nuclear war – Page 5 – The Burning Platform

Why An American And A Russian General Are Suddenly Very Worried About Nuclear War

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/21/2015 21:20 -0400

Over the past several years, there has been an alarming escalation of two very disturbing trends: an increasing preponderance of cyberattacks on complex infrastructure (whether domestic or abroad and whether instigated by external sources or internally, in a false falg attempt to evolve the issue to the benefit of various military-industrial complex benficiaries) as well as around the globe, and a largely unexpected return to a Cold War footing, one catalyzed by the violent US-sponsored overthrow of the former Kiev government and the eagerness to escalate the resultant conflict exhibited by the Kremlin.

native advertising

If one extends said trends, one would arrive at a very unpleasant conclusion: due to the porous nature of modern technology and the increasing prevalence of cyberattacks, coupled with Cold War-era nuclear doctrines and rising tensions between the two superpowers who are now back to a Cold War regime, a nuclear war has suddenly emerged yet again as a very real threat.

At least such is the opinion of two high-ranking military commanders, American James E. Cartwright, a former Marine Corps general, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and commander of the United States Strategic Command, and Russian Vladimir Dvorkin, a retired major general who headed the research institute of Russia’s Strategic Rocket Forces. Both are members of the Global Zero Commission on Nuclear Risk Reduction, and both are very concerned about the future of the world if the current nuclear status quo between the US and Russia is left unchanged.

The two express their joint concern in a NYT Op-Ed, in which they warns of the dangers of old nuclear strike doctrines at a time when relations between the two superpowers are at such a low point. As a result, they call on Moscow and Washington to prevent possible provocations.

Continue reading “Why An American And A Russian General Are Suddenly Very Worried About Nuclear War”

The Neoconservative Threat To International Relations

Guest Post by Paul Craig Roberts

For the illustrated version go here: http://kingworldnews.com/paul-craig-roberts-trust-now-shattered-russia-u-s-world-annihilation-threatened/

This week I was invited to address an important conference of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow. Scholars from Russia and from around the world, Russian government officials, and the Russian people seek an answer as to why Washington destroyed during the past year the friendly relations between America and Russia that President Reagan and President Gorbachev succeeded in establishing. All of Russia is distressed that Washington alone has destroyed the trust between the two major nuclear powers that had been created during the Reagan-Gorbachev era, trust that had removed the threat of nuclear armageddon. Russians at every level are astonished at the virulent propaganda and lies constantly issuing from Washington and the Western media. Washington’s gratuitous demonization of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has rallied the Russian people behind him. Putin has the highest approval rating ever achieved by any leader in my lifetime.

Washington’s reckless and irresponsible destruction of the trust achieved by Reagan and Gorbachev has resurrected the possibility of nuclear war from the grave in which Reagan and Gorbachev buried it. Again, as during the Cold War the specter of nuclear armageddon stalks the earth.

Why did Washington revive the threat of world annihilation? Why is this threat to all of humanity supported by the majority of the US Congress, by the entirety of the presstitute media, and by academics and think-tank inhabitants in the US, such as Motyl and Weiss, about whom I wrote recently?

It was my task to answer this question for the conference. You can read my February 25 and February 26 addresses below. But first you should understand what nuclear war means. You can gain that understanding here: http://thebulletin.org/what-would-happen-if-800-kiloton-nuclear-warhead-detonated-above-midtown-manhattan8023

The Threat Posed to International Relations By The Neoconservative Ideology of American Hegemony, Address to the 70th Anniversary of the Yalta Conference, Hosted by Institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Moscow State Institute of International Relations, Moscow, February 25, 2015, Hon. Paul Craig Roberts

Colleagues,

What I propose to you is that the current difficulties in the international order are unrelated to Yalta and its consequences, but have their origin in the rise of the neoconservative ideology in the post-Soviet era and its influence on Washington’s foreign policy.

