US/NATO War on Russia

[Lauren Johnson]

from excerpted from ZeroHedge

Once again the answer is simple: Western military intervention, this time in the conflict zone, under the guise of public anger against Putin, to reinforce the dwindling Ukraine army forces and to repel the separatists, in the process regaining the critical industrial regions of Ukraine which also are the location of vast natural gas deposits. Certainly showing to Gazprom just who was in charge of this key natural gas nexus wouldn't hurt either. After all the west has already invested so much in the current Ukraine government, it can't all be for nothing.
And we know that because a few hours ago, the biggest Dutch newspaper, Telegraaf, openly asked for military intervention by NATO to protect MH 17 and calls Putin a "KGB liar."

So what happens next? Well, since no crisis should ever be put to waste (especially a crisis created by the same entities who end up benefiting the most from it) the big push over the next week will likely involve setting the stage for the Western arrival (led by NATO or some other grand Western alliance) to secure the MH-17 site, to repel the separatists, and to reinforce armed forces that, courtesy of extensive CIA intervention in recent months, are aligned with said "reinforcers", all the while further provoking Putin and Russia, leading to even more sanctions and countersanctions.
To all those who see this as nothing but a deja vu of the Syrian fiasco scenario that unwound over the past two years with such unprecedented humiliation for the US State Depratment, you are not alone.

[Paul Rigby]

from excerpted from ZeroHedge

Once again the answer is simple: Western military intervention, this time in the conflict zone, under the guise of public anger against Putin, to reinforce the dwindling Ukraine army forces and to repel the separatists, in the process regaining the critical industrial regions of Ukraine which also are the location of vast natural gas deposits. Certainly showing to Gazprom just who was in charge of this key natural gas nexus wouldn't hurt either. After all the west has already invested so much in the current Ukraine government, it can't all be for nothing.
And we know that because a few hours ago, the biggest Dutch newspaper, Telegraaf, openly asked for military intervention by NATO to protect MH 17 and calls Putin a "KGB liar."

So what happens next? Well, since no crisis should ever be put to waste (especially a crisis created by the same entities who end up benefiting the most from it) the big push over the next week will likely involve setting the stage for the Western arrival (led by NATO or some other grand Western alliance) to secure the MH-17 site, to repel the separatists, and to reinforce armed forces that, courtesy of extensive CIA intervention in recent months, are aligned with said "reinforcers", all the while further provoking Putin and Russia, leading to even more sanctions and countersanctions.
To all those who see this as nothing but a deja vu of the Syrian fiasco scenario that unwound over the past two years with such unprecedented humiliation for the US State Depratment, you are not alone.

Particularly against the real enemy within, which is, of course, er, Deutsche Bank:

NY Fed Slams Deutsche Bank (And Its €55 Trillion In Derivatives): Accuses It Of "Significant Operational Risk"

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-07-22...nificant-o

First it was French BNP that was punished with a $9 billion legal fee after France refused to cancel the Mistral warship shipment to Russia (which promptly led to French National Bank head Christian Noyer to warn that the days of the USD as a reserve currency are numbered), and now moments ago, none other than the 150x-levered NY Fed tapped Angela Merkel on the shoulder with a polite reminder to vote "Yes" on the next, "Level-3" round of Russia sanctions when it revealed, via the WSJ, that "Deutsche Bank's giant U.S. operations suffer from a litany of serious problems, including shoddy financial reporting, inadequate auditing and oversight and weak technology systems."

What could possibly go wrong? Well... this. Recall that as we have shown for two years in a row, Deutsche has a total derivative exposure that amounts to €55 trillion or just about $75 trillion. That's a trillion with a T, and is about 100 times greater than the €522 billion in deposits the bank has. It is also 5x greater than the GDP of Europe and more or less the same as the GDP of... the world.

Those naughty Germans are wandering off NATO's reservation!

[David Guyatt]

The US is in danger of becoming a laughing stock amongst the international community if it continues with these holier than thou remonstrations.

Jeez, talk about don't do what I do, just do what I say. What next, French and German national airline carriers being found lacking somehow and their routes to the US closed?

[Peter Presland]

The US is in danger of becoming a laughing stock amongst the international community if it continues with these holier than thou remonstrations.

Jeez, talk about don't do what I do, just do what I say. What next, French and German national airline carriers being found lacking somehow and their routes to the US closed?

Laughing stock or not, ALL that exposure is denominated in Dollars which, short of Germany repudiating the system itself, makes it just another US poodle when it comes to any possibility of calling the Anglo-US Establishment on any threat - implied or otherwise.

Frankly I don't see how they could do it without precipitating the systemic collapse they are so feverishly trying to prevent, but which we all know is inevitable - if not immanent.

