Former U.S. Defense Secretary Explains Why Nuclear Holocaust Is Now Likely

Authored by Eric Zuesse,

The Stanford mathematician William J. Perry was a strategic nuclear advisor to U.S. President John Fitzgerald Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, and then he became U.S. Secretary of Defense under President Bill Clinton.

He stated in a speech on November 28th at the National Cathedral in Washington DC, that “inexplicably to me, we’re recreating the geopolitical hostility of the Cold War, and we’re rebuilding the nuclear dangers,” and he went so far as to make clear why "I believe that the likelihood of some sort of a nuclear catastrophe today is actually greater than it was during the Cold War."

He explained why the increase in tensions between the U.S. and Russia isn’t merely restoring those dangers, but is now exceeding them, despite the elimination of what were supposed to have been the threats that gave rise to the Cold War: the ideological threat of communism, and the threat of the monolithic Soviet bloc which ended in 1991 with the break-up of the Soviet Union, and the threat of the Soviets’ military alliance, the Soviet Union’s equivalent of America’s NATO military alliance, the Warsaw Pact — all of whose alliance-members are now, or are on the way to becoming, members of America’s NATO alliance, targeting against the now lone nation of Russia.

Since no transcript of Perry"s very important speech is yet available to the public, I’ve created my own transcript, though summarizing, or sometimes editing-out, extraneous courtesies and verbal slip-ups and corrections of himself (which self-corrections appear to have been due to difficulties he had reading from his typed text). This edited version of the speech he delivered on November 28th thus includes everything that’s of general public interest in what he said. Occasionally, I’ve added time-marks so that one can locate specific passages in the video of his address:

THE SPEECH

5:10 Secretary Perry: Till 8:00 he analogized himself to a carpenter who worked on building Noah’s Ark and who tried to warn the townspeople of the coming disaster, the flood, but who was ignored until it was too late. “I am like that carpenter who helped Noah build the ark. I am seeking to avert that disaster.” He said, however, he noted that, unlike the flood, this is a “preventable disaster.” He also noted that he had himself helped “contribute to the building of nuclear weapons for the Cold War.” So: he had participated in having created the danger, but is now at the time of his life when he is trying to un-do perhaps some of the danger that he had helped to produce. Here is his speech:

8:33 When the Cold War ended, I believed that we no longer had to take that risk [nuclear annihilation] so I put all my energy into efforts to dismantle the deadly nuclear legacy of the Cold War. During my period as the Secretary of Defense in the 90s, I oversaw the dismantlement of 8,000 nuclear weapons evenly divided between the United States and the former Soviet Union. And I thought then that we were well on our way to putting behind us this deadly existential threat, But that was not to be.

Today, inexplicably to me, we’re recreating the geopolitical hostility of the Cold War, and we’re rebuilding the nuclear dangers. … We are doing this without any serious public discussion or any real understanding of the consequences of these actions. We are sleepwalking into a new Cold War, and there’s very real danger that we will blunder into a nuclear war.

If we are to prevent this catastrophe, the public must understand what is happening. … 

I’m going to justify these assertions by first looking back at the Cold War and explaining how we averted disaster then, and then I will compare it with our present situation.

10:25 When I lecture about the Cold War in my class at Stanford, a student will often ask me, ‘What led us to build 70,000 nuclear weapons? Why were that many weapons needed for deterrence? Wouldn’t a thousand have been more than enough?’ And I patiently explain that our nuclear policy was built on the assumption that the Soviet Union was planning to strike us with a surprise attack, a bolt out of the blue, which we affectionately called a BOOB, a bolt out of the blue. We assumed that the Soviet Union believed that if they could destroy 90% of our weapons in a surprise attack, we would then surrender, and they would then have conquered the world. Based on that premise, we believed that we had to build a significant excess of weapons so that enough of them would survive a first strike to still conduct our retaliatory strikes of deterrence, and then, just to be sure, we built 50% more. The Soviet Union, seeing what we were building, would assume that we must be planning a surprise attack. So they built enough weapons to survive that attack, and then, just to be sure, 50% more. And those assumptions led to an ever-escalating arms race. 

Before that insanity stopped, the United States and the Soviet Union combined had reached the obscene and absurd level of 70,000 nuclear weapons.

I believe that the Cold War arms race was built on a faulty premise, that in fact neither the United States nor the Soviet Union were planning to conduct a surprise attack on the other. The real danger, and this was a very real danger during the Cold War, was that we would blunder into a nuclear war. Indeed, we came very close to a civilization-ending war during the Cuban Missile Crisis. … I was there during that crisis, and I will never forget it. I was part of a small team that worked all day analyzing the intelligence data collected that day, and by midnight, we prepared two reports for President Kennedy’s brief the next morning. So, I knew exactly what was going on. Indeed, every morning when I went into the analysis center I believed would be my last day on Earth. 

After the crisis, President Kennedy said he thought there’s about one chance in three of the Cuban Missile Crisis ending in a nuclear catastrophe — not very good odds when the end of civilization was at the other end of it. But, I have to say that I believe that Kennedy’s statement was optimistic. He did not know, as we now know, that the Soviet Union had already placed tactical nuclear weapons on the island, and that they were fully operational. And if Kennedy had accepted the unanimous recommendation of his Joint Chiefs of Staff to invade Cuba with a conventional military force, our troops would have been decimated on the beachhead by tactical nuclear weapons and a general nuclear war would surely have followed.

14:10 The miscalculations of Soviet and American leaders almost led to a nuclear holocaust. And I believe that we avoided that catastrophe as much by good luck as by good management. 

Also during the Cold War we faced the risk of an accidental nuclear war, if our missile attack warning system experienced a false alarm. How likely was that?  During the Cold War, there were three such false alarms in the United States and at least two that I know about in the Soviet Union. That averages to be about one every eight years. I personally experienced one of those false alarms, and it changed forever my way of thinking about nuclear dangers. It occurred in October of 1979, when I was the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering. Awoken from a sound sleep at 3 o’clock in the morning, as I sleepily put the phone to my ears, the voice on the other end identified himself as the watch officer for the North American Air Defense Command. The general got right to the point: he told me that his computers were showing 200 ICBMs on the way from the Soviet Union to the United States. For one heart-stopping moment, I thought we were about to experience the holocaust that we had narrowly avoided during the Cuban Missile Crisis. But the general quickly explained they had already concluded there was a false alarm. He was calling me to help him determine what had gone wrong with his computer.

There were actually two separate false alarms during the period I was undersecretary. The most dangerous occurred one night when the computer operators changed shifts, and the new operators mistakenly instead of putting in the operating tape put in a training tape. The training tape, of course, was designed to look like a realistic attack scenario. It was human error. That is, our system, with all of its safety features, was still vulnerable to a single person potentially bringing about the end of our civilization. Two things saved the world from that fate.

First one was the watch officer that night was exceptionally thoughtful and responsible, for which we can all be thankful. 

And second the context for the [thought] attack was benign. There were no international incidents under way that made a Soviet attack especially plausible. But what if that false alarm had occurred during the Cuban Missile Crisis, or during one of our Mideast crises when we had our forces on high alert? In that context, the watch officer surely would have passed the alarm on to the President, who, after being awoken at 3 o’clock in the morning, would have less than ten minutes to decide whether to launch our ICBMs before they were destroyed in their silos.

17:30 Had he ordered the launch, there would be no way of recalling the missiles or destroying them in flight; the President would have accidentally started a global nuclear war.

Well, that was then. What about now? I have written that I believe that the likelihood of some sort of a nuclear catastrophe today is actually greater than it was during the Cold War. … Why do I believe that? Because the United States and Russia today are confronting each other with a hostility that is recreating the geopolitical dangers of the Cld War, and because the United States and Russia are rebuilding their Cold War nuclear arsenals, there’s recreating the military dangers of the Cold War. 

