Wednesday 27th of November 2024

western allies look to ukraine as a testing ground for weapons..............

A surprisingly frank article in The New York Times, “Western Allies Look to Ukraine as a Testing Ground for Weapons” describes how the imperial war machine is capitalising on the U.S. proxy war to test its weapons for future use.

“Ukraine has become a testing ground for state-of-the-art weapons and information systems, and new ways to use them, that Western political officials and military commanders predict could shape warfare for generations to come,” writes Lara Jakes.

 

BY Caitlin Johnstone

 

Jakes says “new advances in technology and training in Ukraine are being closely monitored for the ways they are changing the face of the fight.” 

These new technological advancements include an information system known as Delta, as well as “remote-controlled boats, anti-drone weapons known as SkyWipers and an updated version of an air-defense system built in Germany that the German military itself has yet to use.”

A former Lithuanian president is quoted as saying, “We’re learning in Ukraine how to fight, and we’re learning how to use our NATO equipment,” adding, “It is shameful for me because Ukrainians are paying with their lives for these exercises for us.”

At some point The New York Times article was re-headlined, going from “Western Allies Look to Ukraine as a Testing Ground for Weapons” to the slightly less obvious “For Western Weapons, the Ukraine War Is a Beta Test.”

[Related: Caitlin Johnstone: Blame the Managers of Empire]

News that the West is using Ukraine to test weapons systems for future wars aligns with recent comments by the commander of the U.S. nuclear arsenal that the proxy war is a test run for a much bigger conflict that’s on its way.

“This Ukraine crisis that we’re in right now, this is just the warmup,”  U.S. STRATCOM head Charles Richard told a naval conference earlier this month. “The big one is coming. And it isn’t going to be very long before we’re going to get tested in ways that we haven’t been tested [in] a long time.”

So in addition to being used to advance longstanding U.S. geo-strategic objectives, apparently this war is also being used to sharpen the imperial war machine’s claws for a looming hot war with China and/or Russia. The U.S. would certainly have an advantage in military test runs over the years in such a conflict.

As an aside, it’s probably worth noting that all the testing of new Western weapons technology would likely explain reports from Ukrainian astronomers that the skies over Kiev have been “swarming with unidentified flying objects (UFOs).” 

The aforementioned New York Times article quotes Ukrainian Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov as saying that the weapons testing he’s seen has convinced him that “the wars of the future will be about maximum drones and minimal humans.”

 

One of the many reasons the U.S. and its complex network of allies, partners and assets are always fighting so many wars is because new weapons technology needs to be tested in battle before it can be deemed effective. 

What this means in practice is using human bodies as test subjects, the way a scientist uses laboratory rats or guinea pigs.

The U.S.-centralized empire pretends to care about Ukrainian lives, but in reality it only cares about them to the extent that a researcher cares about his lab rats. And for exactly the same reason.

What could be more sinister than that? Well, the agendas for which they are running those tests as preparation, I suppose.

Caitlin Johnstone’s work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following her on FacebookTwitterSoundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into her tip jar on Ko-fiPatreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy her books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff she publishes is to subscribe to the mailing list at her website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything she publishes.  For more info on who she is, where she stands and what she’s trying to do with her platform, click here. All works are co-authored with her American husband Tim Foley.

This article is from CaitlinJohnstone.com

 

READ MORE:

https://consortiumnews.com/2022/11/18/caitlin-johnstone-ukraine-as-weapons-testing-site/

 

 

Why is Ukraine asking the West for longer-range missiles?

 BY Vladimir Platov

The anti-Russian hysteria instigated by Ukraine and Poland, supported by certain members of the current Russophobic military-political elite in the West, around the incident of the two missiles falling in Przewodów, has clearly confirmed not only the fragility of the current system of universal security, But also the fact of active search by neo-Nazis, primarily by the Kiev regime and certain forces in the West that support them, for a reason to unleash World War III.

It is well known that the direct cause of World War I was the conflict between the powers fighting for spheres of influence in the Balkans, and the trigger was the instigation by the Western militarists of a shot by the Serbian student Gavrilo Princip, who killed the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the throne, in Sarajevo, Bosnia, on June 28, 1914.

