MOSCOW — As the Kremlin masses troops near Ukraine, it is signaling one core conviction: Russia cares more about the fate of its southwestern neighbor than the West ever will.[Gusnote: this is bullshit from the NYT] 

In speeches, interviews and lengthy articles, President Vladimir V. Putin and his close associates have telegraphed a singular fixation this year on the former Soviet republic. The Kremlin thesis goes that Ukrainians are “one people” with Russians, living in a failing state controlled by Western forces determined to divide and conquer the post-Soviet world.

Ukrainians, who ousted a Russia-friendly president in 2014 and are increasingly in favor of binding their country to Western institutions, would largely beg to differ. But Mr. Putin’s conviction finds a receptive ear among many Russians, who see themselves as linked intimately with Ukraine by generations of linguistic, cultural, economic, political and family ties. Now, with a force of 175,000 Russian troops poised to be in position near Ukraine by early next year, in what Western officials fear could be a prelude to an invasion, centuries of shared history loom large.

Mr. Putin’s gambit may be a cold calculus of coercion, backed by signals that the threat of war is real — a way to force President Biden to recognize a Russian sphere of interest in Eastern Europe. Mr. Putin in recent days said Russia would demand “legal guarantees” that Ukraine would not join the NATO alliance or host more Western forces, and he is scheduled to speak to Mr. Biden by videoconference on Tuesday.

 

Read more:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/05/world/europe/putin-russia-ukraine-troops.html

 

Please don't think that Russia is "hurt"... Russia is pissed off that the USA LIED about not coming to invade the former countries of the USSR. The pact made by Reagan and Gorbachev was respected by Russia but totally ignored by the USA, with no self-respect either. The US lied. Lied. LIED... can we be clearer?

 

There is the Minsk agreement which the Ukraine government breaks every second day (under supervision of the USA), and the Russians are fed up. The red lines are not something to play with. What Blinken and his dithering kooky boss should think about is that Russia's firepower is equivalent to that of the USA, and that of the Chinese is about one quarter of that of the USA, but Russia and China have something to defend, while the US is always on the warpath to attack... That the US would loose the next war is a given, not only this the entire planet would loose as well. 

 

The USA have been trying to destroy Russia since WW2. This history is clear. The Russians do not like this. They want cooperation, not sanctions upon sanctions.  The USA has been trying to destroy China for the last 20 years... Same caper... Be careful, US military, you might think you know, but rolling over Russia and China is not the picnic of invading Iraq... And please, you will have ONLY YOURSELF TO BLAME, BY THE END OF IT... if you're still there in your pentagonic cubby hole...

 

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW...

Why does Australia still sell weapons to human-rights abuser Saudi Arabia?

By Dechlan Brennan

 

As the kingdom wages war in Yemen, Canberra continues to supply arms, making us complicit in the deaths of innocent civilians, writes Dechlan Brennan.

One of the things everyone who involves themselves in politics quickly understands is that there is always a level of hypocrisy. Australia lambasting countries such as China for human rights violations while ardently supporting nations such as Saudi Arabia for similar bouts of unedifying aggression is a salient example of this.

The Yemeni civil war has escalated since 2015, when a coalition led by Saudi Arabia intervened on behalf of the Yemeni government — which is internationally recognised — against the Houthi rebels. The conflict has taken the lives of more than 100,000 people and a further 4 million have been displaced.

The United Nations (UN) has called it the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

In a report presented to the UN human rights council in September 2020 it said “that the parties to the conflict continue to show no regard for international law or the lives, dignity, continuing to supply the parties with weapons”.

In 2016 the UN reported that “Since the beginning of this conflict in Yemen, weddings, marketplaces, hospitals, schools – and now mourners at a funeral – have been hit, resulting in massive civilian casualties and zero accountability for those responsible.”

This hasn’t stopped Australia from continuing to supply weaponry to both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Investigative journalist Michelle Fahy reported that between July 1, 2015 and March 31, 2021, that the Australian Defence Department approved “103 permits for munitions exports to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). In the same period, the department denied just three permit applications to Saudi Arabia and none for the UAE.”

In 2018 Australia sought to break into the top 10 defence-exporting countries. Various Australian defence ministers have courted more weaponry sales towards both Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The Australian government does not provide date on where its weapons sales go —only mapping it in regions. Unhelpfully, they lump the Middle East in with Asia. It is shocking is that Australia is involved at all.