So, today, we are still vulnerable to blundering into a nuclear war if we have a crisis with Russia comparable to the Cuban Missile Crisis. And when I consider the possibility of another false alarm, I notice humans will err again. Machines will malfunction again. And so we will have another false alarm.

Even in the face of this, Russia and the United States still today have a policy of launch on warning. And both Russia and the United States are building new ICBMs to replace the ones built during the Cold War. 

That means ultimately the future of civilization will depend on the judgment of an anonymous watch officer and the judgment and the temperament of the American President or the Russian President, who have the sole authority to launch a nuclear attack.

19:40 Beyond those dangers, which are comparable to the dangers we faced during the Cold War, there are two dangers that did not exist during the Cold War. 

The first of them is a regional nuclear war, Pakistan, India, North Korea today, have large numbers of nuclear weapons. Pakistan and India have more than a hundred each, and North Korea has 20 and building. 

Beyond that there is danger of a nuclear terror attack, which is the nuclear danger we face today I consider the most likely. …

So [if people ask me what we can do to avert the disaster], I start by telling them that we will never take the actions needed to avert a nuclear disaster until our public understands just how great the danger is. We do not now have the political will to act in reducing nuclear dangers, because we do not understand fully how real and how great those dangers are.

A decade ago, the same situation existed with another existential threat, a global climate disaster. But in that field, a serious and creative education program has [become] under way. Today, there are still climate deniers, but a large majority of our people understand the dangers of a global climate disaster, and are willing to take actions, sometimes expensive actions, to reduce those dangers. Even with this Administration pulling the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Accord, other countries, and most states, are acting to reduce emissions. In particular, Governor Brown, the Governor of my home state of California, is leading an international effort to reduce CO2 emissions, and his efforts have been remarkably successful. So I remain hopeful that the world will be able to avert that existential disaster. 

21:55 To deal with the nuclear dangers we face, we need first of all to have a creative energetic education program that is as effective and as robust as the education in climate change, and I am doing what I can to promote such education.  

But this is a daunting problem, such a daunting problem it’s tempting to throw up one’s hands. Indeed, many have asked me, how can one person make a significant impact on a problem so great. My response is, I am one person. I can’t do everything, but I can do something. Indeed, I am devoting the remainder of my career to doing what I can to educate the public on nuclear dangers. And I think we are beginning to get some traction on this problem.

I do this with a hope, if we succeed in our education task, others will pick up the task of political action. …

*  *  *

He then went into selling his book, My Journey at the Nuclear Brink. The reader-review of it that struck me the most was Mark H. Gaffney’s. He closed by saying:

I am galled by Perry’s credulous acceptance of GW Bush’s blatant lie — also repeated by Obama — that advanced US ABM/radar sites currently placed on the Russian border are there to defend Europe against an alleged Iranian missile threat.

 

How can a brilliant individual such as Perry swallow this obvious hogwash?

 

In truth, there is no Iranian missile threat - not to Europe nor to the US. The US ABMs/radars are not in Romania for the defense of Europe but for offense — part of a US nuclear first strike option. They are aimed at Russia. I know it’s insane but facts are facts.

 

Back in the day, Perry’s negative assessment of Star Wars (SDI) was absolutely correct. It’s unfortunate he failed to follow through and alert the American people to the grave danger we are now facing. Why did Perry wait until 2015 to publish his invaluable memoirs?

 

If Perry is the best the US has to offer, then we are screwed because it seems our best has not been good enough. Not by a long shot. No wonder so many young Americans are deep into drugs, despondency, suicide and despair. They know something Perry does not — that the future has been stolen.

However, that review assumes Perry’s pumping such lies to have been done out of ignorance, not out of psychopathy and a sheer desire to sell as many books as he can, and otherwise to continue being the enormously successful person that he is. His entire life has been serving as a crucial member of America’s military-industrial complex (the owners of Lockheed Martin etc.), and he has brought enormous profits to them, such as the great investigative historian Nafeez Ahmed detailed about Perry in his 25,000-word article, “How the CIA Made Google”, which I subsequently condensed down to 7,400 words and there placed into a somewhat broader context.

I think that Perry knows quite well that we are heading into a world-destroying nuclear war if the U.S. Government continues ignoring the fact that the ‘aggressions’ that it charges against Russia — such as Russia’s having accepted the overwhelming public clamor in Crimea to refuse being ruled by the racist-fascist anti-Russian regme that the U.S. Government under Obama had just installed to lead Ukraine after Obama’s Ukrainian coup in February 2014 - aren’t actually aggressions at all (such as the U.S. regime and its allies charge) but are instead essential defensive measures that the sovereign nation of Russia, now increasingly surrounded by NATO and U.S. missiles on its very borders, needs to take against the U.S. regime’s plan ultimately to conquer Russia.

On 9 March 2016, already two years after America’s bloody coup had overthrown the democratically elected President of Ukraine and replaced him and the legislature by U.S.-Government selected stooges from a far-right Party and from Ukraine’s two outright racist-fascist or ideologically nazi Parties, which immediately began an ethnic-cleansing campaign to eliminate the residents in the regions that had voted heavily for the President whom the Obama regime had overthrown, Perry pretended to be still — even two years afterwards — ignorant of it all. Britain’s Guardian quoted Perry, on that date, 9 March 2016, as saying the following, against Putin’s purely defensive response to the hostile, aggressive, U.S.-regime coup, that had been perpetrated on Russia’s very doorstep:

“After he came to office, Putin came to believe that the United States had an active and robust programme to overthrow his regime. … And from that point on a switch went on in Putin’s mind that said: I’m no longer going to work with the west ... I don’t know the facts behind Putin’s belief that we actually had a programme to foment revolution in Russia but what counts is he believed it. … In the last few years, most of the blame can be pointed at the actions that Putin has taken,” in Ukraine, and in Syria.

Perry isn’t likely to be so stupid as to have actually believed that. The Guardian reporter said that Perry “emphasised that in the past five years it has been Vladimir Putin’s military interventions in Ukraine, Syria and elsewhere that have driven the downward spiral in east-west relations.” Could it be that Perry had never even heard about the coup that occurred in Ukraine in February 2014 — which the head of the “private CIA” firm Stratfor called “the most blatant coup in history”? Could it be that Perry didn’t know the truth about what U.S. propaganda, still to this day, calls by such phrases as “Ukraine’s democratic revolution”, and the “the Maidan revolution” or, as it’s called at the CIA-edited Wikipedia, the “2014 Ukrainian revolution”? Does he really not know that whereas a coup comes from above, a revolution comes from below? Does he not know that in U.S.-Russia relations, it is ‘our’ side (the U.S. aristocracy, no U.S. ‘democracy’ at all) that is the perpetrator, and Russia (the sovereign nation of Russia) that is the victim? He doesn’t know these things?

Perry doesn’t challenge the U.S. Government’s lies, because he has built his entire career in service to them. The Cold War, we now know in retrospect, wasn’t really about communism at all; and, after 1991, America continued the conflict by expanding NATO up to Russia’s borders; the Cold War never ended on the U.S. side — and, now, the U.S. regime is getting ready to go in for the kill.

