(RUSSIA! must be sick of our threats): ‘Listen to us now’: Putin unveils new Russian nuclear arsenal

And who didn’t see this coming?

‘Listen to us now’: Putin unveils new Russian nuclear arsenal

02A396CC-41A7-4206-9808-A88DD18982C5.jpeg
Russian President Vladimir Putin delivers his annual Presidential Address to the Federal Assembly at the Manezh Central Exhibition Hall © Grigoriy Sisoev / Sputnik

Russia has developed a number of advanced weapons systems, including a nuclear-powered cruise missile, which make all US capabilities aimed at undermining the Russian nuclear deterrent obsolete, President Vladimir Putin announced.

The latest advances in Russian strategic deterrence have made America’s anti-missile systems obsolete, so Washington should stop trying to diminish Russia’s security and start talking to Moscow as an equal partner, not the dominant military power it seeks to be, Putin said.

The Russian leader made the comments during his state of the nation address on Wednesday. While the first part of the address was a straightforward description of domestic goals and achievements, the second became a defiant challenge to the US. Putin announced that Russia has successfully developed several new weapons systems, which basically negate American anti-ballistic missile capabilities.

The Russian president accused the US of arrogance, saying that it thought that Russia would not be able to recover anytime soon after the collapse of the Soviet Union and that its interests can simply be ignored. One particular move – the withdrawal by George W Bush from the Anti-ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) in 2002 – resulted in Russia being increasingly surrounded by American assets, which undermined the country’s nuclear deterrence.

“In the end, if we did nothing, this would render the Russian nuclear potential worthless,” Putin said. “They could simply intercept all of it.”

Without a nuclear deterrent, Russia would be exposed to US military pressure and would not be able to pursue a sovereign policy, Putin said. The president warned as early as in 2004 that Russia would not sit idle and that it would respond to this threat by developing new weapons systems.

https://www.rt.com/news/420206-russia-strategic-weapons-putin/

I guess this is Putin ‘talking softly but carrying a really really big stick’.

Too bad the assholes in Washington never know when to STFU and listen.

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He too has a domestic political audience, he can't just roll over and let this country destroy his. How arrogant and stupid our owners are. I swear they're all psychopaths, they do tend to interbreed between families after all, very incestuous group in many ways.

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Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur

Amanda Matthews's picture

@lizzyh7

we’re surrounding RUSSIA! with missiles and tactical weapons

US approves sale of 210 antitank missiles to Ukraine

The State Department has officially approved a possible $47 million sale of Javelin antitank missiles and related equipment to Ukraine, the Pentagon announced Thursday.

The move marks a significant escalation of lethal aid to Ukraine in its ongoing struggles against Russia.

https://www.google.com/amp/thehill.com/policy/defense/376351-us-approves...

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

edg's picture

The "winnable nuclear war" assholes are back in town. Here's what Sen. Lindsey Graham said about North Korea, and I'll be he and others think the same thing about Russia:

"All the damage that would come from a war would be worth it in terms of long-term stability and national security," Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who has had multiple conversations with President Donald Trump about North Korea, told CNN.

I assume "all the damage" means the acceptable loss of those pesky Democratic strongholds LA, San Francisco, Portland and Seattle.

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Pluto's Republic's picture

@edg

They have no idea that wiping out a few cities would return us to a primitive age — for many, many generations. For the rest of the century.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
TheOtherMaven's picture

@Pluto's Republic

What we have now, we have because we used up most of the easily accessible non-renewable resources.

Any survivors who had to make do with the leftover scraps would probably never be able to get out of the Stone Age.

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There is no justice. There can be no peace.

@Pluto's Republic

The lack of oxygen, food and other life dependent on these on the planet might add to the set-back, too.

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

snoopydawg's picture

@edg

to go ahead with this needs to have their butts in a military uniform and go with the troops they want to send.

I don't blame Putin for telling us about that. He's been watching the US and NATO troop and military equipment buildup in Poland. Why else would they be doing this if not to try to take him out?

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Amanda Matthews's picture

@snoopydawg

RUSSIANS! could weed out some of our biggest warmongers.

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

@snoopydawg @snoopydawg

Putin has already stated that another war will not be fought on Russian soil. If The Psychopaths That Be continue their globe-defeating efforts, they'll try to short it out and may succeed, but the Russians will, at the least, go down swinging, and if TPTB start nuking one country, it'll probably be all of those on that lengthy PNAC, et al, list (that other, less-publicized one which includes India and a bunch of others that's been posted on here, as well as elsewhere,) they go after which will, of course, all fire back and likely will do so as soon as the US attacks any country on the hit list. And any who survive the immediate effects of this planetary murder will wish they hadn't.

If Putin wasn't extremely sane, responsible and intelligent, we'd have been toast long since, but the maniacs cheated into US and other governments are none of those. But I suspect that Russia has defenses aimed at preventing violence which may be able to short out attackers and force negotiation; this seems to be his tendency. If forced to it, though, I expect he'll be very... comprehensive in ensuring that the destruction of his country and people is prevented, if at all possible, which is as it should be.

Unfortunately, that means our countries, which are being used for this, have been made targets of probably more of the world TPTB realize, as it's known how treacherous and pathological they are - and how willing to kill allies as 'collateral damage'.

It's just the other way around with TPTB running our countries but having no care for the wreckage they create of them in the pursuit of all wealth, power and control - the ones who target civilians for fun, profit, and to try to make others trying to defend them look bad...

The Psychopaths That Be have no idea of what they're dealing with and will not listen to the adult in the war-room, who deals on a human level and not in blind and often sadistic greed. To them, humanity is weakness; pathology is strength.

They have been warned; they who believe that they can change reality if they only clap loudly enough for each other...

Edit for letter-typo and to add the hope that the bullies will simply back down when faced down with superior strength, as they often do. They've built up their delusions by attacking much smaller, poorer and pacific countries full of civilians who continue to fight even when bombed flat and they may be shocked into self-preservation yet. Where there's life, there's hope.

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

@Ellen North @Ellen North Putin has said that the Russian military is defensive only. He says that offensively Russia could not counter NATO/US as they have asbolute superior numbers. The combined budget of NATO/US is now more than a trillion dollars a year. Russia's military budget is about $60 billion.

What is just so bizzare to me is that European leadership is buying into a militarized response to Russia absolutely forgetting WWII. You know, the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union with a coalition also.

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edg's picture

@MrWebster

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CB's picture

@edg
That was why both thought invading would be a cakewalk - a matter of a few months at most. Despite this military weakness, the Russian people rose to the challenge and defeated the invaders by using their climate to their advantage.

Times are different now. Putin has ensured Russia is much, much better prepared.

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Amanda Matthews's picture

@Ellen North @Ellen North

nucleat war, Kruschev said of the survivors

“The living will envy the dead.”

EDIT: typo

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

@Amanda Matthews

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

@snoopydawg

and then we tie the assholes and their families to it.

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"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

Amanda Matthews's picture

@dkmich @dkmich

the paint.

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

@edg latest by Ellsburg, the Doomsday Machine. These idiots do not even ASK what happens to the planet after they do this. They never really did. They are terrifying in their stupidity and greed. Talk about malignant narcissism.

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Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur

@edg @edg

All of the stability (edit: created by) all of those other attacks/invasions wars they started ought to be enough, then. If it hasn't worked by now, Mutual Assured Destruction probably won't either.

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

Pluto's Republic's picture

...is vastly superior to the US. The US has few military targets in Russia because Russia's nuclear missiles are in constant motion across that vast continent. Russia has all military targets in the US. Striking North Korea is the same as striking China and Russia.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato

@Pluto's Republic I read this descripton in the 1970's what would happen if just one typical Russian MIRV hit Detroit. If memory serves basically the entire upper Midwest and much of the Midwest south of Detriot would be dead--including Chicago.

I won't take alot of thermonuclear bombs to devestate the US and then the entire world, as experts have predicted that just an atom bomb exchange between Pakistan and India could trigger a nuclear winter.

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snoopydawg's picture

Pentagon predicts 10,000 US military casualties in early days of N. Korean War

The New York Times reported that on Wednesday, US military leaders attended a classified exercise in Hawaii to discuss various scenarios that would arise in the opening days of a prospective US invasion of North Korea. The Pentagon stressed that the exercises did not signal that the White House had decided to go to war with North Korea.

The so-called "tabletop exercises," led by Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley and US Special Operations Commander Gen. Raymond Thomas, estimated that the opening days of the invasion would be catastrophic.

Ya think?

For comparison's sake, 10,000 casualties was also the number of Allied soldiers lost on D-Day, the landing on the beaches of Normandy in June 1944 that was the single largest seaborne invasion in human history.

I saw Private Ryan and boy that didn't look fun. But let's do it again. Yippee!

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Bollox Ref's picture

@snoopydawg

haltingly talk of fighting through the mud of 3rd Ypres (Passchendaele) and trail off, with tears in his eyes.

War to end all Wars? 101 years later, and we're still idiots.

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Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.

snoopydawg's picture

@Bollox Ref

The congress critters who make the decisions to send people off to die for nothing have no idea what it's like to be in a war. Being scared after seeing that your legs have just been blown off or seeing your buddies blown up by an IED. Or any of the other nightmares that come from war.

I remember thinking about walking out of Private Ryan because of the gore and imagining how it must have been there.

Then again, there's McCain and he's one of the biggest warmongers, but then again, he sat safely in his plane and bombed his targets. Until ...

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Bollox Ref's picture

@snoopydawg
in WWI, Saving Private Ryan is comparatively easy viewing.

Thinking about it, the scene in Born on the 4th July, when Ron Kovic (Tom Cruise) is removed to the field hospital, with the agony of his fellow soldiers/patients....

I haven't watched that film again.

(Edited)

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Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.

@snoopydawg from home. I cried like a baby during those horrible scenes. After all the talk then about how bad and realistic that scene was, they were surely right.

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Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur

snoopydawg's picture

@lizzyh7

watching the opening scenes. Or that it flared theirs up after all the years since it happened. I too heard that it wasn't as bad as what actually happened.

Most war movies have been sterilized. They don't really show the blood and gore like it is in real life. I'm sure that there is a reason for that. Can't have the populace knowing what real war is like, now can we?

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@snoopydawg @snoopydawg went sort of nuts in the first few minutes of watching Saving Private Ryan. He was not himself for a few weeks afterwards.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

@snoopydawg

The New York Times reported that on Wednesday, US military leaders attended a classified exercise in Hawaii to discuss various scenarios that would arise in the opening days of a prospective US invasion of North Korea. The Pentagon stressed that the exercises did not signal that the White House had decided to go to war with North Korea. ...

nicely defines the idiot psychopath...

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

Supposedly the US (Ronald Reagan) caused the collapse of the Soviet Union by forcing them to spend way beyond their means. It makes an interesting point and can be applied today in reverse. Russia spends 1/10 of the US war budget, yet it an extremely credible threat to completely annihilate the US. How does Russia do it?

1) The US has to support military bases (~1000) all over the globe, Russia only a few.
2) The US is the biggest contributor to the NATO budget.
3) The US has been waging active warfare all over the globe since WWII, Russia has had a very limited part in conflicts.
4) Russia is much more efficient and competent in military science and technology.
5) The US is supporting a massive corporate-military complex.
6) Russia inherited a huge body of research and legacy USSR technology, some of which is up-gradable to current requirements.
7) The US is an aggressor nation.

There is a belief that the US can continue to spent $1 Trillion every year on war and it will not effect the economy. This is nonsense as it really is a choice of guns or butter. In our case it's guns or infrastructure, science, technology, education, health, etc. Think of all of the research that is wasted and could have gone into improving human usable infrastructure, goods and services. Useful research and development has a multiplier, war spending is a dead end and consumes resources for no useful purpose.

Russia is pissed off about NATO expanding to its borders, think Cuban missile crisis in reverse. The US is aggressive and would use it's military dominance over Russia to keep her down, if the US could. But it can't and that will never happen. The US has proven that it is aggressive and the most dangerous country in the world, in fact it brags about it. It doesn't want treaty limitations to it's military power. It lives and breaths on the concept of preventing area denial everywhere on the globe (that means that we have the ability to bomb anyone, anywhere, anytime). Russia is behaving in a totally predictable way. The only way out of this quagmire is for the US to back down and learn to respect Russia's interested and security. Don't hold your breath.

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Capitalism has always been the rule of the people by the oligarchs. You only have two choices, eliminate them or restrict their power.

Pluto's Republic's picture

@The Wizard

If we didn't get out of the Middle East, he would bankrupt us and collapse the Empire.

We didn't get out.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
TheOtherMaven's picture

@Pluto's Republic

Vizzini, the slimy Sicilian, was right about that.

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There is no justice. There can be no peace.

CB's picture

@Pluto's Republic
could he have envisioned how successful he would be.

US Budgetary Costs of Wars through 2016: $4.79 Trillion and Counting

Summary of Costs of the US Wars in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan and
Homeland Security
September 2016
Summary

Wars cost money before, during and after they occur as governments prepare for, wage, and recover from them by replacing equipment, car ing for the wounded and repairing the infrastructure destroyed in the fighting. Although it is rare to have a precise accounting of the costs of war - especially of long wars - one can get a sense of the rough scale of the costs by surveying the major categories of spending.

As of August 2016, the US has already appropriated, spent, or taken on obligations to spend more than $3.6 trillion in current dollars on the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Syria and on Homeland Security (2001 through fiscal year 2016). To this total should be added the approximately $65 billion in dedicated war spending the Department of Defense and State Department have requested for the next fiscal year, 2017, along with an additional nearly $32 billion requested for the Department of Homeland Security in 2017, and estimated spending on veterans in future years.When those are included, the total US budgetary cost of the wars reaches $4.79 trillion.

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Pluto's Republic's picture

@CB

... to take down the Russian Empire in the very same way in Afghanistan? The Russians lost or misplaced every piece of equipment they brought into Kabul, fleets of Assault Choppers, UAZs, and strike jets — 333 helicopters and 118 jets in all — plus a tons of AK47s, palettes of shrink-wrapped Rubles, and untold cases of vodka. Afghanistan is like a giant video game where you drop in a billion dollars in the slot and you get to prop up your very own puppet government and local military in Kabul. It's a very addictive game and you have to keep sending home for more tokens. And more helicopters that keep falling out of the sky and replacements for all the soldiers that seem to get mowed down by friendly fire.

The Afghans got this down to a science. In the end, we peaceniks are going to owe them a solid for putting another Empire out of its misery.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
CB's picture

@Pluto's Republic
and cut their losses after 10 years. The US is still going strong after over 17 years (with no end in sight) and spending $1.07 trillion.

Maybe the US should follow Russia's lead and exit the "graveyard of empires"? I doubt that they will. This is the only region where they can attempt to cut China's BRI. If they lose Afghanistan, they lose Eurasia. They will hang in until the bitter end. BTW, they've already lost Pakistan. China now building a military base there plus a $56 billion investment. That's why Pakistan effectively told Trump to go fuck himself over the $33 billion the US spent in Pakistan in the last 15 years.

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@CB

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

gulfgal98's picture

@The Wizard All these wars of choice and our military occupation of approximately 140 nations throughout the world is a black money pit. You hit the nail on the head with this as well as the rest of your comment. Great comment.

There is a belief that the US can continue to spent $1 Trillion every year on war and it will not effect the economy. This is nonsense as it really is a choice of guns or butter. In our case it's guns or infrastructure, science, technology, education, health, etc. Think of all of the research that is wasted and could have gone into improving human usable infrastructure, goods and services. Useful research and development has a multiplier, war spending is a dead end and consumes resources for no useful purpose.

During our weekly Peace vigil, I used to tell people that our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq alone were costing us between $4 and $6 Trillion. I now believe that figure is far higher and when added to all of our other covert and military adventures worldwide, the American people deserve to know how much of their tax dollars and the future for their children is being wasted.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

Pentagon is already salivating and most elated over this very welcome message...now we must spend MORE (a.k.a. sucking more from the pockets of U.S. citize...er, plebs). Yay for them!

I suspect this was at least a minor facet for Putin's decision to verbalize this; perhaps accelerate the inevitable demise/financial collapse of this nation and relegate to the dustbin.

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CB's picture

@ChezJfrey
programs of social uplift is one of the major causes, historically, of the demise of empires. It effectively destroys empires from within.

Putin is a master of judo - he knows how to turn an opponent's strength back against itself. The more America spends on military, the weaker it becomes internally. It's infrastructure is disintegrating at an ever increasing rate.

Russia has high speed rail. China has high speed rail. Europe has high speed rail. What does America have - 1960's clickity-clacking rail system and a mountain of debt.

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Big Al's picture

military industrial complex orgasm?

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Amanda Matthews's picture

@Big Al

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

CB's picture

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@Big Al also means money wasted.

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CB's picture

by reducing Russia's defense spending and putting the cash into programs of social uplift.

The US will respond by pumping so much money into their defense budget that their military will be blinded and suffocated under a mountainous pile of cash and thus be neutered. This will result in American citizens attacking their government with torches and pitchforks due to widespread lack of butter - effectively accomplishing Putin's strategy of knackering America.

Damn that Putin. He is such an evil man. He's literately grabbed America by the nuts and is squeezing them.

Russia to shell out $46 bln on defense spending in 2018
The Russian defense minister unveils army plans for 2018

BALASHIKHA, December 22. /TASS/. The 2018 year budget of the Russian Defense Ministry will total $46 bln, Minister Sergei Shoigu said on Friday.

"2.8% of GDP or $46 bln," the minister said. The Pentagon’s budget for the next year will be over $700 bln, Shoigu noted for comparison. The budget of the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defense will be about $60 bln and the budget of defense agencies of France and Germany will be $40 bln each. "No comments are needed," the Russian minister said.

"The Russian army at present is modern, mobile, compact, and battle-worthy. However, we do not flex muscles and do not intend to fight with anyone. At the same time, we do not advise anyone to test the strength of our defensive ability," Shoigu said.
...
Putin said "it [the level of defense expenditures] will be 2.85-2.86% of GDP in the next year and it will be reduced further later on. The question arises: can we be self-sufficient in such conditions and with such capabilities, can we reliably and unconditionally support defense capability of our state? We can, we must, and we will do that."
...

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Amanda Matthews's picture

@CB

scheming weasels at Defense be ‘unable to account for’? They’ve been incompetent (or very competent) when it come to taxpayers dollars. Someone(s) made buku bucks off our foreign policy of endless wat.

U.S. Army fudged its accounts by trillions of dollars, auditor finds

The United States Army’s finances are so jumbled it had to make trillions of dollars of improper accounting adjustments to create an illusion that its books are balanced.

The Defense Department’s Inspector General, in a June report, said the Army made $2.8 trillion in wrongful adjustments to accounting entries in one quarter alone in 2015, and $6.5 trillion for the year. Yet the Army lacked receipts and invoices to support those numbers or simply made them up.

As a result, the Army’s financial statements for 2015 were “materially misstated,” the report concluded. The “forced” adjustments rendered the statements useless because “DoD and Army managers could not rely on the data in their accounting systems when making management and resource decisions.”

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-audit-army/u-s-army-fudged-its-ac...

War has been very very good to someone(s).

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

snoopydawg's picture

@Amanda Matthews

I'm sure that they are misplacing a lot of the money on purpose and it's going to things that congress would never have approved of.

One thing I'd like to know is how much of it is going to private contractors who were hired to do the things that the military used to do? KP, keeping the bases and barracks clean and so many other duties? They were outsourced during Bush's administration by none other than Cheney and they went to his companies. Halliburton and KBR.

Plus why are we paying mercenaries up to $1,000/day when our military should be doing what they are? Not enough troops? Not an excuse. If they don't have enough troops for their wars, then maybe there are too damned many wars! This is unfair to us and to the innocent people who are affected by our damned wars.

I'm sure that if there was an audit we would find billions that have been misspent. On purpose. Wars for profits is beyond heinous!

Stop the Fucking wars and bring all the troops home! Make America great by doing this!

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lotlizard's picture

@snoopydawg  

They were outsourced during Bush's administration by none other than Cheney and they went to his companies. Halliburton and KBR.

Obama’s response: “Look forward, not backward.”

And then there’s Obama’s notorious response to Wall Street’s derivatives pyramid scheme having brought economic meltdown, ruining millions of lives:
Obama (to bankers): “My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks”

Obama’s defenders are wrong: is $400K speech to Wall Street matters

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Wink's picture

is saved by closing just
@Amanda Matthews
half of the African, Asian,
Euro military bases.

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the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.

CB's picture

@Amanda Matthews
with fake invoices and receipts. Can you think of any other reason a hammer would cost the DoD $482.50 and a basic ceramic toilet $3,999.99, despite both being made in China and on sale at WallyMart at 1/100th of the cost? We need to follow the money trail back to Russia. Most likely the latest $80 billion that was added to the defense budget went straight into Putin's bank accounts in the Cayman Islands.

This would explain why the Rooskis can afford all their new war toys on such a small budget. It also explains why the Russian tin pot defense department got such advanced tech. The Roosian hackers also stole the blueprints. ROFL

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@CB

What's astounding is that they apparently found a way to avoid the NSA, 5-Eyes and lengthy list of other snoops, satellites and all, in keeping their weaponry secret.

The scary thing about that to me is that it causes me to lean a little more toward this all being kabuki and there being no major power sane and sensible enough to stand up to The Psychopaths That Be without being one him/herself.

Many of the other countries more immediately and officially, if privately, targeted by organizations such as PNAC, running US government policy, are generally smaller and poorer and are said to be thought to typically lack 'reach' to North America - although that's a publicized assumption (true or not, they might well be stupid enough to think it) by TPTB be that somehow others can't access tech (which they [DoD, arms merchants, politicians and very possibly a number of others] freely sell or, in the case of the Likud, give, at taxpayer expense) and are probably somehow 'too primitive' to reach the country which the US PTB claim to be 'protecting' from lunatics with knives (and all of the weapons they and allied others give them) by attacking/invading [oil-rich/mineral-rich/strategically positioned for invasion/attack upon still other countries, etc.) other people's countries and thereby creating more 'moderate rebels'/terrorists, depending on whether they're using them or not as troops in such attacks/invasions or as just general disruption and an excuse to barge in, kill civilians and overthrow the governments to install puppets.

And the Mad Bomber did sell Russia that uranium, so this conceivably might have been part of some mutual plan agreed upon back then, as an excuse to kill off population deemed no longer necessary and a perpetual hazard in the possibility of rebellion - at least in the US; Russia does have bomb shelters and nuclear drills for her people, unlike the US. Although there'd be nothing to come out to, of course, if M.A.D. occurs...

But the US (and other) PTB have long been very casual about incidentally killing off Americans as well as others and do so for additional profit, around the world, on a massive and continual basis, simply by routine 'cost-cutting' industrial pollution and the use of 'cost-cutting'/lucrative/monopoly-directed toxins, etc. in products, including food. The US EPA used to set allowable levels set by the 'acceptable' number of people estimated - going by industry evaluations - to not only sicken but actually die of such exposure levels, initially per million, then in each 100,000 persons, per toxin. Now, with polluting industry entirely running the show, I only seem to hear about 'safe' levels... and in Canada, 'harmonized' with appalling US standards through NAFTA - including the use of hazardous waste as fertilizer, as one example - meant our 'harmonizing' with US industrially created disease, dysfunction (including obesity) and premature death rates. Just as US food supplies flooding markets in other countries increased theirs.

The psychopaths made out like the bandits they are, of course, but it wasn't enough, of course, they needed corporate coups labeled as privately agreed 'trade deals' between complicit governments and corporations, setting up illegal law that corporate interests/billionaires were free to do whatever they liked with the people and country which that government exists to serve the interests of. Hardly legitimate to hand over what doesn't belong to you personally to effectively enslave the people of your country and control of what must be public-protective law - entrusted to the office you hold and not in your private possession - to hostile outside agents.

But there is never 'enough' for the pathologically greedy - they must militarily take control of whatever they do not economically/'legally' control through subverted/infiltrated/implanted government officials (which need to be replaced by humans, by Progs fighting for the public interest because of the people - not that any legitimate political parties would be fighting to harm their people) - or eliminate those not submitting to their micro-management and desired totalitarian authority.

The Psychopaths/Parasites/lackeys That Be are now claiming that they will survive their 'limited' nuclear war', if they only explode all of their bombs above ground, so as not to block the sun as badly or for as long; they're still pretending to themselves that they'd do just fine and would probably walk right out of their bunkers to be irradiated...

http://www.atomicarchive.com/Docs/Effects/wenw_chp2.shtml

Worldwide Effects of Nuclear War
Radioactive Fallout

...Plutonium-239 decays through emission of an alpha particle (helium nucleus) and has a half-life of 24,000 years. To the extent that hydrogen fusion contributes to the explosive force of a weapon, two other radionuclides will be released: tritium (hydrogen-3), an electron emitter with a half-life of 12 years, and carbon-14, an electron emitter with a half-life of 5,730 years. Both are taken up through the food cycle and readily incorporated in organic matter. ...

... It has been estimated that a weapon with a fission yield of 1 million tons TNT equivalent power (1 megaton) exploded at ground level in a 15 miles-per-hour wind would produce fallout in an ellipse extending hundreds of miles downwind from the burst point. At a distance of 20-25 miles downwind, a lethal radiation dose (600 rads) would be accumulated by a person who did not find shelter within 25 minutes after the time the fallout began. At a distance of 40-45 miles, a person would have at most 3 hours after the fallout began to find shelter. Considerably smaller radiation doses will make people seriously ill. Thus, the survival prospects of persons immediately downwind of the burst point would be slim unless they could be sheltered or evacuated.

It has been estimated that an attack on U.S. population centers by 100 weapons of one-megaton fission yield would kill up to 20 percent of the population immediately through blast, heat, ground shock and instant radiation effects (neutrons and gamma rays); an attack with 1,000 such weapons would destroy immediately almost half the U.S. population. These figures do not include additional deaths from fires, lack of medical attention, starvation, or the lethal fallout showering to the ground downwind of the burst points of the weapons.

Most of the bomb-produced radionuclides decay rapidly. Even so, beyond the blast radius of the exploding weapons there would be areas ("hot spots") the survivors could not enter because of radioactive contamination from long-lived radioactive isotopes like strontium-90 or cesium-137, which can be concentrated through the food chain and incorporated into the body. The damage caused would be internal, with the injurious effects appearing over many years. For the survivors of a nuclear war, this lingering radiation hazard could represent a grave threat for as long as 1 to 5 years after the attack. ...

(There's a tendency to focus on the ones with shorter half-lives, and to think that the admittedly reduced hazard is promptly negligible thereafter, but radiation hazards have always been down-played by the nuclear industry and related industries, such as mining, manufacturing, military... with the death of the highly complex and interdependent natural life support system overlooked or skimmed over with references to - apart from all else - absurdly inadequate technological replacements, making any surviving life dependent on no glitches or disasters and on the companies producing these and their power and servicing.)

When it's the Russians, it's a 'Doomsday machine' not a new toy, as would be the American case.

And according to this following, the Pentagon purportedly learnt of this purported weapon through Russian 'media leaks'. Not any of the umpteen spy agencies or any of the satellites or other snoopy tech intent on tracking, apparently, only us.

I can't find specifics of what Putin recently unveiled for that underwater torpedo which sounds similar to this (there was also something similar described in crude propaganda in 2016 in some rag) when he told the US to back off attacking Russia and her allies, and everything that I have found so far on the earlier claims sounds like propaganda to various extents ... too tired to keep poking and I expect others on here will know but I don't know anything about this so just plunking this down, for whatever it's worth, whether a giggle or a 'yeah, you didn't know that???', lol.

in any event, going by what I've found, this following seems to have been based on information released by the Pentagon in or around January of this year - but dunno, corporate media doesn't seem to be including this (have I just not yet seen this used? or was it determined to be counter-productive as propaganda?) in the corporate media RUSSIA!!! crap, (don't follow them, but expect it would have been mentioned here or other places I read sometimes; has Rachel Madbot been rabbiting on about this the past couple of months?) so dunno.

This mentioned in the following may or may not be one of the weapons Putin unveiled - but the fact that this apparently hasn't been mentioned in propaganda (as far as I can tell) pumped out on Russiagate could variously, if not exclusively be: because TPTB:

refused to give up on Russiagate (and the sucking up of all money from US public funds) at any cost

wanted to 'leak it out' and have it used to promote hysteria, (in which case, it apparently having failed, it's possible that Putin may have upheld an entirely theoretical Trilateral Commission or other part by publicly exhibiting his new defences now, a couple of months later) as they are using this as an excuse to blame Russia for starting an 'arms race' and were saying earlier that already-drained Americans were going to have to 'sacrifice' for further looting of the public treasury and, no doubt, whatever remains in their pockets or otherwise might have wound up in there

because they don't want to admit that they've been stymied in their ongoing global take-over, and would rather kill off the world than live and let live, clinging to the notion that if they plan to have their nuclear missiles explode above ground, they'll be fine - and without mentioning how they'll arrange to have everyone else explode theirs above ground? Has WW3 been choreographed by Trilateral Commission members? In every country targeted, including Pakistan and India? Or just where parasitic TC oligarchs have been installed to drain profits for themselves, in China and, (I suspect,) Russia (unless Putin's maneuvering around them, no idea, obviously). Wild guessing on my part, of course.

Nobody who lacks that specific brain deficiency/damage/toxicity - at any rate, the incapacity for humanity - can think like a psychopath, even without all of the confusion tactics; makes it hard to guess, and that's how they get us...

In any event, this was out in January - anyone heard about this on corporate news between then and now? I miss a lot on here, was this posted about back then and forgotten?

https://sofrep.com/98207/pentagon-documents-confirm-russia-developing-nu...

Pentagon documents confirm Russia is developing a nuclear submersible doomsday weapon SOFREP Original Content

By Alex Hollings 01.18.2018#Military News

A recently released Pentagon document has confirmed the existence of a new nuclear weapon being developed for the Russian military. This new intercontinental, nuclear-armed undersea autonomous torpedo is rumored to be the most powerful nuclear weapon developed by any nation in decades.

The weapon, dubbed “Kanyon” by U.S. Defense officials and “Ocean Multipurpose System Status-6” by the Russians, is often referred to as a nuclear torpedo, though it may be more appropriate to consider it an autonomous submersible, or undersea drone. Estimates based on intelligence gathered primarily through media leaks in Russia itself claim the submersible weapon is about 5.5 feet wide and 79 feet long, capable of covering thousands of miles beneath the sea undetected to standby for detonation near coastal cities. The vessel is said to have a maximum speed of 56 knots and be able to travel continuously at depths exceeding 3,280 feet below the surface. The platform’s range is a supposed 6,200 miles, meaning when deployed by Sarov-class Russian Navy submarines, the Kanyon can secretly reach any coastal city in the world.

The Kanyon’s stealth and autonomy aren’t what has caused some experts to refer to it as a “doomsday” weapon however – it’s the 100 megaton payload. ...

... A single megaton, however, is equivalent to a thousand kilotons, or one million tons of TNT. Kanyon’s 100 megatons, then, is the destructive equivalent of parking 100,000,000 tons of dynamite just off of the American coast, accompanied by radioactive fallout that would bar a human presence in the affected region for a century, particularly because the payload is rumored to be “salted” with an additional radioactive isotope, Cobalt-60, which would increase the weapon’s fallout potential as an area denial measure.

The detonation would also almost certainly cause a tsunami of irradiated water that would flood further into the coast that the bomb itself may potentially reach. ...

Although Ocean Multipurpose System Status-6 doesn't much sound like a bomb drone, it could be deceptively named, but with all of the propaganda, that particular one could have been a mining drone also recording data on sea life, for all I know, presented as an excuse for blowing money to the MIC and the one just unveiled might be a real surprise to the Pentagon - and going by the way they're stuttering that they never meant to threaten Russia in a number of news stories I saw while poking around and a video* of an official explaining that they never intended missiles for Russia which I watched, it might be. I dunno, but

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_PLNeMuqu4&t=1sPublished on 27 Feb 2018

Don't Believe Your Lying Eyes
corbettreport

SHOW NOTES: https://www.corbettreport.com/?p=26040

We all know that the "Deep Fakes" application that's going viral on the internet is only a crude toy compared to the technologies the government-sponsored, defence department-linked researchers have been playing with. Here's an example from the year 2000 that shows that real-time video fakery technology has been available to the deep state for decades.

If true, any sane person would accept the Russian advances as a deterrent, but sane people wouldn't be attempting a global takeover and TPTB seem to think they'll be fine taking cover On The Beach in New Zealand while multiple other countries, including their own, melt into radioactive sludge, when they start their nuclear attacks to trigger global murder. On the other hand, some of what I just read seems to indicate that they're backing off on the threats - while ever more frantically planning for more money for more freaking nukes (as if they don't have enough to kill life on the planet umpteen times over already - whether Jonesing to keep up or just to get hold of more lovely public money and control) and other weapons. 'Justifying the extra, extra, extra money over and above that which the Trump admin just demanded to add to all of the rest handed over to the military, money at least some of which was quite likely going somewhere other than claimed anyway. Addicts are like that...

I figure no sense in trying to make sense of this, but one can't help trying, can one?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7hOpT0lPGI

I've studied nuclear war for 35 years -- you should be worried. | Brian Toon | TEDxMileHigh
TEDx Talks

Published on 1 Feb 2018

For the first time in decades, it's hard to ignore the threat of nuclear war. But as long as you're far from the blast, you're safe, right? Wrong. In this sobering talk, atmospheric scientist Brian Toon explains how even a small nuclear war could destroy all life on earth -- and what we can do to prevent it. A professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the University of Colorado-Boulder, Brian Toon investigates the causes of the ozone hole, how volcanic eruptions alter the climate, how ancient Mars had flowing rivers, and the environmental impacts of nuclear war. He contributed to the U.N.’s Nobel Peace Prize for climate change and holds numerous scientific awards, including two NASA medals for Exceptional Scientific Achievement. He is an avid woodworker. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

But how much of this 'US military allotment' money - including the missing trillions - has been going... where?

Hard to figure out where we're being faked out and how we're being manipulated, but the only way to stop it is by cleaning the Psychopaths and Parasites that be out of the system, first in the control centres, such as the US and Europe and then out of all of the other countries they've infested and are also destroying.

The vehicle evidently consists of giant corporations, empowered by complicit government officials to gain the wealth and power required to take over whole governments and countries, under the colour of 'law' against the public interest to serve this agenda at the cost of everything.

Massive boycotts would at least help reduce corporate power - they're typically incompetent as actual businesses, being overall too-often run strictly for maximized profits, at the cost of the business, workers, consumers, the public generally, the ecology and economy, for a relative few, in too-many cases, much of their 'on-paper' wealth is invested in themselves in the form of the trend of stock buy-backs and Speaking As One Who Knows Nothing, I'd suspect that they're unstable in more than one way; voting Prog only and refusing to take 'it's a done deal' as an answer to suspicious electoral results is at least something to try; nation-wide strikes, for which crowd-funded financial coverage for strikers would be necessary...

So many Americans just love dystopian movies in which Americans have to go guerrilla to physically fight off invasions with hand-guns and ingenuity, but when it comes to the incremental invasion of their own governments by psychopathic fascists, they just can't do without actively supporting the very criminal corporations that supply, install and feed these, not even to save their own lives. How to cut though the propaganda, increasing censorship and resultant mind-set, I've no idea, but where there's life, there's hope. How much longer life will exist under current circumstances is another question and another answer I have no idea about.

But it seems that now there may be a single doomsday device likely to set off others in proximity, of the US attacks and the official US Psychopaths That Be's position is that they are eager to create their own so that they can either achieve their goals of global micro-managed hegemony, which will destroy life on the planet or destroy life on the planet more rapidly. And, as that infamous Bush Admin official (loosely) said, we can just sit back and take notes on whatever they do to us in the belief that not only law but reality does not apply to them. Can we take comfort in the fact that we were, to some extent, aware of what was going on before it actually happened?

And planting another one in another long-dead thread, lol.

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

@CB

... Damn that Putin. He is such an evil man. He's literately grabbed America by the nuts and is squeezing them. ...

Oh, good! They're already cracked, so not only will they be shelled out of public office, but America can have peanut butter to tide them over until their economy recovers!

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

Sounds like profits

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Beware the bullshit factories.

Big Al's picture

@Timmethy2.0

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Beware the bullshit factories.

Wink's picture

the skinny on Seth Rich, "DNC hacking."
Hillary Likely Guilty

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the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.