The Saudi government has been accused of “indiscriminate air strikes,” with many of these have being conducted by the F-35 which has parts manufactured in Australia. In 2019 The Australian Defence Force Manual (1994) notes that “launching indiscriminate attacks that affect the civilian population” is an example that constitutes “grave breaches or serious war crimes likely to warrant institution of criminal proceedings”. In 2019 photographs were published showing an Australian-built remote weapons system being shipped from Sydney airport to the general department of arms and explosives of Saudi Arabia’s ministry of interior. The Australian Defence Department said the Saudi government was using it only for internal use.

Other abuses perpetrated by the Saudi military include “civilian populations being deliberately starved, medical supplies being blocked, rape, murder, enforced disappearances, torture, and forcing children to fight.” Human Rights Watch (HRW) stated that Australia risked complicity in war crimes if it continued to supply the Saudi-led coalition with arms.

A recent Guardian expose that found Saudi Arabia has used an intense and protracted lobbying campaign — including “incentives and threats” — to shut down a UN investigation into human rights violations committed by all sides in the conflict. One of the accusations was that Riyadh had insinuated to Indonesia — home to the world’s largest Muslim population — that their citizens would come across many obstacles when attempting to get to Mecca for the Haj pilgrimage unless they played ball. The shutting down of this debate was a “huge blow” to the Human Rights Council — as well as for peace in Yemen — as one country was simply able to shut down the debate through intermediate threats. It also shows that other nations that are accused of such crimes can torpedo investigations through ”skillful negotiations’’. For Australia to both maintain their allyship with the Saudi government after this, as well as continue to supply them with arms, is a poor example for a nation that likes to preach about the rule of law.

Australian law prohibits military exports that are inconsistent or contravene the nation’s international obligations or national interests. One of the parameters for prospective exports is human rights — of which both nations that receive Australia’s weaponry are in clear violation. The government has refused to follow the decision of the United States and other allies to cease to dramatically curb their arm shipments to Saudi Arabia. Instead they have followed the lead of the United Kingdom in maintaining secrecy.

The Australian government has become increasingly secretive in its weaponry dealings, and stopped publishing a report into weapons sales in 2014 — something it had previously done annually. They have, however, denied any weaponry they sell is used in the war in Yemen. This is disputed by the CEO of Save the Children, Paul Ronalds, who told Guardian Australia that Australia was unable to guarantee the weaponry they sold didn’t make its way to the Yemeni conflict.

At any rate, Australia maintaining its relationship with Saudi Arabia, a country accused of gross human rights violations, does nothing for its standing in the diplomatic community. If the standard you walk past is the standard you accept, then Australia has failed to uphold those standards. Australia likes to wax lyrically about upholding human rights and in recent days it has become clear that Saudi Arabia will do anything to avoid responsibility for breaching them. Australia is a signatory to human rights charters as well as obligations against war crimes. By profiting off these various violations, they are complicit.

 

Read more:

https://johnmenadue.com/why-does-australia-still-sell-weapons-to-human-rights-abuser-saudi-arabia/

 

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW...

 

 

Hawkish US Global Posture Review speaks obscurely and carries a big stick

By Binoy Kampmark

 

The US’s national defence strategy calls for regional policing in the Indo-Pacific. The fixation is on China and the spotlight is on Australia.

Get the Marines ready. Store the supplies. Marshal the allies. The United States is getting ready for war (the preferable term in Washington is policing) in the Indo-Pacific region and is hoping to do so with a range of expanded bases across client states, or what it prefers to call friends.

On November 29, the Pentagon announced that US President Joe Biden had accepted the recommendations made by Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III in the Global Posture Review commissioned in February. The news might have been delivered by Austin himself but this solemn duty fell to Mara Karlin, discharging her duties as deputy undersecretary for policy. As the GPR remains classified, we are left with a sketchy performance that should make many across the Indo-Pacific seek cover in a bunker.

For the most part, Karlin’s performance was gibberish, masked by lingo hostile to meaning. The review was intended to “inform” the approach of the Biden administration in terms of national defence strategy, which did not mean that it would necessarily inform anybody else.

“That guidance asserts that the United States will lead with diplomacy first, revitalise our unmatched network of allies and partners and make smart and disciplined choices regarding our national defence and responsible use of our military,” Karlin stated. How reassuring.

She continued in non-revelatory fashion to mention how the “global posture review assesses [Department of Defense] overseas forces and footprint along with the framework and processes that govern our posture decision making”.  The GPR had “strengthened our decision-making processes by deliberately connecting strategic priorities, global trade-offs, force readiness and modernisation, interagency coordination and allied and partner coordination to global posture planning and decisions”.

The only thing to conclude from this remarkable display of non-meaning was that the US imperium was on the march, and it was keen to ensure that its allies would be marching in step with it.

