aircraft departed on January 23 for New Jersey in the United States. Lampedusa was a major staging base for NATO weapons supplies to Libyan rebels during the Western- and Islamist-inspired rebellion against the Qaddafi government. Bucharest has become a major base for NATO military support to Kiev.

On January 25, the Antonov departed Newark Liberty International Airport, New Jersey for Trondheim, Norway. On January 26, the Ukrainian transport plane left Trondheim for Prestwick Airport, Glasgow, Scotland. The plane departed Prestwick on January 28 and touched down the same day at Belgrade. Prestwick was a favorite transit hub used by the CIA for the rendition of detainees following 9/11.

The United States has positioned six storage units located in the mountains of Norway’s central Trøndelag region, the capital of which is Trondheim. U.S. military equipment, including tanks and armored personnel vehicles, are stored at two Norwegian Air Force stations in the area, one of them being co-located with Trondheim Airport Værnes where the Ukrainian Antonov landed on January 26.


Antonov (UR-82072) coming in for a landing at Nikola Tesla International Airport in Belgrade on January 28.

Ukrainian transport UR-82072 plane flight from Glasgow to Belgrade on January 28.
The Antonov's destination after it left Belgrade was Mombasa, Kenya via Athens. The plane was reported by Serbian sources to be carrying "special cargo" weapons. It is conceivable that UR-82072 dropped off in Athens for further shipment to Ukraine weapons loaded at NATO airports in Lampedusa, Glasgow, and Trondheim, as well as Serbian caches placed on board in Belgrade and, perhaps, U.S. weapons stored at Picatinny Arsenal in Morris County, New Jersey, the Defense Department's Specialty Site for Guns and Ammunition, and Naval Weapons Station Earle, New Jersey. Both weapons bases are in close proximity to Newark Liberty International. The AN-124 is permanently based at Kiev's Gostomel Airport.


Helicopter being placed on board Ukraine's "Flying Dutchman" weapons transport.
Ever since fighting broke out between Ukrainian forces and Russian-speaking separatists in eastern Ukraine, the mysterious Ukrainian AN-124 has been spotted around the world, likely picking up weapons. On June 18, 2014, it was seen at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion International Airport. Before that, it was seen on May 22, 2014 at Las Palmas, Canary Islands, in what may have been a refueling stop. On January 1 and 6, 2015 and November 23, 2014, it was spotted at Leipzig/Halle Airport in Germany; on July 2, 2014, it was Luqa International in Malta (Malta was another staging base for weapons supplies to anti-Qaddafi forces during the Libyan civil war); and on April 15, 2014 at Francisco Sa Carneiro Aiport, Porto, Portugal and a week later, on April 27, at Schwechat Airport in Vienna.

