NATO’s War on Russia: Someone Is Playing Us
by Christopher Black, via Defend Democracy
For 17 months, since the Minsk Agreements were signed in February 2015 to try to bring peace to the eastern Ukraine the Kiev regime, and its neo-Nazi and NATO allies, have been preparing for a new offensive against the east Ukraine republics. On July 22nd the Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin stated in a letter to the UN Security Council that “a relapse of large-scale military operations in eastern Ukraine may bury the process of peace settlement there.” He then called on Kiev’s allies to pressure Kiev to back off its war preparations which include the continuous shelling of civilian areas by Ukraine heavy and medium artillery and constant probing attacks by Ukraine and foreign units over the past spring and summer months.
The commander of the Donetsk Republic forces stated in a communiqué on July 22 that the region along the contact line between the two sides was shelled 3,566 times in one week alone ending on the date of the communiqué and confirmed the information set out in Churkin’s letter and reports of the Organisation For Security Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) that the Kiev regime had transferred more heavy artillery, mortars, tanks, multiple rocket launchers to the front.
The shelling has destroyed civilian housing, a water treatment plant and other infrastructure with the clear objective of forcing out the residents and to prepare the ground for a large scale offensive. Ambassador Churkin added that not only were regular Kiev forces massing in the east but they had also deployed the new-Nazi Azov and Donbas “volunteer” battalions, and that Kiev has begun a wide ranging seizure of land in the neutral zone and the towns located there.
Of course the blame for all these criminal actions by NATO and its marionettes in Kiev is placed on Russia as we have seen set out in both the Atlantic Council Report earlier this year and in the NATO Warsaw Communiqué on July 9th in which NATO put the ultimatum to Russia, “do what we say or you will see what we will do”. The day before Ambassador Churkin sent his letter to the Security Council, the French Foreign Minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, in a speech at the Centre of Strategic and International Studies stated that the “sanctions”, that is, the economic war being carried out against Russia by the NATO countries, would only stop if Russia did what it was told.
The Germans have also made noises about being prepared to halt this economic warfare against Russia, about how much they regret it and how they desire only peace and harmony, but, again, only if Russia adheres to their demands.
The attacks on the Donbas republic civilian areas are of course war crimes and crimes against humanity to which the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court responds with her practiced silence despite the fact she has accepted two letters from the Kiev regime providing the ICC with jurisdiction to prosecute war crimes committed there. But, of course, neither Kiev, nor their NATO bosses that control the prosecutor of the ICC have any intention of laying war crimes charges against themselves.
The Russian fear of a renewed offensive against the Donbas republics is a real one since the Warsaw Communiqué issued by NATO on July 9th stated emphatically that NATO does not recognise the republics, that Ukraine needs to be reunited by force if necessary, and that Crimea must be returned to Ukraine. The increased military activity in eastern Ukraine is taking place at the same time that there is increased activity in the Baltic centred on the Russian base at Kaliningrad, a strategic objective for NATO in order to control the Baltic sea lanes and air space and the approaches to St. Petersburg. Crimea is an objective because of the Russian naval base at Sevastopol, the seizure of which was one of the primary objectives of the NATO coup that overthrew the government of President Yanukovich. It is the main objective in the on going NATO “Sea Breeze” naval exercise in the Black Sea.
The situation has become increasingly dangerous as the war against Russia is conducted without limits, that is, across all sectors of life from the military and economic to sports. The International Olympic Committee has now banned the core of the Russian Olympic track and field team from competing at the Games, plus any others who have faced doping allegations in the past, an act of collective punishment that is totally unjustified since it is based on the dubious statements of a wanted man in Russia, Grigory Rodchenkov, who is singing for his supper in the United States, and will sing any song they want him to. The whole scandal is motivated not by problems with doping, but by an attempt to further isolate Russia from the world and slander its leadership and people. The result is that the Olympic Games will be a farce both as a sports event and as a symbol of peace in the world and should be cancelled or boycotted.