And what's this 'international community' stuff David??? - Hey ho, I guess we are all captives to the ZOGs vocabulary eh? ::doh::

[Magda Hassan]

And what's this 'international community' stuff David??? - Hey ho, I guess we are all captives to the ZOGs vocabulary eh? ::doh::

I actually do think there is an international community. It is a place the US rarely visits though certainly not for many decades. It comprises almost all of us in the world and there is a handful of rogue war mongering states and their insane 'leaders' on the outside.

[David Guyatt]

The US is in danger of becoming a laughing stock amongst the international community if it continues with these holier than thou remonstrations.

Jeez, talk about don't do what I do, just do what I say. What next, French and German national airline carriers being found lacking somehow and their routes to the US closed?

Laughing stock or not, ALL that exposure is denominated in Dollars which, short of Germany repudiating the system itself, makes it just another US poodle when it comes to any possibility of calling the Anglo-US Establishment on any threat - implied or otherwise.

Frankly I don't see how they could do it without precipitating the systemic collapse they are so feverishly trying to prevent, but which we all know is inevitable - if not immanent.

And what's this 'international community' stuff David??? - Hey ho, I guess we are all captives to the ZOGs vocabulary eh? ::doh::

You're right Peter. Shame on me re the "international community" statement. ::pullhairout::

On the currency side, I think the dollar is now witnessing it's sunset years - but yes, of course, it's going to take a fairly protracted period before it finally happens. All the recent activity with the French, Germans, Russians and Chinese suggest to me that they recognise their inherent weakness in this respect and are all working steadily and sensibily towards a new non dollar denominated world, and are intent on manoeuvring themselves out of the death grip of the dollar and US geopolitics. The shoot-down of this airliner and the resultant engineered media spew, with Washington now saying it was an "accident", also suggests that they recognise the world is changing before their eyes; their power is diminishing, and they are desperate about it. With good reason too. If ever the rest of the world abandon the dollar, the US is finished such is the depth of its debt, as it currently survives only by its Treasury auctions backing this incredible debt.

[Peter Presland]

On the currency side, I think the dollar is now witnessing it's sunset years - but yes, of course, it's going to take a fairly protracted period before it finally happens. All the recent activity with the French, Germans, Russians and Chinese suggest to me that they recognise their inherent weakness in this respect and are all working steadily and sensibily towards a new non dollar denominated world, and are intent on manoeuvring themselves out of the death grip of the dollar and US geopolitics. The shoot-down of this airliner and the resultant engineered media spew, with Washington now saying it was an "accident", also suggests that they recognise the world is changing before their eyes; their power is diminishing, and they are desperate about it. With good reason too. If ever the rest of the world abandon the dollar, the US is finished such is the depth of its debt, as it currently survives only by its Treasury auctions backing this incredible debt.

Yes. I agree all of that; but the system's principle beneficiaries are not going to concede without one hell of a fight - and that will include deploying every dirty-trick in the book, plus many as yet undreamed of. Of that I have neither illusion nor doubt.

My 'exposure in dollars' reference was to the Deutche Bank derivatives exposure, equivalent in gross terms (I know they are supposed to balance etc yada yada) to approx the entire current global economy. So here's a little speculation about one such possible dirty-trick:

We're not privy to the derivative-book fine detail but, being denominated in Dollars (and even if they weren't given the NSA hoo-ha) sure as hell Uncle Sam is. They are 'triggered' by certain carefully and legalistically defined 'events' - events which can and most assuredly will be engineered to selectively cripple those inclined to 'wander off the reservation' as Paul so eloquently put it. If Merkel did not already know that, she will certainly have been filled in on the detail by now.

On precisely that subject, I reckon a little research into any so-called 'anomalous trading' surrounding the MH17 disaster might pay dividends too - Just a thought.

[Magda Hassan]

I think things will get very bad too. And the ruling class have no intentions of going quietly. However many countries in Europe also have a history of revolution. The US is too medicated and self obsessed to the point of paranoia to react in any rational way (and I consider a revolutionary rejection of the coming shit storm a rational reaction) but I don't think the same can be said of Europe.

The resource wars are on now in earnest. Islamists are being used as the cover.

[Lauren Johnson]

By Pepe Escobar

"The intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." Everyone remembers the Downing Street Memo, which unveiled the Bush/Blair "policy" in the run-up to the 2003 bombing/invasion/occupation of Iraq. The "policy" was to get rid of Saddam Hussein via a lightning war. The justification was "terrorism" and (non-existent) weapons of mass destruction (WMD), which had "disappeared", mounted in trucks, deep into Syria. Forget about intelligence and facts.

