10/4/15

The Moscow-Washington-Tehran Axis of Evil

The conventional wisdom is that Vladimir Putin has blindsided Barack Obama in the Middle East, catching the U.S. off-guard. It’s another Obama “failure,” we’re told. “Obama administration scrambles as Russia attempts to seize initiative in Syria,” is how a Washington Post headline described it. A popular cartoon showsPutin kicking sand in the faces of Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry on a beach.

The conventional wisdom is driven by the notion that Obama has the best of intentions but that he’s been outmaneuvered. What if his intention all along has been to remake the Middle East to the advantage of Moscow and its client state Iran? What if he knows exactly what he’s doing? Too many commentators refuse to consider that Obama is deliberately working against U.S. interests and in favor of the enemies of the U.S. and Israel.

In his U.N. address, Obama said, “As President of the United States, I am mindful of the dangers that we face; they cross my desk every morning. I lead the strongest military that the world has ever known, and I will never hesitate to protect my country or our allies, unilaterally and by force where necessary.”

This is laughable. We still have a strong military, but the inevitable conclusion from what’s recently transpired is that he doesn’t want to protect the interests of the U.S. or its allies in the Middle East. This is not a “failure,” but a deliberate policy.

The trouble with conventional wisdom is the assumption that Obama sees things the way most Americans do. In order to understand Obama’s Middle East policy, it is necessary to consult alternative sources of news and information and analysis. That includes communist news sources.

A fascinating analysis appears in the newspaper of the Socialist Workers Party, The Militant, one of the oldest and most influential publications among the left. You may remember the old photos which surfaced of Lee Harvey Oswald selling copies of The Militant before he killed the American president.

The headline over The Militant story by Maggie Trowe caught my eye: “‘Reset’ with US allows Moscow to send arms, troops to Syria.” It was not about Hillary Clinton’s reset with Moscow years ago, but a more recent one.

Here’s how her story began: “Moscow’s rapid military buildup in Syria is a result of the ‘reset’ in relations forged with the Russian and Iranian governments by the Barack Obama administration. The deal—reshaping alliances and conditions from Syria, Iran and the rest of the Middle East to Ukraine and surrounding region—is the cornerstone of U.S. imperialism’s efforts to establish a new order in the Mideast, but from a much weaker position than when the now-disintegrating order was imposed after World Wars I and II.”

Of course, the idea that “U.S. imperialism” is served by giving the advantage to Russia and Iran is ludicrous. Nevertheless, it does appear that a “reset” of the kind described in this article has in fact taken place. The author writes about Washington’s “strategic shift to Iran and Russia” and the “downgrading” of relations with Israel and Saudi Arabia. She notes that Moscow “seeks more influence and control of the country [Syria] and its Mediterranean ports and a stronger political hand in Mideast politics.” Iran “has sent Revolutionary Guard Quds forces to help prop up Assad, and collaborates with Moscow on operations in Syria,” she notes.

It is sometimes necessary to reject the conventional wisdom and instead analyze developments from the point of view of the Marxists, who understand Obama’s way of thinking. They pretend that Obama is a pawn of the “imperialists” but their analysis also makes sense from a traditional pro-American perspective. Those who accept the evidence that Obama has a Marxist perspective on the world have to consider that his policy is designed to help Moscow and Tehran achieve hegemony in the region.

At the same time, the paper reported, “Since Secretary of State John Kerry’s congenial visit with Putin in May, it has become clear that Washington would accept Moscow’s influence over its ‘near abroad’ in Ukraine and the Baltics, in exchange for help to nail down the nuclear deal with Tehran.” Hence, Obama has put his stamp of approval on Russian aggression in Europe and the Middle East. This analysis, though coming from a Marxist newspaper, fits the facts on the ground. It means that more Russian aggression can be expected in Europe.

The wildcard is Israel and it looks like the Israeli government is being increasingly isolated, not only by Obama but by Putin. The story notes that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with Putin in Moscow on September 21, saying his concern was to “prevent misunderstandings” between Israeli and Russian troops, since Israel has carried out airstrikes in Syrian territory targeting weapons being transported to the Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon.

Some reports indicated that Israel had set up a joint mechanism with the Russian military to coordinate their operations in Syria.

However, the Russian leader reportedly told Obama during their U.N. meeting that he opposes Israeli attacks in Syria. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz ran a storythat Russia intends to “Clip Israel’s Wings Over [the] Syrian Skies.” The paper added that Putin’s remarks to Obama showed that despite Netanyahu’s meeting with Putin in Moscow, “Russia intends to create new facts on the ground in Syria that will include restricting Israel’s freedom of movement in Syrian skies.”

It hardly seems to be the case that Obama has been outsmarted in the Middle East, or that Putin and Obama don’t like each other. Instead, it appears that Obama is working hand-in-glove with Putin to isolate Israel and that Obama is perfectly content to let the former KGB colonel take the lead.

Israel has always been seen by most U.N. members as the real problem in the region. Obama is the first U.S. President to see Israel in that same manner and to act accordingly. This is why Putin has not caught Obama off-guard in the least. They clearly see eye-to-eye on Israel and Iran.

Don’t forget that Obama actually telephoned Putin to thank him for his part in the nuclear deal with Iran. The White House issued a statement saying, “The President thanked President Putin for Russia’s important role in achieving this milestone, the culmination of nearly 20 months of intense negotiations.”

Building off the Iran nuclear deal, it looks like the plan is for Russia and the United States to force Israel to embrace a U.N. plan for a nuclear-free Middle East. That would mean Israel giving up control of its defensive nuclear weapons to the world body. Iran will be able to claim it has already made a deal to prohibit its own nuclear weapons development.

Such a scheme was outlined back in 2005 in an article by Mohamed Elbaradei, the director-general at the time of the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). That’s the same body that is now supposed to guarantee Iranian compliance with the terms of the nuclear deal signed by Russia and the U.S.

Elbaradei argued there would have to be “a dialogue on regional security as part of the peace process,” to be followed by an agreement “to make the Middle East a nuclear-weapons-free zone.”

The “dialogue” appears to be taking place now, mostly under the authority and auspices of the Russian government, with President Obama playing a secondary role.

The obvious danger is that Israel would be forced to comply with the plan for a “nuclear-weapons-free-zone,” while Iran would cheat and develop nuclear weapons anyway.

Netanyahu told the U.N. that “Israel deeply appreciates President Obama’s willingness to bolster our security, help Israel maintain its qualitative military edge and help Israel confront the enormous challenges we face.”

This must be his hope. But he must know that Israel’s security is slipping and that the survival of his country is in grave danger in the face of this Moscow-Washington-Tehran axis.

Before Putin further consolidates his military position in the Middle East and Iran makes more progress in nuclear weapons development, Netanyahu will have to launch a preemptive strike on the Islamic state. “Israel will not allow Iran to break in, to sneak in or to walk in to the nuclear weapons club,” the Israeli Prime Minister said.

In launching such a strike before the end of Obama’s second presidential term, Israel would bring down the wrath of the world, led by Russia and the U.S., on the Jewish state.

07/29/15

America’s Enemies Are Laughing at Us

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

Time magazine is out with a colorful and glossy “Inside the New Cuba” special edition, featuring smiling Cuban kids wearing Communist garb on the cover. Page 64 has a photo showing “Cuban fans” holding up “their national flag” at a baseball game. It turns out that the really happy Cubans are those who have been defecting from the island “paradise,” as Time magazine calls the prison camp country.

Credit goes to Christine Rousselle of Townhall.com for covering these defections. They seem to be developing into a regular feature, with Rousselle providing regular updates about additional defections.

