COMMENTARY & OPINION SPECIAL REPORT

From the desk of

Bill Ramey

1/1/15

COMMENTARY & OPINION

SPECIAL REPORT

Paul Craig Roberts

Prison Planet.com

December 30, 2014

Dear Readers: The conflict that Washington has initiated between the West and Russia/China is reckless and irresponsible. Nuclear war could be the outcome. Indeed, Washington has been preparing for nuclear war since the George W. Bush regime.

Washington has revised US war doctrine in order to initiate conflict with a first strike nuclear attack.

Washington has discarded the ABM treaty in order to build and deploy anti-ballistic missiles that are intended to prevent a retaliatory strike against the US. Washington is engaged in a buildup of military forces on Russia’s borders, and Washington is demonizing Russia’s government with false charges.

As the Bush/Obama regimes dismantled the safeguards put in place in order to minimize the risk of nuclear war, no protests came from the American public or the media. Washington’s European vassal states have also been silent.

Washington’s drive for hegemony has brought nuclear insanity to the world.

Moscow and Beijing understand that they are Washington’s targets. As Larchmonter explains, Russia and China are conjoining their economic and military capabilities in order to protect against Washington’s attack. Read what Larchmonter reports. Open the URL in my column below and run your cursor over the bottom of the page and click “page fit.” Choose 50% and readable text will fill your screen.

Washington’s demonization of Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi, and Assad were preludes to military attacks on Iraq, Libya, and Syria. In view of these precedents, it is reasonable to regard Washington’s demonization of Vladimir Putin as a prelude to military action.

Russia is not Iraq, Libya, or Syria. Russian war doctrine states that Russia can use nuclear weapons in response to a nuclear or conventional attack on Russia. For the world to sit silent while Washington’s arrogance provokes armageddon telegraphs total political failure. Where are the voices in behalf of humanity?

Washington has shaped 2015 to be a year of conflict. The conflict could be intense.

Washington is the cause of the conflict, which has been brewing for some time. Russia was too weak to do anything about it when the Clinton regime pushed NATO to Russia’s borders and illegally attacked Yugoslavia, breaking the country into small easily controlled pieces. Russia was also too weak to do anything about it when the George W. Bush regime withdrew from the ABM treaty and undertook to locate anti-ballistic missile bases on Russia’s borders. Washington lied to Moscow that the purpose of the ABM bases is to protect Europe from non-existent Iranian nuclear ICBMs. However, Moscow understood that the purpose of the ABM bases is to degrade Russia’s nuclear deterrent, thereby enhancing Washington’s ability to coerce Russia into agreements that compromise Russian sovereignty.

By summer 2008 Russian power had returned. On Washington’s orders, the US and Israeli trained and equipped Georgian army attacked the breakaway republic of South Ossetia during the early hours of August 8, killing Russian peacekeepers and civilian population. Units of the Russian military instantly responded and within a few hours the American trained and equipped Georgian army was routed and defeated. Georgia was in Russia’s hands again, where the province had resided during the 19th and 20th centuries.

Putin should have hung Mikheil Saakashvili, the American puppet installed as president of Georgia by the Washington-instigated “Rose Revolution”, and reincorporated Georgia into the Russian Federation. Instead, in a strategic error, Russia withdrew its forces, leaving Washington’s puppet regime in place to cause future trouble for Russia. Washington is pushing hard to incorporate Georgia into NATO, thus adding more US military bases on Russia’s border. However, at the time, Moscow thought Europe to be more independent of Washington than it is and relied on good relations with Europe to keep American bases out of Georgia.

Today the Russian government no longer has any illusion that Europe is capable of an independent foreign policy. Russian President Vladimir Putin has stated publicly that Russia has learned that diplomacy with Europe is pointless, because European politicians represent Washington’s interest, not Europe’s. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov recently acknowledged that Europe’s Captive Nation status has made it clear to Russia that Russian goodwill gestures are unable to produce diplomatic results.

With Moscow’s delusion shattered that diplomacy with the West can produce peaceful solutions, reality has set in, reinforced by the demonization of Vladimir Putin by Washington and its vassal states. Hillary Clinton called Putin the new Hitler. While Washington incorporates former constituent parts of the Russian and Soviet empires into its own empire and bombs seven countries, Washington claims that Putin is militarily aggressive and intends to reconstitute the Soviet empire. Washington arms the neo-nazi regime Obama established in Ukraine, while erroneously claiming that Putin has invaded and annexed Ukrainian provinces. All of these blatant lies are echoed repeatedly by the Western presstitutes. Not even Hitler had such a compliant media as Washington has.

Every diplomatic effort by Russia has been blocked by Washington and has come to naught. So now Russia has been forced by reality to update its military doctrine. The new doctrine approved on December 26 states that the US and NATO comprise a major military threat to the existence of Russia as a sovereign independent country.