Thus, when Perry said,

“We are sleepwaling into a new Cold War, and there’s very real danger that we will blunder into a nuclear war,”

he knew quite well that the public in the U.S. and in its vassal-nations, are sleepwalking into a nuclear invasion of Russia, and that instead of “we will blunder into a nuclear war,” the U.S. billionaires who own and control the U.S. military-industrial complex or MIC are — and have been, ever since 24 February 1990 — aiming to use that MIC in order to win a nuclear war, not (as Russia continues to do) in order merely to maintain the pre-1991 system of Mutually Assured Destruction, or MAD. Perry knows that his friends were — and now are (even if it might be possible that Perry himself wasn’t and isn’t) — out for Russian blood. And he was only pretending when he said: “inexplicably to me, we’re recreating the geopolitical hostility of the Cold War, and we’re rebuilding the nuclear dangers.” He knows what the explanation of that “rebuilding” is, because he was surrounded by it and never went public exposing it. Sure, that would have taken courage, but, the point is, Perry clearly does not have it; or, else — worse still — he’s totally a hypocrite, and all of his nicey-nicey verbal gyrations are merely fakes, pure PR.

At the very top in America is sheer hypocrisy and psychopathy. That’s not unusual; instead, it’s the general worldwide norm. The U.S. Government under Franklin Delano Roosevelt was an exception to this norm; but, now, the U.S. Government is worse than it has ever been, and it’s becoming yet worse; it’s becoming worse and worse — especially after 9/11.

Bill Perry wants to continue being comfortable and widely respected, and not to become a threat to the people (the entire U.S. MIC) whose mega-crimes against humanity and everything, have so profitably employed his services. He remains an impeccable careerist. So: what he pretends not to know, isn’t even possibly unknown to him, because he served as an essential cog in that machinery, building towards ultimate, sudden, nuclear global death (but-with-the-ringmasters-to-be-deep-in-their-luxurious-bunkers).

He is, himself — and long has been — a servant of the American aristocracy. He’s not the shocking but benign idiot that he might seem, to even such knowledgeable readers as Mark H. Gaffney.

*  *  *

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

All The Old World Systems Are Being Deliberately Torn Down

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,

As we approach the holiday season many people turn to thoughts on tradition, heritage, principles, duty, honor and family. They consider the accomplishments and even the failures of the past and where we are headed in the future. For most of the year, the average American will keep their heads in the sands of monotony and decadence and distraction. But during this time, even in the midst of the consumption frenzy it has been molded into, people tend to reflect, and they find joy, and they find worry.

What perhaps does not come to mind very often though are the institutions and structures that provide the "stability" by which our society is able to continue in a predictable manner. While many of these institutions are not built with the good of the public in mind, they often indirectly secure a foundation that can be relied upon, for two or three generations, while securing power for the establishment. The problem is, the establishment is never satisfied with a static or semi-peaceful system for very long. They are not satisfied by being MOSTLY in control, they seek total control. Thus, they are often willing to create chaos and crisis and even tear down old structures that previously benefited them in order to gain something even greater (and more oppressive for the rest of us).

The official Thanksgiving holiday, for example, did not really begin as a homage to the colonial settlers and pilgrims of America"s birth and their struggles to build a new life.  While George Washington did proclaim a "Day of Thanks" in 1789, the model for Thanksgiving began far later, in 1863 as the Civil War was raging. It was the Civil War that upset the traditional balance of power between the states and the federal government, nearly annihilating the nation and asserting federal power as unquestionable for decades to come. A moment of great chaos which destroyed old institutions (like the 10th Amendment) but gave establishment elitists even more control in the end.

In Abraham Lincoln"s proclamation for the Thanksgiving holiday, he stated: "In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity ... peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed and harmony has prevailed everywhere, except in the theater of military conflict."

This may sound like a rather delusional claim on Lincoln"s part as we look back now at that time period, especially for those who understand how much freedom was actually lost in the process. But this is what the establishment does — it provides some security and some stability for a time, then suddenly rips it away to frighten the masses into conforming to increased centralization, then it returns that security and stability afterwards as a reward for our compliance.

In 1864, Lincoln gave a second proclamation for a Thanksgiving holiday, stating that: "I do further recommend to my fellow-citizens aforesaid that on that occasion they do reverently humble themselves in the dust." Now, I sometimes wonder if Lincoln was referring to reverence for God, or reverence to the power structure which was about to give back some of the predictability and tranquility it had taken away?

Well, America has enjoyed another period of relative calm in terms of institutional peace and most citizens have grown rather used to the idea that this calm is somehow the norm. However, it is becoming ever more clear that another shock to the system is coming, this time through domestic AND international events, and some of the old world structures we are used to seeing may not exist afterwards. Here are just a few...

NATO

The cold war era defense alliance between multiple Western nations is on the verge of breaking apart. Turkey, a key NATO ally in projecting power across the Middle East, has undergone a dramatic and aggressive shift towards increased totalitarianism recently. This has all been in the name of stopping a "coup," which is rather bewildering because there is almost no evidence of a coup actually being planned or attempted.

Ever since, Turkey has launched a campaign of anti-western sentiment and is embracing closer economic and military ties with Russia. Recep Erdogen"s chief adviser has publicly called for Turkey"s membership in the NATO alliance to be reconsidered.

At the same time, two dozen European nations have signed a defense pact this month, seeking to build a centralized European military and end dependency on the U.S. and NATO.

The old world military order is being upended. But to what goal? As stated earlier, the establishment is shaking up our conceptions of what is safe and secure. They are taking away the carrot to make way for the stick. When all is said and done, the goal would be a renewed interdependency between nations to a greater degree and a reduced and hobbled U.S. populace more easily frightened into submission.

OPEC

As I examined extensively in my article "Saudi Coup Signals War And The New World Order Reset," there is a vast change coming to the dynamic in the Middle East and specifically involving OPEC pillars like Saudi Arabia. The old order of oil trade and stability is about to crumble and be replaced with something much less agreeable to the U.S. economy.

It is important to remember that while oil and gas only make up about 10 percent of international trade, these are perhaps the most important commodities in the industrial world. Energy from petroleum sources is a root feeding all other trade and production. The fact that the dollar has been inexorably attached to this energy and production has allowed the U.S. a level of economic advantage that is perhaps unprecedented.

As multiple OPEC nations begin to question the validity of the dollar as the petrocurrency, and Saudi Arabia leads the way towards bilateral deals with Russia and China, it is imperative that we ask ourselves how much stability we can count on in the future of our currency? We also need to look at the systems that are being staged to take over from the dollar, including the IMF"s SDR currency basket system and ask ourselves who is really benefiting from the derailment of old world dollar dominance?

Cash And Anonymity

While fiat monetary systems are an abhorrent creation that destroy economies slowly over time, cash at least has the advantages of being anonymous and existing in a physical space - hopefully your pocket.  Unfortunately, current trends indicate that even these small consolations are about to be taken away.

Over the past several years, cryptocurrencies based on blockchain technology have been touted in the liberty movement as the end all be all solution to central bank corruption and control.  They were going to decentralize everything, and perhaps even collapse the banking system as we know it.  These fantasies have so far been proven to be just that - fantasies.  The primary investors and supporters of blockchain technology and cypto have turned out to be the international banks themselves.  Globalist pillars like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan are working fervently to push varying incarnations of the blockchain, and the goal is becoming increasingly clear:  To eliminate all physical transactions in the near future and make digital systems the preeminent method of commerce.

I do not think very many people realize how world changing and catastrophic this development will be if it is allowed to continue.  Cryptocurrencies were promoted as a means to stop international banking power, and now they represent a whole new level of centralization.  The death of anonymity in trade means the death of individual freedom.  It is that serious.

East/West Economic Order

Most alternative analysts have observed the economic power shift over the past 10 years from the West to the East. China is now the largest exporter/importer in the world, and is set to surpass the U.S. as the number one economy on the planet in the next couple of years. We have also seen a slow but methodical decoupling from the U.S. dollar as the world reserve currency. But, what many analysts mistake as a "positive move" by the East away from Western control is actually a deliberate dismantling of the old monetary order by the globalist establishment with the intent of creating a new world order.