Russian election 'meddling' was an ACT OF WAR !
On the level of PEARL HARBOR !
And 911 !
The message 'we're' sending to the Russians is "Arm up."
The oligarchs (on both sides) have become so few in numbers that it's perfectly conceivable for them to already have fully sustainable underground installations (in non-strategic locations, mountains etc.).
As long as everyone agrees to go easy on agriculture areas, which would still suffer immensely, but could probably be utilized (with climate controlled greenhouses etc.) to feed what few oligarchs (the Fortune 500, extended family and friends etc.) that exist.
Another thing. Conventional weapons (bombs/missiles etc.) could be used to effectively thin-out non-cost-effective urban areas (by mutual agreement, of course), which could explain why the insiders (Deep State) don't seem so afraid of a confrontation with Russia (which IS hard to explain).
I'm betting on mutually assured conventional weapons (bombs/missiles etc.), because nukes could easily escalate into a suicide mission, but either way, a thinning out is in the cards.
The oligarchy (Deep State) has reared its ugly head. People are starting to get the picture. And it's a just matter of time before the oligarchs do something to protect themselves from a population that is becoming increasingly hip and a threat to their power.

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Mike Taylor

@Mike Taylor

Members of the Trilateral Commission and related others have apparently been making themselves excessively wealthy from multiple other people's countries which the US had been 'protecting interests' in; I've read about ones being in China and wondered about the oligarchs that took over when the US effectively moved into Russia after meddling in their elections, although I'm hoping that they aren't controlling Putin and that he's 'for reals' standing up to them.

But yeah, I think it evident that we, the Disposables, are certainly likely to be dealt with soon, either way. They gonna have their robots and someday gonna be those robot and exist forever, they think, in the hell they're creating. It's all video-gamesmanship to them...

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

lotlizard's picture

the story that, oh no! someone’s mounted a nasty hacking attack on the German government’s computer network including the foreign ministry and Chancellor Merkel’s office! And (without proof) it sorta looks like maybe, probably, almost certainly it’s those nasty Russians!

In German politics, what’s totally upside down and backwards right now is, the only real pushback against war seems to be coming from the AfD and other Alt-Right groupings (habitually decried by progressives and establishment alike as being neo-Nazis).

So, where do German progressives stand on involvement in NATO and war?

The conventional center-“Left” (Social Democrats) and the Greens? Nowadays, all in on war and German weapons exports.

(Gotta make sure Israel has those made-in-Germany nuclear-armed submarines! Because Holocaust.)

The Left Party? Keeping a low profile because anti-NATO talk tends to remind people that part of the party indeed once were servants of Moscow.

By the way, I was reading through TOP’s 2016 election night comment threads and couldn’t help noticing that, the more things turned sour, the more comments there were taking advantage of people’s emotional vulnerability to promote the idea Russian hacking was to blame, and even going so far as to claim that if Trump is elected, Russia will annex the Baltics within a year!

Sorry, as a child of the Sixties, I smell a rat. A lot of rats, actually — if I may insult honest, toothy rodents by comparing them to dishonestly truthy Deep State operatives.

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mimi's picture

@lotlizard
and hinted at that in my comment here

...I think even a normal innocent ignoramus person like me can feel that for example in the German the daily evening news they offer the same vague 'news' reports as you would hear them in the US.

The coverage of 'mounting the attack on the German government computer network and the one of the foreign ministry' was the one I had in my mind, but didn't or couldn't express myself as well as you can and therefore didn't try to be specific. Their words were filled with "nebulous" assumptions and lacked profoundly in bones or facts to back them up. I doubt and assume very few German would even realize that.

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@lotlizard What amazes me about the Germany and European response is that it seems to lack any historical memory of a war that happened roughly 75 years ago. In a way, I can see how England, Wales, Scotland, France, Norway, Sweden could easy forget as they never suffered the full brunt of Nazi genocide armies in Eastern Europe. But the Germans??? The country was destroyed, millions killed, a Red Army intent on serious payback raped over 2 million German women (The rape of women by the Nazis remains rather hidden.) What lunacy has captured the German people. Germany among all fascist nations owned up to their Nazi horrors, and now apparently forgotten. Sorry if I am harsh about the Germans.

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@lotlizard

... someone’s mounted a nasty hacking attack on the German government’s computer network including the foreign ministry and Chancellor Merkel’s office! And (without proof) it sorta looks like maybe, probably, almost certainly it’s those nasty Russians! ...

American spy agencies would be expected to know, since they're listening to, recording and analyzing every communication on Earth; Angela Merkel's probably said 'hi!' to them every time she engages in a phone conversation for years.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/10407282/Barac...

Barack Obama 'approved tapping Angela Merkel's phone 3 years ago'
President Barack Obama was told about monitoring of German Chancellor in 2010 and allowed it to continue, says German newspaper

By Philip Sherwell, New York and Louise Barnett in Berlin

6:18PM GMT 27 Oct 2013

... The latest claim, reported in the German newspaper Bild am Sonntag, followed reports in Der Spiegel that the surveillance of Mrs Merkel’s phone began as long ago as 2002, when she was still the opposition leader, three years before being elected Chancellor. That monitoring only ended in the weeks before Mr Obama visited Berlin in June this year, the magazine added.

Citing leaked US intelligence documents, it also reported that America conducted eavesdropping operations on the German government from a listening post at its embassy beside the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, one of more than 80 such centres worldwide.

Mr Obama’s European allies will now ask him to say what he personally knew about the NSA’s global eavesdropping operation and its targeting of world leaders, including those from friendly states. The White House declined to comment on the German media reports.

Following, fabulous ginormous detailed article, a must-read in full at source at possible, if only to refresh yourself with some actual newspaper journalism.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2474635/German-fury-US-deny-Merk...

EU trade agreement with the US is under threat as recriminations over the Merkel phone bugging scandal escalate

...

By Allan Hall for MailOnline and Steve Nolan

Published: 19:14 EST, 23 October 2013 | Updated: 05:14 EST, 17 September 2014

...But Britain cannot hope to avoid any involvement in the row - reports today suggest that both US and UK intelligence services have been monitoring communications in Italy, particularly targeting the Government, businesses and terrorist groups.

Ms Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert said of the allegations regarding spying Ms Merkel's phone calls: ‘We swiftly sent a request to our American partners asking for an immediate and comprehensive clarification.

‘If true, this practice must be stopped immediately.’

He added that Mrs Merkel had made it clear to Barack Obama that if the information proved correct it would be ‘completely unacceptable’ and a ‘grave breach of trust’.

The news that the government of the world’s most powerful man had eavesdropped on the phone messages of the world’s most powerful woman – his staunch ally – set alarms ringing on both continents. ...

... The European Commission called for European leaders to take a 'strong and united stand' while while its president Jose Manuel Barroso warned against a slide towards 'totalitarianism' ahead of today's EU summit.

But it is arguable that several European leaders, including Britain and Spain see spying as a matter of national security and outside of the EU's remit.

'I don't imagine the (EU) Council getting into a discussion on national security,' said an EU diplomat speaking on condition of anonymity.

'Espionage is not an EU matter, it's an issue of national sovereignty,' said another diplomat.

But as anger boiled up in Europe, Commission head Barroso said 'We in Europe consider the right to privacy as a fundamental right.' ...

... Mr Obama promised her US intelligence was not listening to her communications, and would not in future. ...

... Merkel has previously referred to the monitoring of communications by the NSA as 'Cold War tactics'.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said: ‘The United States is not monitoring and will not monitor the communications of the chancellor.’ ...

... Earlier this week, the French Government summoned the U.S ambassador to Paris to demand an explanation amid reports that the NSA had monitored 70 per cent of French communications in just one month.

