US military personnel fired shots at a man who tried to force his way into a military base in central England used by the U.S. air force on Monday. The Mildenhall Royal Air Force base in Suffolk, eastern England said security staff locked down the base, used by the United States to refuel U.S. and NATO aircraft in Europe, at about 1300 GMT following reports of a disturbance. The man was subsequently arrested after the incident.
The U.S. Air Force said the incident had been contained and that the suspect had been apprehended. Police said they remained on the base. The U.S. embassy declined immediate comment.
The UK Ministry of Defence said that the incident took place at the entrance of the base after the driver tried to force the car past the gates.
“Shots were fired by American service personnel and a man has been detained with cuts and bruises and taken into custody,” Suffolk Police said. “No other people have been injured as a result of the incident.”
Police have responded to reports of a disturbance at RAF Mildenhall in #Suffolk and a man has been detained with cuts and bruises and taken into custody. No other people have been injured as a result of the incident.
The 1,162-acre base, which houses about 3,100 U.S. military and an additional 3,000 family members, is set for closure after the U.S. said it was going to move is operations from the base to Germany. “The base was locked down and emergency personnel are responding to the situation,” RAF Mildenhall said in a statement. “Individuals in the area surrounding the installation are asked to avoid the base at this time.”
A statement for the base said the lockdown had later been lifted.
Police are continuing to deal with an ongoing incident at RAF Mildenhall, it is considered that there is no wider threat to the public or occupants on the base. One man has been arrested and police are not looking for anyone else on the site.
The future looks very grim for Macedonia as the newly installed pro-Western coup “government” wastes no time in dismantling the country’s identity and selling out sovereignty to some of its hostile neighbors, both of which could have the cumulative effect of erasing what is constitutionally known as the Republic of Macedonia from the world map by sometime next year and replacing it with a domestically reconstituted “federalized” (internally partitioned) entity internationally recognized by a “politically correct” “compromise” moniker.
Backdrop To The Balkans
The tiny South-Central Balkan country of the Republic of Macedonia is in dire straits right now, but most of Europe – let alone the rest of the world – has no idea that this is the case because the Mainstream Media narrative is that the state’s two-year-long political crisis was “resolved” when the patriotic VMRO-DPMNE government of Nikola Gruevski was replaced in a “constitutional/electoral coup” that followed Color Revolution and even Hybrid War provocations. The author wrote about this in a Sputnik piece at the time from May 2017 titled “The Macedonian Crisis Isn’t Over, and a Bigger Balkan One is Just Beginning”, and the reader should review that article and also skim through his Oriental Review & Sputnik archives on the topic if they’re not already familiar with the contextual backdrop of what happened and why.
In a nutshell, the Republic of Macedonia was targeted for Hybrid War destabilization in order to offset Russia and China’s Balkan megaprojects of the Balkan Stream gas pipeline and Balkan Silk Road, respectively, that are expected to transit through the country, though with the former possibly being redirected to Bulgaria instead. In any case, a trumped-up “surveillance” scandal was used as the Color Revolution “trigger event” for attempting to coerce a Regime Tweak (political concessions), the failure of which forced the external conspirators and their internal Soros-backed SDSM “opposition” collaborators to move towards the next step of Regime Change, though eventually the decision was made for a Regime Reboot (constitutional change) to fundamentally cripple the country and forever prevent its key integration in the emerging Multipolar World Order.
The point of this piece isn’t to chronicle all of the author’s previous analyses on the topic, nor to reiterate his explanation about what’s previously been happening and why, but to engage in forward-focused reporting and scenario forecasting in raising awareness about the fraught future that awaits the Republic of Macedonia.
The Great Partition
The newly installed pro-Western coup “government” of Zoran Zaev and his Soros-backed SDSM cohorts has swiftly moved to cut a serious of external and internal deals that are bound to endanger the country’s existence by next year. For starters, despite denying it all throughout the 2016 campaign, his party is now aggressively trying to push through “bilingualism” in setting the institutional precedent for what logically seems to be the country’s inevitable forthcoming “federalization” (internal partition). Concurrently with this, he also signed a “treaty” with neighboring Bulgaria that essentially makes Macedonia a junior-rank partner susceptible to being swallowed up by its civilizationally similar brethren to the east in the event of a serious domestic crisis, such as the one that could be sparked on command by the country’s “federalization” and de-facto partial absorption into the revived Nazi-era geopolitical project of “Greater Albania”.