THE ROVING EYE - Washington plays Russian roulette By Pepe Escobar

Washington plays Russian roulette

THE ROVING EYE Washington plays Russian roulette By Pepe Escobar These are bleak times. I've been in serious conversation with some deep sources and interlocutors - those who know but don't need to show off, privileging discretion. They are all deeply worried. This is what one of them, a New York strategic planner, sent me: The propaganda attack against Putin equating him with Hitler is so extreme that you have to think that the Russians cannot believe their ears and cannot trust the United States anymore under any circumstances. I cannot believe how we could have gotten ourselves into this situation to protect the looters in the Ukraine that Putin would have rid the Ukraine of, and even had the gall to place in a leadership role one of the worst of the thieves. But that is history. What is certain is that MAD [mutually assured destruction] is not a deterrent today when both sides believe the other will use nuclear weapons once they have the advantage and that the side that gains a decisive advantage will use them. MAD is now over. That may sound somewhat extreme - but it's a perfectly logical extension, further on down the road, of what the Russian president intimated in his already legendary interview with Germany's ARD in Vladivostok last week: the West is provoking Russia into a new Cold War. [1] Mikhail Gorbachev just stressed a few days ago the new Cold War is already on. Princeton's Stephen Cohen says the Cold War in fact never left. The Roving Eye reported about Cold War 2.0 months ago. Brits - still stranded in the 19th century new Great Game - prefer to spin the "strident toxic personality" of "diminutive Putin"; [2] he is the "ruthless, charming and ultimately reckless" man who "put the cold war back in vogue". The Council on Foreign Relations, predictably, mourns the end of the post-Cold War world, blasts the current "disorder", and dreams of the good ol' unchallenged exceptionalist days. [3] For arguably the best detailed background on how we came to this perilous state of affairs, it's hard to beat Vladimir Kozin of the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies. [4] Read him carefully. And yes, it's Cold War 2.0, the double trouble remix; between the US and Russia, and between NATO and Russia. Seeing red In his ARD interview, Putin stuck to actual facts on the ground: "NATO and the United States have military bases scattered all over the globe, including in areas close to our borders, and their number is growing ? Moreover, just recently it was decided to deploy special operations forces, again in close proximity to our borders. You have mentioned various [Russian] exercises, flights, ship movements and so on. Is all of this going on? Yes, it is indeed." For the Russia-demonizing hordes, it's always convenient to forget that NATO expansion to Georgia and Ukraine was clinched at a NATO meeting in Bucharest in April 2008. The Georgia op spectacularly failed in the summer of 2008. Ukraine is a work in progress. Crucially, in the ARD interview, Putin also told the EU coalition of the clueless/vassals/puppets/ that Russia can bring down the Ukraine House of Cards in a flash; Moscow just needs to emphasize it's time to collect the humongous amounts of cash it is legally owed. Putin also made it very clear Moscow won't allow - and that was categorical: won't allow - Donbass to be overrun/smashed/ethnic-cleansed by Kiev: "Today there is fighting in eastern Ukraine. The Ukrainian central authorities have sent the armed forces there and they even use ballistic missiles. Does anybody speak about it? Not a single word. And what does it mean? What does it tell us? This points to the fact, that you want the Ukrainian central authorities to annihilate everyone there, all of their political foes and opponents. You want that? We certainly don't. And we won't let it happen." [5] According to Kiev's own figures, no less than 65% of residential buildings and 10% of schools and kindergartens in Donbass have been destroyed. Over 40,000 medium-sized companies are paralyzed. Unemployment - Ukraine-wide, is over 40%. External debt may reach US$80 billion - and don't expect the International Monetary Fund, which now owns Ukraine, to go philanthropic. Most of all, Kiev can't pay its billionaire gas bills to Gazprom because it spends a fortune terrorizing eastern Ukraine citizens. This Poroshenko rant sums it all up - with the US and EU fully complicit. So NATO has been warned about Russia's real red lines. Still, substantial sectors of the Washington/Wall Street elites can't get enough of war. And they like it hot. [6] No one should ever underestimate the unlimited stupidity of the Return of the Living Neo-con Dead using their favorite pulpit, the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal. The "logic" behind Cold War 2.0 - now in full swing - couldn't give a damn about European stability. The Obama administration launched it - with NATO as the spearhead - to in fact prevent Eurasian integration, building a New Berlin Wall in Kiev. The immediate target is to undermine Russia's economy; in the long run, regime change would be the ultimate bonus. So the logic of escalation is on. The economically devastated EU is a joke; the only thing that counts for the US is NATO - and the overwhelming majority of its members are in the bag, sharing the prevailing mood in Washington of treating Putin as if he were Milosevic, Saddam Hussein or Gaddafi. There are no signs whatsoever Team Obama is willing to de-escalate. And when the Hillarator President-in-Waiting ascends to the throne, all bets are off. Notes: 1. Putin's Sunday Interview on German TV (Dubbed + Transcript), Russian Insider, November 19, 2014. 2. The new cold war: are we going back to the bad old days?, The Guardian, November 19, 2014. 3. The Unraveling: How to Respond to a Disordered World, foreignaffairs.com, December 2014 issue. 4. See here. 5. The broken-down beauty of Eastern Ukraine, 25 years after the end of the USSR, Quartz, November 15, 2014. 6. The Wall Street Journal Wants the US to Go To War in Ukraine, Russia Insider, November 18, 2014. Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007), Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge (Nimble Books, 2007), and Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009). He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.

