Below is our translation of a commentary from Ria Novosti.
 
It’s a fair question: can Russia perform the same kind of miracle in Venezuela as it did in Syria, but from an economic rather than a military standpoint? And the problem looks daunting. Maduro is reputed to be a nice guy but he does not seem amenable to change. And, if we can believe the pope, he does not take advice. Putin may have a sow’s ear here. Can he make a silk purse out of it?
 
 
Perhaps if Maduro gets scared enough, a compromise can be reached. This commentator seems to think that, in addition to the sanctions, his primitive “populist socialism” may be getting in the way of recovery.
 
START TRANSLATION
 
Venezuela is becoming an "economic Syria"
 
Irina Alksnis
 
The contours of the Russian-American - yes, quite truly - confrontations in Venezuela are becoming clearer.
 
Donald Trump warned the Venezuelan military about the possibility of "losing everything" if they did not stop supporting President Maduro. An adviser to the American president, John Bolton, happily announced that another high-ranking official, the country's military attaché to the UN, had taken the side of the “interim president” Juan Guaidó, who was self-proclaimed and recognized by the United States.
 
True, it seems the Americans are still not ready for direct military intervention, relying on more complex methods like sanctions pressure and provocations disguised as humanitarian convoys.
 
However, despite the increasingly murky atmosphere, the Venezuelan authorities are surprisingly cheerful. And it seems that their confidence is not least connected with Moscow.
 
Here are just some of the official news and unofficial insights of recent times.
 
- The Russian Foreign Ministry warned the US authorities against military intervention in Venezuela and offered Caracas assistance with their internal political settlement.
 
- According to the Russian Ministry of Finance, Moscow has offered Caracas an informal plan for the restoration of the national economy. A group of specialists was also sent there, including officials of the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Economic Development, the Central Bank, the Federal Tax Service and the Treasury, to advise the authorities on economic recovery measures.
 
- According to Reuters, the bulk of the fuel supply to the country (domestic refineries in the extremely oil-rich Venezuela are in a disastrous state) comes from Russia (specifically from Rosneft), and with very high risk premiums for suppliers.
 
- According to Bloomberg, the Venezuelan government has instructed the leaders of about 50 local companies to open bank accounts in Russia, Turkey, China and India and begin to develop contacts with suppliers in these countries to circumvent American sanctions.
 
To sum up these and numerous other news items, the conclusion is clear: Venezuela is becoming for Russia "an economic Syria."
 
Three and a half years ago, Moscow launched a military operation in the Arab Republic, and based on the results of this campaign, without exaggeration, it can be called epochal. Very limited military forces, pinpoint measures and – let’s say it forthrightly - with very moderate resources (including simply financial ones), Russia has achieved an amazing effect.
 
Moscow not only changed the course of military operations and saved Syrian statehood from collapse, but through its military-political and diplomatic efforts, it also launched a process of real political settlement in the country and a geopolitical transformation of the entire region.
 
Moscow showed the world what it is capable of and what can be counted on by countries that have come under the pressure of Western military and political pressure if they turn to Russia for help. And they don’t ask for a lot for “services” - mutually beneficial cooperation (Moscow no longer deals with charity), contracts and concessions. And no ideological and political interference in the internal affairs of the country.
 
True, it should be noted that, although the achievements of the Russian armed forces and diplomacy in this case cannot be overestimated, for many Moscow’s success in Syria was not something supernatural. The fact is that the Russian army and diplomacy have always maintained a fairly high reputation. “Russians know how to fight” and “Russia knows how to work in the East” are basic and very common ideas.
 
The Venezuelan case is a different matter. At the forefront are economic problems, generated both by many years of domestic policy according to the formulas of the most vulgar populist socialism, and by the economic pressure of the West.
 
However, it seems that Moscow has set an unprecedented, unbelievable goal: to save the Venezuelan economy, to help it return to normal operation - and to contribute to a political settlement contrary to the US goal of overthrowing the country's authorities. And all this is in the grip of the most severe sanctions choking the Bolivarian Republic.
 
Russia in the eyes of the world - and in its own - has never been a guru in the field of economic policy. This role for many decades - and even centuries - has been reliably associated with the West and its institutions like the IMF. The fact that we are talking about Latin America, a region where the possibilities and influence of Moscow have never been weighty, gives the situation a fantasy-like aura.
 
Nevertheless, everything persistently indicates that Russia has decided to act in this direction.
 
Whether it will succeed is an open question. Obviously, in the Venezuelan situation there are so many risks and difficulties that the chances of success seem slim.
 
But after all, three years ago, the same thing was said about the military operation in Syria.
 
END TRANSLATION
 
Our other reports and commentaries on Venezuela:
 
Guaido illegitimate
http://www.newsilkstrategies.com/news--analysis/venezuelan-constitution-yes-guaido-is-illegitimate
 
China can save Venezuela if the US allows it
http://www.newsilkstrategies.com/news--analysis/china-really-can-save-venezuela-if-the-us-allows-it
 
Sanctions on Venezuela boomerang on the US
http://www.newsilkstrategies.com/economics-and-finance/sanctions-on-venezuela-boomerang-on-us
 
US led economic war, not socialism, is tearing Venezuela apart
http://www.newsilkstrategies.com/economics-and-finance/us-led-economic-war-not-socialism-is-tearing-venezuela-apart
 
The other side of the Venezuela story
http://www.newsilkstrategies.com/news--analysis/the-other-side-of-the-venezuela-story
 
Experts analyse Venezuela situation
http://www.newsilkstrategies.com/news--analysis/experts-analyze-venezuela-situation-future-prospects
​

The Trump administration has usurped the power of the Venezuelan Supreme Court in deciding that Juan Guaidó – who, we remind you, was never elected president --  is constitutionally entitled to exercise the powers of the Venezuelan president in substitution of Maduro. Nicolás Maduro and his loyal followers in the government and among the people, begs to differ.
 
