What will it take to awaken us to the "impending danger"?
by Catte
The semi-dormant war for the future of Donbass/Eastern Ukraine has been sputtering back to life since June, as is being reported by both sides. Ukrinform cites a UN report alleging the “highest number of civilian casualties” in Donbass since “August 2015”. Fort Russ has been repeatedly reporting shelling of Donbass regions by the UAF (Ukrainian Armed Forces), targeting “infrastructure and civilians.” Meanwhile Interfax Ukraine is claiming the UAF has itself come under essentially unprovoked fire from “militants”.
Is the recent spate of violence in the region just a passing thing, or is it a sign the Washington Uber-Hawk response to loss of face and direction in Syria is going to be – not a reality check – but a renewed attempt to ignite wider conflict? Are we pivoting back to the pincer-movement so often talked about, a final and crazed attempt to imprison Russia between a burning Ukraine and a burning Middle East?
The western media is – predictably – largely ignoring these developments. The corporate outlets universally upholds the line that Russia deserves renewed sanctions for its alleged “failure” to implement Minsk2 (even though Russia is not a party to the agreement) and its alleged reluctance to put pressure on Donbass to implement the agreement. But they fail to record either the alleged violation of the ceasefire by the UAF and the civilian deaths that result, or the Kiev government’s own reluctance to accede to the requirements of the deal, most notably its total failure to support or facilitate the holding of elections in the region.
If/when renewed war does break out in Donbass expect to see the Guardian et al offer up the usual soundbite intelligence-propaganda, devoid of content, informing docile readers that it’s all the fault of Vladimir Putin and his “territorial ambitions,” while continuing to airbrush out of existence the violations and incursions of the side we are supposed to support.
But how much longer can this go on? With the current NATO summit preaching the need to “reinforce eastern Poland & the Baltic states against Russia,, the recent unprecedented NATO drills on Russia’s borders, and as the US places its pre-emptive-strike “missile defence shields” in Poland, Romania and South Korea how will even the most sanguine or self-delusional mainstream journalists be able to avoid asking themselves where this is going? How long can they continue to brush off Russian fears as “anger” or “paranoia”? How long until they realise that what Russia fears should frighten all of us?
It would be good to know if there are any brakes on this war-wagon the human race has been herded aboard. But even if there are, who’s going to apply them if the Labour Party is lost in internecine warfare with its own right wing that clearly would rather be dead than democratic? What help can we expect from a “quality press” busy re-blogging Langley talking points, wittering about identity politics or faux feminist “issues”, hawking their books about how absolutely horrid Russia is because reasons, or giving space to witless foreign ministers celebrating the drift to Armageddon? What will it take to make these people realise they – like all of humanity – will be in the front line of this particular conflict if it ever ignites, and not just cheering on the action from the Houses of Parliament or filing embedded updates from the cosy safety of a hotel bar 100 miles from the nearest death zone.
“I don’t know how to get through to you people” Putin told assembled reps of the corporate western media recently, in an impassioned explication of the current insanity. He talked about the real purpose of the “missile defence” program and how, inevitably, if nothing changes, there will be a catastrophic war. The corporate journos stared back, glazed, ever so slightly bewildered.
And so far as I can tell not a single one of them reported what he said.
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Might there be a war? If we don’t watch out we could maybe perhaps find ourselves in the vicinity of the edge of the slippery slope (or the greasy pole?) that perhaps leads to some sort of conflict that might possibly be termed “war”? Which could maybe lead to war war? Like with big atomic bombs and such? Aw phooey! Right now we are at war with Russian and China. Blood has been spilled. Armies have been sent abroad. Boots are on the ground. It’s time for us to pull our heads out of the sand and look around. World War III underway right now! The submarines are out there, loaded with nuclear death! Ah, but ignorance is bliss, isn’t it. Let’s keep pretending. Maybe that will work (ie., until the Big Light goes on and we get incinerated.. at which point it just won’t matter anymore!)
I haven’t trusted the Western MSM for over a decade now. I don’t watch TV, I don’t read mainstream newspapers, I don’t access mainstream internet sites. All of my information on a daily basis comes from alternate news sites on the internet. I find that I can cross check the same news on a number of different sites, some of which originate in foreign countrie. It is the best way to gauge truth. Those American Faux “News” watchers are the most ignorant people in the World and CNN, CBS etc are hardly any better.