The formal international partition of the Republic of Macedonia between Albania and Bulgaria is what the author predicted back in May 2015 and which was even indirectly responded to by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at the time during the height of the country’s Color Revolution crisis, but this process has since taken on an unofficial form as well if Macedonia is “federalized” into an Albanian western half simultaneously with its eastern one being socio-economically subsumed by Bulgaria, with this latter scenario being facilitated by the Albanian “bilingualism” push and recent “treaty” with Bulgaria. Some Macedonians have keenly picked up on this plot, but that’s why the ruling authorities have sought to imprison patriotic citizens and political figures in order to intimidate the rest of the population into passively allowing this anti-constitutional and even treasonous process of state dismantlement to continue.
Zaev’s “Dictatorship Of The Proletariat”
At the same time as SDSM is locking up its political opponents, it’s also trying to pass through a controversial “amnesty” proposal for freeing convicted criminals, which might even apply to Daesh terrorists who are returning to the country. Despite the “government’s” heavy American-ordered pressure on civil society, the Republika online information outlet was brave enough to write about this appalling dichotomy in pointing out how imprisoned terrorists and free patriots are poised to switch places if Zaev gets what he wants. This alone speaks to the silent “lustration” process that’s being carried out in the country right now to “cleanse” its permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies (“deep state”), as well as academic, media, and other institutions, of all opposition to the coup-imposed authorities.
Interestingly, SDSM is establishing a sort of “dictatorship of the proletariat” in Macedonia, seeing as how the party presents itself as a “leftist-socialist” one, and true to the tradition of this ideological camp, it’s using the cover and slogans of the working class (“proletariat”) to set up an actual dictatorship in the country. Just like it’s usually happened in the past, “leftist-socialist” demagogues are distracting the masses with high-sounding platitudes and crafting a media-acceptable narrative for their external backers to hide behind in “justifying” the seizure of power by an elite group of individuals who are far removed from the actual concerns of the working class. History has a curious way of repeating itself, as the EU is the warped ideological successor of the Soviet Union taken to its most dystopian socio-cultural and dictatorial extremes, so there’s a certain “logic” behind why this faux “leftist-socialist” “government” is so fawning towards Brussels.
But unlike during the Soviet period of the Old Cold War when any ideologically aligned country could join the Eastern Bloc, in the “EuroLiberal” era of the New Cold War there are certain bureaucratic obstacles that prevent the free accession of aspirant states to both the EU and NATO, namely – pun intended – the Republic of Macedonia’s constitutional name. The aforementioned post-modern unipolar structures occupying Western Eurasia are set up in such a way that new admissions must be consensually agreed upon by all existing members, and in this case Greece is adamantly opposed to Macedonia joining either of these two. What might have at one time been viewed as a “curse” in the chaotic international uncertainty immediately following the dissolution of Yugoslavia, this “veto right” has actually turned into a “blessing” because it formally kept Macedonia out of both organizations until the present day.
Name Games
Nevertheless, the US-installed coup “government” of Zaev’s SDSM wants to change that, but the only way that he can do so is if he gets rid of Macedonia’s constitutional name and therefore erases the country from the map. It doesn’t matter if it’s called “New Macedonia”, “Northern Macedonia”, or “The Central Balkan Republic” like has been speculatively reported, or even the author’s own admittedly absurd prediction of the “Federation of Vardar Albania”, but the fact of the matter is that it won’t be the Republic of Macedonia, a name which has taken on a semi-sacred aura as the torchbearer of Macedonian identity across its rich history. The EU Commissioner signaled that he expects Zaev to change Macedonia’s name by next year, which would then allow the country to be fast-tracked into both the EU and NATO and thus formalize its occupation by the Western elite.
All of this should rightly enrage any Macedonian, but Zaev and his fellow underlings are unfazed because they don’t have any patriotic affiliation to their homeland. Just like their Soviet predecessors, their loyalty lies with an ideology, not a nation, which is why they’re literally selling Macedonia out to Albania, Bulgaria, and the EU in order to please Greece and therefore fulfill the US’ grand strategic vision of annexing their country to its hegemonic unipolar institutions in order to more effectively disrupt, control, or influence China’s (and possibly Russia’s) Balkan megaproject(s). The final step is to remove Macedonia’s constitutional name and replace it with a “compromise” one, but the run-up to dealing a deathblow to this ancient country is the destruction of the monuments to Macedonia’s civilizational heritage that were built as the flagships of the former VMRO government’s Skopje 2014 project.
Monument Mockery
To add insult to injury, the “Cultural Marxist” erasure of all visible signs of Macedonia’s historical uniqueness will probably be directly supervised by Hoyt Brian Yee, Victoria Nuland’s successor and expected replacement of current US Ambassador to Macedonia Jess Baily. Yee was just as responsible for Macedonia’s coup as Nuland was for Ukraine’s, yet at least the Eastern European country wasn’t totally humiliated to the point of having her officially oversee the destruction of its monuments to Lenin, the founder of Ukraine’s first-ever statehood no matter how “politically incorrect” it is for its ultra-nationalists to ever acknowledge. In Macedonia’s case, however, the Balkan country is being forced to endure the shame of having the man most directly responsible for their coup placed in charge of seeing out the destruction of monuments representing a much older civilizational heritage than just the past 100 years.