As for World War II, the injustice of the Versailles system, the economic crisis of the 1930s and the collapse of the security system established in the 1920s led to the rise to power of forces that wanted a re-division of the world. And the initiators of the war were Germany, Italy and Japan. Against the background of some attempts by England and France to appease the aggressor, the USA, at the turn of the 1940s, declared its alleged “neutrality” altogether, effectively isolating itself from the war. However, this self-exclusion of these countries was very detrimental to further developments. And this outwardly “restrained policy” of the leading Western powers was actually a ploy to mask the real interest of their financial and industrial circles in the outbreak of a new world war to solve the crisis that was breaking out at the time and to generate new super-profits from major military operations.

After all, it is no secret that this greatest massacre in human history began in 1939 with its funding by the US Federal Reserve, the Bank of England and affiliated financial and industrial circles seeking absolute control of the German financial system in order to control the political processes in Central Europe. As early as 1933, key sectors of German industry and major banks such as Deutsche Bank, Dresdner Bank, Danatbank and others were already under the control of US financial capital. State-of-the-art equipment was smuggled from the USA to Germany for the aircraft factories that began production of German aircraft. Germany received a large number of military patents from US firms Pratt and Whitney, Douglas, Bendix Aviation, and the well-known Junkers-87 was built using US technology. Even as World War II was raging in 1941, US investments in Germany totaled $475 million, which was a huge amount of money at the time!  In this context it is worth recalling that Ford was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order Of The German Eagle by Adolf Hitler in 1938 as a token of appreciation. The links between Hitler and Ford were maintained even during the war, despite the enactment of a special law (Trading with the Enemy Act) in the USA forbidding any collaboration with the Nazis. And Ford was not the only US corporation that had a hand in building the German war machine; the combined contributions of US corporations in German subsidiaries and agencies by the start of World War II amounted to some $800 million. In other words, they were directly involved in strengthening Hitler’s military power and could monitor its preparations for the outbreak of World War II.

In today’s events, a similar trend is clearly visible as the US and its “closest allies”, amid a new world crisis and a desire to re-divide the world, decided to make the neo-Nazi Kiev regime, sponsored in various ways, the “engine” for unleashing a New World War.

Using the “know-how” of Goebbels’ propaganda ministry, Kiev’s Western puppeteers have placed particular emphasis on the active use of sophisticated propaganda and disinformation to gain public and official support from the West. Behind these activities is an army of foreign political “consultants” linked to US intelligence. One of the main “operators” in this area is the London-based PR Network, an agency closely associated with the UK Government Communication Service Strategy and Evaluation Council.

Thus, Ukraine in recent years has been transformed by the “efforts” of the West into a platform for propaganda of neo-Nazi ideas, glorifying fascist criminals and their formations, creating Russophobic newsworthy events and blatant disinformation. And in all such actions, Ukraine lacks any autonomy, because everything is carried out under direct orders from Washington or London, seeking first to unleash wars in the information field.

The US and NATO countries have been working together to stir up Ukrainian neo-Nazi propaganda and are trying to spread various fakes that could be a pretext to start World War III of the “collective West” against Russia. And the November 15 incident of two missiles falling in Przewodów could have been, to the apparent intentions of Kiev and Warsaw, the kind of pretext that the Russophobic presidents of Ukraine and Poland tried to play up in their official speeches.

But it is one thing with a Ukrainian MLRS falling on the territory of neighboring Poland, and another if an alleged “Russian missile” were to fall on Brussels or anywhere else in Western Europe. And then, without any investigation, the fake news propagandists in Ukraine, already trained by the West, would demand “retaliatory military action against Moscow by NATO”, i.e. the outbreak of World War III. Hence Kiev’s repeated requests from the West for longer-range MLRS, so that it would be easier to stage such a provocation and missiles from Ukrainian territory would be able to reach Western Europe.