On top of all this, compelling evidence is daily coming out that the attempted coup against the government of Turkey was instigated by the Americans and its partners in other NATO countries in order to stop President Erdogan from a rapprochement with Russia. The timing alone of the coup indicates that; for it took place just a few days after Erdogan apologised to President Putin regarding the shoot down of the Russian plane, and just after rumours circulated that the would kick the US out of their base at Incirlik and give it to Russia.
The Turkish government has accused the US of being involved at least indirectly by supporting Turkish Islamist émigré elements led by the cleric, Fethullah Gulen, an arch enemy of President Erdogan, who resides in the US and appears, to Erdogan, to be linked to the coup. Stories have also appeared in the Turkish press of the arrest of the two pilots that shot down the Russian plane over Syria, who happen to be, according to the accusations, the same two pilots that attempted to shoot own Erdogan’s plane the night of the coup. It is stated, though not confirmed, in the Turkish press that these two men worked for the CIA.
On Monday July 25th, it was reported in the Turkish press that American General John Campbell, former commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan was central to the planning of the coup and that it was financed with CIA money through meetings at the US base at Incirlik. If these accusations are correct then the attempted coup constitutes act of aggression by the United States and its allies against Turkey, an attack by NATO on a NATO member.
The British on the same day floated a story in the Daly Express that their special forces, the SAS, are ready to go into to Turkey to “rescue UK citizens” in the event of a second coup attempt and predicted civil war in Turkey of there is a second coup attempt. They stated,
With fears rebels could be about to try to overthrow the government for a second time, which is likely to result in a Turkish civil war, troops have moved into neighbouring Cyprus and are preparing a rescue mission to save stranded Britons.
Defence chiefs have drawn up emergency plans and fully armed soldiers, together with members of the Special Forces Support Group, are ready to fly into areas popular with tourists and help families get home safely.
Hundreds of jets, helicopters and other aircraft will be drafted in to help the estimated 50,000 Brits flee the danger.
This means that Britain as well as the US are prepared to help a second coup attempt against Erdogan and further confirms their involvement in the first coup attempt, as does the reported refusal of the Germans to allow Erdogan’s plane to enter German air space to seek refuge when it appeared he had been overthrown. That decision turned out to be a mistake as he quickly recovered his wits, returned to Turkey and broke the coup.
However this turns out, the principal target remains Russia. Erdogan’s rapprochement with Russia and falling out with NATO weakens NATO in its war against Russia and provides Russia with another card to play, even if it may be the Joker.
Meanwhile in the United States the war against Russia has become a dangerous internal political issue as the Clinton camp accuses Donald Trump of being a Russian agent and his campaign financed by Russian money, essentially accusing Trump of treason. Trump laughs all this off but the fact that these absurdities can even get the attention of the news media shows how desperate things are. The New York Times columnist Andrew Rosenthal wrote a column on the 25th of July with the title “Is Donald Trump Putin’s Puppet” then proceeded to state that he was Putin’s pet poodle at the least.
But things get even more curious as the FBI states it is investigating whether emails “leaked” by Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks organisation, were provided to him by Russia after Russia hacked into the email system of the Democratic National Convention. The Russians deny this absurd charge but so far I have not seen Julian Assange deny that they are his source and we must wonder what his true motivations are if the effect of his “leak” is to have Russia accused of hacking into US government and political party email systems thereby supporting the NATO propaganda against Russia.
It also begs the question as to why Assange would get involved in American party politics at all by publishing emails that would supposedly damage the Clinton campaign for the benefit of the Trump campaign. Is he working for Trump? Is he working for Clinton trying to make it look like Trump works for Russia, or, as is more likely, is he working for those who want to bring down both Trump and Russia? Andrew Rosenthal for the Times, quipped, “it’s eerie, at best, that Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks chose this moment to release the stolen emails…”
But it is not so “eerie” if the exercise is meant to smear Russia and a candidate for President who is willing to at least talk with the Russians. Perhaps his supporters can ask him and report back what his answer is because his actions raise serious questions as to his motivations, his intentions, and his connections. Someone is playing us. It’s about time we found out who.