At one point, Karlin let the cat out of the bag. A primary focus of the GPR is the Indo-Pacific, with China proving to be the continuing fixation. A matter of urgency is cooperation between Washington, its allies and its partners to “advance initiatives” that aid regional stability and deter Chinese military aggression and threats from Pyongyang.

This puts Australia, Guam and various Pacific islands in the spotlight, with the US keen to use them as staging grounds in any coming conflict with Beijing while reducing their troop presence in other global theatres. The press conference language was not quite so blunt but the implications were clear enough.

According to Karlin, the Pentagon will seek a “range of infrastructure improvements in Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands and Australia”. New US rotational fighter and bomber aircraft deployments to Australia and further logistics cooperation with Canberra are promised.

When asked by a journalist why Australia and Guam had been specifically mentioned in the address, Karlin showed some rare candour in admitting that “those were notable, which is why I cited those specifically” though the US was broadly “engaged in consultations with our allies and partners across the Pacific”.

The remarks pertaining to Australia simply affirmed the observations made by Austin in September, the same month the trilateral AUKUS security partnership between Australia, the UK and the US was announced. AUKUS, explained Austin at the time, would “help contribute” to the concept of “integrated deterrence in the region”, an unimaginative way of saying that the US would lead a regional policing effort in the Indo-Pacific, with the assistance of Australia and like-minded partners. While Washington sought “a constructive, results-oriented relationship with the PRC, we will remain clear-eyed in our view of Beijing’s efforts to undermine the established international order”.

Such a clear-eyed disposition involved making good use of Australian territory, with Canberra agreeing to “major force posture initiatives that will expand our access and presence in Australia”.

“Access” is imperial speak for US power. It sounds so much better than military occupation. Becca Wasser of the Center for a New American Security is well versed in that argot. “If you want to change posture — whether that is expanding or consolidating bases, or deploying new capability – you need access,” Wasser told Breaking Defense. “Access is something only allies and partners can provide and changes to access usually require a lengthy consultation process.” Appearances must be kept.

A sense of how the GPR has been received can also be gathered from the security think-tankers, those delightful sorts who make it their tanking business to find enemies for budget reasons. A co-authored report by John Schaus of the hawkish Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington and Michael Shoebridge of the Canberra-based US appendage, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), praises the Review as “an enormous opportunity to signal, and demonstrate, US commitment to regional security in ways that will reassure partners and deter potential adversaries”.

There is an unabashed encouragement of greater US garrisoning and military presence in Australia. Australia would commit to investing in and expanding naval facilities in Darwin and on the west coast. This, in turn, could be “matched with a greater US naval presence at these facilities, for the purpose of joint activity through the Indian Ocean and up into Southeast Asia”.

The authors take issue with conservative US troop numbers that had been present through Marine Corps rotations in Northern Australia during the Obama era. It was time to roll up the sleeves and co-opt Australian real estate and resources to advance Washington’s agenda. “Specifically, the United States should forward deploy Navy surface, subsurface, and uncrewed vessels to Australia; expand the Air Force rotational presence to include larger numbers and more frequent presence of high-endurance intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance platforms; and increase both Marine and Army presence to facilitate greater training and integration within the alliance.”

The GPR remains under lock and key but we can be certain that many of the bellicose wishes of Schaus and Shoebridge are bound to be there. The warmonger’s script is getting increasingly long and relentless.

 

 

Read more:

https://johnmenadue.com/hawkish-us-global-posture-review-speaks-obscurely-and-carries-a-big-stick/

 

Note that Joe Biden has not a clue as what he reads on his teleprompter... 

 

see also: http://www.martinihenry.org/index.php?route=information/information&information_id=7

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW...

 

The New Great Game Is Afoot – With All Of Us “Underfoot”

 

BY Phil Butler

 

The western elites have finally pushed China and Russia too far. A long awaited independent trade network and alternative currencies will certainly go forward as Washington pushes NATO deeper into Eurasia. Presidents Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin have now agree to accelerate attempts to create a system that cannot be influenced by ‘third parties.’

As hundreds of western corporate media outlets propagandize about Russia’s real intentions, on the situation in eastern Europe, and the potential for sanctions on Russia, the reality of a more polarized world looms. Globalization has been exposed by COVID-19 as a fallacy, anyhow, so it seems the ultimate dividing lines to come are a natural progression.

For months now a war front narrative has issued from the U.S. and allies over “red lines” Russia has put in place with regard to the unending march of the NATO military alliance toward Moscow. Now, all of Eurasia is threatened as the great powers clash in the ultimate strategy game. American President Joe Biden’s backers have given him the “go ahead” to force Russia’s hand in Ukraine. By promising massive sanctions, the Biden administration has set a course that was certainly planned years ago.