The collapse of the Soviet Union removed the only constraint on Washington’s power to act unilaterally abroad. At that time China’s rise was estimated to require a half century. Suddenly the United States found itself to be the Uni-power, the “world’s only superpower.” Neoconservatives proclaimed “the end of history.”

Continue reading “The Neoconservative Threat To International Relations”

Washington Has Resurrected The Threat Of Nuclear War

Guest Post by Paul Craig Roberts

Foreign Affairs is the publication of the elitist Council on Foreign Relations, a collection of former and current government officials, academics, and corporate and financial executives who regard themselves as the custodian and formulator of US foreign policy. The publication of the council carries the heavy weight of authority. One doesn’t expect to find humor in it, but I found myself roaring with laughter while reading an article in the February 5 online issue by Alexander J. Motyl, “Goodbye, Putin: Why the President’s Days Are Numbered.”

I assumed I was reading a clever parody of Washington’s anti-Putin propaganda. Absurd statement followed absurd statement. It was better than Colbert. I couldn’t stop laughing.

To my dismay I discovered that the absolute gibberish wasn’t a parody of Washington’s propaganda. Motyl, an ardent Ukrainian nationalist, is a professor at Rugers University and was not joking when he wrote that Putin had stolen $45 billion, that Putin was resurrecting the Soviet Empire, that Putin had troops and tanks in Ukraine and had started the war in Ukraine, that Putin is an authoritarian whose regime is “exceedingly brittle” and subject to being overthrown at any time by the people Putin has bought off with revenues from the former high oil price, or by “an Orange Revolution in Moscow” in which Putin is overthrown by Washington orchestrated demonstrations by US financed NGOs as in Ukraine, or by a coup d’etat by Putin’s Praetorial guards. And if none of this sends Putin goodbye, the North Caucasus, Chechnya, Ingushetia, Dagestan, and the Crimean Tarters are spinning out of control and will do Washington’s will by unseating Putin. Only the West’s friendly relationship with Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakstan can shield “the rest of the world from Putin’s disastrous legacy of ruin.”

Continue reading “Washington Has Resurrected The Threat Of Nuclear War”

Christianity vs. Islam: From a Child’s Perspective

Islam has oil the world covets, and Islam will be the spark.

Putin says he’s a Christian. Obama says he’s a Christian.

The guy who pushes the button unleashing Nuclear Hell, and the guy responding (does it matter who does it first?) will be a Christian. Think about that.

Religion will kill us all …. assuming the bees don’t die out first, or Fuk-u-shima doesn’t kill ocean life, or a solar flare wipes out the earf, or …..

Train up a child when he is young, and when he is old he’ll be true fuknut fanatic.

ISLAM Rocks!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=wWDqcsq8Lus

Christianity Rules!

Neegrow Revival!

Presented to you by me, the Master Of Fluff And Shit (MOFAS).

Llpoh: “Get that MOFAS (MOthaFuckinAssShit) outta here!”

Russia Is Preparing for Nuclear War with the US and Its Allies

Via Hugo Salinas Price

We post the following letter from David K. Lifschultz, President of Genoil, Inc. whose offices are at One Rockefeller Center, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10020. David has been promoting his firm for many years; the company owns patents to a process which converts heavy oil into light oil at an economically advantageous cost.

We think his warnings are extremely serious and merit the consideration of our readers.

From David K. Lifschultz, January 11, 2105:

In view of the Gorbachev warning of nuclear war over the Ukraine, I resend again the analysis of Trotsky’s “No Peace: No War” and a military review of Russia’s capabilities.

Subject: “No War: No Peace” Commissar Leon Trotsky:

It is probably more accurate to describe the today’s war of Germany against Russia as a The Hundreds Years’ War starting in 1914, as Russia and Germany were allies in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871. These wars were interspersed as it has been by truces. The German plans at the 1914 commencement of The Hundreds Years’ War were reflected during their Brest-Litovsk negotiations to annex Russian Poland, and the Ukraine was to be detached from Russia as an independent state under German protection. The Baltic States were to be annexed by Germany. The goals are exactly the same today in nature if not form.