So far, eight players from the Cuban men’s field hockey team, four rowers from the Cuban national team, and two members of the Cuban soccer team have defected.

The defections completely undercut the chapter of the special Time magazine issue on Cuba that is titled, “The Big League Next Door,” which speculates that normalization of relations between the U.S. and Cuba could “stop Cuba’s top talent from fleeing…” This chapter is written by Robert Siegel, senior host of National Public Radio, and Eyder Peralta, an NPR reporter.

Washington Nationals infielder Yunel Escobar defected from Cuba when he was 21. The Washington Post covered his story in a May 7 article, noting:

Escobar’s love of baseball was fueled by television broadcasts and video games, both forbidden in Cuba. He paid to watch MLB games and favorite players such as Alex Rodriguez, Roberto Alomar, Omar Vizquel and fellow Cuban Livan Hernandez on a TV with a hush-hush antenna at a friend’s house. He also grew to love Ken Griffey Jr. because of a video game he played often in secret. A friend had smuggled in a console and charged the equivalent of 50 cents per hour to play.

The entire story is worth reading and there are many touching moments, such as the story of when Escobar spent two days at an immigration detention center in Miami “and kissed the ground when he was released.”

These are the immigrants we should welcome, since they have developed an appreciation of the struggle between freedom and totalitarianism. They want to enjoy and celebrate American freedom, not distort and transform the country into a Third World welfare state of cheap labor for corporations and paid-for votes for the Democratic Party.

In the Time magazine version of Cuba, we are told in the section, “Scenes from the Revolution,” that Fidel Castro “promised to clean up the government, restore democracy and civil liberties, and promote social justice.” Nothing is said about whether he fulfilled those promises.

By contrast, we are told that his predecessor, Fulgencio Batista, was a “ruthless dictator” who ran a system characterized by “economic and social inequality and a corrupt government.” The implication is that Castro changed all of that for the better.

A caption on a page of pictures of Cuban cowboys on the communist island informs us that “Before Castro nationalized all farms, almost three quarters of Cuba’s arable lands was owned by fewer than 3,000 individuals and corporations, many of them American, while most farmworkers were renters.” One of the Cuban cowboys proclaims, “It is no longer of Communism or no Communism. It belongs to us.”

You mean communism works after all? That seems to be the message of this special Time magazine Cuba edition.

It’s completely absurd but this is what passes for serious journalism. It reminds me of the old Ronald Reagan joke, reportedly told to Mikhail Gorbachev, about two men walking down a street in Moscow, when one asks, “Is this pure communism? Have we passed through the stage of socialism and reached pure communism? The other replies, “Hell, no. It’s gonna get a lot worse.”

Ben Lewis wrote an article, “Hammer & tickle,” noting that “Communism is the only political system to have created its own international brand of comedy.”

These days, Oleg Atbashian makes fun of the Marxists and their apologists on a regular basis, on his “People’s Cube” website. One of his latest offerings is the new poster featuring the “Rebel without a gender.” The People’s Cube proclaims, “Che is dead, long live Conchita: a new rebel icon.”

His tribute to the Museum of Communism in Prague is a lot of laughs, as he displays some of the posters from the old communist days, such as the one announcing that communist women would have burnt their bras like their sisters in the West, “if there were any in the shops.”

Another communist poster said: “Sometimes there was no toilet paper in the shops. Luckily there was not much food, either.”

Meanwhile, believe it or not, the comedian Jack Black is being featured in a video campaign from the group Global Zero to sell the Iranian nuclear deal. He previously starred in such films as “Shallow Hal,” “School of Rock,” “Nacho Libre,” and the Kung Fu Panda films.

A comedian as the face of the Iranian nuclear deal? This is where the laughing begins to die down.

The Iranians and their Russian sponsors are the ones laughing at us now.

So are the Cuban Communists.

They may lose some people through defections, but they get an embassy on American soil where they can base their spies and recruit agents inside the U.S. government.

07/27/15

Putin Threatens America with Nuclear Annihilation

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

The nation is fiercely debating the Iran nuclear deal and the significance of the Ayatollah’s “death to America” tweets when the real problem is Iran’s sponsor, Russia, and its lunatic ruler, Vladimir Putin. By controlling the media, killing off the opposition, and smearing Ukrainian freedom fighters as Nazis, the former KGB colonel has his country worked into a collective frenzy over a concocted Western threat. Some experts believe Russia is preparing for nuclear war on a global scale. If Putin carries out his threats, America is no more.

In this case, the U.S. is facing not only a nuclear weapons program, which is the case with Iran, but what our top generals are calling an “existential threat” to our survival as a nation.

As the National Institute for Public Policy documents in the report, “Foreign Nuclear Developments: A Gathering Storm,” Russia has a new military doctrine that anticipates using nuclear weapons, and the regime has embarked on “a massive strategic modernization program to deploy new nuclear weapons and delivery systems.”

Not only that, but Russia has a ballistic missile defense to use against us.

Geopolitical analyst Jeff Nyquist tells Accuracy in Media, “The Russians became angry and threatening when NATO tried to build a very modest missile defense system to stop an Iranian missile. Yet Russia has over 10,000 dual purpose SAM/ABMs for defense against our missiles and will be deploying a new ABM prototype next year.”

He adds, “Russia has potential war winning advantages over the U.S. and NATO—not necessarily in the number of nuclear weapons but in the number of its ABM batteries, and the upgrading of these batteries with a new generation of interceptor rockets while the American side makes no effort in this direction. The U.S. ABMs in Alaska and California would be lucky to stop 12 Russian warheads.”

Despite the preoccupation with Iran’s nuclear program, Iran currently has nothing of that nature which can threaten the homeland of the United States. Yet, Russia can obliterate the United States, a fact that has been highlighted recently by no less than three top American generals. The term, “existential threat,” has been used repeatedly to describe the Russian challenge. That term means the Russians can destroy the United States as a nation.

Marine Corps General Joseph Dunford, nominated to become chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, “If you want to talk about a nation that could pose an existential threat to the United States, I’d have to point to Russia.”

His statement, made during his Senate confirmation hearing on July 9, got a significant amount of media attention. Similar warnings came from Army General Mark A. Milley, commander of U.S. Forces Command, who has been nominated to become the next Army chief of staff, and Air Force General Paul Selva, nominated to become Vice-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

Dunford and the other generals acknowledge the real or potential nuclear threats from Iran, North Korea, and China. But it’s Russia that is deemed an “existential threat.” It is the most significant.

Some conservatives have been complaining that patriotic military officers are being purged from the Armed Forces. Well, it appears that the purge missed Generals Dunford, Milley, and Selva. These generals are taking a risk by going against the conventional wisdom of the Obama administration. Indeed, the White House and the State Department have gone out of their way to say that the Obama administration does not agree with the assessment that Russia is an existential threat to the United States.

For the generals to go public in this manner—and to contradict the official stance of the Obama administration—suggests that the threat from Russia is very real indeed, and may be more serious than they are willing to publicly acknowledge.

When you consider how the Iran nuclear deal came about, you begin to realize how serious it is. Obama actually thanked Putin for bringing it about.

The CNN story, “Obama, Putin congratulate each other for Iran deal,” demonstrates the nature of the problem. Although the story is designed to highlight the alleged positive roles Obama and Putin played in the deal, CNN reported that in a readout of the conversation between the two leaders, “the White House said Obama thanked Putin for Russia’s role in the Iran nuclear negotiations.”