As I have outlined and heavily evidenced in numerous articled, eastern powerhouses like Russia and China are quite public and open about their desire for a new monetary system, NOT under their control, but under the control of the IMF using the SDR basket as a bridge. Once again we see that the deconstruction of the old is almost always pursued to the benefit of the same people that have always been in control.

American Civility

Here at home, divisions have become extremely pronounced in the past few years. There was a time, not long ago, when the primary intention of political ideologues was simply to "win elections" and gain influence over societal norms through legislation. Today, the goal of ideologues is to outright destroy their political opponents by any means necessary, including lies, violence and subterfuge. The political Left in particular has, in my opinion, reached a point of no return in this regard.

The level of zealotry that has been achieved through "social justice" propaganda and cultural Marxism is staggering. There is no logic or reasoning with these people. They are essentially a cult. And while a large percentage of leftists claim they do not necessarily agree with the methodology of these cultists, they do nothing to stop them and often go along quietly with their objectives.

This zealotry and insanity designed to snuff out conservative principles and wreak havoc on American heritage is dangerous. Not because it will be victorious, per se, but because it has the potential to drive conservatives to opposite extremes and into the arms of a totalitarian government response.

When one side reaches a point of zero-tolerance for the ideals or even the existence of the other side, there is a potential for civil unrest. When both sides reach a point of zero tolerance for existence of the other, war is probably coming.

Of course, there should not be "two sides," but as many sides as there are individuals. And by merely observing the non-aggression principle and refusing to apply force to others except in self defense, much of these divisions could be defused. But presenting this solution is easy, making it a mainstay of our culture is another thing entirely.

The Old And The New Belong To Us

These holidays should not be a celebration of luck, which is what they have become. We should not be thankful for one more year without total crisis because the establishment "allowed us" to have it. If something "new" needs to be constructed within our societal framework, then it should be a change in our mentality in terms of how we view the stability of the old world.

These holidays should become a celebration of our own self reliance and independence. A reflection on how we provide our for ownstability and continue our traditions. The existing and planned structures of establishment elitists should play no part in how we reflect and set our course. These systems should not matter. We should not need them.

What does matter? Conscience, freedom, family, responsibility, self reliance and integrity. The best traditions are built on these things. Everything else is a fiction, an illusion of solid ground under our feet that can be taken away at any moment by people who would have us abandon all that matters just to get that poisoned ground back again.

Are Russia And China Right On North Korea?

Authored by Matthew Jamison via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

With the nuclear standoff between North Korea and the United States having heated up significantly over the summer, it has been the Governments of Russia and China who have sought to be the responsible, mature and wise international parties at the United Nations and throughout the international community.

It has been the brilliant diplomacy of Moscow and Beijing who have been the voices urging restraint, calm and dialogue unlike the insane, ridiculous and totally counter-productive rhetoric of the American President Donald Trump and the US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley.

The leaders of Russia and China must be given a strong round of applause for trying to avert a nuclear holocaust on the Korean peninsula whilst upholding international law, attempting to avoid a nuclear war and advocating for multi-party dialogue with the resumption of the 6 Party Talks which have been in abeyance since 2009 and a cooling off period on the Korean peninsula with the suspension of the US-South Korea military exercises. This is the right policy going forward for the welfare, safety and security of the Korean peninsula as well as regional and international peace and stability. The wrong course of action and the wrong policies of handling North Korea and the Kim Jong Un regime have been consistently followed by the Trump administration and its allies on the UN Security Council. 

The American policy of constantly aggravating North Korea with US-South Korea joint military exercises designed to unsettle, disturb and provoke the North is counter-productive and has only increased tensions and the possibility of all out war in Korea which would be a complete disaster and must not be allowed to happen. The American policy of deploying THAAD has also been like a red rag to a bull in North Korea and again only adds to increasing tensions ans the likelihood of armed conflict. While Russia and China have been working with great effort to calm the situation down with the restoration of dialogue, cooperation and stability it has been unfortunately the Governments of the United States and to a certain degree President Trump"s ally in British "prime" minister Theresa May who have actually in reality been increasing tensions, escalating the situation, antagonising the North Koreans and not helping to decrease tensions and deescalate the situation. 

To be clear North Korea is also completely in the wrong and it is the prime actor that must stop its nuclear tests and enter into talks. Yet it is very difficult for the North to enter into the 6 Party Talks when the United States will not countenance such talks. One could also mount an argument that the only reason the North Korean regime is behaving this way and seeking nuclear weapons is to preserve its own security as it in all likelihood feels extremely threatened especially in light of what happened with regards to Iraq during 2002-2003 and beyond and Libya after 2003.

The rhetoric of the Trump administration whether it be from the President himself or his Defence Secretary Mattis or UN Ambassador Haley has not been helpful and has been full of hyperbole, no doubt sabre rattling, but still it simply inflames and escalates an already difficult, tense and fragile international and regional security and humanitarian headache.

Imagine if the situation where reversed and it was Mexico on the United States" southern border acting in this way. Do you really think the American Government would want to deal with the fall out on its own door step of a nuclear obliterated Mexico and the tremendous ecological, environmental and human damage that would create. I doubt it very much that the United States would take the same approach to such a situation if the rogue party playing up was right on its own southern border. 

With regards to the role that the United Kingdom Government is playing, hopefully, it is a constructive role with the aim to help reduce tensions and deescalate the nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula not increase and exacerbate what is already a very delicate situation. Time alone will tell if the current British "prime" minister Theresa May is fully committed to such a course and is actually exerting (what little influence and leverage) she may have over her new found best friend from January President Trump. Mrs. May made great hay out of her early visit to hold hands with Donald Trump a week after he was sworn in. Let the international community see now the Anglo-American "special relationship" in action with the UK prime minister persuading the American President to change tack.

China On Pace To Dethrone The US

Authored by James Holbrooks via TheAntiMedia.org,

“Not sure whether China will be nice to self-ruled Taiwan? Wait until after the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party.

What’s in store for the hotly disputed, resource-rich South China Sea, where Beijing has taken a military and technological lead since 2010? Wait until after the Congress.

Coffee maker wouldn’t start today? Wait until after the Congress.

Wait. But you get the idea: This event, due to start Oct. 18, is monumental enough to put a lot of Asia on hold — and make it worry.”

That’s how Ralph Jennings opened his piece for Forbes on Wednesday. Humor aside, the point he’s making is the same one I made at the end of September — that China’s upcoming National Congress is a really big deal.

China sets the regional tone on nearly all matters, as Jennings points out in his article:

"Chinese foreign and economic policies shape much of Asia. China’s ever-growing efforts to build and fund infrastructure around the subcontinent through initiatives such as One Belt, One Road have obvious impact on smaller countries that might otherwise struggle to finance their own projects. Neighbors from Japan to India are watching China for foreign policy cues that affect their iffy diplomatic relations with the region’s major power.”

But China’s geopolitical influence extends far beyond Asia. The country has long been viewed as the rising global superpower on pace to dethrone the United States. Much has been written and said about China’s willingness to embrace this role as more and more countries turn to it for guidance.

China is highly conscious of this trend. It feels the world’s eyes aimed squarely in its direction and very much wants everything at the upcoming Congress, during which President Xi Jinping is expected to be reaffirmed as leader and appoint his own trusted allies to key positions of power, to go smoothly.

This is why, as I pointed out last month, the Chinese government has implemented a system-wide crackdown - both in the streets and in cyberspace - on political dissent ahead of the Congress. It all goes back to perception and the desire to present to the world the “One China” the country’s government says exists.

But perhaps there’s even more to it than that. It may be that once power is further solidified under Xi at the Congress, China will be ready to fully embrace the role of world leader. On Wednesday, its state-run Xinhua News Agency ran an article titled “China offers wisdom in global governance,” which opened with the following:

“With its own development and becoming increasingly closer to the center of the world stage, China has been injecting positive energy into the international community in pursuit of better global governance over recent years.”