Christopher Black is an international criminal lawyer based in Toronto, he is a member of the Law Society of Upper Canada and he is known for a number of high-profile cases involving human rights and war crimes
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The idea that Assange has an ulterior motive for releasing the emails is disingenuous to say the least. The writer could be saying rather more about himself than Assange by making such an accusation.
If Wikileaks (not Assange) hadn’t released the emails at this point in time, Assange could just as easily be blamed for supporting Clinton later on. Why should he be seen as having to support either Clinton or Trump? Withholding news it doesn’t like is what the corporate media does, not the alternative media.
The fact is that not all the released material is specifically about Hillary Clinton. And it must be remembered Clinton was discovered to have broken protocol – and almost certainly the law – regarding emails only recently. In that particular case the scant regard she showed for security led to an FBI investigation. Who was to blame there?
And as for the FBI, who can trust an organisation that cleared Clinton in the earlier case, despite all the evidence against her? Could it even be the FBI trying to influence the election by blaming Assange without a shred of evidence to back up the accusation? After all, blaming Assange could lessen the damaging impact of the earlier email releases, and could even make poor Hillary look like a victim. The actual material contained in the emails, which is the most important point here, suggests that to be far from the case.
Sorry Mr Black, though I have some sympathy for your apparent dread of Trump being elected president, some might be forgiven for thinking you are letting your own support for Clinton colour your opinion. From there we might even wonder if you are playing us. Or perhaps you are the one being played by the FBI.
Well put!
Mr Assange’s support for the official version of 9/11 does colour one’s views concerning his credentials as does his history with Cryptome’s founder Mr John Young. Not wishing to be too harsh, house arrest in London with ensuing threats must be ‘difficult’ for one whose perceived motives are, to all intents and purposes contrary to those of his jailers…or is it? The author is correct in the assumption of games. I suspect the labyrinth of deception stretches much further than most can imagine. We have been conditioned too well, probably too well to even bear the answer.
Surely Assange should release any and all evidence of Western corruption, no matter who it appears to benefit. Otherwise what price truth?
If anything, the article itself smacks of character assassination towards him in an attempt to smear other leaks under the same alleged agenda.
Assange did not create those emails. Are we seeing more deflection from the DNC?
Interesting comment from the Express about tourists in Cyprus. Nuland was just there and the empire is angling for a nato base in the island. The empire always signals its intentions
Guess it’s now an official fallback position if turkey is out of nato. Turkish troops would have to be cleared from Cyprus. This would mean that nato was behind the coup and its poor planning has ruined the nato position with turkey forever.
The loss of Cyprus would weaken Erdogan. …
The great game is on.
Actually there is a long time British base [NATO member] there – two in fact. Nuland was in Cyprus to force the government to break relations with Russia and to surrender to permanent Turkish occupation of the north part of the island, where of course the Turks [NATO member] also have bases. The straight highway south from Nicoisia to the coast was built to double as a Harrier jet runway. If “NATO” also wants a base Cyprus will start running out of room.
We are waiting to see if Nuland will force Cyprus to also make a SOFA agreement with Israel as it did with Greece, in which case the Israeli air force will take over Cypriot bases, as they have here in Greece. Handy for attacks on Syria, Turkey and Lebanon, not to mention Cyprus.
This is all part of the historically unprecedented build up of NATO/Israel navies, air force and armed forces in the eastern Mediterranean, presently undeclared by Washington?NATO.
If indeed Turkey pivots to Russia and withdraws from NATO the situation will change dramatically.