Thanked Putin? This demonstrates something worse than the deal itself and the real nature of the Iranian threat. Putin should thank Obama because the U.S. is helping Iran, Russia’s client state, get tens of billions of dollars in international financial aid. Down the line, Russia gets U.S. approval to supply more weapons to the anti-American regime.

Iran is certainly a potential nuclear threat to Israel, the so-called “little Satan.” But the U.S. is the “Great Satan,” and our biggest nuclear threat at the current time is Russia, as our top military officers have said. Yet, Obama is treating Putin as an ally.

Israel and its defenders have to come to grips with the fact that Iran is a threat to the Jewish state, the region, and the world because of its Russian sponsorship. Iran can’t be viewed in isolation, apart from Russia. Indeed, Iran is considered to be part of a “strategic alliance” with Russia.

As we have noted on several occasions, the Iranian Ayatollah, Ali Khamenei, is KGB-trained, having been “educated” at the KGB’s Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow. This means he is under Russian influence, if not an agent.

Obama has a blind spot regarding threats from the Islamic world, and that includes Iran. But his unwillingness to face up to the Russian threat, which is more serious than any on the face of the earth today, puts the very existence of the United States in jeopardy.

Remember that Obama mocked Mitt Romney’s statement during the 2012 campaign that Russia was our geopolitical adversary. Obama hasn’t learned anything, despite the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He keeps refusing to supply Ukraine with heavy weapons to defend themselves. Praising the Russians for their role in the Iran deal signals something worse than just incompetence. It appears that Russia is exercising some sort of control over the Obama administration.

We got a taste of that control when it was reported that, on Independence Day, the Kremlin announced that Putin had sent Happy July 4th greetings to Obama. We only later learned that Putin, on the same day, had also sent nuclear-capable Russian bombers off the coast of California that had to be intercepted by American aircraft.

This duplicity is another sign of the lunatic mindset of the former KGB spy running the show in Moscow. This nuclear blackmail is much more serious than a tweet from the Iranian Ayatollah showing Obama with a gun to his head. Putin has a nuclear gun pointed at America and we have practically no defense against it.

07/17/15

How the Republicans Plan to Lose to Hillary

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

A new survey from Univision, the pro-Mexico television network, demonstrates the utter folly of Republicans appealing to Hispanic voters. It finds that 68 percent have a favorable view of Hillary Clinton despite the scandals swirling around her. By contrast, only 36 percent have a favorable view of former Republican Governor Jeb Bush, who is married to a Mexican and speaks Spanish.

Bush “was the highest-rated of all the Republican candidates,” Univision reports, with Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), a one-time proponent of amnesty for illegals, coming in second with only a 35 percent approval rate.

What the poll demonstrates is that Hispanics are basically owned by the Democratic Party. The Democrats’ power grab for the Latino vote has been successful. However, ultimately the Democratic Party’s success in the presidential election depends on convincing Republicans to fruitlessly continue to appeal to Hispanics, while abandoning the GOP voter base of whites, conservatives and Christians.

Overall, in terms of political party affiliation, 57 percent of Hispanics identified themselves as Democrats and only 18 percent said they are Republicans. A total of 25 percent called themselves independent.

In another finding, 59 percent of Hispanic voters said they were satisfied with Barack Obama’s presidency after his six years in office. Clearly, most Hispanics have drunk the Kool-Aid. For them, it appears that federal benefits and legalization of border crossers are what matters. Most of them don’t bat an eye in regard to Obama’s lawless and traitorous conduct of domestic and foreign policy.

What the Republicans have left is to try to appeal to white, conservative and Christian voters. But that strategy, of course, runs the obvious risk of being depicted by the liberal media as racist. After all, whites are not supposed to have a “white identity,” as Jared Taylor’s book by that name describes.

Whites cannot have a racial identity, but Hispanics and blacks can. This is one aspect of political correctness. As communists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, who are themselves white, put it in their book, it is a “race course against white supremacy.”

If Republicans pander to Hispanics, they will alienate their voter base, which has shown in their reaction to the Donald Trump candidacy that they want more—not less—action taken to control the border with Mexico. Republican Senator John McCain (AZ) calls the Trump supporters “crazies,” an indication that the GOP establishment would rather jettison these people than bring them into the Republican camp. Like McCain, former GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney has also attacked Trump, saying his remarks about criminal aliens are hurting the GOP. It’s amazing how a loser like Romney, who also threw in the towel on gay marriage when he was governor of Massachusetts, continues to generate press. What he is saying is what the liberal media want to hear.

Of course, the political correctness which dominates the national dialogue and debate also means that Republicans like Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio are likely to continue to demonize Trump, thereby alienating many whites. As a result, the Republicans will get less of the conservative and Christian vote, further diminishing their chances of winning the White House. It will be a replay of the losing campaigns of John McCain and Mitt Romney. Republicans have already alienated many Christian voters by giving up the fight for traditional marriage. They had planned to abandon border control as an issue until Trump and “El Chapo” got in the way.

Meanwhile, in another amazing turnaround, Republicans on Capitol Hill are backing Obama’s call for “sentencing reform,” a strategy that will empty the prisons and increase the crime rate, thereby alienating GOP voters in favor of law and order.

As this scenario plays out, Mrs. Clinton is coming across on the Democratic side looking like a moderate, by virtue of the fact that an open socialist, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), is running “to her left” for the Democratic nomination.

The Clinton-Sanders show has all the earmarks of a carefully staged demonstration of the Marxist dialectic, an exercise designed to create the appearance of conflict in order to force even more radical change on the American people through Democratic Party rule.

Anybody who knows anything about Hillary, a student of Saul Alinsky, understands that her “moderation” is only a façade. Her thesis on Alinsky for Wellesley College was titled “There Is Only the Fight…” That is the Marxist strategy. It is the Alinsky version of the Marxist dialectic. It was also adopted by Obama, who was trained by Alinsky disciples working with the Catholic Church in Chicago.

In my column, “Study Marxism to Understand Hillary,” I noted that Barbara Olson had come to the conclusion while researching her book on Hillary that “she has a political ideology that has its roots in Marxism.” Olson noted, “In her formative years, Marxism was a very important part of her ideology…”

This means that Mrs. Clinton understands that the Sanders candidacy actually supports and does not undermine her own candidacy. It makes Hillary look like a moderate while she moves further to the left, a place she wants to be, in response to the left-wing Democratic base. Only the Marxist insiders seem to understand what is happening.

Some uninformed commentators refer to something called “Clintonism,” a supposed moderate brand of Democratic Party politics. If that ever existed, it applied to Bill Clinton and not Hillary.

The fact is that Sanders and Mrs. Clinton have associated with the same gang of communists and fellow travelers for many years. Sanders was an active collaborator with the Communist Party-sponsored U.S. Peace Council.

As for Hillary, Barbara Olson reported in her book Hell to Pay that Robert Borosage, who served as director of the Marxist Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), was “a colleague and close acquaintance” of Clinton. Olson wrote that Mrs. Clinton operated in the “reaches of the left including Robert Treuhaft and Jessica Mitford,” who had been “committed Communists” and “Stalinists.” Olson said that Hillary worked for Treuhaft and paved the way for Mitford to lobby then-Governor Bill Clinton on the death penalty issue.

Olson described Hillary as a “budding Leninist” who understood the Leninist concept of acquiring, accumulating and maintaining political power at any cost. She wrote that “Hillary has never repudiated her connection with the Communist movement in America or explained her relationship with two of its leading adherents. Of course, no one has pursued these questions with Hillary. She has shown that she will not answer hard questions about her past, and she has learned that she does not need to—remarkable in an age when political figures are allowed such little privacy.”