The Russian document cites Washington’s war doctrine of preemptive nuclear attack, deployment of anti-ballistic missiles, buildup of NATO forces, and intent to deploy weapons in space as clear indications that Washington is preparing to attack Russia.

Washington is also conducting economic and political warfare against Russia, attempting to destabilize the economy with economic sanctions and attacks on the ruble. The Russian document acknowledges that Russia faces Western threats of regime change achieved through “actions aimed at violent change of the Russian constitutional order, destabilization of the political and social environment, and disorganization of the functioning of governmental bodies, crucial civilian and military facilities and informational infrastructure of Russia.” Foreign financed NGOs and foreign owned Russian media are tools in Washington’s hands for destabilizing Russia.

Washington’s reckless aggressive policy against Russia has resurrected the nuclear arms race. Russia is developing two new ICBM systems and in 2016 will deploy a weapons system designed to negate the US anti-ballistic missile system. In short, the evil warmongers that rule in Washington have set the world on the path to nuclear armageddon.

The Russian and Chinese governments both understand that their existence is threatened by Washington’s hegemonic ambitions. Larchmonter reports that in order to defeat Washington’s plans to marginalize both countries, the Russian and Chinese governments have decided to unify their economies into one and to conjoin their military commands. Henceforth, Russia and China move together on the economic and military fronts.

http://www.mediafire.com/view/08rzue8ffism94t/China-Russia_Double_Helix.docx

The unity of the Bear and the Dragon reduces the crazed neoconservatives’ dream of “an American century” to dangerous nonsense. As Larchmonter puts it, “The US and NATO would need Michael the Archangel to defeat China-Russia, and from all signs Michael the Archangel is aligned with the Bear and its Orthodox culture. There is no weapon, no strategy, no tactic conceivable in the near future to damage either of these rising economies now that they are ‘base pairs.’”

Larchmonter sees hope in the new geopolitics created by the conjoining of Russia and China. I don’t dispute this, but if the arrogant neoconservatives realize that their hegemonic policy has created a foe over which Washington cannot prevail, they will push for a preemptive nuclear strike before the Russian-Chinese unified command is fully operational. To forestall a sneak attack, Russia and China should operate on full nuclear alert.

The US economy–indeed the entire Western orientated economy from Japan to Europe–is a house of cards. Since the economic downturn began seven years ago, the entirety of Western economic policy has been diverted to the support of a few over-sized banks, sovereign debt, and the US dollar. Consequently, the economies themselves and the ability of populations to cope have deteriorated.

The financial markets are based on manipulation, not on fundamentals. The manipulation is untenable. With debt exploding, negative real interest rates make no sense. With real consumer incomes, real consumer credit, and real retail sales stagnant or falling, the stock market is a bubble. With Russia, China, and other countries moving away from the use of the dollar to settle international accounts, with Russia developing an alternative to the SWIFT financial network, the BRICS developing alternatives to the IMF and World Bank, and with other parts of the world developing their own credit card and Internet systems, the US dollar, along with the Japanese and European currencies that are being printed in order to support the dollar’s exchange value, could experience a dramatic drop in exchange value, which would make the import-dependent Western world dysfunctional.

In my opinion, it took the Russians and Chinese too long to comprehend the evil that has control in Washington. Therefore, both countries risk nuclear attack prior to the full operational capability of their conjoined defense. As the Western economy is a house of cards, Russia and China could collapse the Western economy before the neoconservatives can drive the world to war. As Washington’s aggression against both countries is crystal clear, Russia and China have every right to the following defensive measures.

As the US and EU are conducting economic warfare against Russia, Russia could claim that by wrecking the Russian economy the West has deprived Russia of the ability to repay loans to the European banks. If this does not bring down the thinly capitalized EU banks, Russia can announce that as NATO countries are now officially recognized by Russian war doctrine as an enemy of the Russian state, Russia can no longer support NATO’s aggression against Russia by selling natural gas to NATO members. If the shutdown of much of European industry, rapidly rising rates of unemployment, and bank failures do not result in the dissolution of NATO and thus the end of the threat, the Chinese can act.

The Chinese hold a very large amount of dollar-denominated financial assets. Just as the Federal Reserve’s agents, the bullion banks, dump massive shorts onto the bullion futures markets during periods of little activity in order to drive down the bullion price, China can dump the equivalent in US Treasuries of years of Quantitative Easing in a few minutes. If the Federal Reserve quickly creates dollars with which to purchase the enormous quantity of Treasuries so that the financial house of cards does not implode, the Chinese can then dump the dollars that they are paid for the bonds in the currency market. Whereas the Federal Reserve can print dollars with which to purchase the Treasuries, the Fed cannot print foreign currencies with which to buy the dollars.