However, hopefully, the repeated provocations recently arranged by Kiev, not only with the fall of missiles in Przewodów, but also with the recent torpedo attack in the “grain corridor” of the Black Sea, with the creation of the threat of nuclear contamination of vast areas due to the missile attacks of the Ukrainian Armed Forces on the Zaporozhye NPP have now shown to the world the true face of the current Ukrainian authorities.

So have the blatant attempts by Kiev’s sponsors to revive neo-Nazism in Ukraine in order to arrange a new re-division of the world on its shoulders in the name of US capital’s profits.

 

 Vladimir Platov, expert on the Middle East, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.

 

READ MORE:

https://journal-neo.org/2022/11/19/why-is-ukraine-asking-the-west-for-longer-range-missiles/

 

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sich stich.......

The Russian military has targeted the Motor Sich plant in the city of Zaporozhye, the Defense Ministry said in a statement on Sunday.

“A high-precision strike by the Russian Aerospace Forces in the city of Zaporozhye has destroyed a line assembling engines for aircraft of the Ukrainian Air Force,” the Russian military said.

While the statement did not elaborate on when exactly the strike took place, the attack on the facility apparently occurred early Saturday. According to Vladimir Rogov, a senior Zaporozhye Region official, the strikes targeted an ammunition depot in the city, as well as a manufacturing line that produces aircraft engines, including those used in Turkish Bayraktar attack drones.

The official also shared unverified footage on his Telegram channel taken amid the strikes, with the videos purporting to show multiple blasts and a massive fire at the site.

Zaporozhye Region, as well as three other former Ukrainian territories, officially became part of Russia in early October following referendums that saw the majority of residents vote in favor of accession. Kiev and its Western backers have rejected the referendums, dismissing them as “sham”elections and the city of Zaporozhye itself, remains under Ukrainian control.

The Motor Sich plant was recently taken over by Kiev under wartime authority. The move prompted an international scandal, with Beijing Skyrizon Aviation Industry Investment, a Chinese company engaged in a legal battle over plant’s majority stake, accusing Ukraine of “shameless” actions and “plunder” of assets belonging to foreign investors.

 

READ MORE:

https://www.rt.com/russia/566873-aircraft-engine-plant-strike/

 

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extreme fascism......

 

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official fake news.......

 

By Sam Husseini / CounterPunch

 

On Tuesday, the Associated Press reported that a “senior U.S. intelligence official says Russian missiles crossed into NATO member Poland, killing two people.”

This story ripped through big media outlets which blared “BREAKING NEWS” — see from CBS:

 

There would be a series of followups, see how the story morphed on archive.today. The story featured a host of bylines including John Leicester, James LaPorta, Vanessa Gera, Zeke Miller (White House correspondent) and Michael Balsamo.

One version featured the headline: “AP Source: Russian missiles cross into Poland during strike.”

One story AP ran was not bylined and just one sentence: “A senior U.S. intelligence official says Russian missiles crossed into NATO member Poland, killing two people.” This violated AP’s already minimal rules: “Stories that use anonymous sources must carry a reporter’s byline.”

AP rules say reporters can only grant anonymity to a source if “the source is reliable”. But if they prove themselves to not be reliable, shouldn’t the anonymity be rescinded?

Kyle Griffin, executive producer of both MSNBC’s Ayman Mohyeldin and Mehdi Hasan shows, ran with the worst form of the AP report to thousands of more retweets:

 

(NOT MUSK FAULT)

 

World War III was trending on Twitter.

Reuters would report by late afternoon “Poland Likely to Invoke NATO’s Article 4, Will Raise Missile Blast With UN – Officials.”

The Hill reported: “Biden convenes emergency meeting with G-7 allies after missile kills two in Poland.”

By Tuesday evening, the Washington Post would use the frenzy to queue up an extreme distillation of the NATO Charter: “Poland is a member of NATO. A strike on the country could thus invoke NATO’s Article 5, which states ‘an armed attack against one or more of [the members] in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all’ and force may be used.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky would claim: “I have no doubt that it was not our rocket.”