Researcher Carl Teichrib has provided me with a photo of a Hillary meeting with Cora Weiss from the May 2000 edition of “Peace Matters,” the newsletter of the Hague Appeal for Peace. Weiss, a major figure in the Institute for Policy Studies, gained notoriety for organizing anti-Vietnam War demonstrations and traveling to Hanoi to meet with communist leaders. In the photo, Hillary is shown fawning over a Hague Appeal for Peace gold logo pin that Weiss is wearing.

Teichrib, editor of Forcing Change, recalls being an observer at the 1999 World Federalist Association (WFA) conference, held in association with the Hague Appeal for Peace, during which everyone in attendance was given an honorary membership into the WFA. In addition to collaborating with the pro-Hanoi Hague Appeal for Peace, the WFA staged a “Mission to Moscow” and held several meetings with the Soviet Peace Committee for the purpose of “discussing the goal of general and complete disarmament” and “the strengthening of the United Nations.” Mrs. Clinton spoke to a WFA conference in a tribute to veteran newsman Walter Cronkite, a supporter of world government

In the WFA booklet, “The Genius of Federation: Why World Federation is the Answer to Global Problems,” the group described how a “world federation,” a euphemism for world government, could be achieved by advancing “step by step toward global governance,” mostly by enhancing the power and authority of U.N. agencies.

Obama’s Iran deal continues this strategy by placing enormous power in the hands of the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency.

At this stage in the campaign, even before the first Republican presidential debate, we can already see how the race is playing out. Hillary is counting on the Republicans nominating another loser with a losing strategy while she moves to the left and looks like a moderate.

Alinsky would be proud.

07/7/15

Pro-Marxist Sells Greece to Moscow

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

The coverage of the economic disaster in Greece, a strategic NATO country, has mostly ignored the role of Vladimir Putin’s Russia in the growing global turmoil.

Reports continue to circulate that a new European Union (EU) bailout deal with Greece is possible, as Yanis Varoufakis, a self-described “erratic Marxist,” has resigned as finance minister. But these developments appear to be for the purpose of diverting attention away from the fact that Greece has already become, in effect, a satellite of Moscow.

The Greek regime is a Moscow-backed left-right coalition led by Alexis Tsipras, the pro-Marxist and pro-Russia head of Greece’s “Coalition of the Radical Left.” Tsipras, who presented himself as a moderate when he spoke at the Brookings Institution on January 22, 2013, was a member of the youth wing of the Greek Communist Party, the KKE.

The political party known as ANEL (The Independent Greeks) is supposed to be a “conservative” party in the ruling government and yet it is pro-Russian. This reflects Putin’s cultivation of right-wing forces throughout Europe and even in America.

Back from a recent visit to Russia, Tsipras is now counting on cheaper gas and increased Russian investment from Moscow. The prospect of Russian military bases in NATO territory—Greece—cannot be ruled out at this point.

Tsipras previously signed a memorandum that is designed to make 2016 into the “Year of Greece-Russia relations.”

After his coalition won the elections in January, Tsipras received a congratulatory call from President Obama. The two leaders “reviewed close cooperation between Greece and the United States on issues of European security and counterterrorism,” the White House reported.

That alleged “close cooperation” has been replaced by a Greek deal with Moscow.

It seems like just another foreign policy disaster under President Obama, except in this case the stakes are huge. NATO notes that “Greece is strategically located in the Southern region of the Alliance, in close vicinity to South Eastern Europe, the Eastern Mediterranean, the Middle East and North Africa.”

But other than expressing a vague hope that European leaders would devise a plan to allow Greece “to return to growth and debt sustainability within the Eurozone,” Obama has been AWOL on the crisis, leaving it mostly in the hands of German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The subject of reports and even a book suggesting she is a Russian agent, Merkel knows full well that Tsipras and Putin have been undermining the NATO alliance at a time when the West fears a Russian invasion of another former Soviet republic.

For example, in the report, “Stop Putin’s Next Invasion Before It Starts,” Terrence K. Kelly of the Rand Corporation argues that “The United States needs to seriously consider stationing forces in Eastern Europe to support the nation’s commitment to protect the independence of the Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania—NATO members all—against the specter of Russian aggression.”

Some news organizations have alluded to Russia’s role in the current crisis. “Russian President Vladimir Putin feted Tsipras in St. Petersburg last month as bailout negotiations took place in Brussels,” noted Michael Birnbaum and Griff Witte in The Washington Post.

During that meeting Tsipras discussed energy and the “Greek Stream” gas pipeline project with Russian Gazprom chief Alexei Miller during a meeting in St. Petersburg. In fact, Russia and Greece signed a deal to construct a Turkish pipeline across Greek territory. Tsipras also met with representatives of the new development bank for BRICS countries, referring to Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, “who expressed their intense interest in cooperating with Greece,” one report noted.

“Russia has its eye on Athens, trying to break European unity to put an end to economic sanctions imposed over its actions in Ukraine,” Birnbaum and Witte noted in the Post.

But the situation is far more serious than the Post lets on. Syriza’s 40-point program includes undermining NATO, the global battle against Islamic terrorism, and Israel:

Closure of all foreign bases in Greece and withdrawal from NATO.
Withdrawal of Greek troops from Afghanistan and the Balkans. No Greek soldiers beyond our own borders.
Drastically cut military expenditures.
Abolition of military cooperation with Israel. Support for creation of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders.

Syriza, a Greek political party, is a member of The European Left (EL). Member Parties of the EL are described as “socialist, communist, red-green and other democratic left parties of the member states and associated states of the European Union (EU) that work together and establish various forms of co-operation at all levels of political activity in Europe, based on the agreements, basic principles and political aims laid down in the EL Manifesto.” The chairperson of EL is Pierre Laurent of the French Communist Party. Tsipras is the Vice-Chairperson.

In addition to the support from these international Marxist political parties and groups, Tsipras met with the leftist Pope Francis on September 19, 2014. Tsipras said, “We pleaded with him to continue struggling against poverty and to speak in behalf of the dignity of humans as well as the structural causes behind poverty which are the inequality in the distribution of wealth and the rampant behavior of the financial markets. …we agreed that the dialogue between the Left and the Christian Church must go on. We may have different ideological starting points; however, we converge on common values, like solidarity, love for the fellow human being, social justice, and our concern regarding world peace.”

“For the first time ever the head of the Catholic Church will meet a leader of the radical Left,” is how Tsipras described the meeting with the pope at his “Change Europe” website.

In their book, EUSSR, Vladimir Bukovsky and Pavel Stroilov argued that the European Union was itself a project of the old Soviet Union, and that the EU has always been subject to manipulation by Moscow and its agents. Based on this analysis, what’s happening in Greece is part of a process of pulling Europe as a whole to the left and away from the United States.

The eventual goal, some observers say, is the removal of the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency, a development that would strike a mortal blow to the global capitalist system.

07/3/15

#WeWillShootBack: ThinkProgress glorifies black militant violence

By: Renee Nal
New Zeal

A protestor uses a lighter and an aerosol can to burn one of two American flags during a protest in the Chinatown area of Washington, Tuesday, Nov. 25, 2014. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Author Trevor Loudon predicts that Communist-driven violence is ‘imminent’
New violent hashtag #WeWillShootBack glorified by Soros-funded ThinkProgress
ThinkProgress announces “black-only” weapons training
The Nation of Islam planning an October 10 rally in D.C. menacingly titled “Justice….or else!”

Trevor Loudon, expert on socialist and radical movements from New Zealand, predicts that the same rabid pro-communist organizations that incited both the Ferguson and Baltimore riots are applying the pressure for a “black spring” which will further terrorize America in the coming months.

