@Linda Wood

it's worthwhile to keep showing the errors and falsehoods in any reporting of such events. It's exhausting for the people who keep at it, but it has to be done.

The success of propaganda depends on repetition. If you repeat a lie often enough (and in a controlled/censored environment), you can obliterate the truth.

The "errors and falsehoods" are repeated 24/7 on all the corporate media. Meanwhile, the pushback is scattered across hundreds of leftwing (and rightwing) sites, none of which has critical mass. (When they get critical mass, they get "Alex Jones-ed".

At some point, there are so many reinforcing lies that they can simply work around the truth. Case in point, repeating the lie that Mueller has evidence keeps the stories about the crap that Mueller and the FBI have pulled out of the news. The corporate media just keep ping-ponging the lies back and forth, never allowing the truth a moment.

My only satisfaction is that the corporate media is now distrusted. The ratings for news shows are in the toilet. The problem is that rightwing alternate media is way more prominent than leftwing.

Anyway, I agree that telling the truth is vital. However, I just don't see a genuinely leftwing message breaking through in the current environment. The left doesn't know what it stands for since Obama and the Clinton's stole its clothes and Bernie sold out. I have supposedly leftwing friends with Ph.D.s who still defend Her and believe the crapola about the Skripals. They wouldn't know the truth if it was stuck up their ass.

thank you for this essay and for the links. At this point I think it's worthwhile to keep showing the errors and falsehoods in any reporting of such events. It's exhausting for the people who keep at it, but it has to be done.

Because of what you wrote here, I looked back at two State Department Daily Briefings from September 2016. I can't even remember why I went there. Mostly it was to show State Department spokesperson John Kirby talking about MARBLEIZATION, about the Al Nusra Front "marbling" with moderate rebels.

The briefing, quite long, was about how it was supposed to work for Assad to be allowed to attack Nusra, acknowledged as Al Qaeda, but not to attack the Opposition, the moderates, when we openly admitted Nusra and the moderates were "marbled," meaning intermingled.

So Kirby snidely twists around about how awkward and possibly unworkable that is. This was about the ceasefire agreements Secretary of State Kerry had arranged with Russia. Date of the briefing: September 12, 2016.

Then, in the Daily Press Briefing of September 27, 2016, days later, spokesperson Mark Toner responds to questions about how it has all fallen apart, how Assad is barrel bombing Aleppo, and about whether or not the Saudis would now equip the rebels with MANPADS.

So clearly, the Military Industrial Complex takes all the time necessary to explain and un-explain what they're doing, and unfortunately the public has to call them on it by taking even more time to go through their lies. But I have to say, the painstaking scrutiny is effective.

Looking at these dates, I see they coincide with the dates of the scrambling to get a FISA warrant on Carter Page, et al. And very few people would now agree that the marbleization of Al Nusra with moderate rebels was a good idea, and most people, I think, would see it as treason, no matter how it was described by spokespersons.

Daily Press Briefing - September 12, 2016
John Kirby and MARBLEIZATION. (Syria discussion begins at 5:55.)
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1smryz-D4xQ]

Daily Press Briefing - September 27, 2016
Mark Toner and MANPADS.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-m-FP8tbFo]

@snoopydawg

if Putin does continue to give ground then that war will come regardless.

Every day that Putin delays war, the US gets weaker and Russia/China get stronger.

The Chinese navy has more ships than the US navy, albeit the US has more carriers (whose survivability near massive Chinese hypersonic missile launchers is problematic).

The Russians keep rolling out state of the art weaponry, while the US rolls out crap like the F-35 and the Littoral Combat Ship - both trillion dollar turkeys.

The bulk of the US aircraft are 30 year old F-16s, forty year old F-15s, and 60 year old B-52s. The army has been in continuous deployment mode for 18 years. The equipment is worn out, the troops are worn out, the conscripts are of dubious quality. The navy is stretched to the breaking point. The crews are constantly pushed without sleep, resulting in collisions and other FUBARs.

The bottom line is that the US is on the decline, the Russia/China alliance has "interior lines" and massive manpower and material resources. NATO is a joke, with most of the combat power being supplied by the US.

Putin is simply stalling for time while the Russians build what they can afford, and the Chinese build as much as they can. Every day that goes by, the power balance is shifting.

Many analysts believe that neither of the two MICs want an actual non-nuclear war - because it would demonstrate whose equipment actually works. Because the best weapons are withheld from combat to disguise their capabilities, both sides lack confidence.

All in all, I'm glad the Russians are behaving sanely. To me, it looks more like rope-a-dope than appeasement. The US is punching itself out for no gain.