If the Skopje 2014 monuments, especially the horseman in the city center that’s clearly supposed to be Alexander the Macedonian, are destroyed, then it will probably be impossible to prevent Macedonia’s name change and its subsequently swift annexation into the EU and NATO alongside the state-supported suppression of its people’s culture, history, and civilization. The “government’s” plan to make a mockery of Macedonia’s monuments and disown its very identity could function as an emergency “trigger event” for sparking a “reverse-Color Revolution”, which the author previously analyzed as the creative utilization of Color Revolution techniques by patriotic individuals for multipolar and pro-sovereignty purposes, just like what was attempted in May when concerned citizens unsuccessfully tried to prevent their parliament’s takeover by a former Albanian separatist-terrorist who was designed by Zaev as that body’s “speaker”.
A Third Force Is Calling
If Macedonians don’t band together to stop what is being falsely marketed as an “apolitical and anti-corruption municipal decision”, then it might be inevitable that their country will cease to exist in its present name and possibly even state (per an internal and/or external partition) by next year. If the monuments fall, Macedonia falls, once and for all, which is why the last chance to save Macedonia is to save its monuments. VMRO has the greatest potential to organize legal and peaceful demonstrations in support of this pressingly important issue, but some of the party elite are unfortunately partly compromised due to what can only be postulated is American blackmail pressure against them, be it the threat of physical violence or illegal arrest on fake pretexts (“anti-corruption”, “abuse of power”, etc.) by the coup “government”. As such, a Third Force needs to eventually emerge, possibly growing out of VMRO and the various civil society movements aligned with it, in order to counteract the limitations being imposed on the former ruling party and serve as a bridge for attracting “moderate” SDSM supporters who were misled during the last election.
The protection of Macedonia’s monuments – and accordingly its statehood, civilization, and identity – mustn’t be framed as a partisan political issue, which isn’t at all what VMRO is doing but its potentially pivotal role in being the organizational center of such a civil society movement might make it easier for SDSM and its American-Soros backers to manipulate the perception that it is, which is why it’s essential that a Third Force develop in leading the way during this historically crucial moment. Whatever it’s called and however it’s formed, this Third Force will be the vanguard actor protecting Macedonia from dismantlement, with its members understanding that it’s now or never to safeguard their state because its very existence is incompatible with the EU and NATO’s plans expansionist plans. The Republic of Macedonia is slated to be removed from the map so that its people and territory can be formally annexed to these two unipolar structures under Zaev’s “dictatorship of the proletariat”, and all indications point to 2018 being the make-or-break year where Macedonia’s patriots will either prevail or the country itself will perish.
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. …
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.
“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?
“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.
As on the soccer field in his youth, so in a tumultuous political career spanning four decades: Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has consistently shown his mettle as a fighter who won’t be satisfied with anything short of total victory.
But in the battle that is now unfolding around him, and which is besieging him, there isn’t going to be a winner.
What is at stake is survival – the chance to live another day, even if in some ignominy. That much is clear from the opening testimony in a federal courtroom in New York on Wednesday from the Turkish-Iranian gold trader Reza Zarrab, who allegedly helped Tehran sidestep US sanctions to export oil with the connivance of corrupt Turkish high officials and then to launder the income.
When the principal accused becomes the star witness in a US court, he has possibly struck a deal with the authorities. The remaining ambiguity is with regard to when it was that Zarrab struck the deal – was it when he landed in Miami 18 months ago, ostensibly to show his young son around Disneyland, or before he was spirited out of Turkey to America on the express understanding that he’d get clemency for providing hard evidence to nail Erdogan.
Zarrab explained before the court the elaborate scheme he orchestrated to free “a few billion euros” of Iran’s sanctioned oil using funds deposited in the Turkish state-owned Halkbank which were used to buy gold that was subsequently smuggled to Dubai and sold for cash. (The FBI also nabbed a senior functionary of Halkbank, Hakan Atilla, who is on trial.)
Turkish gold trader Reza Zarrab is shown in a court room sketch as he appears in Manhattan federal court in New York. Photo: Reuters / Jane Rosenberg
Zarrab named a confidant of Erdogan, the former Turkish Economy Minister Zafer Caglayan, as having taken bribes amounting to over US$60 million and also implicated Turkey’s Aktif Bank, which is part of a holding company headed at the time by Erdogan’s son-in-law, Berat Albayrak (the current energy minister). Zarrab is due to testify again. We have only seen the tip of the iceberg.
