Danielle Ryan at RT asks today: ‘Coincidence? Baltic invasion story reappears as Pentagon seeks to quadruple Europe spending’
First she explains why the theme of Russian revanchism may have been put on the back burner, especially an older ‘Russia about to invade the Balkans’ story. But she notes this interesting timing today:
“On February 2, the Pentagon announced it would seek to quadruple its budget for Europe in 2017 to deter “Russian aggression”. On February 3, the UK’s BBC aired a fictitious ‘war gaming’ account of a Russian invasion of Latvia, complete with a nuclear strike on a Royal Navy warship and a planned strike on London — an exercise which one expert termed“psychological warfare”. On the same day, an American think tank, the RAND Corporation — which is partly funded by the US Department of Defense — claimed that Russia would be able to “overrun” the Baltics in 60 hours.
In the weeks leading up to the new media blitz, the Atlantic Council — whose primary founding aim is to defend NATO interests — had gotten the ball rolling again with a piece about Putin’s “next potential target” — which, you guessed it, was the Baltics. The piece was then re-published by Newsweek with the headline: “Counting down to a Russian invasion of the Baltics”.
This happens every time the Pentagon wants more money to play with. Various ‘studies’ about the danger posed by whichever bad guy is in fashion start appearing. Experts suddenly realize that the US military is drastically underfunded in said area of immediate strategic importance. Officials begin making even more outlandish statements than usual. And the media eat it up, apparently completely unaware of the fact that they are being taken for a ride.”
She has a bit of fun with the MSM reporting and op-eds following the new Baltics story, Hitler-as-Putin, all would be fine if Putin weren’t bombing Syria to ‘strategically weaken Europe…(Guardian) we must stop Russian propaganda, more sanctions!!! and arm Ukraine. …Well, you get the drift. Then:
Rational, balanced voices sidelined
Meanwhile, saner, expert voices calling for rational thinking rarely get heard, and when they do, they appear as a mere footnote to the drama. Take Kent University Professor Richard Sakwa’s letter to the Guardian last week, in which he called for a calmer assessment of Russia and argued that its constant ‘demonisation’ would serve to make no one safer.
“We need to understand more and condemn less,” he wrote, arguing that the country’s portrayal as an aggressive power only increases its own perception of threat from outside. He warned that such portrayals “fail to take into account its defensive posture”.
The letter is here, although Sawka teaches at Kent University UK, north of Canterbury. And please don’t miss the Atlantic Council’s predictions and reasoning; it’s glorious nutbar stuff. (You might even think they believe their own hyperbole.)
The BBC show: ‘World War II: Inside the War Room’; it sounds sexy as hell for war porn devotées.
On Feb. 3, Russia expert Stephen F. Cohen was up with ‘The Obama Administration Has Just Recklessly Escalated Its Military Confrontation With Russia; The Pentagon’s announcement that it will quadruple US-NATO military forces in countries on or near Russia’s borders pushes the new Cold War toward actual war, possibly even a nuclear one.’ He has a radio discussion on John Bachelor’s program (40 minutes, ugh).
But the text highlights:
“Except during Nazi Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union, Western military power has never been positioned so close to Russia, making the new Cold War even more dangerous than was the preceding one. Russia will certainly react, probably by moving more of its own heavy weapons, including new missiles, to its Western borders, possibly along with a large number of its tactical nuclear weapons. The latter reminds us, Cohen points out, that a new and more dangerous US-Russian nuclear arms race has been under way for several years, which the Obama Administration’s decision can only intensify. The decision will also have other woeful consequences, undermining ongoing negotiations by Secretary of State Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov for cooperation on the Ukrainian and Syrian crises and further dividing Europe itself, which is far from united on Washington’s increasingly hawkish approach to Moscow.”
He ends by saying that MSM have barely reported any of this, and notes that the subject hasn’t come up in the Presidential ‘debates’.