Loudon pointed to an “article” titled “‘We Will Shoot Back’: Meet The Black Activists Who Aren’t Ready To Forgive” published at the Soros-funded “news” outlet ThinkProgress on Saturday glorifying violent hashtag #WeWillShootBack.

The entirely irresponsible violence-inciting article from ThinkProgress confirms that the violent rhetoric is being ramped-up by groups such as the Nation of Islam, who are planning a rally menacingly titled “Justice….or else!” to be held on October 10, 2015 in Washington, D.C.

Some of the comments on a Facebook video featuring Minister Louis Farrakhan illustrate the intense emotions that Farrakhan inspires. One man was rewarded with 220 “likes” for declaring, “…this is the first time a Black leader is openly threatening the government to give us justice or else we’ll ‘clap back’. October 10, 2015 will not be for punks.” Another writes, “I was born for a moment like this…. We are all going to die anyway but if we must die…it must be for something….. THINK ABOUT IT…….” Still another declares passionately, “This time it is a ‘do or die’ situation. If you are not ready to die for justice for our people then stay home!!!!!!”

Ferguson protesters burn American Flag via Twitter

ThinkProgress also notes that Taurean “Sankofa” Brown, “a self-described revolutionary and proponent of militant self-defense” started the hashtag #WeWillShootBack and wants those who advocate for peace to remember that “black people have always had to take arms up against those who used violence to intimidate them and limit their progress in the United States.” Brown continued,

The point of this movement is to educate and let black people know that we too have the right to protect our families and communities by any means necessary.

The ThinkProgress article, written by Sam P.K. Collins, went on to state that “black trained firearms instructors” will be teaching “[B]lack people across the country” about “gun laws in their state and attend community trainings where instructors will show them how to use and clean their weapons as part of National Gun Registry Day, tentatively scheduled for early August.”

“There is no doubt that pro-communist organizations want to break down civil society in America,” the author of his latest book, “The Enemies Within: Communists, Socialists and Progressives in the U.S. Congress” told Broadside News.

Progressive Labor Party via YouTube

Back in January, Loudon wrote about Ferguson organizers joining with anti-Israel radicals in the Palestinian Authority and predicted:

Communists and their Islamic allies are looking to build on 2014’s Ferguson riots, to create major havoc in America this year.

In a must-read article published in January, Loudon explains that in addition to gathering in the Palestinian Authority, radical activists around the globe attended a conference in Moscow in part to address the “…ongoing uprising against racism and police brutality in the United States…”

Organizations such as CAIR, the Nation of Islam, the New Black Panther Party (NBPP), the Revolutionary Communist Party, Communist Party USA, the Progressive Labor Party and the Worker’s World Party have been actively inciting race hatred in order to spark riots across the country.

Communist Organization Worker’s World Party via Twitter

“They want to destabilize America,” Loudon continued.

“A polarized society sets up the conditions that radical elements need to convince citizens that all-powerful government is society’s only hope.”

As rabid anti-capitalists, pro-communist groups seek to control society by fundamentally dismantling America, ultimately spreading communism across the globe.

The ThinkProgress article also featured New Black Panther Party leader Hashim Nzinga, who previously hijacked a Ferguson press conference, as reported at Broadside News.

At the time, Nzinga ranted that President Obama is from Kenya, calling him a “Mau Mau” and further declared:

The Black male is being exterminated…The ones who are not being exterminated, they’re pushing them to be gay and fags so they won’t be productive on reproducing babies. This is about genocide.

‘We Will Shoot Back’: Meet The Black Activists Who Aren’t Ready To Forgive via ThinkProgress

The Soros-funded “news” outlet ThinkProgress laughingly claims to be “non-partisan;” but based on their promotion of radical black militants, this author recommends that the outlet update their “about” section to indicate that they are nothing more than a mouth-piece for the radical left.

This article was cross-posted at Broadside News.

06/30/15

Scholar Speaks on Obama’s Red Mentor

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

The black scholar who previously revealed Obama’s personal relationship with Communist Party operative Frank Marshall Davis is now speaking in detail on the record. Professor Gerald Horne says that while the relationship is noteworthy and should have been uncovered by the press, there is no evidence that Davis turned Obama “into some sort of Manchurian candidate.”

However, Professor Paul Kengor’s book about Davis, The Communist, argues that Davis had a significant influence on the formation of Obama’s Marxist views and policies as President.

Horne, who holds the John J. and Rebecca Moores Chair of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston, is a contributor to Communist Party USA publications such as Political Affairs magazine. He spoke at a March 23, 2007, event at New York University’s Tamiment Library to celebrate the donation of Communist Party materials to the library.

It was at that event that Horne, speaking before an audience that included Communist Party leaders, discussed then-Senator Barack Obama’s relationship with a Communist Party figure in Hawaii, Davis, who died in 1987.

The revelation that a U.S. senator preparing to run for president was linked to a high-level official of the Communist Party, a party which had been funded by Moscow and used to infiltrate the U.S. government, seemed like big news. Yet, despite coverage of Horne’s remarks by blogger Trevor Loudon and Accuracy in Media before Obama won his first presidential term in 2008, the major U.S. media ignored the relationship and the matter of whether Davis had influenced Obama’s politics, and even had recruited him to the Marxist cause. It was apparent that the media did not want to publicize anything that might inhibit the election of the first black president in the U.S.

In my interview, Horne said he came across the activities of Davis while researching his book on labor unions in Hawaii, Fighting in Paradise: Labor Unions, Racism and Communists in the Making of Modern Hawaii, 2011.

“So as I was reading about Frank Marshall Davis there was the simultaneous ascension to influence of then-Senator Barack Obama and I read his memoir [Dreams from My Father], where he talks about a character by the name of Frank and I just put two and two together,” Horne told me. “I don’t think it took a great logical leap.” He added, “The press should have uncovered this, not some obscure professor in Houston.”

In that 2007 speech at Tamiment Library, entitled, “Rethinking the History and Future of the Communist Party,” Horne had referred to Davis as “an African-American poet and journalist” who was “certainly in the orbit of the CP—if not a member …” and had become a friend to Barack Obama and his family in Hawaii.

Horne also noted that Obama, in his memoir, spoke “warmly of an older black poet, he identifies simply as ‘Frank’ as being a decisive influence in helping him to find his present identity as an African-American…”

The Horne speech was subsequently published in the Communist Party newspaper People’s World.

New Zealand researcher Trevor Loudon, who has written two books on Marxist influence in the Obama administration and Congress, discovered the Horne speech identifying “Frank” as Frank Marshall Davis and treated the revelation as a significant fact regarding Obama’s presidential run. We confirmed the information in a February 18, 2008, column, “Obama’s Communist Mentor.” Later that year we obtained the 600-page FBI file on Davis, confirming his actual membership in the CPUSA and raising suspicions that Davis was a Soviet espionage agent.

But the major media refused to treat the information as a serious impediment to Obama’s fitness for office. The Obama campaign lied about Davis, portraying him as just a civil rights activist.

I argued in the interview with Horne that the failure of the press to uncover or publicize the evidence of the Obama-Davis connection was the result of liberals or “progressives” thinking that the relationship would hurt Obama’s chances to be president.

Horne said he wasn’t convinced that was the case, at least in terms of how the black community would react, since Davis had a reputation as a noted black literary figure who had been an associate of the prominent black novelist Richard Wright, a former CPUSA member. Horne said membership in the CPUSA did not “carry as much opprobrium” in the black community “as it might carry in other communities.” In addition, he argued, “if you start digging deep in terms of the public and published record about Obama and Davis, you quickly find there’s not much there. I mean we know that Obama mentioned him. We know that Davis was a radical. But we’re not able to make the link that Davis turned Obama into some sort of Manchurian candidate.”