The dollar would collapse, and with it the power of the Hegemon. The war would be over without a shot or missile fired.

In my view, Russia and China owe it to the world to prevent the nuclear war intended by the neoconservatives simply by replying in kind to Washington’s economic warfare. Russia and China hold all the cards. Not Washington.

Russia and China should give no warning. They should just act. Indeed, instead of step by step, Russia and China could simultaneously use the counter-measures. With four US banks holding derivatives totaling many times world GDP, the financial explosion would be the equivalent to a nuclear one. The US and Europe would be finished, and the world would be saved.

Larchmonter possibly is correct. 2015 could be a very good year, but preemptive economic moves by Moscow and Beijing could be required. Putin’s current plan seems to be to turn away from the West, ignore the provocations, and mesh Russia’s strategic and economic interests with those of Asia. This is a humane and reasonable course of action, but it leaves the West untroubled and undistracted by its economic vulnerabilities. An untroubled West remains a grave danger not only to Russia and China but also to Americans and the entire world.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. His latest book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West is now available.

December 29, 2014

Russia Strikes Deathblow vs NWO Globalists – Confirms Lindsey Williams 2015 Warning By Launching New SWIFT Payment System

By Live Free or Die

  

Russia has launched a deathblow against ‘the West’ and the NWO globalists by launching their own ‘SWIFT’ payment system to go against the ‘global banking system’ with a mid-to-late-2015 full implementation that aligns perfectly with a warning recently given by ‘elite insider’ Lindsey Williams according to the brand new video below from Realist News. While the 2nd video below from MrCati gives us an update on the assassination attempt against Vladimir Putin just months ago, Realist News proves to us why any sanctions against Russia by the West were merely assuring the US and dollar would take the return shot straight to the face, a shot that will likely bring the entire system crashing down within the next 9 months as the world rejects the US dollar, abandons the West and joins up with the ‘still very much alive’ Vladimir Putin as they prepare to bring the NWO global banking system to its’ knees.

16.12.2014 Author: William Engdahl

Oil War on Russia: Ridiculous People and Unintended Consequences

Column: Politics

Region: USA in the World

The once rather ordered world we knew even a decade ago is becoming more and more dis-ordered. That’s not to say it’s chaotic because chaos is merely the emergence of new patterns we do not yet understand. This is dis-order. And it is being fostered by ridiculous power-addicted people in the West who are flailing around to try to hold on to their eroding power over our world and over us. I say ridiculous because we need only look at the initiatives they have launched in recent months to advance their power agenda.

First these power-addicted very rich oligarchs through their neo-conservative networks in the US State Department and in the CIA initiated what was foolishly dubbed the Arab Spring. That was in Tunisia in December 2010. By all accounts an utter and complete flop, their Arab Spring caper, even by oligarch calculations.

They have largely lost Egypt by their stupid attempt to shove the Muslim Brotherhood death cult down the throats of Egypt’s citizens.

Then their war in Libya, where their fig leaf of “democracy” Color Revolution couldn’t work, they bombed Qaddafi and Africa’s most stable and most prosperous tribal monarchy back to the stone age and unleashed dis-order there that still is a disaster by all measures.

Then the same stupid oligarchs, advised by their ridiculous neo-con think-tankers and Obama Administration neo-cons such as the loveless National Security Adviser Susan Rice, Obama’s putative psychological “Rasputin,” rolled out of Libya directly into Syria in January 2012.

They did so to apparently run a repeat of the Qaddafi fiasco. Only in Syria the stakes were global and far different from Libya. It involved national security issues for Russia, for Iran and indirectly, for China. Today, nearly three years on, despite the CIA and Mossad efforts to use their creation, ISIS, or the self-proclaimed Islamic State (IS) to terrify the American war-weary public to agree to yet another war in the Middle East, after the fiasco of Iraq and Afghanistan the trillions of US tax dollars and destroyed lives of US servicemen and women, Bashar al Assad remains in power. Granted he presides over a land devastated by death and destruction, thanks to those loveless, ridiculous western Oligarchs. But the oligarchs and their partner-in-crime, Netanjahu, Brooklyn’s least-honorable son, have not got what they wanted in Syria.

More recently, they have tried to panic us into agreeing to mass vaccination with untested, likely toxic medications to try to justify Obama’s War on Ebola. Only no one seems to believe them. The increasingly ridiculous Dr Margaret Chan, the Director General of WHO, who was guilty of criminal mis-conduct five years ago when she bowed to Big Pharma wishes and declared a non-existent Swine Flu as global “Pandemic Level 6,” tries to utter terrifying statements about Ebola, but nobody much is paying attention.

The Oligarchs of destruction unleashed neo-con artist Victoria Nuland at the State Department along with documented liar, CIA Director John Brennan, to turn Ukraine over to a gaggle of criminals and self-styled neo-nazis, complete with Swastika tattoos and black ski masks. The hope was it would make Putin and the Russians go berserk and invade Ukraine as civil war against ethnic Russian-speakers in east Ukraine raged, targeting women, elderly, children, anyone who walked.