Meanwhile, Turkey’s main opposition leader, Kemal K?l?çdaro?lu, revealed on Tuesday that Erdo?an’s close circle – including his brother, his son and his executive assistant – made transactions worth around US$15 million to an off-shore company called Bellway Limited in the Isle of Man (a tax haven) in late 2011 and early 2012. Kilicdaroglu produced documentary evidence and promised to revert with more such disclosures.
Top Turkish officials and senior leaders of the ruling party have made the counter-allegation that all of this is a political conspiracy orchestrated by Islamist preacher Fetullah Gulen, who lives in the US. They say Gulen and his American mentors are making a second attempt to remove Erdogan from power after the failed military coup two years ago. The Turks believe that CIA officials sponsored Gulen’s exile in Philadelphia.
Evidently, the US establishment has been preparing the case file for quite some time – and the effort predates the Trump presidency.
The Turkish side have kept President Trump personally out of the firing line.
There is, in fact, an eerie similarity here to what the Russians have been saying – namely, that Trump himself desires a good working relationship with Russia and President Vladimir Putin, but, alas, the Washington establishment is pursuing a contrarian agenda.
Erdogan’s strategic defiance of Washington seriously hurts US interests. Without Turkey’s cooperation, America’s military presence in northern Syria is unsustainable. Turkey’s entente with Russia and Iran undermines US regional strategies.
Add to that Turkey’s S-400 missile deal with Russia, Erdogan’s hostility toward Israel and support of Qatar in its rift with Saudi Arabia, the downhill slide in Turkey’s relations with major European countries and its lackadaisical attitude toward NATO, and it’s not hard to see how the West might view Erdogan as a hurdle that must somehow be overcome.
Zarrab can help irreparably damage Erdogan’s reputation, and even implicate his family members and close aides as criminals.
Worse still, heavy penalties of billions of dollars could be levied on the Turkish banks involved, crippling the country’s economy. And sanctions could be imposed.
Suffice to say, Erdogan has a choice between capitulation or the desecration of the house he has built in a long and hugely successful political career. Time is running out. Erdogan is circling the wagons. He may feel tempted to ride the wings of Turkish nationalism. There is still no credible political figure who can seriously challenge him in Turkish politics. He is daring and charismatic. The next elections are due only in 2019.
But that is to cast an eye at the horizon.
Significantly, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson quietly digressed during a speech on trans-Atlantic relations in Washington on Tuesday to pose a riddle to no one in particular – whether Turkey would be better off partnering with Russia and Iran or aligning with the West.
On the eve of Zorrab’s testimony, Tillerson seemed to hint at a passage that Erdogan has not taken, toward a door that he has never opened – one that leads into the rose-garden.
Few people are able to recognize their own mistakes. Many prefer to deny the truth becoming willfully oblivious to obvious facts. Why assume responsibility if there is such a thing as blame shifting - a true-and-tried method to get away with it? Pointing a finger at someone else to divert attention serves the purpose.
There is method to this madness and Western politicians have been resorting to blame-shifting tactic increasingly often. Each and everything going awry in the world is the fault of Russia. The drive of peoples for independence is a good example. Take Catalonia to illustrate the point.
The Spanish government said on Nov.10 that it had noted news manipulation about the Catalan crisis on social media originating from Russia’s territory. Spain"s government spokesman Inigo Mendez de Vigo said disinformation on social networks was a "serious issue." According to Spanish Defence Minister Maria Dolores de Cospedal, the government had established that "many messages and interventions via social networks come from Russian territory." She did not offer any specific examples to confirm the affirmation. Foreign Minister Alfonso Dastis said there was evidence of activity by Russian networks and hackers. The trolls are said to be spreading misinformation across social media to further "destabilize" Spain and the EU.
The issue was even raised at the EU foreign and defense ministers meeting on Nov.13-14, where Spain briefed the EU on the alleged interference. The debate comes after eight member states urged EU foreign service chief Federica Mogherini to build up the counter-propaganda cell in her service.
Spanish media have many times attacked Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik Spanish language services for instigating tensions in Catalonia, supporting the separatist movement. El Pais daily wrote an editorial on Nov. 10 denouncing "the intense campaign by Russian media that are close to the Kremlin," whose "propaganda machine" it accused of siding with the pro-independence movement.
NATO leadership chimed in. On Nov.9, US General Curtis Scaparrotti, the commander of NATO forces in Europe, called on Russia to stop “meddling” into European elections. He was concerned over Russia’s “malign influence’ in other countries. The Atlantic Council, a US-based think-tank close to NATO, has published a report suggesting that Russia was seeking to meddle in support of Catalan independence and to discredit the Spanish central government"s position that the referendum on independence held on Oct. 1 was illegal. El Pais, the Washington Times and Politico all issued publications alleging that an army of Russian bots had perfected their techniques of online influence and thus ensured the October 1 vote went down the path of separation.