On the other side, Presidents Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin most certainly anticipated the coming clash. For some years now they’ve moved closer and closer to forting up Eurasia’s financial and trade territory, and now only one big question remains. Which side will the borderlands decided to ally with?

If the next move by the liberal order is to try Russia’s resolve in eastern Europe, the Russians will be forced to cushion their borders. Once this happens, Biden and his contemporaries in Europe will have to make their move. Once the new Cold War starts, borderlands like Greece, Turkey, Japan, Middle East players now dominated by the Israelis, and particularly southeast Asia will be in a stew to choose. In addition, all of Africa and Latin America will be up for grabs for obvious reasons. While U.S. influence and the power of the dollar still hold sway, the attempts to globalize the world economy have created a desperate interdependence. We are in the middle of a new “Great Game” described by Ariel Cohen in 2006 in his report for the Heritage Foundation (subsequently removed) “The New “Great Game”: Oil Politics in the Caucasus and Central Asia:

“Control over energy resources [of the former Soviet Union] and export routes out of the Eurasian hinterland is quickly becoming one of the central issues in post-Cold War politics.” 

In this version of the game of world conquest, at the very least, we can expect every market on the planet to crash if Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin end up forced into this stalemate. Whether conflict on Russia’s frontiers expand or not, the world will be faced with an economic Dark Age of unknown duration. Surely China and Russia are considering this eventuality. Interestingly, their region of the world will be better prepared for hard times than America or the north Europeans. And this geo/societal aspect may be what tilts the balance all over the former eastern bloc. Democracy, after all, has not exactly made every Romanian or Bulgarian into a middle-class American dreamer.

On the NATO situation with Ukraine, President Xi Jinping agreed in a video conference with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin’s insistence that NATO guarantee it will not expand to Ukraine or place troops and weapons in the country. After the meeting, China’s state-run Xinhua news agency reported that China’s president emphasized the need for Moscow and Beijing to ​”safeguard” their security interests. In other words, the battle lines are drawn economically and militarily. There’s an old saying in the deep south of America, where I come from. “You can chase me til I am home, after that I’ve nowhere to run to.” NATO and the United States have been on a continual push since World War II, and even more so following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Washington think tanks call the push a “quest for expanding democracy,” but everyone by now knows its a corporate capitalistic quest. America and its oil suppliers are all finished. Super capitalism has drained the world dry, and the borderlands hold what’s left. The New York Post quoted President Xi Jinping saying:

“At present, certain international forces under the guise of ‘democracy’ and ‘human rights’ are interfering in the internal affairs of China and Russia, and brutally trampling on international law and recognized norms of international relations.”

Russia, compartmentalized by the west since before Napoleon, reared her head once Putin took charge, energized by the demand for her immense natural resources. And this was not part of the big plan. A similar situation elevated China to her rightful place in the world economic community. The greed of western corporations put the Communist country in the trade loop, but it seems nobody holding Walmart of Apple stocks considered what would happen when poor Chinese people emerged as the world’s biggest middle class.

“In Russia, Great Britain had for a century, at least, been regarded by the mass of the people as the one Power always to the fore in baulking at every conjuncture the national aspirations and barring the natural development and expansion of Russia.” – Russian foreign minister Vladimir Nikolaevich Lamsdorff, 1902

Finally, the Kremlin has submitted draft documents outlining security arrangements it feels need to be implemented with the United States and its NATO allies amid spiraling tensions. Mr. Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that a senior Russian envoy stood ready to immediately depart for talks in a neutral country on the proposal. But, it seems the stalemate cannot be broken unless something unanticipated happens.

That surprise could come into play should a summit of Russia, India and China take place anytime soon. If India were to drift father into the orbit of her neighbors, America’s situation would become dire. The stakes alone make any sane person wonder why anyone would dream of expanding NATO now. And this may be the point. These crazy times have taught us one thing, depend on nothing but more WTF moments.

 

 

Phil Butler, is a policy investigator and analyst, a political scientist and expert on Eastern Europe, he’s an author of the recent bestseller “Putin’s Praetorians” and other books. He writes exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

 

 

Read more:

https://journal-neo.org/2021/12/17/the-new-great-game-is-afoot-with-all-of-us-underfoot/

 

Read from top.

 

See also: 

 

https://yourdemocracy.net/drupal/node/32016

 

https://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/39431

 

https://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/36261

 

https://yourdemocracy.net/drupal/node/41674

 

and plenty more on this site...

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW...