Estland stopt militaire oefening na een 'vergissing' >> de lancering van een raket in het grensgebied met Rusland......

Estland 'heeft een vroegtijdig einde gemaakt' aan één van de voordurende militaire oefeningen van de NAVO langs de grens met Rusland.....

Een Spaanse straaljager vuurde per ongeluk een raket af, gelukkig zonder, althans zo lijkt het, een slachtoffer te hebben gemaakt, of een doel te hebben geraakt......

Dit voorval zet nog eens extra grote vraagtekens bij de voortdurende militaire oefeningen van de NAVO langs de grens met Rusland.......

Als zo'n raket 'per ongeluk' een Russische stad of militaire basis had geraakt, waren de rapen gaar geweest en was de kans groot geweest dat we verwikkeld waren geweest in een oorlog met Rusland, een oorlog die vrijwel zeker tot een volledige wereldoorlog zou hebben geleid.......

Deze NAVO oefeningen gaan terug tot 2004, lang voordat de relatie met Rusland werd vernield door het westen..... Ofwel de NAVO agressie tegen Rusland was al bezig voordat Georgië in 2008 tekeer ging in Zuid-Ossetië en voordat de VS een opstand in Oekraïne organiseerde, met de opzet de democratische gekozen president af te zetten, waardoor nu een uiterst corrupte neonazi-junta dit land 'regeert', een junta die werd geparachuteerd door de VS, met volledige instemming van de hypocriete EU......

Het voorgaande betekent ook nog eens dat de EU NAVO lidstaten, inclusief de Nederlandse regering, hebben gelogen toen ze hun bevolking voorhielden dat de Baltische staten verdedigd moesten worden tegen Rusland, dit n.a.v. de zogenaamde annexatie van De Krim en de leugens over het Russische leger dat in Oost-Oekraïne zou vechten......

De agressie in het bewuste gebied (en andere gebieden langs de Russische grens) komt maar van één kant: de NAVO (onder leiding van de VS) en haar voortdurende militaire oefeningen langs die grens!!

Stop de VS/NAVO agressie tegen Rusland, de NAVO is zelfs illegaal aanwezig in Oost-Europa, gezien de afspraken die met Sovjet president Gorbatsjov werden gemaakt in 1991.......

Nederland zou zich terug moeten trekken uit de NAVO, de hoogste tijd voor de ontmanteling van deze uiterst gewelddadige terreurorganisatie!!

Het volgende Associated Press (AP) artikel dat gisteren werd gepubliceerd over dit 'ongelukje' werd geschreven door Jari Tanner:

Estonia halts NATO air drills after jet misfires missile

By JARI TANNER

HELSINKI (AP) — Estonia’s defense minister has ordered a halt to NATO air exercises in Estonia pending an investigation after a missile was accidentally fired over the Baltic country’s airspace by a Spanish fighter jet on a military exercise this week.

The air-to-air missile that was erroneously launched Tuesday over southern Estonia has not been found, but no people were reported injured or killed by the misfiring, Defense Minister Juri Luik said Thursday.

“The Spanish defense minister has apologized and expressed deep regret,” Luik said at a news conference in the Estonian capital of Tallinn, adding that the commander of the Spanish Armed Forces apologized as well.

Estonian Prime Minister Juri Ratas spoke with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on Wednesday, expressing Estonia’s concern over the “serious incident.”

The AMRAAM-type missile has a range of up to 100 kilometers (62 miles.) It may have crashed into a remote nature reserve in the eastern Jogeva region, not far from Estonia’s border with Russia, or triggered its built-in self-destruct mode and exploded in midair, Luik said.

The Eurofighter Typhoon jet belonging to the Spanish Air Force was part of NATO’s Baltic air-policing mission based in Lithuania and was carrying air-to-air missiles containing up to 10 kilograms (22 pounds) of explosives.

While Luik urged Spain to conduct a thorough investigation, he also launched an internal review of the safety regulations for arranging military air exercises in the tiny NATO nation of 1.3 million.
Until the completion of that review “I have suspended all NATO exercises in the Estonian airspace,” he said.

Luik reaffirmed Estonia’s trust in NATO’s Baltic air mission, which started in 2004 as Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania joined the military alliance. The three former Soviet republics don’t possess fighter jets of their own.

The air policing is carried out from NATO’s bases in Siauliai, Lithuania, and Amari, Estonia. French, Portuguese and Spanish fighter jets are currently in charge of the rotating four-month mission.

In Moscow, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Thursday the Estonian missile incident showed that NATO’s air drills are security risks for the region.


“What happened is yet another vivid demonstration of the fact that NATO’s actions, including in the Baltic states, pose extra risks to security rather than improving it,” Zakharova told reporters.
==============================
Zie ook:
'VS zendt tegen wil van de bevolking in 1.500 militairen naar Duitsland, opbouw voor WOIII?'

'VS vergroot doelbewust de spanningen met Rusland: een enorme VS troepenopbouw langs de Russische grens..........'

'NAVO oefent op een nucleaire aanval tegen 'een denkbeeldige vijand', ofwel Rusland..........'

'Rechtse denktank waarschuwt voor een groot risico op een kernoorlog met Rusland.....'

'VS sluit een nucleaire aanval niet uit als een mogelijke reactie op een 'cyberaanval.......''

'VS op weg naar daadwerkelijk gebruik van het kernwapen..............'

'VN chef Guterres geeft alarmcode rood af voor de wereld in 2018 en niet alleen vanwege het milieu of klimaat......'

PS: opvallend, 'de enorme belangstelling' van de reguliere media in ons land voor deze uiterst gevaarlijke vergissing........

Professor Stephen Cohen prikt door de Putin – Trump hysterie heen, hysterie als gevolg van 'vredesbesprekingen....'

Professor Stephen Cohen prikt in een interview dat Aaron Mate afnam, fijntjes door de Putin – Trump hysterie heen, de hysterie die in de VS ontstond na het gesprek dat Putin en Trump voerden in de Finse hoofdstad Helsinki. Men raakt er in de VS weer niet over uitgesproken, al heeft dat alles met de reguliere, over het algemeen rechtse neoliberale pers in de VS te maken, uiteraard aangevuld met de democratische en republikeinse politici die openlijk lobbyen voor het militair-industrieel complex..........

Vanaf het eind van de Sovjet-Unie tot de ontmoeting van Trump en Putin, zet Cohen duidelijk uiteen hoe we zijn voorgelogen, bijvoorbeeld over 'de oorlog van Rusland tegen Georgië', via Oekraïne, De Krim tot Syrië.....

Voorts moet ik Cohen gelijk geven als hij stelt dat we nu blij mogen zijn met Trump als president, daar hij niet meegaat in de oorlogshitserij die zoveel VS politici in hun greep houdt. Zoals op deze plek al eerder gesteld, wat is erop tegen dat men met elkaar spreekt en probeert oorlog te voorkomen??? Oké Trump is een beest, maar liever een beest dat niet aanvalt dan bijvoorbeeld Obama die 2 volledige termijnen in illegale oorlogsvoering was verwikkeld, zelfs 2 illegale oorlogen extra begon en veel meer bommen liet afwerpen dan Bush in 2 termijnen....... 

Cohen stelt voorts terecht dat het onder eerdere presidenten de normaalste zaak van de wereld was om te spreken met de Russische collega's, terwijl dat nu als verraad wordt neergezet, alleen om Trump af te kunnen zetten en ongebreideld oorlog te kunnen voeren, zoals de VS gewend is te doen.......

Cohen gaat ook in op de beschuldiging dat Putin journalisten laat vermoorden, terwijl daar geen bewijs voor wordt geleverd, sterker nog: Cohen stelt dat deze moorden alles te maken hebben met de georganiseerde misdaad in Rusland......

Lezen mensen en geeft het door, de hoogste tijd dat we met z'n allen weer ons gezonde verstand gebruiken en ons niet langer laten voorliegen en gek laten maken door de reguliere media en het grootste deel van de politici in ons land!

Video: Debunking the Putin Panic With Professor Stephen Cohen

July 31, 2018 at 8:02 am

Written by Real News

(RN) — President Trump’s warm words for Vladimir Putin and his failure to endorse U.S. intelligence community claims about alleged Russian meddling have been called “treasonous” and the cause of a “national security crisis.” There is a crisis, says Prof. Stephen F. Cohen, but one of our own making…

Part 1:

AARON MATE: It’s The Real News. I’m Aaron Mate.

The White House is walking back another statement from President Trump about Russia and U.S. intelligence. It began in Helsinki on Monday, when at his press conference with Vladimir Putin, Trump did not endorse the claim that Russia meddled in the 2016 election. After an outcry that played out mostly on cable news, Trump appeared to retract that view one day later. But then on Wednesday, Trump was asked if he believes Russia is now targeting the U.S. ahead of the midterms.

DONALD TRUMP: [Thank] you all very much. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you.

REPORTER: Is Russia still targeting the U.S. [inaudible]. No, you don’t believe that to be the case?

DONALD TRUMP: Thank you very much, everyone. We’re doing very well. We are doing very well, and we’re doing very well, probably as well as anybody has ever done with Russia. And there’s been no president ever as tough as I have been on Russia. All you have to do is look at the numbers, look at what we’ve done, look at sanctions, look at ambassadors. Not there. Look, unfortunately, at what happened in Syria recently. I think President Putin knows that better than anybody. Certainly a lot better than the media.

AARON MATE: The White House later claimed that when Trump said ‘no,’ he meant no to answering questions. But Trump’s contradiction of U.S. intelligence claims has brought the Russiagate story, one that has engulfed his presidency, to a fever pitch. Prominent U.S. figures have called Trump’s comments in Helsinki treasonous, and compared alleged Russian e-mail hacking and social media activity to 9/11 and Pearl Harbor. Those who also question intelligence claims or warmongering with Russia have been dubbed traitors, or Kremlin agents.

Speaking to MSNBC, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul declared that with Trump’s comments, the U.S. is in the midst of a national security crisis.

MICHAEL MCFAUL: Republicans need to step up. They need to speak out, not just the familiar voices, because this is a national security crisis, and the president of the United States flew all the way to Finland, met with Vladimir Putin, and basically capitulated. It felt like appeasement.

AARON MATE: Well, joining me to address this so-called national security crisis is Stephen Cohen, professor emeritus at New York University and Princeton University. His books include “Failed Crusade: America and the Tragedy of Post-Soviet Russia,” and “Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War.” Professor Cohen, welcome. I imagine that you might agree with the view that we are in the midst of a national security crisis when it comes to Russia, but for far different reasons than those expounded on by Ambassador McFaul.

STEPHEN COHEN: There is a national security crisis, and there is a Russian threat. And we, we ourselves here in the United States, have created both of them. This has been true for years, and now it’s reached crisis proportion. Notice what’s going on. A mainstream TV reporter shouts to President Trump, “Are the Russians still targeting our elections?” This is in the category “Are you still beating your wife?” There is no proof that the Russians have targeted or attacked our elections. But it’s become axiomatic. What kind of media is that, are the Russians still, still attacking our elections.

And what Michael McFaul, whom I’ve known for years, formerly Ambassador McFaul, purportedly a scholar and sometimes a scholar said, it is simply the kind of thing, to be as kind as I can, that I heard from the John Birch Society about President Eisenhower when he went to meet Khrushchev when I was a kid growing up in Kentucky. This is fringe discourse that never came anywhere near the mainstream before, at least after Joseph McCarthy, that the president went, committed treason, and betrayed the country. Trump may have not done the right thing at the summit, because agreements were reached. Nobody discusses the agreements. But to stage a kangaroo trial of the president of the United States in the mainstream media, and have plenty of once-dignified people come on and deliver the indictment, is without precedent in this country. And it has created a national crisis in our relations with Russia. So yes, there’s a national crisis.

AARON MATE: Let me play for you a clip from Trump’s news conference with Putin that also drew outrage back in the U.S. When he was asked about the state of U.S.-Russia relations, he said both sides had responsibility.

DONALD TRUMP: Yes, I do. I hold both countries responsible. I think that the United States has been foolish. I think we’ve all been foolish. We should have had this dialogue a long time ago. A long time, frankly, before I got to office. And I think we’re all to blame. I think that the United States now has stepped forward, along with Russia, and we’re getting together, and we have a chance to do some great things. Whether it’s nuclear proliferation, in terms of stopping, because we have to do it. Ultimately that’s probably the most important thing that we can be working on.

AARON MATE: That’s President Trump in Helsinki. Professor Cohen, I imagine that this comment probably was part of the reason why there was so much outrage, not Just of what Trump said about the claims of Russian meddling in the election. Can you talk about the significance of what he said here, and how it contradicts the, the entire consensus of the bipartisan foreign policy establishment?

STEPHEN COHEN: I did not vote for President Trump. But for that I salute him, what he just said. So far as I can remember, no wiser words or more important words have been spoken by the American president about Russia and the Soviet Union since Ronald Reagan did his great detente with Mikhail Gorbachev in the late 1980s. What Trump just did, and I don’t- we never know, Aaron, how aware he is of the ramifications of what he says. But in this case, whether he fully understood it or not, he just broke with, and the first time any major political figure in the United States has broken with the orthodoxy, ever since at least 2000. And even going back to the ’90s. That all the conflicts we’ve had with post-Soviet Russia, after communism went away in Russia, all those conflicts, which I call a new and more dangerous Cold War, are solely, completely, the fault of Putin or Putin’s Russia. That nothing in American policy since Bill Clinton in the 1990s did anything to contribute seriously to the very dangerous conflict, confrontation we have with Russia today. It was all Russia’s fault.

What that has meant, and you know this, Aaron, because you live in this world as well, it has meant no media or public dialogue about the merits of American policy toward post-Soviet Russia from Clinton, certainly through Obama. It may be changing now under President Trump. Not sure. It means if we don’t have a debate, we’re not permitted to ask, did we do something wrong, or so unwise that it led to this even more dangerous Cold War? And if the debate leads to a conclusion that we did do something unwise, and that we’re still doing it, then arises the pressure and the imperative for any new policy toward Russia. None of that has been permitted, because the orthodoxy, the dogma, the axiom, is Putin alone has solely been responsible.

So you know, you know as well as I do what is excluded. It doesn’t matter that we moved NATO to Russia’s borders, that’s not significant. Or that we bombed Serbia, Russia’s traditional ally. Or that George Bush left the Antiballistic Missile Treaty, which was the bedrock of Russian nuclear security and, I would argue, our own. Or that we did regime change by military might in Iraq and Libya, and many other things. Or that we provoked the Ukrainian crisis in 2004, and supported the coup that overthrew a legitimate, elected, constitutional president there. None of that matters. Oh, it was kind of footnotes to the real narrative. And the narrative is, is that a Russian leader Vladimir Putin in power was a horrible aggressor. Killed everybody, somehow, with secret poisons or thieves in the night who opposed him. And began this new cold or even worse war with the United States.

No historian of any merit will ever write the story that way. It’s factually, analytically, simply untrue. Now Trump has said something radically different. We got here in these dire circumstances because both sides acted unwisely, and we should have had this discussion a long time ago. So for that, two cheers for President Trump. But whether he can inspire the discussion that he may wish to, considering the fact that he’s now being indicted as a criminal for having met Putin, is a big question.

AARON MATE: So a few questions. You mentioned that some agreements were made, but details on that have been vague. So do you have any sense of what concretely came out of this summit? There was talk about cooperation on nuclear weapons, possibly renewing the New START Treaty. We know that Putin offered that to Trump when he first came into office, but Trump rejected it. There was talk about cooperating in Syria. And, well, yeah, if I can put that question to you first, and then I have a follow-up about what might be motivating Trump here. But first, what do you think concretely came out of this?

STEPHEN COHEN: Well, look, I know a lot, both as a historian, and I’ve actually participated in some about the history of American-Russian, previously Soviet, summits. Which, by the way, this is the 75th anniversary of the very first one, when Franklin Roosevelt traveled to Tehran to meet Stalin. And every president, and this is important to emphasize, every president since

Roosevelt has met with the Kremlin leader. Some many times, or several times. So there’s a long tradition. And therefore there are customs. And one custom, this goes to your question, is that never, except maybe very rarely, but almost never do we learn the full extent and nature of what agreements were made. That usually comes in a week or two or three later, because there’s still the teams of both are hammering out the details.

So that’s exactly what happened at this summit. There was no conspiracy. No, you know, appeasement behind closed doors. The two leaders announced in general terms what they agreed upon. Now, the most important, and this is traditional, too, by meeting they intended to revive the diplomatic process between the United States and Russia which has been badly tattered by events including the exclusion of diplomats, and sanctions, and the rest. So to get active, vigorous diplomacy about many issues going. They may not achieve that goal, because the American media and the political mainstream is trying to stop that. Remember that anything approaching diplomatic negotiations with Russia still less detente, is now being criminalized in the United States. Criminalized. What was once an honorable tradition, the pursuit of detente, is now a capital crime, if we believe these charges against Trump.

So they tried to revive that process, and we’ll see if it’s going to be possible. I think at least behind the scenes it will be. Obviously what you mentioned, both sides now have new, more elusive, more lethal, faster, more precise nuclear weapons. We’ve been developing them for a long time in conjunction with missile defense. We’ve essentially been saying to Russia, you may have equality in nuclear weapons with us, but we have missile defense. Therefore, we could use missile defense to take out your retaliatory capacity. That is, we could stage the first strike on you and you would not be able to retaliate.

Now, everybody who’s lived through the nuclear era knows that’s an invitation to disaster. Because like it or not, we’ve lived with a doctrine called MAD, Mutual Assured Destruction, that one side dare not attack the other with a nuclear weapon because it would be destroyed as well. We were saying we now have this primacy. Putin, then, on March 1 of this year, announced that they have developed weapons that can elude missile defense. And it seems to be true. In the air and at sea, their dodgy, darty, quick thing- but they could avoid our missile defense. So where we are at now is on the cusp of a new nuclear arms race involving more dangerous nuclear weapons. And the current START, New START Treaty will expire, I think, in three or four years. But its expiration date is less important that the process of talking and negotiating and worrying officially about these new weapons had ended.

So essentially what Trump and Putin agreed is that process of concern about new and more dangerous nuclear weapons must now resume immediately. And if there’s anybody living in the United States who think that that is a bad idea they need to reconsider their life, because they may be looking into the darkness of death. So that was excellent. Briefly.

What I hope they did- they didn’t announce it, but I’m pretty sure they did- that there had been very close calls between American and Russian combat forces and their proxies in Syria. We’re doing a proxy war, but there are plenty of native Russians and Americans in Syria in a relatively small combat cell. And there have been casualties. The Russians have said at the highest level the next time a Russian is killed in Syria by an American-based weapon, we will strike the American launcher. If Russia strikes our launching pads or areas, whether on land or sea, which means Americans will be there and are killed, call it war. Call it war.

So we need to agree in Syria to do more than, what do they call it, deconfliction, where we have all these warnings. It’s still too much space for mishap. And what I hope it think Trump and Putin did was to try to get a grip on this.

AARON MATE: Stephen F. Cohen, professor emeritus at at Princeton University and New York University, thank you. And stay tuned for part two. I’m Aaron Mate for The Real News.