In fact, however, Obama makes at least 22 explicit references to “Frank” in his memoir, talks about how Davis influenced his thinking on race and other matters during eight years in Hawaii, and in a recently discovered 1995 speech promoting his book acknowledged that Davis had “schooled” him on the subject of white racism.

Horne countered, “Some of my friends on the left who are quite hostile to Obama would say that if Davis schooled Obama, he didn’t do a very good job.”

Back in 2007, however, Horne had predicted that Obama, then a somewhat obscure political figure, would go down in history.

Horne said, “At some point in the future, a teacher will add to her syllabus Barack’s memoir and instruct her students to read it alongside Frank Marshall Davis’ equally affecting memoir, ‘Living the Blues’ and when that day comes, I’m sure a future student will not only examine critically the Frankenstein monsters that U.S. imperialism created in order to subdue Communist parties but will also be moved to come to this historic and wonderful archive in order to gain insight on what has befallen this complex and intriguing planet on which we reside.”

The role of Communist parties here and abroad is a favorite subject of Horne, who has written more than 30 books. These books include:

Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America (2014).

Black Revolutionary: William Patterson and the Globalization of the African-American Freedom Struggle (2014).

From the Barrel of a Gun: The U.S. and the War Against Zimbabwe (2001).

The Final Victim of the Blacklist: John Howard Lawson, Dean of the Hollywood Ten (2005).

The Communist Party USA backed Obama for president in 2008, and in 2012 said his re-election was “absolutely essential.”

Current policies and programs of the CPUSA include support for Obamacare, rights for homosexuals, and Pope Francis’ encyclical on climate change.

06/24/15

A Russian Link to the Charleston Massacre?

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), treated by the media as an objective source of information on right-wing “hate” groups, sent an email message to its supporters on Monday declaring evidence that the Charleston church shooter was “connected to [a] worldwide white supremacist movement.” This seemed like a big discovery. After all, the shooter, Dylann Roof, had declared in his alleged manifesto, that “We have no skinheads, no real KKK, no one doing anything but talking on the Internet,” when it came to racist support groups for his planned massacre of black people. The drug-abusing 21-year-old was complaining about a lack of organized support for his views.

Had the SPLC dug up some new evidence? Indeed, where was the evidence that Roof was “connected” to a global plot? SPLC President Richard Cohen informed his supporters in this email begging for financial support that “through his symbols and writings, suspect Dylann Storm Roof has expressed sentiments that are uniting white supremacists across the world—from the United States to Europe to Australia.” His symbols and writings made him part of an international plot? Is this the best the SPLC can do?

Welcome to the world of the Southern Poverty Law Center, the media’s designated “experts” on right-wing extremism. The SPLC “tracks hate groups” is the usual claim in the media. In fact, it helped inspire an actual terrorist attack on the Washington, D.C. offices of the conservative Christian Family Research Council (FRC), after a gay militant discovered the location of the FRC on an SPLC “hate map.” A security guard was wounded before he succeeded in taking down the attacker.

“Thank you [for] supporting this vital fight against hate and extremism,” said Cohen in the fundraising letter exploiting the Roof case. They are desperate to add to their $245.3 million financial endowment.

At the top of the email message was a “DONATE” button. Readers were also told they could become a financial “partner” through a planned gift, or a “friend of the Center” through monthly giving.

On the same day that Cohen inflated the facts in the Roof case in a crass appeal for money, he and his associate, Morris Dees, had written an op-ed for The New York Times including similar exaggerations. The piece, headlined, “White Supremacists Without Borders,” insisted that the “themes” adopted by the killer were “signs of the growing globalization of white nationalism.” The term “globalization” can apply to just about anything on the Internet, since that technology is international in scope. That was good enough for those who procure and place op-eds at The New York Times.

“When we think of the Islamist terrorism of groups like Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, we recognize their international dimension,” said Dees and Cohen. “When it comes to far-right domestic terrorism, we don’t.” Perhaps that is because the “evidence” of Roof’s international connections is thin, if not non-existent. Indeed, as noted, Roof complains in the manifesto about the absence of even local grassroots support for his cause in the supposedly racist enclave of South Carolina.

The only evidence of an international connection, not mentioned by Cohen or Dees, is that several in the media have determined through a simple search on the Internet that Roof’s website was hosted by a Russian server, apparently located in Moscow. At a time of news about Russian and Chinese hackers getting access to federal and other websites in the U.S., this seems mighty interesting and newsworthy. Does this mean that Russian interests had advance knowledge of Roof’s manifesto and murder plans? This seems worthy of follow-up, but is not mentioned by the SPLC in its Times op-ed.

The op-ed ignores the real hard evidence of the international connections of the white supremacist movement in the form of former KKK leader David Duke once traveling to Russia and meeting with Alexander Dugin, a one-time adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia Party. We reported on this connection back in March of last year. Duke called Dugin “one of the leading intellectuals of Russia’s patriotic movement.” The SPLC is aware of Dugin, having published an article noting that he “has close ties to the Kremlin” and “supports a Eurasian empire made up of Russia and former Soviet republics such as the Ukraine and set against ‘North Atlantic interests.’” But it calls him a “fascist,” rather than a staunch ally of Putin and advocate of Russian imperialism.

The SPLC did report previously on what it termed a “Russian White Nationalist Conference” held in St. Petersburg, Russia, in March of this year, with various foreign groups and individuals in attendance. Strangely, however, there is no evidence that the SPLC seriously investigated a possible Russian connection to any of this in the Dylann Roof case. Instead, it claims a foreign connection through images and themes he invoked, a very weak case to present to the Times’ readers.

Euromaidan Press, a voice for Ukraine’s anti-Russian activists, reported extensively on the St. Petersburg conference, even publishing the names of those attending the event. An article noted “…the prevalence of statements in support of Russia and Putin in particular as the true conservatives that can save the world,” citing “quotes from now infamous speeches of Putin’s in which he talks of the emergence of nationalism and conservatism as a natural expression of Russian patriotism.”

As we have argued in the past, however, Putin’s alleged conservatism is a grand deception, designed to lure conservatives around the world into supporting Russian aggression. Putin has never given up his old KGB and Soviet ways.

In their op-ed, Cohen and Dees said, “Europe has also seen the rise of a powerful, far-right political movement that rejects multiculturalism. The anti-Semitic Jobbik Party in Hungary and the neo-fascist Golden Dawn in Greece are prime examples. In Germany, there has been a series of murders by neo-Nazis. Britain, too, is experiencing an upswing of nationalist, anti-immigrant politics.”

Left unsaid in the case of Greece is that the new left-wing ruling party, Syriza, is pro-Russia and anti-Western, and that Vladimir Putin has promised financial assistance if the European Union balks at another economic bailout.

It turns out that the SPLC has been conned by the Russians in the past. SPLC staffer Mark Potok, described by the group as a “leading expert” on extremism, actually appeared as a guest on Putin’s TV channel, Russia Today. Embarrassed over this fact, the group later published a “Full disclosure” disclaimer, noting that Potok had appeared on an edition of Russia Today’s “CrossTalk” program to discuss the rise of militias in the U.S. The SPLC then belatedly began to take note of the channel’s anti-American propaganda and disinformation campaigns.

Potok, their expert, apparently didn’t understand—or didn’t care—that Russia Today TV was actually linked to Russia and the Russian government. His expertise is clearly lacking about Russian influence operations.