We are watching unfold my concern that the acceptance of provocations results in more provocations and that the provocations escalate in their danger. What will Putin do now? If he backs down again, he can expect a yet more dangerous provocation until the only choice becomes surrender or nuclear war.

Washington’s provocations would not have reached the current level of intensity if Putin had put his foot down several provocations ago. Indeed, the entire Syrian crisis would have been over except for the repeated hesitations and premature withdrawals of Russian forces.

Does the Russian government not understand that Washington is conducting war against Russia, not against terrorists?

If Vlad continues to let himself or Syria be bullied then it makes him look weak. This is his second article on this topic and I think like many of us he wants our murdererous hegemony to be stopped and Putin is probably the only one who can do it.

Bibi doesn't care how many people are killed in his lust to be the only superpower in the Middle East. He has had our government dancing to his tune for decades and they will continue to do so until this country decides that they have had enough. The PTB knows that time is coming, but they don't know when.

Here's another article where he talks about this.

Israel wants Syria as a wasteland, like Iraq, and intends to produce that outcome in Iran as well. Israel wants the water resources of southern Lebanon, but the Hezbollah militia, supported and supplied by Syria and Iran is in the way. Twice the Israeli Army sent to occupy southern Lebanon was defeated and driven out by Hezbollah. Israel cannot risk a third defeat, so Israel uses its American puppet. Indeed, the only reason Washington has been at war in the Middle East for the entirety of the 21st century is because Washington is serving Israel’s agenda.

**
In my opinion, Russia’s inability to stand firm in the face of Western and Israeli aggression will be the principal cause of World War Three in which we will all die and the planet as well.

I see both points of view. Israel will keep pushing for Russia to hit back which will trigger a war of untold proportions which is what Putin is trying to avoid. But if Putin does continue to give ground then that war will come regardless.

The chess graphic is what's happening in real time. Right now it looks like Vlad is winning, but?

@Linda Wood

Putin has no choice but to surrender whatever and wherever he can to prevent these imbeciles from destroying life on earth.

As I said earlier:

The bottom line is that the US is on the decline, the Russia/China alliance has "interior lines" and massive manpower and material resources. NATO is a joke, with most of the combat power being supplied by the US.

Putin is simply stalling for time while the Russians build what they can afford, and the Chinese build as much as they can. Every day that goes by, the power balance is shifting.

I hear you that our cabal is insane, that they are willing to risk using nukes. The question is, how will the Russians and Chinese convey to these criminally insane people that nukes will be met with nukes?

The Russians have a massive civil defense program and a huge country into which to disperse people. The Chinese have over a billion citizens. Both countries have known privation in the last 50 years. Meanwhile the US has become a nation of obese, pampered, uninformed dunces. There are no civil defense plans to speak of. Guess which countries have a better chance of staying together as a society in a nuclear exchange?

BTW, most nuke scenarios begin with high-altitude EMP attacks that would fry every civilian computer that isn't in a Faraday cage. The result of those attacks would be complete devastation. Transportation would fail (40+ microprocessors in every car). Oil pipelines and electricity grids would fail, which would result in the supply chain being broken. Hospital systems would crash. Patients in ICUs would die. Surgery would become impossible. The inventory systems for warehouses would be fried, so no one would no where anything was located. We would be paralyzed, starving, and freezing within a week.

In short, you can do a lot of damage without a single mushroom cloud at ground level.

There are all kinds of nuclear wars. Not saying I want to fight one; but the Russians are smart enough to fight it there way - cleverly, asymmetrically.

arendt, snoopydawg, Pluto's Republic, and k9disc,

your comments are breathtaking and terrifying, some of the most clear thinking I've seen expressed about this crisis over all these months of brinksmanship. But snoopy, I agree with Paul Craig Roberts, as you quote him,

What will Putin do now? If he backs down again, he can expect a yet more dangerous provocation until the only choice becomes surrender or nuclear war.

Yes. That appears to be the situation. The American leadership has been bat-shit crazy since the time of George Herbert Walker Bush. They are on record, and they are behaving accordingly, as saying if anyone stands up to them, they'll kill everyone. Bye-bye baseball, good-bye birds, toodle-loo Bach, no more babies, no more music, no more love. It's that bad, and it's our fault for building this monstrosity, a crazy, psychopathic Council of Jerks, jerking off on power, armed with nuclear weapons.

Mikhail Gorbachev was the only person to see this reality and to see the solution, to disarm. He agreed to destroy all his nuclear weapons, to allow the American government to destroy all his nuclear weapons! The Bush people put an end to it. Putin has no choice but to surrender whatever and wherever he can to prevent these imbeciles from destroying life on earth. So far, it appears he's doing an incredible job of preventing the worst.