If the accusations were true, it would mean that Russia-backed media networks operate to undermine Russia’s official position on the issue made clear in a Foreign Ministry’s statement. Russia has consistently voiced its respect for Spain’s territorial integrity.
Can anyone of sane mind believe that Russia’s “meddling” is the real reason to make over 40 percent of Catalans support independence?
Has Russia been behind the 95-year-old independence movement in Catalonia?
Has Russia made the Catalans’ language and culture distinct?
Did Russia make Francisco Franco oppress the Catalan people?
Has Russia provoked the economic crisis in Spain, which has served to magnify calls for Catalan independence?
Has Russia made Catalans believe that the current tax structure is unfair?
Has Russia made Madrid unwilling to renegotiate Catalonia’s autonomy agreement?
Has Russia written Spain’s constitution, which expressly prohibits a region from breaking away unilaterally?
Did Moscow order Spanish police to use brutal force, while preventing the unconstitutional vote?
If it didn’t count, why take such pains to stop it?
Did Russia make the EU abstain from mediation effort? And, finally, does Russia stand to gain from an independent Catalonia?
With many publications on the issue, no evidence has been produced to demonstrate a link between the Russian government and Catalonia vote.
Obviously, the use of the "Russian meddling" narrative seems to work as a distraction from the wrongdoing of the Spanish government. The fantasy provides a convenient scapegoat to avoid responsibility of the Spanish government for missing opportunities to launch meaningful political dialogue with Catalonia and mishandling of the vote.
Spain is by far not the only country to use the narrative to its own advantage. As Karl Sharro, a well-known British architect and satirist, commented on the results of UK elections, “The most disappointing thing about the UK election is there wasn"t even a hint of Russian interference. It"s like we don"t matter at all.”
The United States and its allies continue to cajole and threaten North Korea to negotiate an agreement that would relinquish its growing nuclear and ballistic-missile programs.
The latest verbal prodding came from President Trump during his joint press conference with South Korean president Moon Jae-in. Trump urged Pyongyang to “come to the negotiating table,” and asserted that it “makes sense for North Korea to do the right thing.” The “right thing” Trump and his predecessors have always maintained, is for North Korea to become nonnuclear.
It is unlikely that the DPRK will ever return to nuclear virginity. Pyongyang has multiple reasons for retaining its nukes. For a country with an economy roughly the size of Paraguay’s, a bizarre political system that has no external appeal, and an increasingly antiquated conventional military force, a nuclear-weapons capability is the sole factor that provides prestige and a seat at the table of international affairs. There is one other crucial reason for the DPRK’s truculence, though. North Korean leaders simply do not trust the United States to honor any agreement that might be reached.
Unfortunately, there are ample reasons for such distrust.
North Korean leaders have witnessed how the United States treats nonnuclear adversaries such as Serbia and Iraq. But it was the U.S.-led intervention in Libya in 2011 that underscored to Pyongyang why achieving and retaining a nuclear-weapons capability might be the only reliable way to prevent a regime-change war directed against the DPRK.
Partially in response to Washington’s war that ousted Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in the spring of 2003, ostensibly because of a threat posed by Baghdad’s “weapons of mass destruction,” Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi seemed to capitulate regarding such matters. He signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in December of that year and agreed to abandon his country’s embryonic nuclear program. In exchange, the United States and its allies lifted economic sanctions and pledged that they no longer sought to isolate Libya.
Qaddafi was welcomed back into the international community once he relinquished his nuclear ambitions.
That reconciliation lasted less than a decade. When one of the periodic domestic revolts against Qaddafi’s rule erupted again in 2011, Washington and its NATO partners argued that a humanitarian catastrophe was imminent (despite meager evidence of that scenario), and initiated a military intervention. It soon became apparent that the official justification to protect innocent civilians was a cynical pretext, and that another regime-change war was underway. The Western powers launched devastating air strikes and cruise-missile attacks against Libyan government forces. NATO also armed rebel units and assisted the insurgency in other ways.
Although all previous revolts had fizzled, extensive Western military involvement produced a very different result this time. The insurgents not only overthrew Qaddafi, they captured, tortured and executed him in an especially grisly fashion. Washington’s response was astonishingly flippant. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton quipped: “We came, we saw, he died.”