But even as AP was putting out their false stories Tuesday afternoon, others were pointing to evidence that Russia didn’t fire the missiles that hit Poland. And others raised good points — some effectively arguing that AP shouldn’t have run with the story. Responsible Statecraft in “How a lightly-sourced AP story almost set off World War III” the following day gave a breakdown of how some of this played out, especially how local players falsified or tried to leverage the story.

On Wednesday morning, I contacted AP, asking a series of questions beyond the obvious. In particular, would the AP name the falsifying source? Nicole Meir from AP finally replied Wednesday evening, but didn’t answer any of the questions. She simply pointed me to the “Correction: Russia-Ukraine-War story” they had just issued.

 

But, a central question remains: Why is the AP still protecting a source it now says fed it false information?

In my piece “Should Media Expose Sources Who Lied to Them?” from 2017, I argued that not exposing falsifying sources is “like having a loaded gun lying around.” When a crisis happens, “a government source wanting to smear a foreign government, or even help provoke war, has the mechanisms to do so without fear of consequence or accountability.” The source can hide behind anonymous quotes, and their media contact hides behind anonymous sources. Both are effectively off the hook.

The solution is for falsifying sources to be unmasked so we get accountable speech.

Part of the bargain of anonymity is truthfulness. Why should a serious media outlet protect the anonymity of a source who just fed it false information? So they can do it again?

As I detail in my article, there have been major precursors to this that ended in disaster. Judith Miller at the New York Times in 2002 cited an anonymous Bush/Cheney administration official who claimed that government scientists thought aluminum tubes Iraq was reportedly attempting to acquire were for a nuclear weapons program. That was false and used to propel the case for war. When I confronted her in 2005 and asked her who the source was, she wouldn’t say.

In contrast, in 1996, the Wall Street Journal turned on a source orchestrating a smear campaign by Big Tobacco targeting whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand. This story was told in the film “The Insider.”

So, which world do we want? One where falsifying sources get away with lies — so we get disastrous wars — or do we want a world where they don’t get away with it, so we get some measure of accountability for major wrongdoing?

Thursday morning, the Washington Post ran with “How an anonymous source raised a false alarm of a Russian strike on Poland” by Elahe Izadi and Paul Farhi. But, as with past instances, the Post did not raise the prospect of the AP naming the official.

It is possible that AP can offer a compelling reason why the source  shouldn’t be unmasked. They would need to spell it out very seriously. We don’t know what the source’s motives were, but on its face, as others have argued, it seems like part of a coordinated attempt to invoke NATO articles 4 and/or 5 and risk triggering a wider war. Even risking a nuclear war. Or perhaps it’s an extreme form of saber rattling toward Russia. The AP should name the source, in part so they can be questioned and scrutinized.

As it is, AP seems intent on sweeping all this under the rug. The URL for the original series of stories now brings up the “correction” — so accessing the actual reporting may be difficult going forward (that’s why I link to the archive pageabove.) That is similar to what CNN did after it retracted an article on Trump’s associate’s alleged ties to Russia, replacing the original story with an editor’s note.

AP’s designation on Twitter is “Official”. If this isn’t seriously addressed, it’s hard to see why it shouldn’t be deemed “U.S. state-affiliated media.”

 

READ MORE:

https://scheerpost.com/2022/11/18/why-is-ap-still-protecting-the-source-behind-its-false-russia-bombed-poland-story/

 

 

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update.....

The Associated Press has fired the journalist behind its since-retracted story, which claimed that the missile that hit NATO member Poland last week had been launched by Russia, a number of US media outlets have reported.

The news that the agency had terminated its contract with investigative reporter James LaPorta after a brief internal probe was broken by the Daily Beast on Monday. The sacking was later confirmed to the Washington Post by “people at the news organization.”

Last Tuesday, AP issued a news alert citing “a senior US intelligence official,” who claimed that “Russian missiles crossed into NATO member Poland, killing two people.” 

Such an event would constitute a major escalation of the conflict in Ukraine, given that an attack on one NATO member is supposed to trigger a response from the entire US-led military bloc. The story was quickly picked up by numerous other media outlets and made international headlines.

 

 

READ MORE:

https://www.rt.com/news/566976-ap-poland-missile-ukraine/

 

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