@snoopydawg

The reason is obvious – they are designed to take out Russia’s entire land-based missile silos, as well as bomber bases, basically eliminating any real chance of Russia retaliating against a US first strike.

He may need to edit.

The reality: The United States is today the greatest threat to mankind in the history of the world, run as it is by a gang of crazy bastards like National Insecurity Council Director John Bolton and the armageddon-believing Christian fanatic Sec. of State Michael Pompeo, who are hell-bent on making or keeping the US as a global hegemon at whatever the cost in money and life. We need to eliminate these psychopaths...

I suppose it does not help to understand that we have a coup government, a rogue government that cannot be voted away. The elected government does not have the authority, nor do they have access to the highly classified information about what is really going on. The US is an isolated fortress on the other side of the world. The people are all transplants with a narrated history. They don't ask any questions. They go from confusion to belligerence in one step. Their minds are owned by the Intelligence Agencies. The Russia Hoax proved that once and for all. These big issues are not subject to "democracy" and they never will be. The NSA has a blackmail dossier on every one in Congress. That's why they are allowed to get away with their tawdry sins and crimes. By the time Ed Snowden told us all this, it was too late.

#2.1

to this article.

We’re Edging Closer to Nuclear War

Everything you write, Stephen, is correct, but the scariest thing is what is happening in the relationship between the US and Russia, and also, not perhaps as serious, but serion enough, between the US and China.

During the Obama administration, the US pushed its military alliance up against Russia’s western border, and moved to put advanced anti-missile batteries along that border, in Poland and to the south in, I believe, Rumania. The US has also continued to expand its submarine-launched missile fleet, each of 18 Ohio class subs holding 24 Trident II missiles with 8-10 highly accurate independently targetable nuclear warheads. Do the math. There are virtually undetectable and unstoppable subs off Russia’s coasts contaning a total of, at a minimum 3500 nuclear warheads. Four more Ohio class subs carry tomahawk nuclear-armed cruise missiles, also supremely accurate. Why do we have these weapons? We’re told they are a deterrent against any Russian thought of a nuclear first strike against the US, but if that were so, why would so much money have been spent on developing such accurate weapons that they can hit a target within a range of a few hundred feet? The reason is obvious – they are designed to take out Russia’s entire land-based missile silos, as well as bomber bases, basically eliminating any real chance of Russia retaliating against a US first strike. Accuracy is pointless in a retaliatory strike, since all the Russian missile silos and airports would, by definition, already be empty, their attack having been launched already. And the purpose of anti-missile systems in Europe? Not to protect Europe from attack, but to knock down Russian missiles as they are ascending, to eliminate any stray missiles that might have survived a US surprise attack. There is no other explanation. The Obama adminsitration simply lied to us, as it also lied in ordering a $1.3-trillion “refurbishment” of the US nuke arsenal. Actually part of that money has gone to developing new first strike weapons, like the so-called B61-12 dial-able variable power nuclear bomb cleverly misnamed as if it were just an upgrade of an existing 1960s weapon when it is actually a wholey new weapon specifically designed to be carried by the Pentagon’s new stealth plane, the F-35A Block 4, hundreds of which will be stationed along Russia’s border in Europe and in Asia. And why would that be? It’s not a very good interceptor, we know, nor a good ground support plane, but assuming its stealth design works, it’s a great first strike weapon for slipping past the radars of an advanced nation (Russia) to hit command-and-control and government targets, crippling any response to a US attack. Again a first-strike weapon, as I have been told by Pentagon experts off the record.

The reason for the US pulling out of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Force (INF) Treaty negotiated by President Reagan and President Mikhail Gorbachev in the 1980s is to be able to put back the Pershing II missiles removed under that treaty, giving the US the ability to strike Russia in minutes, not half an hour like with ICBMs, or 15 minutes as with sub-launched Tridents, making a Russian retaliation even less likely.

All of this is forcing Russia, a far less technologically advanced nation with very severe budgetary constraints (Russia’s entire military budget is $66 billion, down $20 billion from a year ago, smaller than Saudi Arabia’s and a third of China’s, and miniscule compared to the US military budget of $716 billion), to respond by developing hypersonic cruise missiles that could be produced enmasse relatively cheaply and evade most conceivable countermeasures, changing flight path and target automatically, and probably, like Russia’s retaliatory missiles, put on automatic or hair-trigger launch status.