It is important to note that the form of Empire or Imperialism changed in its form but not its nature after World War Two. In World War Two Roosevelt’s war aims were to dismantle and take over five empires: that of Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, Germany and Japan. In other words, the United States inherited the control of the seas from Britain and their entire Empire as well as the others. This, or course, explains how our actions in French Indochina and our actions in British Iraq were no different than our predecessors. The use of the Cross against the Hammer and Sickle was just a ruse. The Korean and Vietnam Wars were part of the struggle against the Soviets where Stalin had large number of Russian aircraft and flyers directly participate in combat with the Americans in the Korean War. Empire was no longer called Empire but the incorporation into the free market system of the United States. Discipline is created by sanctions as in the case of Iran or war as in the case of Libya, Iraq, Syria, etc. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics completely replicated the geostrategic policies of the Tsars substituting Bolshevism for Christianity as their New Jerusalem and Stalin admired greatly Ivan The Terrible who is shown in Stalin’s 1944 movie on Ivan IV of Russia always crushing Boyar rebellions as Tsar Stalin crushed continuous opposition from the Bolshevik Boyars.

The Germans saw a golden opportunity in the collapse of Russia under the drunken Yeltsin by creating looting operations and destroying the Russian economy, and moved into the Balkans staging massacres, ethnic unrest and rebellion in Croatia, Slovenia, and latter Kosovo until the old Yugoslavia was totally destroyed as a force and ally of Russia. The entire effort was to lay Russia lower and lower to paraphrase Ludendorff explaining his funding of the Bolshevik Revolution. Germany pulled the plug on Russia in the 1998 Russian financial crisis, and then fomented the bombing of Belgrade for 78 days starting on March 24, 1999 as a replication of the German bombing of Belgrade in April, 1941 under their Operation Retribution. They did this through staged massacres in Kosovo that were reported as fake in the Manchester Guardian and later proven so by an extensive investigation. There was no blood or cartridges by the bodies which indicated that the corpses were shot up after they were dead, and these incidents were conducted under the German BND (Bundesnachrichtendienst) in accordance with their historical Sudetenland style provocations. Only, they delegated the work to the Albanians who were incompetent.

Commissar Trotsky had walked out of the initial Brest-Litovsk peace negotiations stating “No War: No Peace” and would not sign the peace treaty. The Soviets refused to accept the dismemberment of their nation and the destruction of their national security. You might say this is where Germany likes to think of itself today sitting with its hand on Russia’s throat but there is going to be a role reversal in the near future.

The peace negotiations were later resumed after Germany seized most of the Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltic countries. As the Lenin government was about to collapse, the Germans demanded the cession of Dunaburg, Livonia, and Estonia to Germany, cession of western Armenia to Turkey, and recognition of an independent Ukraine. All Russian troops had to leave the Ukraine and Finland and the Russian Army had to be completely demobilized. The treaty cut out of Russia a quarter of its population and industry and nine-tenths of its coal. Essentially Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus and the Ukraine were ceded to Germany. When Field Marshall von Hindenberg was asked why Germany needed the Baltic States, he said “to secure my left flank when the next war happens”, which took place on June 22, 1941. We are now in a continuation of that war.

Europe has not returned to the 1930s as they never left the 1930s. The great powers are maneuvering in Europe in a declared war against each other (President Franklin Delano Roosevelt when asked in 1940 why he did not embargo oil to Japan explained that this would have been a declaration of war. He launched the embargo on July 25, 1941. So any suggestion that the EU and the United States are not in a state of war with Russia is false.) The tiny powers in the Baltic and Poland, and some others, are screaming hysterically against Russia as they did against Germany in 1939, and they do not realize that they are pawns to the great powers who will do with them as they will. They have short memories about Germany. Nobody really cares about the populations of Poland or the Ukraine, or the others, as Poland learned after the British murdered General Wladyslaw Sikorski over the dismemberment of Poland demanded by Stalin and the Katyn massacres.

Continue reading “Russia Is Preparing for Nuclear War with the US and Its Allies”

Russia Threatens US with Nuclear War

Guest Post by Martin Armstrong

Russia has continually sent signals to these Western leaders that it can wage nuclear war. Russia keeps sending bombers into strategic places that can take out key cities in the USA and Europe. Even during the last NATO summit/Golf resort trip, two aircraft took off from an air base in western Russia, just east of the Russian city of Saratov. The aircraft, Tu-95 strategic bombers code-named Bear by NATO, flew northwest, skirting Iceland, Greenland, and Canada. They then turned on a heading straight toward the United States. This was what was called a “launch box” maneuver where just off the coast of the USA they would fire nuclear-tipped cruise missiles towards American cities and military bases.

These provocative flights were timed to a NATO summit that was attended by President Obama in Wales. I have warned from the outset that Ukraine should have been divided and the Russian ethic regions should be surrendered to Russia. I restated this position just last August. I recommended that position since the start of the year because this was the ONLY way to defuse the crisis that would get worse and has. Let the people return as part of Russia. In Ukraine, they have always looked down on the East as sort of the uneducated hicks anyway. Why endanger the entire world over such a stupid issue?

Had the agreement been reached to simply split the nation, then there would not have been the killings and death toll we see now. Instead of paying for bailouts, simply afford the means to relocate people from the East who wanted to remain outside of Russia. This conflict is stupid. The is like waging nuclear war because Key West, Florida calls itself the Conch Republic that wants to secede from the USA.

What difference does it make is the rural backward region of Ukraine prefers Russia since they speak Russian. Let the people decide their own fate. Haven’t political leaders caused more wars, pain, and bloodshed trying to carve up the world into territorial fiefdoms?

The Empires’ Plan for a Nuclear First Strike

Are You Ready For Nuclear War?

By Paul Craig Roberts

PaulCraigRoberts.org

June 5, 2014

Pay close attention to Steven Starr’s guest column, “The Lethality of Nuclear Weapons.”http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2014/05/30/lethality-nuclear-weapons/ Washington thinks nuclear war can be won and is planning for a first strike on Russia, and perhaps China, in order to prevent any challenge to Washington’s world hegemony.

The plan is far advanced, and the implementation of the plan is underway. As I have reported previously, US strategic doctrine was changed and the role of nuclear missiles was elevated from a retaliatory role to an offensive first strike role. US anti-ballistic missile (ABM) bases have been established in Poland on Russia’s frontier, and other bases are planned. When completed Russia will be ringed with US missile bases.

Anti-ballistic missiles, known as “star wars,” are weapons designed to intercept and destroy ICBMs. In Washington’s war doctrine, the US hits Russia with a first strike, and whatever retaliatory force Russia might have remaining is prevented from reaching the US by the shield of ABMs.

The reason Washington gave for the change in war doctrine is the possibility that terrorists might obtain a nuclear weapon with which to destroy an American city. This explanation is nonsensical. Terrorists are individuals or a group of individuals, not a country with a threatening military. To use nuclear weapons against terrorists would destroy far more than the terrorists and be pointless as a drone with a conventional missile would suffice.

The reason Washington gave for the ABM base in Poland is to protect Europe from Iranian ICBMs. Washington and every European government knows that Iran has no ICBMs and that Iran has not indicated any intent to attack Europe.

No government believes Washington’s reasons. Every government realizes that Washington’s reasons are feeble attempts to hide the fact that it is creating the capability on the ground to win a nuclear war.

The Russian government understands that the change in US war doctrine and the US ABM bases on its borders are directed at Russia and are indications that Washington plans a first strike with nuclear weapons on Russia.

China has also understood that Washington has similar intentions toward China. As I reported several months ago, in response to Washington’s threat China called the world’s attention to China’s ability to destroy the US should Washington initiate such a conflict.

However, Washington believes that it can win a nuclear war with little or no damage to the US. This belief makes nuclear war likely.

As Steven Starr makes clear, this belief is based in ignorance. Nuclear war has no winner. Even if US cities were saved from retaliation by ABMs, the radiation and nuclear winter effects of the weapons that hit Russia and China would destroy the US as well.

The media, conveniently concentrated into a few hands during the corrupt Clinton regime, is complicit by ignoring the issue. The governments of Washington’s vassal states in Western and Eastern Europe, Canada, Australia, and Japan are also complicit, because they accept Washington’s plan and provide the bases for implementing it. The demented Polish government has probably signed the death warrant for humanity. The US Congress is complicit, because no hearings are held about the executive branch’s plans for initiating nuclear war.

Washington has created a dangerous situation. As Russia and China are clearly threatened with a first strike, they might decide to strike first themselves. Why should Russia and China sit and await the inevitable while their adversary creates the ability to protect itself by developing its ABM shield? Once Washington completes the shield, Russia and China are certain to be attacked, unless they surrender in advance.

The 10 minute report below from Russia Today makes it clear that Washington’s secret plan for a first strike on Russia is not secret. The report also makes it clear that Washington is prepared to eliminate any European leaders who do not align with Washington. http://rt.com/shows/the-truthseeker/162864-us-plans-strike-russia/A transcript is provided by Global Research: http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-plans-first-strike-attack-on-russia-or-china/5384799

Readers will ask me, “What can we do?” This is what you can do. You can shut down the Ministry of Propaganda by turning off Fox News, CNN, the BBC, ABC, NBC, CBS, by ceasing to read the New York Times, the Washington Post, the LA Times. Simply exit the official media. Do not believe one word that the government says. Do not vote. Realize that evil is concentrated in Washington. In the 21st century Washington has destroyed in whole or part seven countries. Millions of peoples murdered, maimed, displaced, and Washington has shown no remorse whatsoever. Neither have the “christian” churches. The devastation that Washington has inflicted is portrayed as a great success. Washington prevailed.

Washington is determined to prevail, and the evil that Washington represents is leading the world to destruction.

THE WEST LOST CONTROL IN 1888

The West has lost control of the world and disaster awaits

We’re going to need a great of luck to avoid a nuclear catastrophe – and this can be traced back to the First World War and the death of Frederick III in 1888

British soldiers line up in a narrow trench during World War One

British soldiers line up in a trench during World War One Photo: Hulton/Getty Images

By Bruce Anderson

As we look forward to the First World War commemorations, three stark conclusions are hard to refute. First, that in the course of this century we will need a great deal of luck to avoid a nuclear catastrophe. Second, that the Enlightenment has failed. Third, that this can all be traced back to the Great War.

As a result of the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, it seemed that mankind might make a decisive break with the scarcity and oppression that had characterised previous eras. There was, admittedly, one early warning. The French Revolution proved that a radical reconstruction of society on abstract principles was likely to end in tyranny and bloodshed. But after 1815, the 19th century developed into one of the most successful epochs in history. Living standards, life expectancy, productivity, medicine, the rule of law, constitutional government, versions of democracy – there was dramatic progress on all fronts, and in the spread of civilisation across the globe.

Then one of the scourges of modern life struck and killed. In 1888, Frederick III became Emperor of Germany. Queen Victoria’s son-in-law, he was a thoughtful man who had an easy relationship with his English relatives. By temperament he was a constitutionalist, a liberal and no enthusiast for militarism. As he had served in the field with distinction, Frederick could have mobilised the prestige to justify his pacific inclinations.

It was not to be. Already in the grip of cancer when he ascended the throne, he lived for only 99 days. There is an irony. Frederick, not a blood relation, would have had much in common with Prince Albert. The new Emperor, William, Albert’s grandson, was more like some of the worst Hanoverian princes. Envious and insecure, he was a strutting little ponce of an emperor: Kaiser Sarkozy.