I have to agree with you 100%. If you read, watch, or listen to the MSM you are willingly choosing to remain ignorant of what is actually happening in the World. This World is definitely NOT what it seems……………
This is a good piece which captures a good deal of what is going on. These are matters I follow pretty closely by comparing what is said in a number of places and evaluating the statements.
Unfortunately, over at The Guardian itself, you’d never know these things, not a hint.
Despite its traditional reputation as a progressive paper, current management, more often than not, sounds like the Washington Post.
Just packed with propaganda against Russia, for NATO and Obama, and full of distortions about Syria and Ukraine. And Israel is always treated as an honored member of the world community rather than what it actually is.
But now here comes Hillary, the worst American dog of war in memory.
And if she is elected, all bets are off in international affairs, and a serious war gains as a possibility.
As Paul Craig Roberts wrote recently: the ignorance of the American people could destroy the world.
After all, her close associates include savages like Madeline Albright and Victoria Nuland.
While Trump, who offers at least some expectations of better days in foreign affairs, appears to have the Republican nomination locked-up, there is a serious quiet movement in the committee running the Convention to alter the rules so that delegates won in the primaries are not bound to a candidate.
They still do not have enough votes to carry out the Party coup, but if they succeed – and I’m sure they will use all kinds of lures and threats – and substitute an ineffective chump like Cruz or Romney, Hillary is almost sure to win.
By the way, in any serious war, Russia can definitely hold its own. It has new nuclear systems which guarantee America’s being incinerated, and I’m sure America’s establishment knows it. The problem is that with the kind of insanity now going on in Europe – kind of a giant game of chicken like teen-agers in hot rods used to play in the 1950s – the slightest miscalculation can lead to disaster. With each additional move and exercise, chances of things going very wrong are increased.
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What needs to happen is a tax revolt centred on the race to Armageddon.
People need to withhold any controllable monies and pivot this just say no program on the fact that such irresponsible action as to consider military conflict with Russia can be regarded as insane. The social contract is broken and thus null and void.
Look at the people in the streets who have become slaves to their smartphones. We can’t expect help from them to get us out of this dangerous situation. The cattle is never going to join or organize an effort to eliminate their butchers.
We’re too few to make a difference. Maybe we should just accept the situation for what it is and make the best out of our last days on the planet. There is no help nor hope in sight. It has been a nice 4.5 billion years here for life on Earth, but now evil has won.
Just keep in mind never to reincarnate in this doomed place ever again. I’ve already got plans to come back as a tree on a primordial planet: Worst thing that could happen there would be to get hit by a load of dinosaur poo. Quite prefarable to a nuclear bomb in comparison.
Good luck everyone.
There are no winners in the use of next generation nuclear weaponry ….This is from the 1960s and the full film is no longer online.. This clip is worth watching https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QXOZzBwXGS0
Catte, you’ve raised terrific questions here.
Everytime I hear people talking about what a good idea a nuclear war actually might be, I think of ‘the war game’; a 1965 BBC ‘documentary’ of the last few weeks before Great Britain is attacked by a nuclear bomb from the USSR.
The documentary is not about good vs. bad, but about what will happen to a country (any country) and its citizens (any citizens) when it’s hit by a nuclear bomb. It also effectively shows how citizens of a country (any country) can be made gung hoo for going to war and how large populations of a country can be talked into the idea that retaliation against innocent people (Russians or Brits, the country where you are from really doesn’t matter) may be a very good and justifiable thing to do.
Watching that documentary for the first time certainly shook and shocked me, as a wake up call is supposed to do.
Perhaps journalists should watch the ‘documentary’ too for a good shake and shock which they can do here for free: http://m.disclose.tv/action/viewvideo/167578/The_War_Game_1965/
Of note, this 50 minute BBC ‘documentary’ was so good, that the BBC decided to ban it from the screen for 20 years. “Too horrifying for the medium of broadcasting”, the BBC censor said time and again, meaning that people were not allowed to know what their leaders at the time were hatching and certainly would have led to a life “nasty, brutish and short” if nuclear war was tried at that time.
But the British were not allowed to know by the BBC. And in 1985 (when the documentary was finally aired) only once.
Which reminds me of the situation that we (the west) are in now, talking about good (we) and evil (Russia) only leading to fear without knowing what we actually should be afraid of (if one would only read MSM news). Which is the worst fear of all and therefore applied by NATO, the US and their (very special) relations with countries and their media. It makes their worst enemy, their OWN population, very docile and meek. Which is good for closed societies, who hate one thing more than anything else: a change of the status quo.