Is that what we want from our government? A first-strike capability against Russia? Because that’s what we’ve got. As Michio Kaku and Daniel Axelrod documented in their 1986 book “To Win a Nuclear War,” and as Dan Ellsberg in his more recent book “The Doomsday Machine” also documents, the US, since 1945 before WWII even ended, has been trying to achieve the ability to destroy the Soviet Union/Russia with a first strike that could guarantee no effective retaliation against the US. Some US strategists were suggesting that some retaliation, as long as it killed fewer than 20 million of us, would be “acceptable” if it destroyed Russia as an adversary/rival. Thankfully, saner heads from Eisenhower and Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Reagan, were unwilling to go that far, while they did support efforts to develop the ability to have a cost-free first strike on Russia. But now the US is getting closer to being able to achieve that goal.

We don’t know what the Trump administration and Trump Pentagon’s thinking is about “acceptable US casualties” from a Russian counterstrike might be, but even if it were 1 milllion or 100,000 it would be an incredible crime. So would killing tens of millions or more than 100 million Russians, a prospect that should be simply unthinkable and would make US leaders far worse than Hitler in the annals of genocidal monsters.

The American people need to rise up against this madness. We need to return to the INF Treaty, to shut down the F-35A Block four stealth fighter/bomber and the planned stealth B-21 bomber, cancel the B61-12 bomb with it’s 0.3 kiloton to 50-kiloton adjustable warhead – a weapon designed to be “useable” not just in a first strike on Russia, but against non-nuclear nations, and we need to aggressively slash our outsize military budget, currently representing 34% of all global military spending.

The reality: The United States is today the greatest threat to mankind in the history of the world, run as it is by a gang of crazy bastards like National Insecurity Council Director John Bolton and the armageddon-believing Christian fanatic Sec. of State Michael Pompeo, who are hell-bent on making or keeping the US as a global hegemon at whatever the cost in money and life. We need to eliminate these psychopaths from government and demand that the US join the community of nations, refocussing our resources to combating the climate catastrophe that is building day by day through our inaction.

Dave Lindorff
founding editor of ThisCantBeHappening

@ovals49

... of economic precision. I only recently fully understood how it works. Austerity is a terrorist device in a place like the US.

#3.1

Depreciation will continue to take automatic deductions from all wages and savings. We’ll invent more e-money to cover shortfalls as needed. Only the investor class will have a chance of staying ahead of the game.

@Wally
not that congressional oversight means much anymore, but are you saying they are their own undisputed authority. Que' nil. Guess we'll have to pull out our masked marvel super heros to tame these monsters. Oh noes

#3.1 The NSA isn't even under congressional review since it wasn't created by congress. So without congressional oversight, we're never really going to know how much money is there and how it gets bandied about from here to there.

A brief summary of the NSA is here:

https://www.britannica.com/topic/National-Security-Agency

Tom Englehardt, aka Tom Dispatch, has written a couple of really great books about the global security state:

http://www.tomdispatch.com/books/175915/shadow_government%3A_surveillanc...

and

http://www.tomdispatch.com/books/175465/the_united_states_of_fear/

@snoopydawg @snoopydawg Macron and other European leaders pay the Trump demand,
swing hard right, and who gets killed?
Poor ass American soldiers.
And poor ass Yellow Vesters.

#8

This is what many countries are doing already even before Trump's threat. Macron has stated that he wants France to bulk up its military budget and that's why he is raiding social programs. I think the U.K. is doing this too.

#8.1

Yep. Macron apparently doesn't care how much money he has to spend to fight the yellow vests instead of just letting people protest. Watched a video on RT about this. There are thousands of coppers in the streets with their water cannons that are spraying people on the sidewalks not even doing anything but watching the people in the streets. This what Trump's DHS did during his inauguration. People who weren't even protesting got arrested and charged with felony rioting. Going to lunch, work or just a walk? Bam! You're arrested.

If we try it here it's going to be much more violent.