Xinhua writes that China’s leadership ability is already well-established and that even though it’s currently undergoing a restructuring of its own, its vision for the world is one rooted in peace and innovation:

“As the world’s second largest economy and the biggest contributor of global economic growth, China’s innovative concepts on improving global governance and promoting global peace and common prosperity have gained wide recognition and support from other countries.

“Undergoing structural reforms, China is implementing its new concept of innovative, coordinated, green, open and shared development, eyeing a quality growth model driven by innovation.

“Meanwhile, the country is assuming its international responsibility to promote common development with other countries in the interconnected world.”

Continuing, Xinhua points to international acceptance of One Belt, One Road as evidence of China’s ability to take the lead in adapting to the modern era:

“The Belt and Road Initiative, building a community of shared future for mankind and the principle of extensive consultation, joint contribution and shared benefits, all proposed by China, have been incorporated in U.N. resolutions, showing wide international consensus on the concepts.

“Equality, mutual respect and win-win cooperation feature in the Chinese plans, which also safeguard the irreversible trend of globalization.”

This “win-win cooperation” is China’s guiding principle, Hu Angang of Tsinghua University in Beijing, told Xinhua. He even dubbed the philosophy “win-winism,” as the state news organ explains:

“’Win-winism’ highlights an open world economy for common development of all countries and joint efforts to address global challenges such as climate change and terrorism, and exchanges of different cultures, said the researcher.”

Xinhua goes on to write that Liu Wei, president of Renmin University of China, says the country has taken the lead by “putting forward new concepts, thoughts and plans to reshape the global governance system.”

With China in the spotlight ahead of the National Congress, it shouldn’t be taken lightly that the superpower would allow such bold language by one of its state mouthpieces. Indeed, it could be that a post-Congress China will be a far more assertive player on the world stage.

Jim Rogers Warns "If Trump Starts A Trade War With China, It Will End US Hegemony"

Following Treasury Secretary Mnuchin"s threat that the US could impose economic sanctions on China if it does not implement the new sanctions regime against North Korea:

"If China doesn’t follow these sanctions, we will put additional sanctions on them and prevent them from accessing the US and international dollar system, and that’s quite meaningful."

Billionaire investor and commodity guru Jim Rogers has a warning for the Trump administration - this would hurt America more because it just forces China and Russia and other countries to cooperate.

RT: What is the likelihood that the US will go through with and actually impose economic sanctions on China if it does not implement the new sanctions regime against North Korea?

Jim Rogers: Sanctions are sanctions. They could do sanctions which are not very important or don’t do much damage. And then they will have good public relations which says they have sanctions, but it is meaningless. I would suspect if anything, that is what they will start with. If they put sanctions on China in a big way, it brings the whole world economy down. And in the end, it hurts America more than it hurts China because it just forces China and Russia and other countries closer together. Russia and China and other countries are already trying to come up with a new financial system. If America puts sanctions on them, they would have to do it that much faster and in the end America will lose its monopoly on the financial system, which will hurt America more than anybody.

RT: What do you think, is it an empty rhetoric and saber-rattling from Donald Trump because he said “those [UN] sanctions are nothing compared to what ultimately will have to happen” without specifying what he meant by that. Do you think this is just mere bluff on the part of the US, or would it really use the ‘nuclear option’?

JR: If it uses a nuclear option for sanctions, it will hurt America much more than will hurt North Korea, it will hurt America much more than it will hurt China, Russia and everybody else. It will force the rest of the world to find an alternative to the US financial system. If he does that, it is going to cause a lot of turmoil in the world financial economy and in the end it is going to hurt America more than it is going to hurt anybody else.

I would give you an example, if you look at Russian agriculture right now – America put sanctions on Russian agriculture trying to hurt Russia, but it has helped Russian agriculture. Russian agriculture is booming now. In the end, America has hurt itself more than it has hurt anybody else.

RT: If that happens, what would the consequences be for the global economy? Could this end up becoming a global economic crisis?

JR: We are probably going to have a global economic problem, maybe even crisis, in the next couple of years. This may be one of the things that start it. There is always something which starts a crisis. If America does something like this, this could be the thing that did it. In 1929, it started when America started a huge trade war with the rest of the world and the economists said, “please, this is a mistake,” but America did that anyway. And then we had a great collapse and The Great Depression of the 1930s.

RT: Washington runs a $350 billion annual trade deficit with Beijing. China also holds more than $1 trillion in US debt. How could the US actually threaten China in such circumstances?

JR: Mr. Trump has been saying for over a year, two years, that he was going to start a trade war with China. He was going to put very high tariffs on Chinese goods. In his mind, he wants to do it, he is ready to do it. Some of his advisors are very much in favor of a trade war. It may very well happen. If it happens, it is going to be very bad for the world and it is going to be worse for America than for other people.

Furthermore, as we detailed previously, Beijing has announced plans to start a crude oil futures contract priced in yuan and convertible into gold and Rogers understands how much of a game changer this could be for an industry dominated by the dollar.

"This is just another step in that direction. Many people do not like using US dollars because if the US gets angry at you, they just set enormous pressure on you that can even get you out of business. China, Russia, and other countries understand this, and they are trying to move world trade and world finance away from that,” said the Jim Rogers.

As China is the world’s biggest crude buyer, the new contract may allow exporters to avoid US sanctions by trading oil in yuan. Such countries as Russia, Iran, Pakistan, Vietnam, China and many other Asian countries are interested in that, according to the expert.

The futures contract will allow participants to pay with gold or to convert yuan into gold without the necessity to keep money in Chinese assets or turn it into US dollars.

“The world has been moving that way. Iran will accept renminbi (yuan) from China now. The world is moving that way. China and Russia have currently swaps in rubles and renminbis. It is happening. But it is happening slowly. It takes a lot of time,” Rogers said.

The investor stressed the shift is not going to happen swiftly.

“In this case, there are so many people that actively want it, I would suspect that in less than ten years you will see a major shift into the trading of oil to Asia,” he said.

“When US dollar replaced the pound sterling, there was no one really going around trying to do it quickly. But now you have major economies: Russia, China, Iran and others – very much want this to happen. So, it will happen faster,” Rogers added.

Venezuela Begins Publishing Oil Basket Price In Yuan

Two days after the WSJ confirmed Maduro"s earlier threat that he would stop accepting US Dollars as payment for crude oil imports, Venezuela has done just that.

As a reminder, and as we reported previously, in an effort to circumvent U.S. sanctions, Venezuela told oil traders that it will no longer receive or send payments in dollars. As a result, oil traders who export Venezuelan crude or import oil products into the country have begun converting their invoices to euros.

Furthermore, Venezuela"s state oil company Petróleos de Venezuela SA, or PdVSA (whose bankruptcy is fast approaching), told its private joint venture partners to open accounts in euros and to convert existing cash holdings into Europe’s main currency, said one project partner. The new payment policy hasn’t been publicly announced, but Vice President Tareck El Aissami, who has been blacklisted by the U.S., said Friday, "To fight against the economic blockade there will be a basket of currencies to liberate us from the dollar."

Fast forward to today, when according to a statement on the Venezuela oil ministry, the country"s weekly crude oil and petroleum basket "will be published in Chinese Yuan" - oddly, not in Euros as the WSJ hinted - going forward. We can only assume that Venezuela avoided the European currency on concerns that Brussels may follow in D.C."s footsteps and impose financial sanctions on the Maduro regime next. Which meant that the only "safe" currency to transact in, was that of the country"s two big sources of vendor (and commodity) financing: China and Russia. For now Venezuela has picked the former.

The ministry also unveiled a price of 306.26 Yuan per barrel for the week of Sept. 11-15, up 1.8% from the 300.91 in the previous week, saying "the more favorable outlook on world oil demand and reports of lower global production contributed to the strengthening of crude oil prices this week."

As for the more relevant topic, Venezuela"s abdication of the US dollar, whether permanent or temporary - until the US finds a way to intervene and restore normalcy - Nomura debt analyst Siobhan Morden warned that "you can say whatever you want for your domestic propaganda and make it look like you’re retaliating against the U.S.... this political posturing will only be to their detriment.”

It remains to be seen if president Trump will use today"s official switch by Venezuela to a PetroYuan as justification for a more "aggressive" foreign policy posture.

* * *

Meanwhile, recall that the decision by the nation with the world"s largest proven oil reserves to eliminate the dollar, comes just days after China and Russia unveiled the latest Oil/Yuan/Gold triad at the latest BRICS conference.

“Russia shares the BRICS countries’ concerns over the unfairness of the global financial and economic architecture, which does not give due regard to the growing weight of the emerging economies. We are ready to work together with our partners to promote international financial regulation reforms and to overcome the excessive domination of the limited number of reserve currencies.”

“To overcome the excessive domination of the limited number of reserve currencies” is the politest way of stating what the BRICS have been discussing for years now; how to bypass the US dollar, as well as the petrodollar. Clearly, Beijing is ready to step up the game. Soon China will launch a crude oil futures contract priced in yuan and convertible into gold.

This means that Russia – as well as Iran, the other key node of Eurasia integration – may bypass US sanctions by trading energy in their own currencies, or in yuan. Inbuilt in the move is a true Chinese win-win; the yuan will be fully convertible into gold on both the Shanghai and Hong Kong exchanges.

The new triad of oil, yuan and gold is actually a win-win-win. No problem at all if energy providers prefer to be paid in physical gold instead of yuan. The key message is the US dollar being bypassed.

To promote their strategic partnership, Russia and China  – via the Russian Central Bank and the People’s Bank of China – have been developing ruble-yuan swaps for quite a while now. Once that moves beyond the BRICS to aspiring “BRICS Plus” members and then all across the Global South, Washington’s reaction is bound to be nuclear (hopefully, not literally).

Washington’s strategic doctrine rules RC should not be allowed by any means to be preponderant along the Eurasian landmass. Yet what the BRICS have in store geo-economically does not concern only Eurasia – but the whole Global South.

Sections of the War Party in Washington bent on instrumentalizing  India against China – or against RC – may be in for a rude awakening. As much as the BRICS may be currently facing varied waves of economic turmoil, the daring long-term road map, way beyond the Xiamen Declaration, is very much in place.

*  *  *

Finally, having threatened China just this week with exclusion from SWIFT, we suspect Washington is rapidly running out of any great ally to sustain the petrodollar-driven hegemony (and implicitly the US war machine). So will calls for a Venezuelan invasion now commence, if for no other reason than to teach any other nation contemplating a similar move that it will simply not be allowed?

Pepe Escobar: Why Jihadism Won't Be Allowed To Die

Authored by Pepe Escobar via SputnikNews.com,

A serious working hypothesis is being discussed for a while now among independent geopolitical analysts. Here it is, in a nutshell.

Daesh may be dying – but the world is still encumbered with its walking corpse.

Plan B of Daesh’s masters may have been to indoctrinate repeated waves of misguided youth across the EU and “seduce” them into D.I. Y. jihadi terror, creating fear and insecurity in Europe. I’ve just been to Barcelona — and that’s not happening. No Fear.

Daesh can also manipulate its brand name to stake a claim into what we may call the New War Belt in Southwest Asia. That’s also not happening, because the “4+1” – Russia, Syria, Iran, Iraq, plus Hezbollah – with the addition of Turkey, and with China in a “leading from behind” role, are all working together.

The unfinished war across “Syraq” coupled with spasms of jihadism in Europe could certainly still metastasize into a massive Eurasian cancer, spreading like a plague from Afghanistan to Germany and vice-versa, and from the South China Sea to Brussels via Pakistan and vice-versa.

What would happen under this cataclysmic scenario is the complete derailment of the Chinese-driven New Silk Roads, a.k.a. Belt and Road Initiative (BRI); its integration with the Russia-driven Eurasia Economic Union (EAEC); and a massive security threat to the domestic stability of the Russia-China strategic partnership, with uncontrollable bellicose scenarios developing very close to their borders.

It’s no secret which elements and institutions would very much cherish internal political chaos in both Russia and China.

Charlie gets stronger

Dr. Zbig “Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski may be dead, but geopolitics is still encumbered with his corpse. Brzezinski’s life obsession is that no peer competitor to the US should be allowed to emerge. Imagine as he lay dying contemplating the ongoing, ultimate nightmare; a Russia-China pan-Eurasian alliance.

The less disastrous scenario in this case would be to seduce either Moscow or Beijing into becoming a US partner, based on which one would pose a lesser “threat” in the future. Brzezinski focused on Russia as the immediate threat and China as the long game threat.

Thus the obsession of the US deep state and the Clinton machine in demonizing all things Russia – like an infantile neo-McCarthyism on steroids. Inevitably, what this geopolitical back hole has precipitated is China’s even more rapid advance on all fronts.

Not to mention that the Russia-China strategic partnership kept getting stronger every day – an eerie echo of Capt. Willard’s line in Coppola’s Apocalypse Now; “Every minute I stay in this room I get weaker, every minute Charlie squats in the bush, he gets stronger”.

And yet Charlie is not squatting; he’s conquering via trade and investment. And he’s not in the bush; he’s all over the Eurasian plains.

A basket of Hobbesian flare-ups

The other American dalang, Henry Kissinger, is still alive, at 94. Advising President Trump before the January inauguration, and posing as the supreme gray eminence on China matters, he suggested Russia should be courted.

But then came the clincher. Clearly identifying that the Russia-China-Iran alliance holds the key to Eurasia integration, Kissinger revealed his true colors; it’s the weakest link – Iran – that should be neutralized.

Thus his recent proclamation/warning about an “Iranian radical empire” developing/stretching from Tehran to Beirut as the “vacuum” left by Daesh is filled by the Persians.

And here we have Kissinger once again as the unreconstructed Cold Warrior that he is; exit Communism, enter Khomeinism as the supreme “evil.” And may the Lord bask in praise of the Wahhabi matrix of jihadism enablers; the House of Saud.

The Kissingerian recipe sounds like music to the US deep state; Daesh should not be routed, it should be “realigned” as a tool against Iran.

Who cares that the notion of an “Iranian radical empire” per se does not even qualify as a joke? Lebanon is multicultural. Syria will continue to be ruled by the secular Baath Party. Iraq rejects Khomeinism – with tremendously influential Ayatollah Sistani privileging the parliamentary system.

The “4+1” – backed by China — have forged a serious alliance in the fire of the Syrian war. None of this will change by a Kissinger decree. As for “filling the vacuum”, the alternative is Daesh and Jabhat al-Nusra, a.k.a. al-Qaeda in Syria. “But wait!” — say the neocons/neoliberalcons of the War Party. “We like that!”]

And that brings us full circle to the initial working hypothesis. Daesh won’t be allowed to die – as much as the geopolitical re-engineering of what Dr. Zbig used to call the “Eurasian Balkans” refuses to die.

ISIS-Khorasan, or ISIS-K – that regroup in Afghanistan – can be so handy to wreak havoc in the intersection of Central Asia and South Asia, so close to key BRI development corridors.

Moscow and Beijing though, know exactly what’s goin’ on. The phony Caliphate was useful in an attempt to break off BRI across “Syraq”, as much as Maidan in Ukraine was useful to break off the EAEU.

Other war fronts will follow – from the Philippines to Venezuela, all bent on disrupting regional integration projects under a Divide and Rule strategy of US satraps manipulated into Hobbesian asymmetrical flare-ups.