Therefore, watch the War Game if you have not done so already. It makes you active.
Forty years of absolute dominance of Western societies by the Right has had the expected result. The Right, by which we mean ‘the psychopaths’, insatiably greedy, narcissistically egomaniacal, insanely destructive, with no human empathy or compassion, unscrupulous and violent, have projected their psychopathy on Western societies, thus ‘normalising’ the pathological.
They do this through total control of the brainwashing apparatuses of the MSM, advertising, ‘entertainment’ and PR, and to do so these organs have been steadily purged of all but psychopaths over the decades. One need only look at what the BBC and Guardian have become, and the loathsome, Satanic, sewer that is Murdochism to see the process in action.
One feature of the rule by psychopaths is the normalisation of their genocidal death-worship. The pace of killing has been relentless, and more and more directed at civilians in target countries, often by the second-hand strategy of murderous sanctions, when direct obliteration is not yet required. The ‘Western Moral Values’ that lie behind this mass murder of defenceless innocents was best expressed by that loathsome flower of Western womanhood, Madeleine Albright (ie Davros’s evil twin sister)with her infamous, but totally suppressed, observation that the murder of 500,000 Iraqi children under five (over one million children of all ages were thus murdered) was a price that ‘Yes’, was ‘Worth it’.
You are describing H. Clinton!
What the public in the West needs, to wake them up from their docile slumber, is a good shake or shock, but what form should it take? Should the Russians attempt to provide it? Would this, in itself, be seen as a dangerous escalation, more Russian aggression, that could tip over into a more serious conflict that could lead to war itself?
Putin cannot ‘get through’ to the West. It seems… impossible, using arguements and logic, appealing to self-interest, because the ruling elite in the West is totally, at least in public, subserviant to Washington.
The current situation is chillingly similar to the period prior to the outbreak of WW1, though, at least then, there was a powerful opposition to the outbreak of war; we, don’t even have that. Since Iraq, which was regarded with horror by the elite, the anti-war opposition has been crushed. It’s still there, but dormant.
So the drift towards conflict with both Russia and China, which isn’t really ‘drift’ but a constant movement that actually wants conflict, is getting stronger and there’s a deliberate momentum that’s going to be extremely difficult to change or stop. What’s frightening is that most people, the Western public, are blissfully unaware of the dangers and the direction we are heading in, diverted as we are by other things.
Like WW1 we’ve created a bizarre set of ‘excuses’ for a conflict by allowing tiny nations on our borders to assume the role of ‘trip wires’ which could ‘drag’ the larger nations into a larger conflict quite easily, if that’s is what they want. This seems to be the reason and purpose behind the complex nest of alliances we’ve created. Triggers designed to legitimise war with Russia if a localised and symbolic conflict ‘gets out of control.’
Is Ukraine going to be the trigger for a wider war with Russia? Clearly there are forces in the West that believe, and this again reminds one of WW1, that if we are going to fight Russia it’s better to do it now before Russia succeeds in reforming and modernising their military and becoming too strong. The ‘window of opportunity’ is closing, so why wait? Also the Americans believe they can fight a war in Europe with Russia and win it, thereby undermining Putin’s credibility and status and this will lead to a ‘coup’ or uprising that’ll see him chased from the Kremlin and lynched by a screaming mob Gadaffi style. Then, after the ‘revolution’ Russia will be ‘open for business’ once again. All of this is, I would argue, a total, deranged, fantasy. Russia isn’t Libya and the Russians are a different people with a different history and culture. Attacking Russia is always a really bad idea.
Too true, missiles can reach Washington from Russian subs in the Atlantic. So the missile shield in eastern Europe will be bypassed.
Game, Set and matched to Putin.
While the rest of us who survive go to hell in a handcart.
There won’t be any survivors, or, if a few, they’ll ‘envy the dead’. Washington DC has always been Thanatopolis, and it is about to self-immolate, and take humanity with it.
As usual, the first to suffer will be those closest to the immediate war zone. Europe will go up in smoke, later the US will suffer the same fate. Sure there will be no more Moscow but those Russians living outside the major cities will survive as they have done for many centuries. You see Russia is simply too large a nation to totally destroy.
Reblogged this on EU: Ramshackle Empire.