Obama's 'stupid stuff' turned upside down By Pepe Escobar

THE ROVING EYE Obama's 'stupid stuff' turned upside down By Pepe Escobar  PARIS - I've been rovin' around Europe for a while and the star of the show is definitely The Caliph. Former Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has totally outstripped Vladimir Putin as Doctor Evil of the hour. Where's a good ol' Cold War 2.0 when you need it? Well, upstaged by the Pentagon's "long war" - our familiar GWOT (Global War on Terror). First Obama promised there would be no ground troops to fight The Caliph - as in a re-invasion of Iraq. Then General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that if the current gambit of Obama's self-defined "Don't So Stupid Stuff" foreign policy doctrine does not work - and it won't - he'll go for ground troops, embedded or otherwise. Right on cue, The Caliph went Hollywood, releasing the trailer of The Caliphate's upcoming mega-production, Flames of War. Directed by Michael Bay (Fall, 2014). Will that go straight to Netflix? You just can't beat the Marvel Comics school of geopolitics. Confide in me, baby  Meanwhile, in Paris, President General Francois Hollande is itching to deploy his Rafales and get into a new war - considering that's about the only thing that could lift the mood of a wretched president, whose administration has barely survived a "confidence" vote; compare that "confidence" with the nasty epithets with which his team is showered by largely unemployed, taxed to death or swamped by red tape Parisians. Obama has already sent 475 extra military "advisers" to Baghdad and Iraqi Kurdistan. There are at least 1,600 US military already on the ground in Iraq. That's how Vietnam started. The CIA, supported by unmatched ground intel, swears there are exactly 31.785 jihadis fighting for The Caliph. Well, roughly. Two-thirds of these are supposed to be in Syria. So the new war, in fact, is all across "Syraq". Or what The Caliph calls IS, Islamic State, his own private emirate. The no less meticulous Dempsey, for his part, is sure it will take up to five months to train and weaponize a new bunch of "moderate" rebels to fight the Caliph. Wait a minute; foolish global public opinion was supposed to believe the previous "moderate" rebels - supported by Qatar - would one day fulfill the "Assad must go" Obama mandate. Well, they didn't. "Our" bastards at the petrodollar racket known as GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) have duly promised to help Obama's new war, alongside Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq. Turkey will only get involved in the "humanitarian" front - while allowing smuggled oil sold by The Caliph's goons into its territory. The members of the wretched Arab League have solemnly promised to be "determined" in cutting off the flux of weapons and cash to The Caliph show. Yet they would never have the balls of the Kurdish peshmerga, who have just killed the Mosul chief of IS. This kind of ground intel, plus following the money, as in the oil smuggling routes, would finish off the Caliphate in no time. But that's not what endless GWOT is all about. Caliph, give us a hand  With such an array of Hollywood thrills on show, who cares about Ukraine? Well, it may have been snuffed out of the news cycle after the latest nasty package of US/EU sanctions, but it's back in the spotlight this Thursday, as Ukrainian oligarch turned president Petro Poroshenko visits The Caliph's nemesis in Washington. So expect a frantic rerun of Evil Empire rhetoric - plus ample indignation caused by the Russian "invasion" of Ukraine. That will last barely a day. "Don't Do Stupid Stuff" changes its tune like surfing on iTunes. And the tune now is the "Syraq" offensive; yet another Obama "kinetic" operation, Billy Idol's Rebel Yell remixed. That leaves plenty of space for US Think Tankland to carp that Russia "aggression" will profit from the new tune to "advance" in Central and Eastern Europe, and the China "threat" will profit to "dominate" the Western Pacific. So what's more crucial for the Empire of Chaos; Russia, China or "Syraq"? They don't have a clue. They are just trying not to do "stupid stuff". \ For all that volcanic Beltway paranoia, the Big Picture in the long run spells out Moscow expanding its Pipelineistan nodes throughout Eastern Europe all the way to Western Europe, thus enlarging, commercially, its "soft" zone of influence. No "invasion" required. On Ukraine, the Big Picture spells out the European Union mired in a horrendous crisis, under a third recession in five years, obviously without the cash, not to mention the will, to pay Ukraine's humongous bills. Sooner - with negotiations starting this Saturday in Berlin - or later the EU will have to find an accommodation with Moscow to guarantee its precious gas supplies. That leaves warmongering NATO - as in the EU under the Pentagon's thumb. All rhetoric about that puny "rapid reaction force" aside, the fact is that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization won't have the balls to confront Russia, via troops deployed in Ukraine. And there will be no Obama "Stupid Stuff" aerial bombing of federalists in Donbass - as if Russophones in Ukraine defending their land and their language against a form of slow motion ethnic cleansing could be compared to The Caliph's multinational goons in "Syraq". US public opinion very well knows - well, maybe not - that people in Donbass are not threatening to cross into El Paso tomorrow. So much hard work to pivot from GWOT to the Big Boys in Eurasia. So little time - and competence. The Caliph's goons have announced on the record they would go for beheading Putin. If only the Pentagon would subcontract the job. Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007), Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge (Nimble Books, 2007), and Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009). He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.