The scale of spying by America on French individuals and companies was revealed in documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the whistleblower and former contractor at the National Security Agency (NSA).

If repeated every month, more than 843.6 million calls a year would be intercepted in a country with a population of just 65 million.

The report in Le Monde, co-written by Glenn Greenwald who originally revealed the NSA surveillance program, found that when certain numbers were used, the conversations were automatically recorded.

Citing Snowden's leaked documents, Le Monde says links to terrorism were not always necessary for an intercept to take place.

Snowden had previously claimed that many of the west's major powers, including Germany, are 'in bed' with the NSA. ...

... Der Spiegel has previously reported that on an average day, the NSA monitored about 20 million German phone connections and 10 million internet data sets, rising to 60 million phone connections on busy days.

Germans are particularly sensitive about eavesdropping because of the intrusive surveillance in the communist German Democratic Republic (GDR) and during the Nazi era.

Referring to life in Communist-era East Germany, where Merkel grew up, EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso warned that not so long ago 'there was a part of Germany where political police were spying on people's lives daily.

'We know very recently what totalitarianism means,' he said.

'We know what happens when a state uses powers that intrude on peoples lives.'

It also emerged today that U.S. and British intelligence services have monitored Italian telecoms networks, targeting the government and companies as well as suspected terrorist groups, according to Italian weekly L’Espresso.

The report, based on evidence from Snowden, is likely to fuel growing anger among Washington’s European allies over the activities of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). ...

... As well as surveillance under the U.S. PRISM programme, a separate programme dubbed Tempora and run by Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) also spied on telephone, Internet and email traffic carried through three undersea fibre-optic cables in Sicily, L’Espresso said.

It said British intelligence services sought information in Italy to protect British economic interests as well as to identify “the political intentions of foreign governments” including on military affairs.

In addition to information on nuclear, chemical and biological arms proliferation, British priorities included advanced military technology which could include legitimate Italian trade deals with Arab countries, the magazine said. ...

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-24690055

US bugged Merkel's phone from 2002 until 2013, report claims

27 October 2013

... Mrs Merkel phoned the US president when she first heard of the spying allegations on Wednesday.

President Barack Obama apologised to the German chancellor and promised Mrs Merkel he knew nothing of the alleged phone monitoring and would have stopped it if he had, Der Spiegel reports.

But on Sunday Bild newspaper quoted US intelligence sources as saying NSA head Keith Alexander personally briefed the president about the covert operation targeting Mrs Merkel in 2010.

"Obama did not halt the operation but rather let it continue," the newspaper quoted a senior NSA official as saying.

Her number was still on a surveillance list in 2013. ...

... A unit called Special Collection Services, based on the fourth floor of the US embassy in Pariser Platz in Berlin, was responsible for monitoring communications in the German capital's government quarter, including those targeting Mrs Merkel.

Germany's Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich told Bild that running such an operation on German soil would be illegal under German law, and adds that those "responsible must be held accountable".

A criminal investigation would take the current scandal out of the hands of diplomats and politicians, and so make it harder to control politically, says the BBC's Steve Evans in Berlin.

Similar listening units were based in around 80 locations worldwide, according to the documents seen by Der Spiegel, 19 of them in European cities. ...

...Mrs Merkel - an Americophile who was awarded the US Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011 - is said to be shocked that Washington may have engaged in the sort of spying she had to endure growing up in Communist East Germany.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10/24/angela_merkel_outraged_by_claim...

Obama to Merkel: No Americans are listening to you on this call
Nor will we listen to you in future, on this
By Kelly Fiveash 24 Oct 2013 at 11:03

...Washington attempted to prevent a row over alleged surveillance escalating with Berlin by confirming that President Barack Obama had told Merkel that the US "is not monitoring and will not monitor" the chancellor's telephone conversations, German magazine Der Spiegel reported. ...

...Earlier this week, the European Parliament voted in favour of strengthening the 28-member bloc's data protection legislation - partly in response, it said, to recent revelations about US spooks spying on its allies.

From 2012, another ginormous and detailed absolute must-read:

https://www.wired.com/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/

James Bamford Security Date of Publication: 03.15.12.
03.15.12
Time of Publication: 7:24 pm.
7:24 pm

The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say)

... Just off Beef Hollow Road, less than a mile from brethren headquarters, thousands of hard-hatted construction workers in sweat-soaked T-shirts are laying the groundwork for the newcomers’ own temple and archive, a massive complex so large that it necessitated expanding the town’s boundaries. Once built, it will be more than five times the size of the US Capitol.

Rather than Bibles, prophets, and worshippers, this temple will be filled with servers, computer intelligence experts, and armed guards. And instead of listening for words flowing down from heaven, these newcomers will be secretly capturing, storing, and analyzing vast quantities of words and images hurtling through the world’s telecommunications networks. In the little town of Bluffdale, Big Love and Big Brother have become uneasy neighbors.

The NSA has become the largest, most covert, and potentially most intrusive intelligence agency ever.

Under construction by contractors with top-secret clearances, the blandly named Utah Data Center is being built for the National Security Agency. A project of immense secrecy, it is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world’s communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks. The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013. Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter.” It is, in some measure, the realization of the “total information awareness” program created during the first term of the Bush administration—an effort that was killed by Congress in 2003 after it caused an outcry over its potential for invading Americans’ privacy.

But “this is more than just a data center,” says one senior intelligence official who until recently was involved with the program. The mammoth Bluffdale center will have another important and far more secret role that until now has gone unrevealed. It is also critical, he says, for breaking codes. And code-breaking is crucial, because much of the data that the center will handle—financial information, stock transactions, business deals, foreign military and diplomatic secrets, legal documents, confidential personal communications—will be heavily encrypted. According to another top official also involved with the program, the NSA made an enormous breakthrough several years ago in its ability to cryptanalyze, or break, unfathomably complex encryption systems employed by not only governments around the world but also many average computer users in the US. The upshot, according to this official: “Everybody’s a target; everybody with communication is a target.” ...

From 2014; this was operational in 2012:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/16/nsa-collects-millions-text...

NSA collects millions of text messages daily in 'untargeted' global sweep

• NSA extracts location, contacts and financial transactions
• 'Dishfire' program sweeps up 'pretty much everything it can'
• GCHQ using database to search metadata from UK numbers

• Dishfire presentation on text message collection – key extracts

Follow Barack Obama's speech on NSA surveillance on our live blog

James Ball in New York
@jamesrbuk

Thu 16 Jan 2014 18.55 GMT
Last modified on Thu 30 Nov 2017 18.47 GMT

The National Security Agency has collected almost 200 million text messages a day from across the globe, using them to extract data including location, contact networks and credit card details, according to top-secret documents.

The untargeted collection and storage of SMS messages – including their contacts – is revealed in a joint investigation between the Guardian and the UK’s Channel 4 News based on material provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The documents also reveal the UK spy agency GCHQ has made use of the NSA database to search the metadata of “untargeted and unwarranted” communications belonging to people in the UK.

The NSA program, codenamed Dishfire, collects “pretty much everything it can”, according to GCHQ documents, rather than merely storing the communications of existing surveillance targets.

The NSA has made extensive use of its vast text message database to extract information on people’s travel plans, contact books, financial transactions and more – including of individuals under no suspicion of illegal activity.

An agency presentation from 2011 – subtitled “SMS Text Messages: A Goldmine to Exploit” – reveals the program collected an average of 194 million text messages a day in April of that year. In addition to storing the messages themselves, a further program known as “Prefer” conducted automated analysis on the untargeted communications. ...