Government is the number one and main tool of the oppressor! Communism, Capitalism, Socialism, Democracy, Fascism, etc., etc., etc., have never existed, but maybe on paper or in somebody’s ‘mind(s)’. But Government has and does exist. In fact one cannot name or describe Government without calling it by it’s real and accurate name, and that is: Corrupted-Totalitarian-Government-By-The-Few! As long as humans worship and demand and allow, Corrupted-Totalitarian-Government-By-The-few, they will be oppressed, impoverished, and murdered, and done so increasingly.
If there’s one thing I admire Putin for it is these occasional outbursts of clear speech. You can gauge how delusional the west is by how deaf we are to them.
My favourite:
\”They sit there across the Pond, and sometimes I think they feel like they\’re in a lab and they\’re running experiments on rats and not understanding the consequences of what they are doing,\” the Russian president said at a press conference.
A close second was the – rough translation “and even now do you not understand what you have done?”
Any politician that speaks that plainly about, well, anything, but ESPECIALLY the shameful results of the West’s interventions has my utmost respect.
In fact I almost wonder whether such plain language is available to our politicians anymore. I really think our brains have been so addled by marketing and PR that we’re defenceless in the face of our own self-serving bullshit.
“When fascism comes to the West, it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a Cross”………..Sinclair Lewis.
Thats rite not a single anglo-zionist MSM journo has reported on anything that has been said in the last fortnite. The Italian foreign minister, Holland , Steinmier and other Eurocrats have all stated the danger in continuing this gunboat style diplomacy. They r creating more trip wire areas to justify the war they want. The South China Sea is a perfect example, the newly elected President of the Philippines is not a washington consensus type of guy. He has just publicly stated at the end of the wholly day of Ramadan in southern Philippines that all these global events are all manufactured and supported by the Us and the west along with Israel , Turkey and the GCC. I really dont know what to do in demonstrating to the vast populations of the west that we r walking with the dead at this pace. Nuclear winter is getting very near . Putin,Lavarov,Medved Xi have all said as much but in the west this never gets any air time. Orwellian times we r living. The West has to realise that the continual extortion of Iran,Syria,Iraq,Russia,and China is no longer going to wash with these countries they will not succumb to the blatant extortion of the anglo-zionist. Enough is enough and the real danger is all it takes in one mistake and the whole can of nuclear bombs will be unleashed. We r a hair trigger away from the END. Will cooler heads prevail. It appears that some leaders in Europe r coming out of the closet.
Boy are you right. It is so sad to have to say so.
Whose interest does this war mongering serve? The defense minister of Canada was interviewed on cbc this morning and seemed just as genial and vapid as the pm. The interviewer lobbed him a softball about how some say this is reminiscent of the cold war and find it worrisome and he didn’t even have a prepared soundbite. Just said oh no not at all! We like dialogue too! The most frightening thing is how truly dim many people in positions of Western power appear to be. He explained the build up in Latvia as a response to “fears of” Russian aggression… Real troops and weapons to stand against emotive projections. And he didn”t seem even flustered about how silly what he was saying…. seemed to feel his address to the Canadian public was going really well. Very jolly like a happy student explaining his nice book report or science project.
They all need to be approved by Washington and Tel Aviv, so are not the cream of the human crop.
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blockquote> Whose interest does this war mongering serve?
Barack O’Bomber, Shillary Clinton, Robert Kagan, Victoriwhore Nuland, Trash Carter, Jens Stoltenberg, Philip Breedhate, Curtis Crapalotti, Susan Lice, the Council on Foreign Relations, Condosleazewhore Lice, Colin Powell, George Soros, Roger Ailes, Billo Reilly, John Bolton, John McLame-Brain-Insane…..
…. need I go on?
Like a psychopathic murderer. No brain, happy grin!! Who does it remind us of?
You spelt “Colon Bowel” incorrectly…………
“If Hitler invaded Russia I would make at least a favourable reference to Hitler in the House of Commons.” That paraphrased quote is not so cool. Are we going to rehabilitate Nazis in the name of “Freedom”? Which one?
Oh, but Catte, didn’t you get the memo from Langley? A nuclear war with Russia is winnable. Besides, “Russia must understand that it would be a serious miscalculation to consider nuclear escalation as a viable option.” That’s why we have to hit them first . . .
https://youtu.be/vuP6KbIsNK4