Sixteen years after 9/11, the name of the game is not GWOT (Global War on Terror) anymore; is how, under the cover of GWOT, to disturb geostrategic expansion by the people who matter; “peer competitors” Russia and China.

China Raises Radiation Threat Level, Begins "Emergency Monitoring" Along North Korean Border

Shortly after North Korea conducted what’s believed to be its first successful test of a hydrogen bomb (and its sixth nuclear test in total), China’s Nuclear Safety Administration said on Sunday that it would begin emergency monitoring for radiation along its northeastern border with North Korea, according to Reuters.

The emergency response was set at “level 2,” the second-highest grade on a four-tier system, according to the Times of Japan. The NSA did not indicate whether any radiation had been detected.

“’At present, the automatic radiation monitoring stations in the provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin, Liaoning and Shandong are functioning properly,’ Xinhua reported, citing the Ministry of Environmental Protection, which administers the safety agency.”

Earlier in the day, the presidents of China and Russia agreed to “appropriately deal with” North Korea’s sixth and most powerful nuclear test, according to the South China Morning Post. Beijing strongly condemned Pyongyang’s actions and threatened to work with the United Nation’s Security Council to add sanctions. The agreement came as Chinese President Xi Jinping met his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on Sunday night in Xiamen, Fujian province, ahead of Monday’s BRICS leaders’ summit, according to the SCMP.

The test late Sunday morning triggered a 6.3-magnitude quake followed by a 4.6-magnitude tremor, and was felt throughout northeastern China.

Here’s more from the SCMP:

“The Chinese government resolutely opposes and strongly condemns this,” the Chinese foreign ministry said after North Korea confirmed the test.

“We urge North Korea to recognise the determination of the international community to achieve a denuclearised Korean peninsula … and to return to the path of resolving conflicts through dialogue,” it said adding that China will continue to implement UN sanctions against Pyongyang in ‘comprehensive manner.’”

As one analyst who spoke with the SCMP suggested, the North may have timed its nuclear test to coincide with the BRICS conference that begins tomorrow in Xiamen. World leaders from some of the world’s largest emerging-market countries have traveled to China for the conference, and by testing the nuke Sunday, not only did the North overshadow the conference, which was supposed to be about economic issues, but it also provided world leaders with a first-hand look at its nuclear capabilities.

"On The Beach" 2017 - The Beckoning Of Nuclear War

Paul Craig Roberts writes that the admirable and honorable truth-teller John Pilger warns us that nuclear war is closer than we think.

The 1957 book, On The Beach, introduced awareness that war in the nuclear age is terminable for life on earth. This realization explains President John F. Kennedy’s rejection of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff’s recommendation to launch a nuclear strike on the Soviet Union. Today as evidenced by the behavior of the US government, its European vassal states, and neoconservative pundits, this realization no longer informs US policy.

Pilger speaks of the lobotomy performed on each generation that removes facts from history. Pilger himself is a victim when he chooses to stress that Ronald Reagan defended the Vietnam war instead of emphasizing that Reagan worked with Gorbachev to reduce the threat of nuclear war. The lobotomy that has been performed on the Western world has destroyed knowledge that the US and Russia were on peaceful terms prior to the Soviet collapse.

These peaceful terms lasted a short time, only through the administration of President George H.W. Bush. With the advent of the Clinton regime, all peaceful agreements that were made have been consistently broken by Washington for 24 years throughout the two-term presidencies of three regimes, and now Congress is set on destroying what remains of the work of 20th century US administrations to remove the specter of nuclear armageddon. The defense authorization bill currently before Congress overturns the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty signed by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. This treaty eliminated an entire class of nuclear weapons and signaled the end of the Cold War.

John Pilger tells us of the certain consequences of the renewed nuclear arms race:

The US submarine captain says, "We"ve all got to die one day, some sooner and some later. The trouble always has been that you"re never ready, because you don"t know when it"s coming. Well, now we do know and there"s nothing to be done about it."

He says he will be dead by September. It will take about a week to die, though no one can be sure. Animals live the longest.

The war was over in a month. The United States, Russia and China were the protagonists. It is not clear if it was started by accident or mistake. There was no victor. The northern hemisphere is contaminated and lifeless now.

A curtain of radioactivity is moving south towards Australia and New Zealand, southern Africa and South America. By September, the last cities, towns and villages will succumb. As in the north, most buildings will remain untouched, some illuminated by the last flickers of electric light.

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper

These lines from T.S. Eliot"s poem The Hollow Men appear at the beginning of Nevil Shute"s novel On the Beach, which left me close to tears. The endorsements on the cover said the same.

Published in 1957 at the height of the Cold War when too many writers were silent or cowed, it is a masterpiece. At first the language suggests a genteel relic; yet nothing I have read on nuclear war is as unyielding in its warning. No book is more urgent.

Some readers will remember the black and white Hollywood film starring Gregory Peck as the US Navy commander who takes his submarine to Australia to await the silent, formless spectre descending on the last of the living world.

I read On the Beach for the first time the other day, finishing it as the US Congress passed a law to wage economic war on Russia, the world"s second most lethal nuclear power.  There was no justification for this insane vote, except the promise of plunder.

The "sanctions" are aimed at Europe, too, mainly Germany, which depends on Russian natural gas and on European companies that do legitimate business with Russia. In what passed for debate on Capitol Hill, the more garrulous senators left no doubt that the embargo was designed to force Europe to import expensive American gas.

Their main aim seems to be war - real war. No provocation as extreme can suggest anything else. They seem to crave it, even though Americans have little idea what war is. The Civil War of 1861-5 was the last on their mainland. War is what the United States does to others.

The only nation to have used nuclear weapons against human beings, they have since destroyed scores of governments, many of them democracies, and laid to waste whole societies - the million deaths in Iraq were a fraction of the carnage in Indo-China, which President Reagan called "a noble cause" and President Obama revised as the tragedy of an "exceptional people"He was not referring to the Vietnamese.

Filming last year at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, I overheard a National Parks Service guide lecturing a school party of young teenagers. "Listen up," he said. "We lost 58,000 young soldiers in Vietnam, and they died defending your freedom."

At a stroke, the truth was inverted. No freedom was defended. Freedom was destroyed. A peasant country was invaded and millions of its people were killed, maimed, dispossessed, poisoned; 60,000 of the invaders took their own lives. Listen up, indeed.

A lobotomy is performed on each generation. Facts are removed. History is excised and replaced by what Time magazine calls "an eternal present".

Harold Pinter described this as "manipulation of power worldwide, while masquerading as a force for universal good, a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis [which meant] that it never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn"t happening. It didn"t matter. It was of no interest."

Those who call themselves liberals or tendentiously "the left" are eager participants in this manipulation, and its brainwashing, which today revert to one name: Trump.

Trump is mad, a fascist, a dupe of Russia. He is also a gift for "liberal brains pickled in the formaldehyde of identity politics", wrote Luciana Bohne memorably. The obsession with Trump the man - not Trump as a symptom and caricature of an enduring system - beckons great danger for all of us.

While they pursue their fossilised anti-Russia agendas, narcissistic media such as the Washington Post, the BBC and the Guardian suppress the essence of the most important political story of our time as they warmonger on a scale I cannot remember in my lifetime.

On 3 August, in contrast to the acreage the Guardian has given to drivel that the Russians conspired with Trump (reminiscent of the far-right smearing of John Kennedy as a "Soviet agent"), the paper buried, on page 16, news that the President of the United States was forced to sign a Congressional bill declaring economic war on Russia. Unlike every other Trump signing, this was conducted in virtual secrecy and attached with a caveat from Trump himself that it was "clearly unconstitutional".