*  *  *

There is much to criticize the Russian president for, says Professor Stephen F. Cohen of Princeton and NYU, but many US political and media claims about Putin are false – and reckless…

Part 2:

AARON MATE: It’s The Real News. I’m Aaron Mate. This is part two with Stephen Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies at New York University and Princeton. In part one we talked about the uproar over the Trump-Putin summit, and Trump’s comments about the U.S. intelligence community and about cooperation with Russia. Now in part two we’re going to get to some of the main talking points that have been pervasive throughout corporate media, talking about the stated reasons for why pundits and politicians say they are opposed to Trump sitting down with Putin.

So let me start with Jon Meacham. He is a historian. And speaking to CNN, he worried that Trump, with his comments about NATO calling on the alliance to pay more, and calling into question, he worried about the possibility that Trump won’t come to the aid of Baltic states in the event that Russia invades.

JON MEACHAM: And what worries me most is the known unknown, as Donald Rumsfeld might put it, of what happens next. Let’s say Putin- just look at this whole week of the last five, six days in total. What happens if Putin launches military action against, say, the Baltics? What, what is it that President Trump, what about his comments that NATO suggest thar he would follow an invocation of Article 5 and actually project American force in defense of the values that not only do we have an intellectual and moral assent to, but a contractual one, a treaty one. I think that’s the great question going forward.

AARON MATE: OK. So that’s Jon Meacham speaking to CNN. So, Professor Cohen, putting aside what he said there about our intellectual values and strong tradition, just on the issue of Trump, of Putin posing a potential threat and possibly invading the Baltics, is that a realistic possibility?

STEPHEN COHEN: So, I’m not sure what you’re asking me about. The folly of NATO expansion? The fact that every president in my memory has asked the Europeans to pay more? But can we be real? Can we be real? The only country that’s attacked that region of Europe militarily since the end of the Soviet Union was the United States of America. As I recall, we bombed Serbia, a, I say this so people understand, a traditional Christian country, under Bill Clinton, bombed Serbia for about 80 days. There is no evidence that Russia has ever bombed a European country.

You tell me, Aaron. You must be a smart guy, because you got your own television show. Why would Putin want to launch a military attack and occupy the Baltics? So he has to pay the pensions there? Which he’s having a hard time already paying in Russia, and therefore has had to raise the pension age, and thereby lost 10 percentage points of popularity in two weeks? Why in the world can we, can we simply become rational people. Why in the world would Russia want to attack and occupy Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia? The only reason I can think of is that many, many of my friends love to take their summer vacations there. And maybe some crazy person thinks that if we occupy it, vacations will be cheaper. It’s crazy. It’s beyond crazy. It’s a kind-.

AARON MATE: Professor Cohen, if you were on CNN right now I imagine that the anchor would say to you, well, okay, but one could say the same thing about Georgia in 2008. Why did Russia attack Georgia then?

STEPHEN COHEN: I’m not aware that Russia attacked Georgia. The European Commission, if you’re talking about the 2008 war, the European Commission, investigating what happened, found that Georgia, which was backed by the United States, fighting with an American-built army under the control of the, shall we say, slightly unpredictable Georgian president then, Saakashvili, that he began the war by firing on Russian enclaves. And the Kremlin, which by the way was not occupied by Putin, but by Michael McFaul and Obama’s best friend and reset partner then-president Dmitry Medvedev, did what any Kremlin leader, what any leader in any country would have had to do: it reacted. It sent troops across the border through the tunnel, and drove the Georgian forces out of what essentially were kind of Russian protectorate areas of Georgia.

So that- Russia didn’t begin that war. And it didn’t begin the one in Ukraine, either. We did that by [continents], the overthrow of the Ukrainian president in [20]14 after President Obama told Putin that he would not permit that to happen. And I think it happened within 36 hours. The Russians, like them or not, feel that they have been lied to and betrayed. They use this word, predatl’stvo, betrayal, about American policy toward Russia ever since 1991, when it wasn’t just President George Bush, all the documents have been published by the National Security Archive in Washington, all the leaders of the main Western powers promised the Soviet Union that under Gorbachev, if Gorbachev would allow a reunited Germany to be NATO, NATO would not, in the famous expression, move two inches to the east.

Now NATO is sitting on Russia’s borders from the Baltic to Ukraine. So Russians aren’t fools, and they’re good-hearted, but they become resentful. They’re worried about being attacked by the United States. In fact, you read and hear in the Russian media daily, we are under attack by the United States. And this is a lot more real and meaningful than this crap that is being put out that Russia somehow attacked us in 2016. I must have been sleeping. I didn’t see Pearl Harbor or 9/11 and 2016. This is reckless, dangerous, warmongering talk. It needs to stop. Russia has a better case for saying they’ve been attacked by us since 1991. We put our military alliance on the front door. Maybe it’s not an attack, but it looks like one, feels like one. Could be one.

AARON MATE: OK. And in a moment I want to speak to you more about Ukraine, because we’ve heard Crimea invoked a lot in the criticism of Putin of late. But first I want to actually to ask you about a domestic issue. This one is it’s widely held that Putin is responsible for the killing of journalists and opposition activists who oppose him. And on this front I want to play for you a clip of Joe Cirincione. He is the head of the Ploughshares Fund. And this is what he said this week in an appearance on Democracy Now!.

JOE CIRINCIONE: Both of these men are dangerous. Both of these men oppress basic human rights, basic freedoms. Both of them think the press are the enemy of the people. Putin goes further. He kills journalists. He has them assassinated on the streets of Moscow.

Donald Trump does not go that far yet. But I think what Putin is doing is using the president of the United States to project his rule, to increase his power, to carry out his agenda in Syria, with Europe, et cetera, and that Trump is acquiescing to that for reasons that are not yet clear.

AARON MATE: That’s Joe Cirincione.

STEPHEN COHEN: I know him well. It’s worse than that. It’s worse than that.

AARON MATE: Well Yes. There’s two issues here, Professor Cohen. One is the state of the crackdown on press freedoms in Russia, which I’m sure you would say is very much alive, and is a strong part of the Russian system. But let’s first address this widely-held view that Putin is responsible for killing journalists who are critical of him.

STEPHEN COHEN: I know I’m supposed to follow your lead, but I think you’re skipping over a major point. How is it that Joe, who was once one of our most eminent and influential, eloquent opponents of nuclear arms race, who was prepared to have the president of the United States negotiate with every Soviet communist leader, including those who had a lot of blood on their hands, now decide that Putin kills everybody and he’s not a worthy partner? What happened to Joe?