Now I’d been mocking NATO on Twitter the other day for their…er…muscular weapons and other armaments photos and grotesque names for the new ‘strengthening NATO in Europe’ the other day, and lookie here! I checked back with the Feb. 2 royal blue map and noted that the northermost three Stars are...the Baltics: Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia. Funny that. Plus: US trains with Latvian forces, Norway (next door), “Cuts in defence have now practically stopped among European Allies & Canada”, and tra la la.
(cross-posted at caucus99percent.com)
davidly
Greyson Smythe
LeMoyne
juliania2
ohiobarbarian
stephenadavis1
wendyedavis
café babylon 
the pbs snooze hour just had a notice of a story about how awful a site was of a recent russian bombing campaign. i was only half-way listening & turned it off quickly, not needing the dim bulbs at pbs to tell me bombing campaigns are nightmares. they also said the pentagon says its principal threat is russia. (i tried to find a link. pbs has not posted today’s show yet.)
BOOM! the propaganda machine is at work. snap of the fingers.
i’m so glad that you see it, jason. it;s getting almost embarrassing for the hegemon.
but i checked to see what Avaaz, pimps for the military (er…did you see my introduction to them? i forget, i’m so sorry). here’s Avaaz retweeted 20 hrs ago: (roth is either HRW or the other soros one with an “I’.
also, all of this, before my lame brane forgets:
Somehow over the past two days I’d ended up at the Oriental Review website, and had seen news of this Paul Moreira documentary . I swear there was a function to play it in English, but although I spent far too long trying to hunt down that version, I never did find it. But I did find: “The Director of Controversial French Maidan Documentary (and the Odessa Massacre at the Trades Union House) Answers His Critics”, an he brings some of what the film had told, and it’s not easy (Right Sektor proto-Nazis, etc.), as those of us who’d followed the events in almost-real time…know.
” What happened on that May 2, 2014, in Odessa? I discovered the answer after viewing hours of video shootings, interviewing dozens of witnesses, finding victims and aggressors and comparing the stories until I pieced together facts that make sense of this fury. Important fact: I interviewed and have broadcast only direct witnesses of events–the people I saw on videos– in order to filter to some extent the exaggerations and lies that arise in such a circumstance, on the side of the attackers as well as victims. The result of this painstaking work is at the heart of the film to be broadcast Monday evening [February 1] by Canal Plus [Canal +].
During my investigation into this massacre of little exposure, I saw the importance of Ukrainian nationalist militias. They were at the forefront of street fighting on Maidan Square (January-February 2014], and later formed battalions to fight Russian troops in the east of the country. But these battalions were merged into the army. They did not exercise the same discipline. They were able to serve as auxiliaries to the government; or become a parallel police. And, yes, in their ranks, the signs of neo-Nazi ideology were obvious
.
My investigation went against the commonly accepted narrative. I knew I was going to meet strong opposition, that we would be accused of playing into the hands of Putin, to voice elements of Russian propaganda. I did not expect to meet with such huge denial, bordering on hysteria at times. On a Ukrainian website, I am called a “terrorist” in the pay of the Russian secret service. The site calls for a ban on the film. Even the Ukrainian ambassador to France pressured Canal Plus [not to screen the film]. That is what surprises me the most. For it seems to me that Ukraine must ask itself about these paramilitary groups. They are, as stated in the film, the greatest threat to Ukrainian democracy. To renounce saying what one knows to be the truth because “it plays into Russian propaganda” is to become a propagandist oneself. One omits, not because we are liars but because we are full of good intentions. But never forget that from such omissions, the worst conspiracy theories are born.”
The English version to which even he links has been removed. Does he know? I’d think not, given his linking to it. Was it Censored? prolly
This is the French version; my four years of high school French…are almost useless.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=30e_1454796647
bless your heart, comrade oX; i’ll even take the english subtitles. look how many others are on the right sidebar!
sleep well; i’m out for the night, exhausted.
Shite. No wonder the English version was suppressed.