We see similar blindness regarding other threats.

“We know Islamic terrorists are thinking globally, and we confront that threat,” Dees and Cohen declare in their Times op-ed. “We’ve been too slow to realize that white supremacists are doing the same.” The SPLC has been way too slow to investigate the Russian connection to the white supremacists it claims to be so concerned about. There is certainly no evidence of what they have uncovered in that Times op-ed.

As far as Islamic terrorists are concerned, the SPLC turns things around by targeting the critics of radical Islam. A simple search of the group’s website brings forth several stories about the dangers allegedly posed by “Islamophobes,” not the terrorists themselves. Consider the article that begins, “In the weeks following the terrorist attacks in France, major players in the American anti-Muslim movement have unleashed a tirade of bigotry and renewed their energies in attacking the federal government. But not to be left out, prominent anti-immigrant figures and politicians have also joined the show.”

This is typical of how the SPLC operates. The problem is not radical Islam trying to kill Americans or others. Rather, the problem is the people who focus on the threat and want the federal government to protect the American people from the threat. Hence, Pamela Geller, later targeted in a terrorist attack on American soil, was an “Islamophobe,” according to the SPLC and the Council on American-Islamic Relations. The term is usually applied to anyone who suggests taking the threat of Islamic terrorism seriously and takes action against it.

By attempting to orchestrate the coverage of terrorism in such a way as to ignore the threat posed by the terrorists themselves, the SPLC employs the tactic of “partisan tolerance,” meaning that the conservatives who want to protect America and its allies from Islamic terrorists or Russian aggression become the problem. This is why Dylann Roof must be transformed by the SPLC from a drug-abusing loner into a global right-wing terrorist. It is political exploitation of a national tragedy that confuses and misleads the nation.

It’s shocking that the major media continue to take the SPLC seriously. Liberal media bias helps explain, but not justify, this curious state of affairs. Another factor has to be laziness on the part of reporters, who don’t want to take the time to do their own research or work. It’s easier to cite the “experts,” even if they are frauds and con men.

06/21/15

Russia – The Horseman of War

By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton

“Death on a Pale Horse” (1796) by Benjamin West, Detroit Institute of Arts

When the Lamb opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come and see!” Then another horse came out, a fiery red one. Its rider was given power to take peace from the earth and to make men slay each other. To him was given a large sword. (Revelation 6:3-4)

Glenn Beck had a very interesting episode this week and it has the ring of truth to it over Vladimir Putin and Russia. He brought up the possibility that Russia is in the grip of political turmoil and its power structure is fracturing and reforming from within. This all hinges on Putin disappearing for ten days in March and exactly why he vanished for that length of time.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his top military brass visit an arms show in
Kubinka, outside Moscow, on Tuesday. (Aleksey Druginyn / RIA Novosti / European Pressphoto Agency)

Putin has been hot for the Ukraine and to continue his expansion of the Motherland. However, he seems to have backed off somewhat due to global pressure and financial worries. The radicals within Russia didn’t like that at all and pushed Putin even harder to militarily expand Russia’s reach. At this point, Putin began to bring together a coalition to protect himself and he began transferring power from the Federal Security Bureau to the Ministry of the Interior. That’s akin to taking power from the CIA and giving it to DHS. These two agencies do not play well together.

On March 8th, soon after the assassination of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, the FSB proclaimed that they had two suspects for the murder. One had been a top commander in the Chechen police, Ramzan Kadyrov, who is a strong supporter of Putin. This was meant to reflect poorly on Putin.

Not long after that development, the major players in Russia starting choosing sides. They either went with Putin and his version of the DHS, or with the FSB and the fascist radicals. The wild card here is the military… whoever wins them over, wins for realsies.

On March 10th, Putin just up and disappeared for ten days. There were a lot of wild theories from the birth of a love child, to a coup. But no one has definitive proof yet. The most plausible explanation is that Putin was held against his will, while power was consolidated within Russia for the FSB and the fascists. He was told to play ball or get ready for the afterlife. This was a show of force by the FSB, Alexander Dugin and the fascists. I’m sure he was told in no uncertain terms to up the military aggression and the process of restoring the motherland. Someone like Putin doesn’t just ‘disappear’ for ten days for no reason. Along with Putin, Victor Zolotov, who controls 200,000 troops for the Ministry of Interior, disappeared with him. One of Putin’s closest crony allies also packed up his whole family, fled the country and simply vanished as well.

So, the lines have been drawn in Russia and sides have been taken. Whoever wins, it will be bad for the rest of the world, trust me.

Now, on to Russia’s military moves…

Russia’s military will add over 40 new intercontinental ballistic missiles this year alone that are capable of piercing any missile defenses according to President Vladimir Putin. It was a stark reminder of the nation’s nuclear might amid tensions with the West over the Ukraine. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg accused the Russians of “nuclear saber-rattling” and said that was one of the reasons the Western military alliance has been beefing up its ability to defend its members. The increase in nukes is a very troubling indicator of conflict to come, as is the decrease in the US’ stockpiles by Obama. It’s a recipe for catastrophe for the West. Even worse, our clownish leaders act as if Russia isn’t serious and this is all posturing. Grizzly bears don’t posture… first they maul you, then they eat you… maybe after burying you first for a little tenderizing.

The US and NATO are deploying new weapons and armaments near Russian borders as a tentative response. Russia claims this will foment dangerous instability in Europe. “The United States is inciting tensions and carefully nurturing their European allies’ anti-Russian phobias in order to use the current difficult situation for further expanding its military presence and influence in Europe,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said. “We hope that reason will prevail and it will be possible to save the situation in Europe from sliding toward a military standoff, which could entail dangerous consequences,” the ministry added.

In the perpetual game of RISK that Putin is playing, Russia is pouring all their money into military preps. In the end, they will try to use war to save themselves economically and nationally from going off a cliff.

Kirill Kudryavtsev | AFP | Getty Images

Eastern European and Baltic states sharing a border with Russia include Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Ukraine and they have become increasingly nervous about recent, seemingly provocative military exercises by Russia. This follows Moscow’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region last year, their role in the pro-Russian uprising in Ukraine and the subsequent sanctioning by the West.

“If heavy U.S. military equipment, including tanks, artillery batteries and other equipment really does turn up in countries in eastern Europe and the Baltics, that will be the most aggressive step by the Pentagon and NATO since the Cold War,” Russian defense ministry official General Yuri Yakubov said.

He was also quoted as saying Moscow would retaliate by building up its own forces “on the Western strategic front.” As is typical for the Russkies, in true Progressive fashion, they are claiming all of this is the West’s fault and has nothing to do with Putin’s military buildup and geopolitical aggression.

Russia is still violating airspace across the globe and playing chicken with our Air Force every time they get the chance. They are continuously poking the American badger.

In the latest military development, Russia is warning Sweden that if they join NATO, there will be military consequences.

From Yahoo! News:

Russia’s ambassador to Sweden has warned the country of the potential military “consequences” associated with joining NATO in an interview with the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter, The Local reports.

Russian Ambassador Viktor Tatarintsev told Dagens Nyheter that Russia does not have any military plans against Sweden, in line with Stockholm’s alliance neutrality.

But Tatarintsev warned that this could change if Sweden were to join the NATO alliance.

“I don’t think it will become relevant in the near future, even though there has been a certain swing in public opinion. But if it happens there will be countermeasures,” Tatarintsev said according to a translation from The Local.

“Putin pointed out that there will be consequences, that Russia will have to resort to a response of the military kind and reorientate our troops and missiles,” the ambassador said. “The country that joins NATO needs to be aware of the risks it is exposing itself to.”