The US created the Cyprus we see today. They deliberately caused the partition of the island to further their aims in the area. Looks like it’s ongoing…
I don’t remember if I’ve posted this here before but here is what Kissinger said about Greece [including Cyprus] in 1974 [notice the date!]:

“The Greek people are anarchic and difficult to tame. For this reason we must strike deep into their cultural roots: Perhaps then we can force them to conform. I mean, of course, to strike at their language, their religion, their cultural and historical reserves, so that we can neutralize their ability to develop, to distinguish themselves, or to prevail; thereby removing them as an obstacle to our strategically vital plans in the Balkans, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East.”
Prescient words or long-time plans?
He denies now that he ever said this – but – it is on the record, as a speech to a room full of businessmen and reported in the greek newspapers at the time. Either HK is wrong – or – a whole raft of witnesses and reporters…
More important though is that not only is this underway in Greece in “soft” NATO/EU/Thanatopolis DC form – Greece is a NATO / EU member after all, but is being applied as US/NATO/Israeli policy across the Middle East to Iraq, Syria, Libya…with more to come. The Sykes-Picot “lines in the sand” meme “proving” that no such “countries” ever existed is dangerous to buy into [it applies even better to USA, for a start] but ignores totally that these ancient places pre-date the nation state and have existed as empires and civilizations for 8+ millennia.
With the deliberate, purposive looting and destruction of the world’s most ancient monuments [the US Army camping on top of Ur, instead of next to it, destroying it; Palmyra and Aleppo another; the most ancient Christian monasteries another in NE Syria and the Golan; etc. etc.] one really has to wonder at the sheer envy, viciousness and deadly malice driving such an ambition.
You might read Douglas Reed’s The Controversy Of Zion for some insight.
Meanwhile, here’s what’s going on in Romania this weekend.
https://youtu.be/EYlZe1o9Mf4
I suppose if you have a tanking economy, rocketing unemployment, no investment, but a great need for foreign cash, it makes a great business model – hire out your young men as a fighting force for NATO whackjobs like Mr Stupidberg, and get paid a sack of cash. And no outgoings, because you simply bludgeon the recruits into serving for free through a compulsory program of unpaid national service. All you have to find is the cost of a bowl of millet for breakfast, a bowl of carrot soup for lunch, and a bowl of stew for supper – probably around $5 per day should cover it. Uncle Sam will provide the uniforms and some cheap ill-fitting boots.
And if they get killed accidentally, tell their parents to hurry up and breed some more. Their sisters can find other ways to ‘serve’ the American servicemen. Apparently $10 a time. Or as little as $6 in Baia Mare.
Romania began as a backward nation serving the Roman Legions. Now it serves the Americans in similar fashion.
Sad!!
Thanks for “Mr. Stupidberg” – spot on :-))
And Richard Le Sarcophage supplied “Thanatopolis DC” yesterday – brilliant.
My private name for H Clinton is “Bibi’s Lapdog”….don’t know if it rates.
Vaska, OffGuardian should run a Dictionary on the side…
Similar can be said for the Baltic states although they don’t have the excuse of having once served as barbarian outposts of the Roman empire or the Ottoman empire.
Although the peoples of the Baltic may not have served as Roman vassals, they were certainly known to Rome, and traded with the Romans. Tacitus viewed them as ‘Germans’ in his study On The Germanic Peoples . With a typically Roman eye for managing resources, he mentioned that they were ‘valuable for their production of corn, and of amber’. Tacitus never travelled in Baltic region himself (or to any parts of Germany either) – all of his information seems to have come from Roman legions who had served or explored there.
The peoples of the Baltic in Tacitus’ time would have traded amber with the Romans through middlemen neighbours who would have been the sources of the information Tacitus had about them. If not actually “Germans” themselves, some of these Baltic groups would have been related to Germanic-speaking peoples.
Very probably! Like all the best journalists, Tacitus rarely disclosed his sources. Of course, some parts of the Baltics were German in a very real sense – much of modern Lithuania was formerly Eastern Prussia in the 19th century. The characters in Bulgakov’s The White Guard refer to the Balts (somewhat incorrectly, but plausibly for their characters) as “Germans”. The reference is probably not ethnic or political, but identifies to whom they owed ultimate allegiance.