@Pluto's Republic

I mean, yes the neocons are rabid animals. But Trump is an idiot, and TPTB find ways to use him.

What if TPTB have decided they have looted all they can easily get away with from the US? We sort of suspect that Trump's trade wars are designed to crash global trade so that TPTB can buy up failed businesses at low prices. That's the standard "disaster capitalism" playbook.

I mean the stock market is inflated beyond belief. The value of the dollar is being driven up by all the uncertaintly. Therefore, now is the time to get out of dollars and short the market. If all this provocation pushes China to retaliate, the smart crooks could make out like Joe Kennedy, Sr. in the 1929 crash.

As an added bonus, a complete economic collapse of the US would blow away Medicare and SocSec. Those programs still have too much support for TPTB to privatize and loot them. An economic disaster would vaporize those plans, and the government itself - which has been the goal of the neoliberals since forever.

Just thinking out loud. But the lack of adult supervision here is starting to look like a feature (for the 0.01%) not a bug.

..imperiousness, today. A lashing out and provocation that I found shocking — because from my perspective, the US is deliberately pushing together China, Russia, and the entire Eastern Hemisphere to act as an opposing force against it.

Quite simply, the US is guided by the most inept foreign policy and war strategists in all of human history.

U.S. sanctions China for buying Russian fighter jets, missiles

September 20, 2018

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Trump administration imposed sanctions on the Chinese military on Thursday for buying fighter jets and missile systems from Russia, in breach of a sweeping U.S. sanctions law punishing Moscow for meddling in the 2016 U.S. election.

The US thinks it can punish China in order to punish Russia for a problem that the US invented to hide its failed internal coup?

The U.S. State Department said it would immediately impose sanctions on China’s Equipment Development Department (EDD), the branch of the Chinese military responsible for weapons and equipment, and its director, Li Shangfu, for engaging in “significant transactions” with Rosoboronexport, Russia’s main arms exporter.

The sanctions are related to China’s purchase of 10 SU-35 combat aircraft in 2017 and S-400 surface-to-air missile system-related equipment in 2018, the State Department said.

They block the Chinese agency, and Li, from applying for export licenses and participating in the U.S. financial system.

It also adds them to the Treasury Department’s list of specially designated individuals with whom Americans are barred from doing business.

Every day the US pokes China with another sharp stick. These Neocons who have seized control of the Federal Government have no idea what they are creating, but the US is forever reeling and spinning from the unintended consequences of their murderous actions on the world stage. And then, they double down.

The administration also blacklisted an additional 33 people and entities associated with the Russian military and intelligence, adding them to a list under the 2017 law, known as the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, or CAATSA.

CAATSA also seeks to punish Russia for its aggression in Ukraine and involvement in Syria’s civil war.

Doing significant business with anyone on that list can trigger sanctions like those imposed on China.

Some of those added to the list, which now contains 72 names, were indicted in connection with Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election, the official said.

As if to confirm that the US is as intellectually challenged as one might suspect, an anonymous official weighs in:

One U.S. administration official, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity, said the sanctions imposed on the Chinese agency were aimed at Moscow, not Beijing or its military, despite an escalating trade war between the United States and China.

“The ultimate target of these sanctions is Russia. CAATSA sanctions in this context are not intended to undermine the defense capabilities of any particular country,” the official told reporters on a conference call.

“They are instead aimed at imposing costs upon Russia in response to its malign activities,” the official said.

Yep. Onlookers agree. US policy is dumb as a stump:

“The imposition of U.S. sanctions will have zero impact on Russian arms sales to China,” said Ian Storey, of Singapore’s ISEAS Yusof Ishak Institute.

“Both countries are opposed to what they see as U.S. bullying and these kind of actions will just push Beijing and Moscow even closer together,” he said.

Next, the Neocons turn to threaten NATO member Turkey because that's going to work out really well, they think:

Administration officials said they hoped the action... would send a message to others considering buying the S-400... particularly with NATO ally Turkey, which wants to buy the Russian-made S-400 surface-to-air missile batteries.

Washington has expressed concern that Turkey’s planned deployment of the S-400s could pose a risk to the security of some U.S.-made weapons and other technology used by Turkey, including the F-35 fighter jet.

“We hope that at least this step will send a signal of our seriousness and perhaps encourage others to think twice about their own engagement with the Russian defense and intelligence sectors,” another U.S. official said.

This announcement was made just in time for Asia morning news and right now, Europe is just waking up. They'll have a chance to see this before Americans ever hear about it. If they ever do, would they understand what it means? The US is a zombie.

This story has traction in the World News lineup.