That Ukraine State Department coup too has blown up in their faces as Russia turns to her East and the South, making a dazzling array of strategic agreements with China for energy and military cooperation, with India, with Brazil and the list continues.

Then the same ridiculous Oligarchs unleashed the drones of their National Endowment for Democracy in Hong Kong in a vain effort to spread their dis-order to China, which was becoming far too independent of the Oligarchs’ New World Order agenda. That too has flopped.

Old Saudi Arabia vs New Saudi Arabia

Now the same ridiculous American Oligarchs hovering around such loveless characters as David Rockefeller, have come to the brilliant strategy of unleashing their “super-weapon” against Putin’s Russia—full-scale oil price war. Backed by The US Treasury’s neo-con David S. Cohen, whose title is aptly named as Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, the John Kerry State Department in September came up with the bright idea to rerun the 1986 State Department-Saudi operation to collapse Russia by getting the Saudis to collapse oil prices.

The execution of the oil collapse has so far been technically flawless. Oil prices on average have plummeted almost 30% since September. The only problem is that the power-addicted Oligarchs and their ridiculous neo-con hired thinkers overlooked the fact that, in the process, they would bankrupt their very vulnerable shale oil bonanza.

For the past several years, the United States Government has bought on to the shale oil bonanza myth. It has shaped US foreign policy decisions, given people in Washington the false illusion they can risk blowing up much of the world’s Middle East without threatening global oil supplies, or Ukraine, because The United States of America is becoming the New Saudi Arabia.

But now the knife cuts the other way. John Kerry’s brilliant Saudi plan is being used by those same Saudis, not only to bring Russia to her knees, which it hasn’t managed to do. It is being used by the Old Saudi Arabia to cripple the shale oil basis of the New Saudi Arabia. The Saudis clearly, as was seen in the recent OPEC meeting, want to burst the US shale oil bubble in order to reassert control of the Old Saudi Arabia over world oil markets.

On November 27 following an indecisive OPEC meeting where the Saudis refused various pleas to reverse and stop the price fall, the traded price for the marker crude that US shale oil is priced at, West Texas Intermediate, fell below $66 a barrel, a five year low with no bottom in sight. The sharp rise in US shale oil output in the past three years has enabled the US to take over the decisive leverage role once held by the Saudis, that of Swing Producer. That means if the powers that be in Washington decide world oil prices are too high, it can cut supply one way or another. If too low, restrict supply.

That did not make the Saudi royals happy. Perhaps when Kerry proposed to the Saudi King, with Prince Bandar in the room last September, that Saudi Arabia help Washington break Russia by collapsing Russian oil revenues, King Abdullah and Bandar happily agreed. But now it seems the Saudi focus is less to hurt Russia and more to shoot down the US shale oil competition. Shale oil is unconventional and expensive to drill compared with conventional oil.

Only extraordinary, sustained prices above $100 a barrel the past five years made shale profitable. In 2014 and by present estimates 2015 shale oil will account for an extra 2 million barrels of US domestic oil output, the largest output since 1970. Now Wall Street banks with billions lent to US shale producers are re-examining their portfolio and considering calling in those loans or at the very least not lending further to a losing game. However, shale oil, unlike conventional, requires an escalating investment to drill ever new wells as the old deplete far faster than conventional. That is the Ponzi core of the shale oil mirage.

Unconventional shale oil costs from $50 to $100 a barrel just to produce. Conventional US oil by contrast costs from $10 upwards. By calculations of leading US shale oil bankers, “If prices go to $80 or lower, which I think is possible, then we are going to see a reduction in drilling activity.”ii That was said in October when prices hovered around $90. Come this spring, we can expect numerous US shale oil companies to hit the hard wall of bankruptcy or insolvency.

The Russians are apparently not as alarmed as they were in 1986, the previous time Washington and the Saudis ran such a price collapse operation. Lukoil part-owner Leonid Fedun told the press recently, “The shale boom is on a par with the dot-com boom. The strong players will remain, the weak ones will vanish.” According to a report on RT, Russian Economic Development Minister Aleksey Ulyukaev told a meeting of cabinet ministers after the OPEC decision that the government had cut its oil price estimate for its 2015 Budget from $100 to $80 a barrel. ö Low oil prices will not ruin the economy the Russian Economic Development Minister Aleksey Ulyukaev has said, adding that the oil price estimate for the 2015 budget has been slashed to $80 a barrel from $100 a barrel. “We aren’t going to collapse,” he said.

So much for the Oligarchs’ ridiculous plans to make USA into the New Saudi Arabia and bankrupt Russia in the process.

F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”