The tragedy of MH17 - turned, incidentally, into a WMD - might be seen as a warped rerun of imperial policy in Iraq. No need for a memo this time. The "policy" of the Empire of Chaos is clear, and multi-pronged; diversify the "pivot to Asia" by establishing a beachhead in Ukraine to sabotage trade between Europe and Russia; expand the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to Ukraine; break the Russia-China strategic partnership; prevent by all means the trade/economic integration of Eurasia, from the Russia-Germany partnership to the New Silk Roads converging from China to the Ruhr; keep Europe under US hegemony.

The key reason why Russian President Vladimir Putin did not "invade" Eastern Ukraine - as much as he's been enticed to by Washington/NATO - to stop a US military adviser-facilitated running slaughter of civilians is that he does not want to antagonize the European Union, Russia's top trading partner.

Crucially, Washington's intervention in Kosovo invoking R2P - Responsibility to Protect - was justified at the time for exactly the same reasons a Russian intervention in Donetsk and Luhansk could be totally justified now. Except that Moscow won't do it - because the Kremlin is playing a very long game.

The MH17 tragedy may have been a horrendous mistake. But it may also have been a desperate gambit by the Kiev minions of the Empire of Chaos. By now, Russian intel may have already mastered the key facts. Washington's predictable modus operandi was to shoot from the hip, igniting and in theory winning the spin war, and doubling down by releasing the proverbial army of "top officials" brimming with social media evidence. Moscow will take time to build a meticulous case, and only then lay it out in detail.

Hegemony lost
The Big Picture spells out the Empire of Chaos elites as extremely uneasy. Take Dr Zbigniew "The Grand Chessboard" Brzezinski, who as a former foreign policy mentor has the ears of the increasingly dejected White House paperboy. Dr Zbig was on CNN this Sunday challenging Europe's leaders to "stand up to Putin". He wonders if "Europe wants to become a satellite" and worries about "a moment of decisive significance for the future of the system - of the world system".

And it's all Putin's fault, of course: "We're not starting the Cold War. He [Putin] has started it. But he has gotten himself into a horrendous jam. I strongly suspect that a lot of people in Russia, even not far away from him who are worried that Russia's status in the world is dramatically being undermined, that Russia's economically beginning to fail, that Russia's threatened by the prospect of becoming a satellite to China, that Russia's becoming self-isolated and discredited."

Obviously Dr Zbig is blissfully unaware of the finer points of the Russia-China strategic partnership, as well as their concerted voice inside the BRICS, the G-20 and myriad other mechanisms. His trademark Russophobia in the end always gets the better of him. And to think that in his latest book, Strategic Vision (2012), Dr Zbig was in favor of an enlarged "West" annexing Turkey and Russia, with the Empire of Chaos posing as "promoter" and "guarantor" of broader unity in the West, and a "balancer" and "conciliator" between the major powers in the East. A quick look at the record since 2012 - Libya, Syria, Ukraine, encirclement of China - reveals the Empire of Chaos only as fomenter of, what else, chaos.

Now compare a fearful Dr Zbig with Immanuel Wallerstein - who was a huge influence in my 2007 warped geopolitical travel book Globalistan. In this piece (in Spanish) Wallerstein argues that the Empire of Chaos simply can't accept its geopolitical decadence - and that's why it has become so dangerous. Restoring its hegemony in the world-system has become the supreme obsession; and that's where the whole "policy" that is an essential background to the MH17 tragedy reveals Ukraine as the definitive do or die battleground.

In Europe, everything hinges on Germany. Especially after the National Security Agency scandal and its ramifications, the key debate raging in Berlin is how to position itself geopolitically bypassing the US. And the answer, as pressed by large swathes of German big business, lies in a strategic partnership with Russia.

Show me the missile
Slowly, with no hype and no spin, the Russian military are starting to deliver the goods. Here, courtesy of the Vineyard of The Saker blog, is their key presentation so far. As The Saker put it, Russia had - and has - a "20/20 radar vision", or full spectrum surveillance, on everything going on in Ukraine. And so, arguably, does NATO. What the Russian Ministry of Defense is saying is as important as the clues it is laying out for experts to follow.

The damaged MH17 starboard jet engine suggests a shape charge from an air-to-air missile - and not a Buk; that's consistent with the Russian Ministry of Defense presentation graphically highlighting an Ukrainian SU-25 shadowing MH17. Increasingly, the Buk scenario - hysterically peddled by the Empire of Chaos - is being discarded. Not to mention, again, that not a single eyewitness saw the very graphic, thick missile trace that would have been clearly visible had a Buk been used.

Way beyond the established fact of a Ukrainian SU-25 trailing MH17, plenty of unanswered questions remain, some involving a murky security procedure at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport - where security is operated by ICTS, an Israeli company based in The Netherlands and founded by former officers from the Israeli Shin Bet intel agency. And then there is the unexplained presence of "foreign" advisors in Kiev's control tower.