I’ll tell you what happened to him. Trump. Trump has driven once-sensible people completely crazy. Moreover, Joe knows absolutely nothing about internal Russian politics, and he ought to follow my rule. When I don’t know something about something, I say I don’t know. But what he just said is ludicrous. And the sad part is-.

AARON MATE: But it’s widely held. If it’s ludicrous-. But widely held, yeah.

STEPHEN COHEN: Well, the point is that once distinguished and important spokespeople for rightful causes, like ending a nuclear arms race, have been degraded, or degraded themselves by saying things like he said to the point that they’re of utility today only to the proponents of a new nuclear arms race. And he’s not alone. Somebody called it Trump derangement syndrome. I’m not a psychiatrist, but it’s a widespread mania across our land. And when good people succumb to it, we are all endangered.

AARON MATE: But many people would be surprised to hear that, because again, the stories that we get, and there are human rights reports, and it’s just sort of taken as a given fact that Putin is responsible for killing journalists. So if that’s ludicrous, if you can explain why you think that is.

STEPHEN COHEN: Well, I got this big problem which seems to afflict very few people in public life anymore. I live by facts. I’m like my doctor, who told me not long ago I had to have minor surgery for a problem I didn’t even know I had. And I said, I’m not going to do it. Show me the facts. And he did. I had the minor surgery. Journalists no longer seem to care about facts. They repeat tabloid rumors. Putin kills everybody.

All I can tell you is this. I have never seen any evidence whatsoever, and I’ve been- I knew some of the people who were killed. Anna Politkovskaya, the famous journalist for Novaya Gazeta was the first, I think, who was- Putin was accused of killing. I knew her well. She was right here, in this apartment. Look behind me, right here. She was here with my wife, Katrina vanden Huevel. I wouldn’t say we were close friends, but we were associates in Moscow, and we were social friends. And I mourn her assassination today. But I will tell you this, that neither her editors at that newspaper, nor her family, her surviving sons, think Putin had anything to do with the killing. No evidence has ever been presented. Only media kangaroo courts that Putin was involved in these high-profile assassinations, two of the most famous being this guy Litvinenko by polonium in London, about the time Anna was killed, and more recently Boris Netsov, whom, it’s always said, was walking within view of the Kremlin when he was shot. Well, you could see the Kremlin from miles away. I don’t know what within the view- unless they think Putin was, you know, watching it through binoculars. There is no evidence that Putin ever ordered the killing of anybody outside his capacity as commander in chief. No evidence.

Now, did he? But we live, Aaron, and I hope the folks who watch us remember this. Every professional person, every decent person lives or malpractices based on verified facts. You go down the wrong way on a one-way street, you might get killed. You take some medication that’s not prescribed for you, you might die. You pursue foreign policies based on fiction, you’re likely to get in war. And all these journalists, from the New York Times to the Washington Post, from MSNBC to CNN who churn out daily these allegations that Putin kills people are disgracing themselves. I will give you one fact. Wait. One fact, and you could look it up, as Casey Stengel used to say. He was a baseball manager, in case you don’t know.

There’s an organization called the Committee to Protect American Journalists. It’s kind of iconic. It does good things, it says unwise things. Go on its website and look at the number of Russian journalists killed since 1991, since the end of the Soviet Union, under two leaders. Boris Yeltsin, whom we dearly loved and still mourn, and Putin, whom we hate. Last time I looked, the numbers may have changed, more were killed under Yeltsin than under Putin. Did Putin kill those in the 1990s?

So you should ask me, why did they die, then? And I can tell you the main reason. Corrupt business. Mafia-like business in Russia. Just like happened in the United States during our primitive accumulation days. Profit seekers killed rivals. Killed them dead in the streets. Killed them as demonstrations, as demonstrative acts. The only thing you could say about Putin is that he might have created an atmosphere that abets that sort of thing. To which I would say, maybe, but originally it was created with the oligarchical class under Boris Yeltsin, who remains for us the most beloved Russian leader in history. So that’s the long and the short of it. Go look at the listing on the Committee to Protect Journalists.

AARON MATE: OK. So, following up on that, to what extent- and this gets a bit into history, which you’ve covered extensively in your writings. To what extent are we here in the West responsible for the creation of that Russian oligarchal class that you mentioned? But also, what is Putin’s relationship to it now, today? Does he abet it? Is he entrenched in it? We hear, often, talk of Putin possibly being the richest person in the world as a result of his entanglement with the very corruption of Russia you’re speaking about. So both our role in creating that problem in Russia, but then also Putin’s role now in terms of his relationship to it.

STEPHEN COHEN: I’m going to give you a quick, truncated, scholarly, historical perspective on this. But this is what people should begin with when they think about Vladimir Putin and his 18 years in power. Putin came to power almost accidentally in 2000. He inherited a country whose state had collapsed twice in the 20th century. You’ve got to think about that. How many states have collapsed that you know of once? But the Russian state, Russian statehood, had collapsed once in 1917 during the revolution, and again in 1991 when the Soviet Union ended. The country was in ruination; 75 percent of the people were in poverty.

Putin said- and this obsesses him. If you want to know what obsesses Putin, it’s the word ‘sovereignty.’ Russia lost its sovereignty- political, foreign policy, security, financial- in the 1990s. Putin saw his mission, as I read him, and I try to read him as a biographer. He says a lot, to regain Russia’s sovereignty, which meant to make the country whole again at home, to rescue its people, and to protect its defenses. That’s been his mission. Has it been more than that? Maybe. But everything he’s done, as I see it, has followed that concept of his role in history. And he’s done pretty well.

Now, I can give you all Putin’s minuses very easily. I would not care for him to be my president. But let me tell you one other thing that’s important. You evaluate nations within their own history, not within ours. If you asked me if Putin is a democrat, and I will answer you two ways. He thinks he has. And compared to what? Compared to the leader of Egypt? Yeah, he is a democrat. Compared to the rulers of our pals in the Gulf states, he is a democrat. Compared to Bill Clinton? No, he’s not a Democrat. I mean, Russia-. Countries are on their own historical clock. And you have to judge Putin in terms of his predecessors. So people think Putin is a horrible leader. Did you prefer Brezhnev? Did you prefer Stalin? Did you prefer Andropov? Compared to what? Please tell me, compared to what.

And by the way, that’s how that’s how Russians-. You want to know why he’s so popular in Russia? Because Russians judge him in the context of their own what they call zhivaya istoriya, living history; what we call autobiography. In terms of their own lives, he looks pretty darn good. They complain out him. We sit in the kitchen and they bitch about Putin all the time. But they don’t want him to go away.

AARON MATE: All right. Well, on that front, we’re going to wrap this up there. Stephen Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies at New York University and Princeton. His books include “Failed Crusade: America and the Tragedy of Post-Soviet Russia,” and “Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War.” Professor Cohen, thank you.

STEPHEN COHEN: You forgot one book.

AARON MATE: I did not say I was reading your, your complete bibliography.

STEPHEN COHEN: It’s called-. It’s called “Confessions of a Holy Fool.”

AARON MATE: Is that true? Or are you making a joke.

STEPHEN COHEN: Somewhere in between. [Thank you, Aaron.]

AARON MATE: Professor Cohen, thank you. And thank you for joining us on The Real News.

Republished with permission / TheRealNews.com / Report a typo

Zie ook:
'VS torpedojager arriveert in Zwarte Zee terwijl de boel daar op scherp staat........'

'Putin en Trump halen spanning uit de lucht >> de westerse wereld schreeuwt moord en brand......'

'Russiagate hysterie na bezoek Trump aan Putin blijft groeien, zonder dat daarvoor een nanometer aan bewijs is geleverd.....'

'De Russiagate samenzweringstheorie dient de machthebbers.........' Zie ook de links in dat bericht!

'Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin's War on America and the Election of Donald Trump'

En zie de volgende video (7,5 minuut genieten!):

Watch: Professor Stephen Cohen Schools Neocon in CNN Debate on Russiagate

Stop militaire transporten van de VS en NAVO richting Russische grens >> niet nog een wereldoorlog!

Sinds kort gaan er militaire transporten richting Oost-Europa, het totale aantal transporten zal na afronding, tegen het eind van juni, boven de 100 liggen. Het gaat hier veelal om troepen en materiële verplaatsingen van de VS, echter ook de NAVO (onder opperbevel van de VS) stuurt extra troepen en materieel richting Oost-Europa.....

Volgens de NAVO is de agressie van Rusland de oorzaak van deze transporten en gaan ze naar de Baltische Staten, echter gezien de grootte van de totale verplaatsingen is dat maar zeer de vraag, immers het gaat hier om relatief kleine landen, die al propvol NAVO (inclusief VS) troepen zitten...... Er is zelfs een permanente missie met NAVO straaljagers uit andere lidstaten aanwezig in die landen, bovendien worden er in de Baltische Staten meerdere keren per jaar militaire oefeningen gehouden door de NAVO, o.l.v. de VS, op die momenten zijn er nog meer troepen in die 3 landen......

Eén ding is zeker, met deze verplaatsingen van troepen en materieel zet men de zaak verder op scherp en dat langs de Russische westgrens......... Hoe lang zal Rusland blijven toekijken hoe het westen langzaam maar zeker een enorm leger langs de Russische grenzen heeft samengetrokken.......

Niet Rusland is agressief, daar is nul komma nada bewijs voor, maar er is wel een Himalaya aan bewijs voor de VS/NAVO agressie, neem alleen al het feit dat de NAVO langs een flink deel van de Russische westgrens staat, volkomen tegen de afspraken met Rusland in..... (daarnaast heeft de VS rond een fiks deel van China en Rusland een groot aantal militaire bases....) Dan zijn er nog alle illegale oorlogen die de de grootste terreurentiteit op aarde, de VS met de NAVO aan de hand heeft gevoerd, waarmee alleen deze eeuw al mee dan 2 miljoen mensen zijn vermoord...... (en ja, via de belastingen hebben jij en ik daar ook aan bijgedragen....).......

In de Duitse deelstaat Brandenburg is men het meer dan zat, de militaire transporten richting Russische grens, transporten die WOIII steeds dichterbij trekken....... Een groot deel van de bewoners in die deelstaat weet ondanks de hersenspoeling van de reguliere westerse media en een groot deel van de westerse politici, dat niet Rusland de agressor is maar de VS en haar oorlogshond de NAVO......

The Action Network is een petitie gestart tegen deze troepenverplaatsingen. Lees en teken de petitie ajb en geeft het door!

NO to U.S. military transports through the eastern German state of Brandenburg and other regions of Germany



Click here if you agree.

Between May and June 2018, over 100 U.S. military convoys are planned to cross the eastern German state of Brandenburg and other regions of Germany towards Eastern Europe. According to NATO propaganda, these U.S. troops, as well as other NATO troops, will serve to protect the Baltic States from the "aggressor Russia."

However, large parts of the population in Brandenburg know that the aggressor is NATO. It is the United States, the leading NATO country, which has positioned nuclear weapons and a missile defense shield against Russia within Europe. It is NATO that has moved closer and closer to Russia's borders during the last two decades.

By acting in this way, the NATO states risk provoking war, which entails unforeseeable dangers not only for Germany and Europe, but for the entire world.

In this sense, the protest of the citizens of Brandenburg against the U.S. military transport is a concrete contribution toward bringing together a common resistance -- in Germany, the United States, and the whole world - against U.S. military bases worldwide, which form the backbone of NATO aggression.

Great hopes are to be put in the Coalition against U.S. Foreign Military Bases and in forming a truly global coalition against U.S, and NATO military bases in the world.

This statement originated by Potsdam Peace Coordination.

Here's the petition:

To: North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)

Cease all transportation of troops and weapons through Germany.

CLICK HERE TO ADD YOUR NAME.

Please forward this to everyone you can.

Please share on Facebook and Twitter.

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Zie ook:
'Pentagon rapport geeft aan dat VS zich voorbereidt op totale oorlog'

'Oekraïne het toneel van grootschalige luchtmachtoefeningen met VS en NAVO, naast een enorme militaire VS/NAVO oefening in Noorwegen'

'Duitsland doet mee in het koor van de wolven: Russische cyberterreur!'

'VS heeft Rusland al 3 keer met oorlog gedreigd, de laatste 2 keer in de afgelopen 1,5 week.....'

'Idlib: akkoord Turkije – Rusland leidt tot grote aanval op Syrië....'

'VS zendt tegen wil van de bevolking in 1.500 militairen naar Duitsland, opbouw voor WOIII?'

'Groot-Brittannië bezig met volk voor te bereiden op oorlog tegen Rusland'

'NAVO kan WOIII beginnen waarschuwt de baas van de NAVO >> Trump..... ha! ha! ha! ha!'

'Russische volk wordt geadviseerd zich voor te bereiden op een nucleaire oorlog.......'

'VS vergroot doelbewust de spanningen met Rusland: een enorme VS troepenopbouw langs de Russische grens..........'

'NAVO oefent op een nucleaire aanval tegen 'een denkbeeldige vijand', ofwel Rusland..........'

'Rechtse denktank waarschuwt voor een groot risico op een kernoorlog met Rusland.....'

'Estland stopt militaire oefening na een 'vergissing' >> de lancering van een raket in het grensgebied met Rusland......'

'VS op weg naar daadwerkelijk gebruik van het kernwapen..............'

'VN chef Guterres geeft alarmcode rood af voor de wereld in 2018 en niet alleen vanwege het milieu of klimaat......'

'Top VS generaal stelt dat er een grote oorlog met Rusland op komst is, ofwel: WOIII......'

'Trumps atoomknop is groter dan die van Kim Yung-un, bovendien werkt de VS knop wel....... ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!'

'Trumps uitlating over de atoomknop en de onverschilligheid bij zijn achterban, een dictatuur waardig.........'

'Trumps beleid t.a.v. kernwapens brengt de VS staatsveiligheid in gevaar (en die van de rest van de wereld)'

NAVO gaat door met voorbereiding op oorlog tegen Rusland....... Grootste troepenopbouw sinds Koude Oorlog...... Gaat u gerust slapen!

Gisteren ontving ik het volgende artikel van Information Clearing House. Hierin de NAVO aankondiging voor de grootste troepenopbouw langs de Russische grens. Ondanks dat zijn er schoften als van Kappen, de Wijk, ten Broeke, die nog steeds durven te zeggen dat we veel meer moeten uitgeven aan defensie, terwijl de NAVO landen Groot-Brittannië, Frankrijk, Duitsland en Italië, gezamenlijk al zeven keer meer uitgeven aan defensie dan Rusland........

De roep om meer geld is geen wonder, daar de oorlogsvoering van de NAVO en de voorbereiding op een oorlog met Rusland, kapitalen kosten. Zoals al vaker hier gesteld, de ene grootscheepse NAVO oefening langs de Russische grens, wordt gevolgd door de andere.....  Niets anders dan de voorbereiding op een (nucleaire) oorlog tegen Rusland!!

De bedoeling is, dat de bestaande vaste troepenmacht in Oost-Europa, wordt uitgebreid met tienduizenden manschappen, wat er uiteindelijk honderdduizenden moeten worden*. De kosten bovenop de al geldverslindende oefeningen, plus de kosten voor de snelle reactie macht, worden voor die extra manschappen geschat op 2,7 miljard dollar per jaar!!! ('onze' miljarden, dus biljoenen in VS).
Gaat u maar gerust slapen, uw overheid waakt over u en begint tijdens uw slaap een kernoorlog tegen Rusland......... Gisteren was VVD knuppellul van Kappen**, de oud-generaal met de koperen fluit op Radio1, waar hij zonder enige kritiek zijn leugens kon ventileren over het Russische (kernwapen) gevaar......

Deze beroepsleugenaar en opperlobbyist van het militair-industrieel complex, durfde te zeggen, dat Rusland de atoomkaart weer ter tafel had gebracht.... Terwijl al meer dan een half jaar geleden bekend werd gemaakt, dat het opperbevel van de NAVO een aanvalsoorlog met kernwapens in de toekomst niet uitsloot.

Nadat May het inhumane neoliberale stokje van Cameron overnam, stelde ook zij niet uit te sluiten, dat Groot Brittannië een aanvalsoorlog met kernwapens zal beginnen..... Een paar maanden geleden, liet ook oorlogsmisdadiger Killary Clinton weten, zo'n oorlog niet uit de weg te gaan..... Als reactie heeft Rusland laten weten niet op de handen te gaan zitten en dat wordt de Russen kwalijk genomen..... ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!

Superschoft van Kappen wilde wel even extra aandacht, daar de Russen volgens hem niet alleen de atoomkaart ter tafel brachten, maar daarmee een belangrijk principe schonden, namelijk, dat het atoomwapen alleen ter afschrikking dient en dat Putin daarmee een aanvalswapen van het kernwapen heeft gemaakt...... De schoft vertelde de luisteraar uiteraard niet, dat zoals u hiervoor kon lezen, de NAVO daar zelf de eerste aanzet toe heeft gedaan. De ploert sprak over de tactische kernwapens die Rusland eventueel in zou zetten, terwijl het uiterst agressieve bondgenootschap NAVO al een paar jaar geleden liet weten, dat een tactisch kernwapen op het slagveld tot de mogelijkheden wordt gerekend......

Dan nog: wie begint de ene illegale oorlog na de andere, alleen deze eeuw al meer dan 1,5 miljoen burgerslachtoffers!! Wie vermoord er op grote schaal mensen, middels drone aanvallen, waarbij 90% van de slachtoffers niet eens verdacht is.... Wie regisseert de ene coup na de andere....???? Juist, niet Rusland, maar de VS, vaak met de NAVO aan de hand!!!!

Figuren als van Kappen zouden strafrechtelijk moeten worden vervolgd, zij hersenspoelen de bevolking met leugens, met maar één doel: oorlogvoeren, zo veel en zo groot mogelijk!! Het zou militairen bovendien verboden moeten worden de politiek in te gaan, ze hebben met hun psychopathische poten van de politiek af te blijven!! Het is 2016 en we hebben op deze planeet al veel te veel oorlog gevoerd, godverdomme!!!

Hier het bewuste artikel (onder dit artikel kan u klikken voor een 'Dutch' vertaling):


NATO Announces Largest Troop Deployments Against Russia Since Cold War

By Alex Lantier

November 09, 2016 "Information Clearing House" - "WSWS" - NATO will place hundreds of thousands of troops on alert for military action against Russia in the coming months, top NATO officials told the Times of London on Monday.

The US-led military alliance is planning to speed up the mobilization of forces numbering in the tens of thousands and, ultimately, hundreds of thousands and millions that are to be mobilized against Russia. Beyond its existing 5,000-strong emergency response force, NATO is tripling its “incumbent response force” to 40,000 and putting hundreds of thousands of troops on higher alert levels.

The Times wrote, “Sir Adam West, Britain’s outgoing permanent representative to NATO, said he thought that the goal was to speed up the response time of up to 300,000 military personnel to about two months. At present a force of this size could take up to 180 days to deploy.”