Will NATO liberate Jihadistan? By Pepe Escobar

THE ROVING EYE

Will NATO liberate Jihadistan?

By Pepe Escobar 

Drive your cart and your plow
Over the bones of the dead … 
- William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Caliph Ibrahim, aka Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, self-declared leader of Islamic State, formerly the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, really sports a mean PR vein. When the show seemed scheduled for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to save Ukraine and Western Civilization - at least rhetorically - from that Evil Empire remixed, Russia, The Caliph, accessing his expensive watch wisdom, intervened with - what else - yet another "off with their heads" special. 

Eyebrows were properly raised until the United States' intel alphabet soup solemnly concluded that Islamic State (IS) really beheaded yet another American journalist on video (US President Barack Obama: "An horrific act of violence"). 

And then, out of the blue, The Caliph doubled down, proclaiming to the whole world his next target is none other than Russian President Vladimir Putin. Was he channeling the recently ostracized Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan, aka Bandar Bush? 

In thesis, everything would be settled. The Caliph becomes a contractor to NATO (well, he’s been on to it, sort of). The Caliph beheads Putin. The Caliph liberates Chechnya - fast; not the usual, deeply embarrassing NATO quagmire in Afghanistan. The Caliph, on a roll, attacks the BRICS - Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The Caliph becomes NATO’s shadow secretary-general. And Obama finally stops complaining that his calls to Putin always end up on voicemail. 

Ah, if geopolitics was as simple as a Marvel Comics blockbuster.

Instead, The Caliph should know - even as he is largely a Made-in-the-West product, with substantial input from Gulf Cooperation Council petrodollar cash - that NATO never promised him a rose garden. 

So, predictably, those ungrateful Obama and David Cameron, the British Prime Minister - oh yes, because the "special relationship" is all that matters in NATO, the others are mere extras - have vowed to go after him with a broad (well, not that broad) "coalition of the willing" with the usual GCC suspects plus Turkey and Jordan, bombing Iraqi Kurdistan, parts of Sunni Iraq and even Syria. 

After all, Syrian President "Bashar al-Assad must go", rather "Assad brutality" in Cameron’s formulation, is the real culprit for The Caliph’s actions. 

And all in the name of the Enduring Freedom Forever-style Global War on Terror. 

Now get me that Slavic Caliph 
NATO’s outgoing secretary-general Anders "Fogh of War" Rasmussen was somehow rattled. After all, this was supposed to be the "crucial moment", at the NATO summit in Wales, when NATO would be at its Cold War 2.0 best, rescuing "the allies", all 28 of them, from the dark gloom of insecurity. 

One just had to look at the replica of a glorious Eurofighter Typhoon deployed in front of the NATO summit hotel in the southern Welsh town of Newport. 