US using NAZI’s like they did in Gladio. Turkey is rife with the fascist deep state; some/many of the motherfuckers will remain burrowed into the Ukrainian state even if they scrape the worst scumbags off.
i haven’t had time to watch, i’ve been updating my ‘spices as medicines’ post for a woman at c99%, and it ended up taking a hella lot of time. now i gotta make bread.
but seeing videos with flashlights lighting up the dead, and some burned outright to death, others dead from smoke inhalation…do i remember some jumping out of upstairs windows since the nazis had barred the doors? mebbe. but it wasn’t the only war crime in the donbass, but likely the grizzliest.
ach, i was trying to find the name of the blond-braided one, yulia? banderist. didn’t, but max blumenthal had quite an exposé at alternet in 2014 i hadn’t seen. ugly, ugly stuff. ‘neo-nazis’ he called them rather than prto-nazis. better, i expect. and i took you liveleak link to the folks at c99%; thank you again.
[on edit] how odd that being in or around water allows me to remember things so often…yulia tymeoshenko.
Well, there is “mood-congruent memory”, but maybe it has more to do with mood assisting recollection.
I should replace scumbags with Uberschrulles. It occurred to me that the fat maggot who got caught being bribed and expelled was set up, him being an expendable extremist. I am reminded of “Gangs and Counter-gangs” by Kitson. This widespread pattern of social exploitation needs an exposure.
fat maggot yanukovitch, ya mean? there are a few different stories for the reason of his ouster, but it’s at least possible that the original Maidan protests were almost real, before the West’s astro-turfing.
‘memory of water’, but that often refers to homeoptahic preparations. nonetheless, it’s an uncanny phenonomen, and growing up, i was indeed part fish.
water & meditation are forever wed-Melville
nice, and i agree, jason. synchronicity: i gave this and a second video of masauro emoto’s discoveries and philosophy to a woman at c99% last night. it was in the context of ‘past the tipping point to the sixth extinction’. i’ve fancied (like the hippie i yam) that changing water by thought, prayer, and meditation, through the noosphere, might…might…have good outcomes. in my own defense, i know how silly it sounds. ;-)
perhaps,perhaps not. who knows for sure? at the very least, one can say w/certainty: there are worse things one could do. i went to a rather traditional (except for the reverend mother part) “high church” ash wednesday service the other night. ashes to ashes & all that. memento mori.
btw, oh d-g, npr/pbs, their “3 minutes of newz” on the local classical station this a.m.: “Russia & Assad vs. Western-backed rebels.” hmmmm…wave the wand of silence & nasty ol’ ISIS is magically gone…
i don;t know, of course, but in some ways it comforts me to say thank you to water, especially as water is, and has long been, my ally. my philosopher friend in geneva would say that stuff like this IS a religion, in that i am assigning agency to water. i don’t quite see it as such.
but in somewhat of a similar belief/ceremony, each night before bed i light a braid of sweetgrass, and waft…fifteen or sixteen people with the smoke for the beneficial (almost prayerful) effects they might receive. oh, myself included, of course. ;-)
‘more mysteries in heaven and on earth than we can conceive, horatio’ or however it goes. sleep well; i’m out for the night.
oh, and i love the npr duality. my stars. guardian was full of ‘no one believes in the cease fire, of course’ dreck. way to fook it up! then blame…putin.
Focus our sights, indeed! The Baltics (on the Baltic Sea: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania [& Poland?]) are the NATO Invasion route INTO Russia (hence Russia’s reverse tactical nukes; remember the Fulda Gap furors?). And Norway’s out in the North Sea with us neutral Swedes between. Anyhoo, they’re the 3 northern stars on the map. The 2 southern stars on the map are the Balkans, on HATO’s southern flank (think Serbia ca, 1914). Da, Russkies WON’T be invading them through obviously hostile Nuland (the Ukraine); unless US really Steppes In it (rendering invasion unnecessary since the nukes will already have been EXchanged)!
oh, my; thank you for correcting my mistake, bruce (but not poland, i think). i corrected in the OP both here and over yonder. Swedes are only so neutral, even post karl bildt, imo. assange, for instance, still feudal sates to the Empire, i reckon.
fulda gap errors? no. tell, please.
but danielle ryan has quipped: “Readers were left with the impression that Russia had attempted a “strategic weakening” of Europe (presumably to allow the “revisionist” power to sneakishly invade the Baltics?) yeppers. what idiocy such agitprop amounts to. although, i have a few erstwhile blogging friends who hate putin sooooo much that they’re willing dupes for all of it. “surely you’re smarter than that, wd, to believe that there are more than six banderists in ukraine!” ay.yi.yi.