The behavior of Washington and its allies in Libya certainly did not give any incentive to North Korea or other would-be nuclear powers to abandon such ambitions in exchange for U.S. paper promises for normal relations. Indeed, North Korea promptly cited the Libya episode as a reason why it needed a deterrent capability—a point that Pyongyang has reiterated several times in the years since Muammar el-Qaddafi ouster. There is little doubt that the West’s betrayal of Qaddafi has made an agreement with the DPRK to denuclearize even less attainable than it might have been otherwise. Even some U.S. officials concede that the Libya episode convinced North Korean leaders that nuclear weapons were necessary for regime survival.
The foundation for successful diplomacy is a country’s reputation for credibility and reliability. U.S. leaders fret that autocratic regimes—such as those in Iran and North Korea—might well violate agreements they sign. There are legitimate reasons for wariness, although in Iran’s case, the government appears to be complying with its obligations under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that Tehran signed with the United States and other major powers in 2015—despite allegations from U.S. hawks about violations.
When it comes to problems with credibility, though, U.S. leaders also need to look in the mirror. Washington’s conduct in Libya was a case of brazen duplicity. It is hardly a surprise if North Korea (or other countries) now regard the United States as an untrustworthy negotiating partner. Because of Pyongyang’s other reasons for wanting a nuclear capability, a denuclearization accord was always a long shot. But U.S. actions in Libya reduced prospects to the vanishing point. American leaders have only themselves to blame for that situation.
America controls NATO policymaking. The alliance serves as its global imperial arm – warmaking its mission, not fostering world peace and stability.
Nor does it have anything to do with defense at a time the only threats alliance members face are invented ones. Real ones don’t exist.
World peace and stability notions are contrary to US objectives, wanting unchallenged dominance over world nations, their resources and populations.
America’s diabolical agenda involves endless wars of aggression, wanting all sovereign independent nations replaced by US vassal states, creating ruler/serf societies globally, an open-air prison for ordinary people disposed of if resist – a world unsafe and unfit to live in.
On November 8 and 9, NATO ministers met in Brussels. Like his predecessors, Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg was appointed to serve US interests, taking orders from Washington.
Issues discussed included revising NATO’s command structure, including “a new command to help protect sea lines of communication between North America and Europe, and another command to improve the movement of troops and equipment within Europe,” said Stoltenberg – stressing “our ability to move forces,” he added.
Against what, he didn’t explain – preparing for war on Russia the unstated objective, whether or not waged. It’s more likely than not ahead – a modern-day Operation Barbarossa with nukes if launched.
Russia and China represent the final frontier of resistance against US sought global dominance.
Eventual conflict against both nations is ominously possible, maybe likely or certain, a grim prospect if happens.
High on the ministerial agenda is improving infrastructure for warmaking, including upgraded roads and bridges, facilitating movement of troops, weapons and equipment.
So-called “deterrence for collective defense” is code language for possible offensive operations. The private sector in NATO countries have an “important role to play,” said Stoltenberg.
In late October, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu explained his nation must deal with serious threats on its western borders.
During a Defense Ministry Board meeting, he said “(t)he military and political situation at our western borders remains tense and shows a tendency to escalation.”
US-led NATO forces are deployed menacingly close to Russia’s borders, their hostile presence a cause for great concern.
If Russian troops were positioned along America’s north and/or southern borders, or offshore near its east, west, or Gulf coasts, Washington would consider their presence an act of war. Conflict could follow.
America’s provocative Eastern European presence has Moscow justifiably concerned, Shoigu explaining:
“The intensity and scale of the operational and combat training of the bloc member-countries’ military forces near our borders are growing.”
“Only in the past three months there have been over 30 drills in East European and Baltic states” – heightening tensions, Shoigu adding:
“We’re implementing a set of measures to neutralize the emerging challenges and threats,” including modernized hardware positioned by yearend and upgraded infrastructure.
Former head of Russian airborne troops/current lower house State Duma Defense Committee chairman Vladimir Shamanov warned about hostile NATO saber-rattling, “bring(ing) nothing positive,” he said.
Given America’s rage for endless wars and global dominance, the threat of catastrophic nuclear war is ominously real.
Following today"s Senate Judiciary panel hearings with social media executives, the establishment"s "Russians colluded with Trump" narrative is hanging but all but the thinnest of threads.
Having shown that so-called "Russian actors" "were trying to create discord between Americans," during the election - which politicians attempted to position as "directed against Clinton," top lawyers from Facebook and Twitter said Tuesday that Russian-linked posts and advertisements placed on the social networks after Election Day sought to sow doubt about President Donald Trump"s victory.
“Join us in the streets! Stop Trump and his bigoted agenda!” reads the Facebook event page for the rally.
“Divided is the reason we just fell. We must unite despite our differences to stop HATE from ruling the land.”