As much as Bashar al-Assad in Syria had absolutely no motive to "gas his own people" - as the hysterical narrative went at the time - the Eastern Ukraine federalists have no motive to down a civilian airliner. And as much as Washington doesn't give a damn about the current civilian slaughter in Gaza, it doesn't give a damn about the MH17 civilian deaths; the one and only obsession is to force Europeans to sanction Russia to death. Translation: break up Europe-Russia commercial and geopolitical integration.

One week before the MH17 tragedy, the Russian Institute of Strategic Studies was already sounding the alarm concerning the Empire of Chaos's "policy" and its refusal to "adhere to the principles and norms of international law and the rules and spirit of the existing system of international relations".

Moscow, in building its case on the MH17 tragedy, will bide its time to debunk Kiev's claims and maximize its own credibility. The game now moves to the black boxes and the cockpit voice recorder. Still Ukraine will remain the do or die battlefield - a chessboard drenched in blood.

[Lauren Johnson]

From a commenter The Saker's website:

Larchmonter445 said...The Pivot to Asia is centered on Malaysia.

The US Navy demands its hegemonic control of the Straits of Malacca so it can strangle China's oceanic transport (commodities in, products out).

The Chinese want to build a canal through Thailand to end the Straits as a choke-point. So the government there is overthrown by chaos and the military.

Malaysia has very entwined Free Trade Zone relationships with China.

Everywhere China invests, the U.S. creates chaos.
Libya, Greece, South Sudan, Ukraine, Thailand, Iraq, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Vietnam, Mongolia are just a few.

I follow China very closely for the last dozen years and this pattern is predictable. The U.S. turns peace into war, investment into loses, stability into chaos. Most of these are maritime or petroleum points in the Chinese trade system. They have lost hundreds of billions in recent years because of these situations.

The Chinese need Russia, Russia needs China. And they need to gather more big nations. BRICS and SCO are just the beginning of what they need.

The U.S. is going to toss Turkey some heavy trouble soon. Probably, will use the Kurds and ISIS.
Turkey is talking to Russia. It is inevitable that Turkey will get a storm the government cannot handle.

The U.S. is working over South Korea for its very close relationship with China. Forcing a missile defense system which is a threat to both China and Russia. Notice, last week the DPRK offered the idea of a Federal re-uniting of North and South. What was the response? I've heard nothing. Didn't the world want this? Isn't that what the last 60 years has been all about? Well, the U.S. does not want a resolution. It wants trouble, so its power is necessary in the East China Sea region.

Malaysia is an easy patsie for U.S. power. It isn't radical muslim, isn't aggressive by nature, a place you can build filthy rare earth processing plants and they won't say anything about the pollution.

I imagine the Chief of Station of the CIA can tell the Prime Minister and head of Malaysia Air that we are going to disappear a plane or two, kill some 600 people and string the world along with lies, and the leadership will say nothing. Patsies. Overwhelmed. They'd give the COS their wives and daughters, or sons for a night or two, if that was the "request".

So a few lying headlines is no big thing in KL.
26 July, 2014 13:40

and then from Wikispooks

Wikispooks said...The more I ponder MH17 and the whole Ukrainian imbroglio, the more obvious (to me) it becomes that deeply-laid plans and minutely detailed gaming of every conceivable scenario are behind all that has happened since the prematurely sprung February coup in Kiev. That emphatically includes the MH17 shoot-down, together with the fact that is was another Malaysian plane being no accident. The foot-soldiers were the Ukie military; the planning and execution control were pure CIA.

No matter what my heart tells me, the fact is that the Russian elite are deeply divided in a number of ways, interven/don't intervene being only the most obvious. Larchmonter445 is spot on in his 13:40 post. Thus the big problem, for Russia-China and the whole BRICS endeavour, is that Russian elite divisions are both an obvious and very serious weakness. The Anglo-US-NATO power brokers can see this clear-as-a-bell and, per the above, have thoroughly gamed it.

Their bet is that they can keep the European ZOG's of Europe - especially Germany and France - on board even without an overt military intervention from Russia and the relentless continuing western MSM demonising propaganda is harnessed to just that purpose. If it appears to be failing, then another false-flag is no-doubt already primed and ready to go. If Russia does embark on overt military intervention, then perhaps it will be shelved. Either way the Anglo-US-NATO agenda will remain pretty much on track.

All things considered, this really does look increasingly like 'the big one' to me. The Empire is not going to back down short of open war - and considering its profiability and system reset potential etc etc, probably not then either. The deeply worrying question for me is: Will Russia's internal divisions prevent it from dealing optimally with those increasingly obvious facts.
26 July, 2014 16:26

Having lived through the Cold War, most confrontations and wars took place far away from Russian borders. This Ukraine situation has a feel unlike anything I can remember.