To round it all off, that evil Slavic Caliph, Vlad Putin himself, designed a seven-point peace plan to solve the Ukrainian quagmire - just as Kiev’s appalling army has been reduced to strogonoff by the federalists and/or separatists in the Donbass. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko - who until virtually yesterday was screaming "Invasion!" at the top of his lungs - breathed long sighs of relief. And as an aside, he disclosed Kiev was receiving high-precision weapons from an unnamed country that could only be the US, the UK or Poland. 

The whole thing posed a problem, though. What is NATO to defend Western Civilization from when all that threat embodied by "Russian aggression" dissolves into a road map to peace? 

No wonder the 60 heads of state and government with their Ministers of Defense and Foreign Relations who performed a soft invasion/breaching of the "ring of steel" protecting Newport from protesting hordes were also somehow dazed an confused. 

Over 11 years after Shock and Awe, we are still living in a Rumsfeldian world. It was the former Pentagon head David Rumsfeld under George "Dubya" Bush who conceptualized "Old Europe" and "New Europe". "Old" were Venusian sissies; "New" were vigorous Martians. 

"New" totally supported Shock and Awe, and the subsequent invasion/occupation of Iraq. Now they support, in fact beg, for NATO to stare down Russia. 

"Old", for its part, was trying at least to save a negotiating space with Putin. And in the end dear prudence, especially by Berlin, was rewarded with the Putin peace plan. 

Just in case, not to rattle the Empire of Chaos too much, Paris announced it won’t deliver the first of two Mistral helicopter carrier battleships to Moscow according to schedule. And of course NATO strongly condemned Russia on Ukraine, and the European Union followed up with yet more sanctions. 

As for Fogh of War, predictably, he kept juggling his "Mars Attacks!" rhetoric (see Asia Times Online, September 3, 2014). It was all Moscow’s fault. NATO is nothing but an innocent force of appeasement - powerful and solid. At the same time, NATO would not be foolish to start depicting Russia as an enemy outright. 

So, as Asia Times Online reported, NATO at best will help train Kiev’s forces; the Donbass performance showed they badly need it. But there will be no Ukraine "integration" - for all the hysteria deployed by Kiev and well as Poland and the Baltic states calling for permanent bases. The new element will be the remixed NATO Response Force (NRF) which, by the way, was never used before. 

NRF even comes with a catchy slogan: "Travel light and strike hard". An 800-strong battalion will be able to strike in two days, and a 5,000-strong brigade between five and seven days. Well, by those "travel light" standards it would hardly be enough to prevent The Caliph from annexing larger parts of Jihadistan with his gleaming white Toyota combo. As for "strike hard", ask Pashtuns in the Hindu Kush for an informed opinion. 

So Wales yielded NRF; permanent "rotation" and permanent forward bases to "protect" Central and Eastern Europe; and everybody shelling out more cash (no less than 2% of their GDP each, for all 28 members, from here to 2025). All this in the middle of the third European recession in five years. 

Now compare the astonishing combined NATO military budget of US$900 billion (75% of all expenses monopolized by the US) with only $80 billion for Russia. Yet Moscow is the "threat". 

Needless to add, even under so much sound and fury, Wales did not yield NATO sitting on a Freudian divan - analyzing in an endless monologue its abject failure in both Afghanistan and Libya. 

In Afghanistan, the Taliban basically run rings around NATO’s bases and "strike hard" movements, demoralizing them to oblivion. That was NATO in GWOT mode. 

And in Libya, NATO created a failed state ravaged by militias and called it "peace". That was NATO in "Responsibility To Protect" mode. 

NATO liberating Jihadistan? The Pentagon couldn’t care less. The Pentagon wants eternal GWOT. US Think Tankland is ecstatic at NATO finding a "renewed purpose" and its long-term survival now assured by a "unifying threat". Translation: Russia. 

So The Caliph is not exactly quaking in his Made-in-USA desert boots. He’s even dreaming of taking on the Slavic Caliph himself. How come Marvel Comics never thought about that? 

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007), Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge (Nimble Books, 2007), and Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).

He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.