Reblogged this on TheFlippinTruth.
You must remember that Wikileaks started out as an anti-Chinese operation in large part, then grew, then effectively buried the Manning leaks by handing them over to the Establishment MSM, then Assange got to play Lee Harvey Oswald. If Assange is working for the Real Evil Empire again, he’ll probably see his Swedish business cleared up, but, of course, the Yanks may still double-cross him again-it’s in their DNA.
It is remarkable that in all the trillions of leaks released since Wikileaks started there has been nothing – NADA! – about 911. And little on Mossad / AIPAC’s relations with the US government. One would think these would be hard to avoid since even the MSM connects the dots once in a while.
That is a consequence of Assange’s model for releasing the data to the Great Unwashed, namely via conventional MSM outfits such as The Guardian and NYT. The ‘jounralists’ at these outfits selected what was published, not Assange. I think Assange had a big row with the Guardian ‘sournalists’ over all this, shortly prior to him being taken down in Sweden.
It’s a fair point, indeed.
Yet what else should he have done? A leak that remains in obscurity changes nothing.
Perhaps he should have selected a media source which is barely seen by anyone. For example – The Independent? 😀
I really would like to ask Andrew Rosenthal one simple question on prime time live US TV:
‘In the greatest democracy in the world, would you explain why it is not an acceptable position for a Presidential Candidate to state that they wish to engage sensibly with the President of Russia and to give the US people the chance to state that they support such a position?’
Whether or not Trump’s position is popular or not, it is absolutely his right to hold it and, if it is very unpopular, then surely the Democratic NY mafia will be in heaven, as their candidate will surely be elected by a landslide?
It is after all absolutely clear that Andrew Rosenthal represents precisely no-one, since if he did or were trying to, he might use his brains a bit more than merely typing up copy he has had supplied for him by others……..
Regarding the Olympics, I could not agree more with this:
“The whole scandal is motivated not by problems with doping, but by an attempt to further isolate Russia from the world and slander its leadership and people.”
No one in the mainstream media is talking about how absurd it is. I started laughing in my car when I heard it announced on the radio in stern tones that the “entire” Russian men’s weightlifting team had been banned. Well, yes, weightlifting. Everyone knows that sport’s global reputation for being squeaky clean around steroids. Why if the Russian men’s team were such naughty outliers as to actually be using banned substances, well my heavens. Of course they need to be fended off with sticks so as not to contaminate the clean living Popeyes trained on nothing but cans of spinach from other countries.
It just shows what vermin the Western MSM are, after forty years of total domination by the hard Right, the likes of the Murdoch cancer. The Russian doping hate campaign has been LUDICROUS but the hate-propaganda RELENTLESS, and totally uniform. You NEVER see dissent one nanometre from the Establishment line these days, anywhere, yet the presstitute scum have the utter gall to call Russia ‘totalitarian’. Kakistocracy, ie the rule of the worst in society, is so firmly established in the West that a thermo-nuclear war may be, at least, merciful release from a descent into a Hell of rule of, by and for ruthless, deamonic, psychopaths.
“Like”…………Don’t hold back, let it out.
https://youtu.be/1_I4WgBfETc
Hollywood has always been the ‘Propaganda’ arm of the American government. It’s their job to ‘condition’ they way Americans think. They’re very good at it. Remember the scene from “Wall Street”…………”Greed is good, greed is right, greed works”…………followed a decade or so later by The Global Financial meltdown, orchestrated by Wall St.
They did a remake in 2008 with the Chinese as the invaders.
The “villains” in the remake were North Korea, using US vehicles. Arguably a worse film (and certainly more disable as propaganda) than the anti-Soviet original.
I suspect that after further revelations of Wikileaks, the inner motivations of Assange would be obvious. After all, he is one of the few who has seen all. with further info we will be able to assess better.
Maybe he’s trying to help Jill Stein: Assange to speak to Green Party Convention via live feed.