Yes, the western $pears since Poppy Bush’s betrayal of Gorbachev have all been pointed EAST, including Germany’s Fulda Gap into Poland (wherein, to stop Stalin’s “Slavic hordes”; the US “bulwark of freedom” was prepared to unleash : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6U7FehRB3g
All the Nuking Futs PNAC Attackers should be required to watch these nuclear ‘tests’ and their horrific consequences! And, If ONLY US peace-loving Swedes could remain neutral; but … NOOOooo …
‘atomic annie’. my stars. but ‘limited nuke delivery systems’ are now aboard war ships now, i think. K-pow!
‘soldiers sing the song you and i don’t sing’. gotta say, plenty of Uians sing them, and still have their confounded yellow ribbons festooned around town last time i was there. i hate jingoistic nationalism more than most anything. well, for the moment.
I bet those ribbons are made in China; guess who submitted the RFQ.
Thanks for posting on the French documentary here, wendye and friends – I haven’t looked yet but there is also a version at the Saker complete with subtitles in English. (His usually are easy for my old computer to tag along with so I plan to do that.) It sounds as though what the French have compiled is a more understandable version of what was coming out at the time at Saker’s site. The advantage of his site is there is a lot of European input there, even Ukrainian. Some of the rants are off the wall, but I did get a sense of what was happening during that takeover and immediately afterward. Also the position of Crimea from a resident there.
The rot has even permeated a site to which I was favorably disposed until now, ‘The Wheel’ – a new Orthodox journal. The last article published, by a pro-coup pseudo-intellectual puts forth the ‘Russia invaded Ukraine’ meme. I had been favorably disposed because it gave some of the WW2 history I am interested in, so I accepted some anti-Russian church bias as according with my disapproval of too much ‘religiosity’. Won’t be going there again.
Also, the latest Crosstalk discussion includes these topics and is less argumentative than some. Has a Frenchman on the panel.
dunno if you’d seen comrade aXe’s lliveleak link, but it’s one with english subtitles. crazy day here for me, so i still haven’t watched. but i remember well posting on it (with chePasa’s able assists) at my.fdl.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=30e_1454796647
also, i dunno if you’d seen, given the many comments about zika virus at MoA, but it remined me a lot of Bt corn, the (hopefully) uninteded consequences of Roundup’s glyphosate, etc., but i did update the spices as medicines section on my food diary here. i’d also researched yukon gold potatoes in the one recipe for you, and they are not transgenic.
i need some rest; been up since the wee small hours.
might look at the crosstalk, that peter dude usually gives me…the shivers. ;-)
the Guardian:
“In a speech in Washington last week, previewing his announcement, Ash Carter said he would ask for spending on US military forces in Europe to be quadrupled in the light of “Russian aggression”. The allocation for combating Islamic State, in contrast, is to be increased by 50. The message is unambiguous: as viewed from the Pentagon, the threat from Russia has become more alarming, suddenly, even than the menace that is Isis.”
Ya follah, Putin?
Cohen says we are now at the most dangerous nuclear moment since the nuclear crisis of the early 1960s, and “Obama cannot hide from this now. All his silences and his ellipses and his vanishing moment… this is his decision. The buck stops there. He signed off on this, and it is an enormous escalation of the Cold War in the direction of hot war.”
Perhaps the most notable statement of the interview comes at the end, when Cohen points out:
“Not one question about it has been raised in all this multitude of presidential debates. … You and I tonight have talked about something that is unknown to the American public.”
How’s that for a propaganda system?
Robert Barsocchini
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2016/02/emeritus-russia-scholar-princeton-obama-us-testing-provoking-russia-pushing-towards-hot-war.html
thanks, nomad, and i agree that those are the cogent points, esp. about the fact not having come up at the ‘debates’. mustn’t get people riled fer nothin’! those commies! better dead than red!