And that appears to have the "Russians" m.o. after the election, as Politico reports, Facebook general counsel Colin Stretch told a Senate Judiciary panel that content generated by a Russian troll farm known as the Internet Research Agency after Nov. 8 centered on “fomenting discord about the validity of his [Trump’s] election.”
“During the election, they were trying to create discord between Americans, most of it directed against Clinton.
After the election you saw Russian-tied groups and organizations trying to undermine President Trump’s legitimacy. Is that what you saw on Facebook?” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) asked at the hearing.
Stretch and his Twitter counterpart, Sean Edgett, called that an "accurate" statement.
Not really the one-sided, reason-for-my-loss, Russians-colluded narrative that the left (and right establishment) would like to be spun.
The social media giants" counsels parried most grandstanding blows from the various politicians; however, there were five key moments that Politico identified during the hearings...
1) First look at the fake Russian ads
Tuesday"s hearing offered the public its first look at political ads that Facebook and Twitter have identified as being purchased by the Russia-sponsored Internet Research Agency. The companies provided copies of the ads to congressional investigators earlier this month and revealed yesterday that they were seen by millions of users in the U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) showed an advertisement depicting an altered image of comedian Aziz Ansari holding a sign deceptively claiming voters could cast ballots via text from home. Meanwhile, Coons decried a sponsored image of a kneeling solider with the text "Hillary Clinton has a 69 percent disapproval rate among all veterans" overlaid on top. Facebook has said publicly that lawmakers should decide whether to make all 3,000 Russia-backed ads it has found available for public review.
2) Facebook not sure whether Russian ads swayed election
Facebook wasn’t able to offer much in the form of a definitive answer when Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) asked the company if it felt like content on its platform had an effect on the election. “In an election where a total of about 115,000 votes would have changed the outcome, can you say that the false and misleading propaganda people saw on your Facebook didn’t have an impact on the election?” Hirono asked. Stretch dodged in response. “We’re not well-positioned to judge why any one person or an entire electorate voted as it did,” he said.
3) Facebook won’t say no to accepting election-related foreign money
Franken, in an especially fiery exchange, asked Twitter, Google and Facebook if they would commit to not accepting foreign money payments on election-related advertisements, saying he wanted a simple “yes” or “no” answer from the platforms — and wanted to know why Facebook didn’t catch Russian agents purchasing ads sooner. Stretch said he hesitated on the foreign currency question because “it’s relatively easy for bad actors to switch currencies. So it’s a signal but not enough.” Edgett gave a quick “yes” to Franken, and Google Law Enforcement and Information Security Director Richard Salgado said Google would need to have a good enough “signal” that the transaction was illegal to keep it from going through. “Foreigners can’t use money in our campaign, you know that?” Franken said.
4) Democrats — allies of tech — attack their friends
For Democrats, who have for years had a largely warm and productive relationship with liberal-leaning Silicon Valley, the hearing represented a sharp break. Several members seized upon the chance to unleash on the company reps their simmering frustrations that the tech industry’s tools -- so often pitched as the means for making the world a better place -- had harmed their nominee, perhaps even fatally. Blumenthal highlighted widely shared posts on Twitter that incorrectly claimed that voters could cast ballots for Clinton simply by tweeting. “Do you know how many thought they voted but in fact were fooled?,” Blumenthal asked Edgett, who said he did not know.
5) No support for Honest Ads Act
Not a single one of the three tech giants would commit to supporting Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Mark Warner (D-Va.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.)’s Honest Ads Act, which would require disclosures about political advertising on their platforms. All three have rolled out and touted work to independently address the issue of ads, following the introduction of the bill. “We certainly support the goals of the legislation and would like to work through the nuances to make it work for all of us,” Salgado said. Their answers prompted Klobuchar to draw attention to the lack of external oversight on these actions. “Just to clarify, while you are taking responsibility for a lot of what happened here, and trying to make some changes, there wouldn’t be an outside enforcer for any of these policies, right?”
Finally, James Lewis, an international cyber policy expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the revelation about Russian anti-Trump activity on social media post-election fits with typical Kremlin information warfare efforts.
“Their goal is to create confusion and dissent. The target is the U.S. and NATO, not any particular candidate. They just want chaos..."
Asked to name the defining attributes of the America we wish to become, many liberals would answer that we must realize our manifest destiny since 1776, by becoming more equal, more diverse and more democratic - and the model for mankind’s future.
Equality, diversity, democracy - this is the holy trinity of the post-Christian secular state at whose altars Liberal Man worships.
But the congregation worshiping these gods is shrinking.
And even Europe seems to be rejecting what America has on offer.
In a retreat from diversity, Catalonia just voted to separate from Spain. The Basque and Galician peoples of Spain are following the Catalan secession crisis with great interest.