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said, “We are… addressing what we call the follow-on forces. There are a large number of people in the armed forces of NATO allies. We are looking into how more of them can be ready on a shorter notice.” According to the Times, Stoltenberg explained that NATO is looking broadly at methods for “improving the readiness of many of the alliance's three million soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines.”

The target of these deployments, the largest since the dissolution of the Soviet Union by the Stalinist bureaucracy and the end of the Cold War a quarter century ago, is Russia.

“We have seen a more assertive Russia implementing a substantial military build-up of many years, tripling defence spending since 2000 in real terms; developing new military capabilities; exercising their forces and using military force against neighbours,” Stoltenberg said. “We have also seen Russia using propaganda in Europe among NATO allies and that is exactly the reason why NATO is responding. We are responding with the biggest reinforcement of our collective defence since the end of the Cold War.”

These statements show how NATO planning for a horrific war against Russia has continued behind the backs of the people throughout the US presidential election campaign. Military deployments and war preparations by the Pentagon and the general staffs of the various European countries are set to go ahead, moreover, whatever the outcome of the election in the United States and those slated for 2017 in the European NATO countries.

Stoltenberg's vague attack on Russian “propaganda” in Europe is an allusion to the instinctive opposition to war that exists in the European and international working class and popular distrust of the anti-Russian propaganda promoted by NATO officials like Stoltenberg and West.

Last year, a Pew poll found broad international opposition to NATO participation in a conventional war against Russia in Eastern Europe, even in a scenario that assumes Russia started the conflict. Under these hypothetical conditions, 58 percent of Germans, 53 percent of French people, and 51 percent of Italians opposed any military action against Russia. Opposition to war in the poll would doubtless have been higher had pollsters mentioned that NATO's decision to attack Russian forces in Eastern Europe could lead to nuclear war.

This opposition is rooted in deep disaffection with the imperialist Middle East wars of the post-Soviet period and the memory of two world wars in Europe in the 20th century. The arguments Stoltenberg presented against it are politically fraudulent.

The primary threat of military aggression and war in Europe comes not from Russia, but from the NATO countries. Over the past 25 years, the imperialist powers of NATO have bombed and invaded countries in Central Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Within Europe, they bombed Serbia and Kosovo in the Balkan Wars of the 1990s, pushed NATO’s borders hundreds of miles to the East, and backed a violent, fascist-led putsch to topple a pro-Russian government in Ukraine in 2014.

The aggressive character of NATO policy emerged once again last Friday, when NBC News reported that US cyber warfare units had hacked key Russian electricity, Internet and military networks. These are now “vulnerable to attack by secret American cyber weapons should the US deem it necessary,” NBC stated.

Russian officials denounced the activities highlighted in the report and the Obama White House's silence on the matter. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said, “If no official reaction from the American administration follows, it would mean state cyber terrorism exists in the US. If the threats of the attack, which were published by the US media, are carried out, Moscow would be justified in charging Washington.”

The geo-strategically disastrous consequences of the Stalinist bureaucracy's dissolution of the Soviet Union and restoration of capitalism in Eastern Europe are ever more apparent. With NATO troops or proxy forces stationed in a geographic belt extending from the Baltic republics to Poland, Ukraine and Romania—either a short distance from or on Russia's borders—NATO is now poised for a major war against Russia that could escalate into a nuclear conflagration.

An examination of Stoltenberg’s remarks shows that NATO’s plans are not defensive preparations to counter a sudden conventional invasion of Europe by the Russian army. In such a scenario, Russian tank columns would overrun the few thousand or tens of thousands of troops in NATO’s various emergency response forces, depriving the broader ranks of NATO “follow-up” forces the 60 to 180 days they need to mobilize.

Rather, the plan for mobilizing successive layers of “follow-on forces” is intended to allow NATO to threaten Russia in a crisis situation by gradually bringing to bear more and more of its collective military strength, which, although split between 28 member states, outweighs that of Russia. Russia's population of 145 million is far smaller than that of the NATO countries, at 906 million.

The aggressive character of NATO’s agenda is illustrated by a report issued last month by the CIA-linked Rand Corporation think tank on the military situation in the Baltic republics of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. The small military forces NATO has posted in the Baltic republics, Rand wrote, are “inviting a devastating war, rather than deterring it.” They calculated that Russian forces, if they actually invaded, could overrun these countries in approximately 60 hours.

On this basis, the think tank called for launching a vast NATO military build-up in the Baltic republics, virtually at the gates of St. Petersburg. It wrote that it would take “a force of about seven brigades, including three heavy armored brigades—adequately supported by air power, land-based fires, and other enablers on the ground and ready to fight at the onset of hostilities… to prevent the rapid overrun of the Baltic states.” This would cost the NATO countries $2.7 billion each year.

As the NATO countries intensify their threats against Russia, there are increasingly bitter conflicts among the NATO imperialist powers themselves. Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi bluntly opposed new sanctions on Russia as called for by Washington at last month's European Union summit in Brussels, and there are deepening tensions between Germany and the United States as officials in Berlin and Paris call for an independent EU military.

Prospects of increased US-led military provocations against Russia are sharpening tensions within Europe. In an article titled “Whether Clinton or Trump wins, for Germany things will get uncomfortable,” German news magazine Der Spiegel warned of the long-term implications of an aggressive US-led policy against Russia, which it assumed would continue regardless which of the two candidates secured the White House.

The magazine wrote, “The motto will be: If you want (nuclear) US protection from Putin, you must either pay us more money or re-arm yourself.”

Copyright © 1998-2016 World Socialist Web Site - All rights reserved


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* Reken maar gerust dat binnen afzienbare tijd, de dienstplicht weer wordt ingevoerd, kunnen de psychopaten van het beroepsleger, weer lekker tekeergaan tegen kinderen, want je wilt geen leger van mensen boven de 23 jaar, dat loopt mis, daar deze volwassenen zich niet meer alles laten zeggen......

** Van Kappen, de oorlogshitser is tevens senator voor de VVD in de Eerste Kamer..... Hoe bedoelt u 'corruptie', daar hij grootlobbyist is voor het militair-industrieel complex?? Normaal toch, dat zo'n lobbyist voor het bedrijfsleven als volksvertegenwoordiger in de Eerste Kamer zit??!!!

Zie ook: 'Ruslandfobie: anti-Russische propaganda, waarvoor Goebbels zich niet zou hebben geschaamd!'

Voor meer berichten n.a.v. het bovenstaande, klik op één van de labels, die u onder dit bericht terug kan vinden, dit geldt niet voor de labels: NBC, Pew, Rand Corp en Zakharova.