...But Vodafone, one of the world’s largest mobile phone companies with operations in 25 countries including Britain, greeted the latest revelations with shock.

“It’s the first we’ve heard about it and naturally we’re shocked and surprised,” the group’s privacy officer and head of legal for privacy, security and content standards told Channel 4 News.

“What you’re describing sounds concerning to us because the regime that we are required to comply with is very clear and we will only disclose information to governments where we are legally compelled to do so, won’t go beyond the law and comply with due process.

“But what you’re describing is something that sounds as if that’s been circumvented. And for us as a business this is anathema because our whole business is founded on protecting privacy as a fundamental imperative.”

He said the company would be challenging the UK government over this. “From our perspective, the law is there to protect our customers and it doesn’t sound as if that is what is necessarily happening.”

The NSA’s access to, and storage of, the content of communications of UK citizens may also be contentious in the light of earlier Guardian revelations that the agency was drafting policies to facilitate spying on the citizens of its allies, including the UK and Australia, which would – if enacted – enable the agency to search its databases for UK citizens without informing GCHQ or UK politicians.

The documents seen by the Guardian were from an internal Wikipedia-style guide to the NSA program provided for GCHQ analysts, and noted the Dishfire program was “operational” at the time the site was accessed, in 2012. ...

From 2013:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-tracking-cell...

NSA tracking cellphone locations worldwide, Snowden documents show

By Barton Gellman and Ashkan Soltani December 4, 2013

... The National Security Agency is gathering nearly 5 billion records a day on the whereabouts of cellphones around the world, according to top-secret documents and interviews with U.S. intelligence officials, enabling the agency to track the movements of individuals — and map their relationships — in ways that would have been previously unimaginable.

The records feed a vast database that stores information about the locations of at least hundreds of millions of devices, according to the officials and the documents, which were provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. New projects created to analyze that data have provided the intelligence community with what amounts to a mass surveillance tool. ...

... In scale, scope and potential impact on privacy, the efforts to collect and analyze location data may be unsurpassed among the NSA surveillance programs that have been disclosed since June. Analysts can find cellphones anywhere in the world, retrace their movements and expose hidden relationships among the people using them. ...

... CO-TRAVELER and related tools require the methodical collection and storage of location data on what amounts to a planetary scale. The government is tracking people from afar into confidential business meetings or personal visits to medical facilities, hotel rooms, private homes and other traditionally protected spaces.

“One of the key components of location data, and why it’s so sensitive, is that the laws of physics don’t let you keep it private,” said Chris Soghoian, principal technologist at the American Civil Liberties Union. People who value their privacy can encrypt their e-mails and disguise their online identities, but “the only way to hide your location is to disconnect from our modern communication system and live in a cave.” ...

... A sigad known as STORMBREW, for example, relies on two unnamed corporate partners described only as ARTIFICE and WOLFPOINT. According to an NSA site inventory, the companies administer the NSA’s “physical systems,” or interception equipment, and “NSA asks nicely for tasking/updates.”

STORMBREW collects data from 27 telephone links known as OPC/DPC pairs, which refer to originating and destination points and which typically transfer traffic from one provider’s internal network to another’s. That data include cell tower identifiers, which can be used to locate a phone’s location.

The agency’s access to carriers’ networks appears to be vast. ...

... The NSA’s capabilities to track location are staggering, based on the Snowden documents, and indicate that the agency is able to render most efforts at communications security effectively futile.

Like encryption and anonymity tools online, which are used by dissidents, journalists and terrorists alike, security-minded behavior — using disposable cellphones and switching them on only long enough to make brief calls — marks a user for special scrutiny. CO-TRAVELER takes note, for example, when a new telephone connects to a cell tower soon after another nearby device is used for the last time.

Side-by-side security efforts — when nearby devices power off and on together over time — “assist in determining whether co-travelers are associated . . . through behaviorally relevant relationships,” according to the 24-page white paper, which was developed by the NSA in partnership with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the Australian Signals Directorate and private contractors.

A central feature of each of these tools is that they do not rely on knowing a particular target in advance, or even suspecting one. They operate on the full universe of data in the NSA’s FASCIA repository, which stores trillions of metadata records, of which a large but unknown fraction include locations. ...

Yeah, liars and snoops want to nuke Russia over claims that they've been snooping, too. But honestly, who'd believe a word they say? Hell, they hack into other people's (edit: computer systems) just to leave faked 'fingerprints' as 'excuse' for their planned attacks and invasions of other people's countries, never mind planted malware and everything else.

Betcha it was the US PTB spy agencies again, snooping around and manipulating other people's everything - especially elections, because they're fighting democracy at home and abroad, on the American public's dime.

And, also on the American public's back, TPTB have (despite never having having been in any danger of invasion) a military darned near big enough to take over the world, they hope, so objections to their criminal acts (edit: don't) matter any more to them than does human or other life. Psychopaths are like that...

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

lotlizard's picture

@Ellen North  
Naturally, the investigation was a farce and a whitewash on the part of the ruling grand coalition of Christian Democrats and Social Democrats.

I thought the parliamentary committee should have called Ed Snowden to testify in person, guaranteeing him safe passage and safe return to Russia — as demanded by the remaining scattered few genuine opposition voices among the Greens, the Left Party, and the alt-right AfD (the latter not yet in the Bundestag, having missed the 5 percent cutoff in 2013).

But of course Merkel & Co. were not about to disobey Washington and make their masters look bad.

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@lotlizard

Apart from anything else, TPTB can't be trusted and tend to get handled with kid gloves in case they go off the rails... do you think Snowden would have been safe in traveling there to testify, considering how lawless they are? I'd be scared for him...

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

lotlizard's picture

@Ellen North  
Exactly, Merkel knew that a repeat of that sort of incident would reveal to everyone that the sovereignty of Germany — as with other Western countries excepting the U.K., France, and Israel, who control their own nuclear weapons — when push comes to shove, is a hollow sham.

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TheOtherMaven's picture

@lotlizard

All on the basis of a stupid unfounded rumor that the President of Bolivia was going to smuggle Snowden out of Russia....

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There is no justice. There can be no peace.

lotlizard's picture

@TheOtherMaven

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@lotlizard

Unfortunately, Snowden would have still been kidnapped to Gitmo or wherever. But I would think that by now public officials in other countries have anyway become aware that psychopaths don't give a damn about damaging/betraying/using their allies, as the US PTB have shown. I've been assuming that fear of US/European TPTB's reaction is at least part of what's been keeping them in line, although self-preservation would actually dictate a refusal to support their agendas having kicked in much earlier. And greed would play a role...

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

Amanda Matthews's picture

@lotlizard

bit harsh.

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

about push back from Putin and pointed to this Russia stole our election garbage as a catalyst. Caitlin Johnstone, the writers at Consortium News and many other have been screaming about the push to take us back to the Cold War Nuclear Standoff Days for the last couple of years.
We are also being manipulated to accept war with Iran and South Korea.
We are living in very dangerous times.

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"Without the right to offend, freedom of speech does not exist." Taslima Nasrin

@Fishtroller 02

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CB's picture

https://sputniknews.com/russia/201803021062164313-putin-kaliningrad-jour...
The Russian president's covesrsation with reporters at the 5th Truth and Justice Forum of the Local and Regional Media follows his address to the parliament on March 1.

Putin currently answering questions about massive new funding for health care, education and protecting environment.

Even questions about "programs of social uplift", "social mobility" using those very words. Looks like Putin is taking the lead from MLK “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.”

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