The right-wing People’s Party and far-right Freedom Party just swept 60 percent of Austria’s vote, delivering the nation to 31-year-old Sebastian Kurz, whose anti-immigrant platform was plagiarized from the Freedom Party. Summarized it is: Austria for the Austrians!
Lombardy, whose capital is Milan, and Veneto will vote Sunday for greater autonomy from Rome.
South Tyrol (Alto Adige), severed from Austria and ceded to Italy at Versailles, written off by Hitler to appease Mussolini after his Anschluss, is astir anew with secessionism. Even the Sicilians are talking of separation.
By Sunday, the Czech Republic may have a new leader, billionaire Andrej Babis. Writes The Washington Post, Babis “makes a sport of attacking the European Union and says NATO’s mission is outdated.”
Platform Promise: Keep the Muslim masses out of the motherland.
To ethnonationalists, their countrymen are not equal to all others, but superior in rights. Many may nod at Thomas Jefferson’s line that “All men are created equal,” but they no more practice that in their own nations than did Jefferson in his.
On Oct. 7, scores of thousands of Poles lined up along the country’s entire 2,000-mile border — to pray the rosary.
It was the centennial of the Virgin Mary’s last apparition at Fatima in Portugal in 1917, and the day in 1571 the Holy League sank the Muslim fleet at Lepanto to save Europe. G. K. Chesterton’s poem, “Lepanto,” was once required reading in Catholic schools.
Each of these traditionalist-nationalist movements is unique, but all have a common cause. In the hearts of Europe’s indigenous peoples is embedded an ancient fear: loss of the homeland to Islamic invaders.
Europe is rejecting, resisting, recoiling from “diversity,” the multiracial, multicultural, multiethnic and multilingual future that, say U.S. elites, is America’s preordained mission to bring about for all mankind.
Indeed, increasingly, the indigenous peoples of Europe seem to view as the death of their nations and continent, what U.S. liberal elites see as the Brave New World to come.
To traditionalist Europeans, our heaven looks like their hell.
Thus Poles fall on their knees to pray to the Virgin Mary to spare them from threats of an Islamic future, as their ancestors prayed at the time of Lepanto, and of Vienna in 1683, when the Polish King John Sobieski marched to halt the last Muslim drive into the heart of Europe.
European peoples and parties are today using democratic means to achieve “illiberal” ends. And it is hard to see what halts the drift away from liberal democracy toward the restrictive right. For in virtually every nation, there is a major party in opposition, or a party in power, that holds deeply nationalist views.
European elites may denounce these new parties as “illiberal” or fascist, but it is becoming apparent that it may be liberalism itself that belongs to yesterday. For more and more Europeans see the invasion of the continent along the routes whence the invaders came centuries ago, not as a manageable problem but an existential crisis.
To many Europeans, it portends an irreversible alteration in the character of the countries their grandchildren will inherit, and possibly an end to their civilization. And they are not going to be deterred from voting their fears by being called names that long ago lost their toxicity from overuse.
And as Europeans decline to celebrate the racial, ethnic, creedal and cultural diversity extolled by American elites, they also seem to reject the idea that foreigners should be treated equally in nations created for their own kind.
Europeans seem to admire more, and model their nations more, along the lines of the less diverse America of the Eisenhower era, than on the polyglot America of 2017.
And Europe seems to be moving toward immigration polices more like the McCarran-Walter Act of 1950 than the open borders bill that Sen. Edward Kennedy shepherded through the Senate in 1965.
Kennedy promised that the racial and ethnic composition of the America of the 1960s would not be overturned, and he questioned the morality and motives of any who implied that it would.
So, why is liberalism dying?
Because it is proving to be what James Burnham called it in his 1964 “Suicide of the West” — the ideology of Western suicide.
What we see in Europe today is people who, belatedly recognizing this, have begun to “rage, rage, against dying of the light.”
“We are sending a very clear message: NATO is here, NATO is strong and NATO is united,” Stoltenberg told assembled Polish, Romanian, Spanish and Portuguese soldiers.
The force is there to target Russia in the Black Sea region.
Romania insisted the deployment is “not a threat to Russia” and that the purpose of having more troops there to “target” Russia is “peace, not war.”
“We are not a threat for Russia. But we need dialogue from a strong position of defense and discouragement,”
900 US troops were deployed to Romania to participate in this force.
Since Russia doesn’t border NATO anywhere in the Black Sea region, the force appears to be largely pointless, except for additional grandstanding about NATO’s “readiness” for a fight with “invading” Russian forces, in an invasion that’s been predicted for years.
This appears to be an attempt to mirror the creation of NATO’s much larger Baltic forces, which are all deployed at or near the Russian frontier, and which see large western military contingents placed in tiny Baltic states.