‘“Obama cannot hide from this now. All his silences and his ellipses and his vanishing moment… this is his decision. The buck stops there.’
Maybe that’s what the talent was hired to do: 1. Bail out the banksters. 2. squash healthcare reform. 3. Cut social security (failed but not for lack of trying. 4. Ram through TPP. 5. Start world war three.
he may have seemed extraordinarily easy to manipulate from the beginning. his early life was that way, say going to jeremiah wright’s church as politically expedient, then tossing him in the trash when he felt it was…politically expedient.
‘Escalating the Political Propaganda War v. Cooperation with Russia‘
In recent days, opponents of diminishing the most dangerous aspects of the new Cold War have assailed such possibilities—from Ukraine, Turkey, and Europe to Syria, by Stephen F. Cohen Yesterday 3:26 pm
‘ easy to manipulate ‘ or eager to please de white man? (our corporate overseers)
black folks needin’ pleezin’ = zero
white man needin pleezin’ = hella lot
ford has it right on why most blacks are leftish, but vote for the most likely (able to leap tall buildings in the general election) Ds they perceive as protecting them from…Rs. captive to the D status quo, iow.
Yes, the Saker contribution was also liveleak, and I have watched it. I was hoping for something as detailed as the Russian movie about Crimea – it wasn’t that. And it wasn’t clearer than what came out immediately after, though it made some good points. Somebody has to make a documentary including the points made about the original orchestrated uprising – the French film dwells to some length on the far right aspects of the militias in Ukraine, which isn’t news – better they had detailed the aspects of provocation we got from the Der Spiegel article and some of the clips of tanks speeding into peaceful towns, assassinating someone and speeding off. Those were not tanks from Russia. And nothing was said about the seige and assault on the elected officials of that town, Mariupol.
That somebody has to include the inferences about the provocateurs in the ‘pro-Russian’ demonstrators in Odessa – who were the red armband guys? why was the police force so compliant? The mere use of the term ‘pro-Russian’ raised my hackles since the demonstrators were Ukrainian citizens, a lot of them elderly (who had presumably lived in Ukraine all their lives.) Just calling them ‘communists’ doesn’t cut it in my view.
Plus, there was plenty of video from inside the Trade Union building in earlier accounts – is that faked? Nothing was said of the co-ordination between fires set outside the building, persons herded in, and fires magically appear inside. Instead we saw briefly one person on the roof throwing a molotov cocktail. How would that spread inside? Had bodies been doused in gasoline and burned, not to mention the other atrocities? It’s good they called it a massacre, but they didn’t go far enough in my opinion. I remember the victims being called colorado beetles whilst the building was burning, people falling from the building and being set upon, and that the fire brigade was mysteriously absent.
Not only that but officials of the government weren’t just harassed by hooligan right wing interlopers – some were beaten. There were videos of those encounters which could hardly have been faked. And some officials in various towns ended up dead.
So I’m critical of the film in that it seems only to strike points that allow people to assume ‘both sides are equally violent’ and ‘Russia invaded Ukraine.” None of that is true. Somebody has to do better than that.
i never saw the russian film, so i can’t comment on that. but i just finished the film, and must say that i didn’t see what you saw, although who was saying what got a bit confusing since i had to watch it without sound.
i thought he was quite damning of the neo-nazis’ violence and intimidation, and showed clearly that in his mind the police were terrified of them. it was odd that he showed larry summers, who hasn’t been treasury sec. since 2001. but the photos of oleg tyagnibok with key players made my flesh crawl. here’s the longer version of Paul Moreira respondings to critics of his documentary:
https://newcoldwar.org/french-filmmaker-paul-moreira-responds-to-critics-of-his-documentary-film-on-the-odessa-massacre-of-may-2-2014/
but yes, someone must still have the flashlight-lit videos (smartphone, i’d reckon) of the dead, charred bodies. oh, and moreira did show the svoboda and other militias throwing molotov cocktails through the windows, i swear. his ‘communist russians’…yeah, not so much, but hell, he barely seemed to know who nuland was. mebbe he made it that way so it wouldn’t get censored?