A coup against the man in the White House is under way. This is not because he is an odious human being, but because he has consistently made clear he does not want war with Russia.

This glimpse of sanity, or simple pragmatism, is anathema to the "national security" managers who guard a system based on war, surveillance, armaments, threats and extreme capitalism. Martin Luther King called them "the greatest purveyors of violence in the world today".

They have encircled Russia and China with missiles and a nuclear arsenal. They have used neo-Nazis to instal an unstable, aggressive regime on Russia"s "borderland" - the way through which Hitler invaded, causing the deaths of 27 million people.  Their goal is to dismember the modern Russian Federation.

In response, "partnership" is a word used incessantly by Vladimir Putin - anything, it seems, that might halt an evangelical drive to war in the United States. Incredulity in Russia may have now turned to fear and perhaps a certain resolution. The Russians almost certainly have war-gamed nuclear counter strikes. Air-raid drills are not uncommon. Their history tells them to get ready.

The threat is simultaneous. Russia is first, China is next. The US has just completed a huge military exercise with Australia known as Talisman Sabre. They rehearsed a blockade of the Malacca Straits and the South China Sea, through which pass China"s economic lifelines.

The admiral commanding the US Pacific fleet said that, "if required", he would nuke China. That he would say such a thing publicly in the current perfidious atmosphere begins to make fact of Nevil Shute"s fiction.

None of this is considered news. No connection is made as the bloodfest of Passchendaele a century ago is remembered. Honest reporting is no longer welcome in much of the media. Windbags, known as pundits, dominate: editors are infotainment or party line managers. Where there was once sub-editing, there is the liberation of axe-grinding clichés. Those journalists who do not comply are defenestrated.

The urgency has plenty of precedents. In my film, The Coming War on China, John Bordne, a member of a US Air Force missile combat crew based in Okinawa, Japan, describes how in 1962 - during the Cuban missile crisis - he and his colleagues were "told to launch all the missiles" from their silos.

Nuclear armed, the missiles were aimed at both China and Russia. A junior officer questioned this, and the order was eventually rescinded - but only after they were issued with service revolvers and ordered to shoot at others in a missile crew if they did not "stand down".

At the height of the Cold War, the anti-communist hysteria in the United States was such that US officials who were on official business in China were accused of treason and sacked. In 1957 - the year Shute wrote On the Beach - no official in the State Department could speak the language of the world"s most populous nation. Mandarin speakers were purged under strictures now echoed in the Congressional bill that has just passed, aimed at Russia.

The bill was bipartisan. There is no fundamental difference between Democrats and Republicans. The terms "left" and "right" are meaningless. Most of America"s modern wars were started not by conservatives, but by liberal Democrats.

When Obama left office, he presided over a record seven wars, including America"s longest war and an unprecedented campaign of extrajudicial killings - murder - by drones.

In his last year, according to a Council on Foreign Relations study, Obama, the "reluctant liberal warrior", dropped 26,171 bombs - three bombs every hour, 24 hours a day.  Having pledged to help "rid the world" of nuclear weapons, the Nobel Peace Laureate built more nuclear warheads than any president since the Cold War.

Trump is a wimp by comparison. It was Obama - with his secretary of state Hillary Clinton at his side - who destroyed Libya as a modern state and launched the human stampede to Europe. At home, immigration groups knew him as the "deporter-in-chief".

One of Obama"s last acts as president was to sign a bill that handed a record $618billion to the Pentagon, reflecting the soaring ascendancy of fascist militarism in the governance of the United States. Trump has endorsed this.

Buried in the detail was the establishment of a "Center for Information Analysis and Response". This is a ministry of truth. It is tasked with providing an "official narrative of facts" that will prepare us for the real possibility of nuclear war - if we allow it.

Is U.S. Or China The World's Economic Superpower?

Since the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the world has had one undisputed economic superpower: the United States.

But while the U.S. has enjoyed its moment in the sun, the balance of power has been slowly shifting towards the inevitable rise of China. It’s been a long time coming, but, as Visual Capitalist"s Jeff Desjardins notes, China now has the manpower, influence, and economic might to compete at a similar level – and if you ask people around the world, they’ve certainly taken notice.

ECONOMIC SUPERPOWERS

The United States and China combine for 39% of global GDP, 53% of estimated economic growth in the coming years, and 23% of the world’s population.

But which one is perceived as the more dominant economic power?

According to a recent survey by Pew Research Center, the vary wildly depending on the people and country surveyed. However, on an aggregate level that uses the results from the people in 38 countries surveyed, Pew determined that a median of 42% of people list the United States as the world’s leading economic power, while 32% name China as top dog.

While the U.S. maintains a narrow lead in aggregate, things get much more interesting when we look at individual countries.

DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES

Do America’s closest allies view it as the clear global superpower? What about the countries that neighbor China – surely, they must witness China’s economic might firsthand.

Weirdly, the dominant perspectives in these places are not as obvious as one would think.

More people living in Canada, Australia, and major European countries like France, Germany, Sweden, Spain, and the United Kingdom tend to view China as the global economic superpower.

Meanwhile, the majority of people in South American and African countries see the United States as the world’s major economic power – and people in countries near China (such as South Korea, Japan, Philippines, Indonesia, and Vietnam) all tend to agree with that sentiment as well.

Ron Paul: Trump Should Veto Congress' Foolish New Sanctions Bill

Authored by Ron Paul via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity,

This week’s expected House vote to add more sanctions on Russia, Iran, and North Korea is a prime example of how little thought goes into US foreign policy. Sanctions have become kind of an automatic action the US government takes when it simply doesn’t know what else to do.

No matter what the problem, no matter where on earth it occurs, the answer from Washington is always sanctions. Sanctions are supposed to force governments to change policies and do what Washington tells them or face the wrath of their people. So the goal of sanctions is to make life as miserable as possible for civilians so they will try to overthrow their governments. Foreign leaders and the elites do not suffer under sanctions. This policy would be immoral even if it did work, but it does not.

As Ron Paul relates...

Why is Congress so eager for more sanctions on Russia? The neocons and the media have designated Russia as the official enemy and the military industrial complex and other special interests want to continue getting rich terrifying Americans into believing the propaganda.

Why, just weeks after the White House affirmed that Iran is abiding by its obligations under the nuclear treaty, does Congress pass additional sanctions anyway? Washington blames Iran for “destabilizing” Syria and Iraq by helping them fight ISIS and al-Qaeda. Does this make any sense at all?

When is the last time Iran committed a terrorist act on our soil? It hasn’t. Yet we learned from the declassified 28 pages of the Congressional 9/11 report that Saudi Arabia was deeply involved in the 2001 attacks against Washington and New York. Who has funded al-Qaeda and ISIS in Syria for years? Saudi Arabia. Yet no one is talking about sanctions against that country. This is because sanctions are not about our security. They are about politics and special interests.

Why is Congress poised to add yet more sanctions on North Korea? Do they want the North Korean people to suffer more than they are already suffering? North Korea’s GDP is half that of Vermont – the US state with the lowest GDP! Does anyone believe they are about to invade us? There is much talk about North Korea’s ballistic missile program, but little talk about 30,000 US troops and weapons on North Korea’s border. For Washington, it’s never a threat if we do it to the other guy.

Here’s an alternative to doing the same thing over and over: Let’s take US troops out of North Korea after 70 years. The new South Korean president has proposed military talks with North Korea to try and reduce tensions. We should get out of the way and let them solve their own problems. If Iran and Russia want to fight ISIS and al-Qaeda at the invitation of their ally, Syria, why stand in the way? We can’t run the world. We are out of money.

President Trump was elected to pursue a new kind of foreign policy. If he means what he said on the campaign trail, he will veto this foolish sanctions bill and begin dismantling neocon control of his Administration.