Currently, Sweden does not have any plans to join NATO. The country has stayed out of competing alliances between the West and Russia since World War II. However, public support for NATO membership is quickly rising.

An October 2014 poll showed 37% of Swedes were in favor of joining NATO with 36% of Swedes against — the first time that more Swedes have favored joining the alliance than not.

This swing in public opinion could be in response to a series of aggressive and provocative Russian actions throughout the region. On September 17, 2014, two Russian military aircraft crossed into Swedish territory.

Shortly after that, a Russian military aircraft — flying with its transponders turned off — passed dangerously close to a commercial jet in the south of the country.

Most provocatively, the Swedish military believes that Russia sailed submarines into its waters in the fall of 2014, leading to a sub hunt that became Sweden’s largest military operation since the end of the Cold War.

Russia will bring war and will revel in it. Whether it is Putin or a fascist from within the Russian power structure, it does not matter. Alea iacta est (“the die is cast”) is a Latin phrase attributed by Suetonius to Julius Caesar on January 10, 49 BC as he led his army across the River Rubicon in Northern Italy. History is repeating itself, only this time the timing and the moves are eerily similar to Hitler’s moves in WWII. Russia is the Horseman of War and with Putin’s moves into Europe and beyond, they will bring bloody conflict, war and death. However, they won’t be alone… China has everything in place to control the planet economically and Iran will have their cut as well. Putin sits astride a red horse in the midst of the ultimate Game of Thrones.

06/9/15

The Secret Russian Role in Global Conflict

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

In an extraordinary judgment that throws U.S. policy in the Middle East into complete turmoil, strategic analyst Michael Ledeen has concluded, in regard to the activities of the Islamic State, “I think the Russians are involved, in tandem with the Iranians, who have had their own troops on the Syrian battlefield for years.”

This means that a U.S. congressional declaration of war on the Islamic State would miss the point, and that the Russians and the Iranians are the bigger threat.

“It’s part of the global war, of which Syria is only one killing field, and IS [Islamic State] is one of the band of killers,” says Ledeen.

The analysis of Ledeen, who previously served as a consultant to the National Security Council, the State Department, and the Defense Department, should serve as an opportunity to review what is really happening in the Middle East, and to examine whether the Islamic State is a Russian creation that is designed to pave the way for Iranian expansion.

Ledeen notes evidence that the top IS military commander, Abu Omar al-Shishani, is a Russian asset, and that “the Russians are exploiting their strategic position in Ukraine to set up transit facilities for IS.” He adds that Ukrainian security forces recently arrested five IS volunteers coming from Russia or the former Soviet republics.

Last September we reported on some of this evidence, noting, “We have heard repeatedly about Americans and Europeans fighting for ISIL [the Islamic state], but little attention is being devoted to the Russian-speaking foreign fighters that make up the group. Their numbers are estimated at 500 or more. Omar al-Shishani is usually described as a prominent Islamic State fighter who is Chechen. In fact, he was born in the former Soviet republic of Georgia and was trained there.”

Those who believe the Russians are incapable of such deception and misdirection have conveniently forgotten about the history of the old Soviet intelligence service, the KGB. It is represented in the Kremlin today by Russian President Vladimir Putin, a former KGB officer once based in East Germany.

In another area of global affairs that reveals a hidden Russian role, The New York Times has taken note in a June 7 story of evidence that the Russians under Putin are financing conservative movements and political parties around the world. The Times reports, “Not only is it [the Kremlin] aligning itself with the leftists traditionally affiliated with Moscow since the Cold War, but it is making common cause with far-right forces rebelling against the rise of the European Union that are sympathetic to Mr. Putin’s attack on what he calls the West’s moral decline.”

This is actually an old story. We have been reporting for more than a year about Putin acquiring agents of influence or dupes in the West, even in the United States. Perhaps the most prominent name associated with this pro-Moscow trend is veteran conservative columnist Patrick J. Buchanan. The World Congress of Families is the most prominent organization to embrace Moscow’s alleged devotion to Christian values.

It is quite natural for conservatives in favor of traditional values to abhor the Obama administration’s embrace of the so-called LGBT agenda, here and abroad. But to adore Putin in reaction to this trend is a major miscalculation that assumes Moscow is genuinely interested in preserving Western values.

It is a welcome development that The New York Times has finally taken note of Moscow’s hand in right-wing political movements.

But there’s more. The paper added, “American and European officials have accused Moscow of financing green movements in Europe to encourage protests against hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a move intended to defend Russia’s gas industry. And a shadowy ‘troll farm’ in St. Petersburg uses Twitter to plant fake stories about chemical spills or Ebola outbreaks in the West.”

Another example of how Putin is deceiving the world lies in his exploitation of Edward Snowden, the former NSA employee still being hailed as a whistleblower in the United States.

Buchanan’s magazine, The American Conservative, has written about how figures on the U.S. political right such as Ronald Reagan biographer Craig Shirley have rallied to Snowden’s defense. In a recent column, Shirley condemned “the senior GOP leadership’s embrace of the National Security Agency’s enveloping surveillance activities.”

What Shirley and other Snowden supporters ignore is the fact that the NSA’s surveillance activities rely mostly on a Ronald Reagan Executive Order (12333) and that funding and manpower for the NSA increased dramatically under Reagan.

In fact, President Reagan used the NSA to undermine America’s enemies, especially the old USSR.

National security reporter Bill Gertz wrote in 2013 about how a former “top-secret” document, “United States Cryptologic History, Series VI, Vol. 5: American Cryptology During the Cold War, 1945-89,” contained a section on how President Ronald Reagan realized the value of the NSA’s unique electronic intelligence collection capabilities.

The history notes that “the best known exposure of SIGINT [signals intelligence] since the Pearl Harbor hearings of 1945 had actually come in 1983, when the Reagan administration played the intercepted cockpit conversations of the Soviet pilot as he shot down KAL-007. The SIGINT gave the administration a tremendous foreign policy coup.”

On September 1, 1983, the Soviet Union shot down the civilian airliner KAL-007, killing 269 people.

In 1986, the document states, Reagan became the first American president to visit the NSA, as he gave the official dedication speech for the NSA’s two new buildings. He wanted to loosen “the legal reins governing intelligence,” the document says, giving rise to Reagan executive order 12333. It gave the NSA latitude in SIGINT collection that the agency had not had during the disastrous Carter years.

This executive order remains in effect. Not even Obama has tried to revoke it.

Based on this history, one would have to conclude that President Reagan would defend the NSA, just as the GOP leadership in the U.S. Senate has done. Leaders like Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) defended the NSA against the Obama administration, liberal Democrats and libertarian Republicans.

The tragedy is that, with Obama in office rather than a conservative like Reagan, some conservatives decided to join the campaign to undermine the agency that Reagan considered absolutely essential to America’s security and survival.

Could it be just a coincidence that the Islamic state, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and aggressive Chinese cyber-warfare against the U.S. have emerged as major problems in the wake of Snowden’s arrival in Moscow?

Those who blame Obama alone for all of our foreign policy setbacks should examine the evidence that Putin and the Russians may ultimately be pulling the strings. At the same time, the NSA can’t be blamed for Obama’s failure or unwillingness to use the agency effectively against our enemies.

When the next president takes office, he will need an NSA capable of gathering the intelligence information the nation needs to defend itself. The next administration will have to consider apprehending and then prosecuting Snowden for operating as a Russian/Chinese agent of influence and committing espionage against the United States.

Hopefully, those who defended or praised Snowden will one day have to answer for their foolishness.