It is by no means certain that 1914 could have been avoided. There was a great deal of tinder around, and most of the policymakers had a wholly insufficient understanding of the horrors of modern war. But a German emperor of immense authority, who would have been seeking a 20th-century version of the post-1815 settlement, who might even have invented the concept of collective security – it could have worked.

If so, Adolf Hitler’s name might now be gathering dust in a police file: “Failed artist and casually employed house painter, who sometimes tries to rabble-rouse the bierkeller dregs in the poorer quarters. Once spent the night in the cells for causing a disturbance outside a Jewish household…” An early British socialist, Robert Tressell, wrote a novel about house painters, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. Without the Great War, Hitler would have been a mere unchronicled ragged-trousered misanthropist.

If only; 1914-1945 was the worst period in European history since the Dark Ages. In 1914, there was talk of “the war to end all wars” – possibly the most fatuous geopolitical mistake of all time. It makes “the new world order” sound like common sense. By the end of the First World War, they were rolling the pitch for the Second. Enlightenment, the Whig theory of history, any other theory based on inevitable and steady improvement: they had all formed a Pals’ battalion and died in the trenches.

The deaths continued. By 1945, Europe was staring into the abyss, and we know what Nietzsche said: “If you stare into the abyss for long enough, it will stare back at you.” The stare was broken, the Third and final war avoided, not by a reassertion of civilised values, but by the atom bomb. Mankind survived because of mutually assured destruction.

Apropos of atomic weapons, there is another terrible thought. If Hitler had not been anti-semitic, he would have won the Second World War. Instead of dismissing atomic/nuclear physics as “Jewish science”, suppose he had persuaded enough Jewish scientists to work for him? He would almost certainly have had the Bomb first. But anti-semitism was at Hitler’s black and evil core. In the bleak midwinter, why do we need ghost stories to provide a frisson of pretend horror, when real horror is available in unlimited quantities just by contemplating the last 100 years?

The wars left Britain too exhausted to deal with a brace of imperial difficulties. Even if we had not been so depleted in blood and treasure, India would have been tricky. From Macaulay onwards, the wisest intellects who involved themselves with Indian affairs knew that English rule was a trusteeship, not a 1,000-year Reich. But when it came to India, Churchill’s was not a wise intellect, and he would have had supporters. No wars, therefore no imperial overstretch: assuming that wisdom had prevailed, India could have been brought to independence gradually, not in a post-war scuttle. It could also have been brought to independence as one country – so no Pakistan, that most dangerous of all failed states.

Equally, if there had been no First and Second World Wars, there would have been nothing like the same pressure for a Jewish nation in Palestine. The odd rich philanthropist, satiated with first-growth claret and sick of the falsity of drawing rooms, might have persuaded some similar-minded kibbutzniks of the delights of ditch-digging. As they would probably have paid the previous Arab proprietors 50 times what the land was worth, there might have been no trouble. It should have been possible to create a self-governing Jewish enclave in Palestine for the price of a few broken heads in the odd inter-communal riot.

Without Pakistan, without a chronic and insoluble Palestinian crisis – those two Ps that will continue to torment mankind, no matter how many mattresses are used to squash them – this century would look promising.

As it is, we have the two Ps, and mutually assured destruction is breaking down. It worked during the Cold War, and it has worked between India and Pakistan. Could it work between Israel and Iran? Could the Iranians be trusted not to hand some stuff out at the back door? For that matter, is it inconceivable that there could be a seepage from Pakistan? What about miniaturisation? A couple of hundred quid in a high-street computer shop will buy you something more powerful than the Pentagon’s computer resources 40 years ago. All other forms of technology are becoming smaller, cheaper and more accessible. Is nuclear weaponry really immune from that?

While the whole world was turned upside down in the 20th century, Islamic societies were not immune. Though it would be absurd to talk as if Islam was the same from Morocco to Malaysia, there are forces and fractures in the Muslim world, many of them related to religion; some of them producing young men who hate us and everything we stand for. The West has lost control, and it all started in 1888. We will need a lot of good fortune to steer through the next few decades. Happy New Year.