So who’s right?
 
Well, aside from the fact that Venezuela is a sovereign country and has never accorded Trump and his men in black any power over the Venezuelan legal system, here is what the Venezuelan Constitution actually says in its Article 233 (first our English translation, followed by the Spanish original further on).
 
Article 233. Absolute absences of the President of the Republic shall be: death, resignation, dismissal decreed by the Supreme Court of Justice, permanent physical or mental incapacity certified by a medical board appointed by the Supreme Court of Justice and with approval of the National Assembly, the abandonment of the office, declared by the National Assembly, as well as the popular revocation of his mandate.
 
These are the only grounds for the legal substitution of the elected president of Venezuela. As to the allegation that the election was illegitimate, international observers had been invited and the Latin American Council of Electoral Experts (CEELA) declared the election clean:
 
“Caracas, October 16, 2017 (venezuelanalysis.com) – The Latin American Council of Electoral Experts (CEELA) has confirmed that Sunday’s vote in Venezuelan gubernatorial elections was clean and transparent.”
 
As you can see, this constitution does not contain in its grounds for substitution of the president any requirement that the president’s actions must conform to the demands of the opposition or any foreign country, or that it must renounce socialism (US allies include socialist countries like Germany, France, Spain, China, etc) or that its economy must be resilient enough to remain strong despite economic sanctions or a drop in oil prices worldwide). Nor has "popular revocation of his mandate" been properly documented by referendum or other legal means -- despite the loud screaming from Western governments and some protest marches, which, however, have been matched by pro-government marches to which your friendly media gave short shrift.
 
Therefore, we may conclude without equivocation that, despite the pronouncements of the Trump administration and the EU, Guaidó is not nor ever was the legitimate president of Venezuela, and that title still accrues to Nicolás Maduro, for better or for worse.

Original in Spanish:
 
https://www.oas.org/juridico/mla/sp/ven/sp_ven-int-const.html
 
Artículo 233. Serán faltas absolutas del Presidente o Presidenta de la República: la muerte, su renuncia, la destitución decretada por sentencia del Tribunal Supremo de Justicia, la incapacidad física o mental permanente certificada por una junta médica designada por el Tribunal Supremo de Justicia y con aprobación de la Asamblea Nacional, el abandono del cargo, declarado éste por la Asamblea Nacional, así como la revocatoria popular de su mandato.
 
A translation of ours from the site Ria Novosti indicates that Russia has taken Maduro under its wing in the same way it did Assad. This is not well understood in the West, where commentators often suggest that Russia is about to throw Maduro under the bus. They said the same thing about Assad too, but Putin never betrays his friends. The West should know that by now.
 
But Westerners are slow learners.


Recent on Venezuela:


Can Russia pull off an economic Syria in Venezuela?
http://www.newsilkstrategies.com/news--analysis/can-russia-pull-off-an-economic-syria-in-venezuela

Matthew 23:39
“For I say unto you, Ye [Israel] shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.” 


Vince Dhimos on Quora.

How do you envision that a war between Israel and Iran would play out, were it to break out in Syria?
 
Vince Dhimos, Editor-in-Chief at New Silk Strategies (2016-present)
 
Answered Feb 6
 
Iran claims to have well over 100,000 missiles, some with long enough ranges that they could hit Israel.
 
They have warned that if Israel keeps provoking and starts a war, they will finish off Israel once and for all.
 
This is complicated by the fact that Israel has nukes, probably over 100, that could also destroy Iran.
 
Russia is doing its best to bring peace in the Middle East. Even when Israel lobs missiles into the Damascus international airport, Russia does virtually nothing to retaliate.
 
However, the US eggs Israel on, sending it more and more weapons with which to destabilize the region. There is only one thing that could possibly bring peace to the region — and the world as well — and that would be a change in US policy to stop tacitly endorsing the belligerence of Israel.
 
If it happens, it will be a slow process. There are two main things holding back peace:

1. AIPAC, the most powerful lobby in Washington, which strong-arms US candidates to endorse Israel’s crimes, like shooting unarmed protesters to kill and maim, illegally attacking anyone it claims to be Iranian in Syria, illegally settling Israelis in Palestinian territory, and generally wreaking havoc in the Middle East.
2.  “Christian” Zionism, which teaches that the secular Israel of today is the incarnation of the resurrected Israel prophesied in Ezekiel 37. It is estimated that about 80% of Evangelicals believe this. The trouble is, verse 24 of that chapter prophesies that this resurrected Israel will have David as its king and will be obedient to God’s decrees. And the trouble with applying this verse to modern secular Israel is that a WIN/Gallup poll shows that 65% of Israelis have no religion, self-describing as “irreligious,” and of course, David has been dead for millennia. These folks are supporting genocidal US policies based on a misreading of the Old Testament.

 
The good news is that, according to polls, young college Jews in America are no longer supporting Israel. They are now increasingly supportive of the Palestinian victims. As for the “Christian” Zionists, younger Evangelicals are also slowly dropping their blind belief that the modern Israel is really the incarnation of Ezekiel’s prophesied Israel.
 
But “Christian” Zionism and AIPAC still have plenty of power and it remains to be seen if these two bellicose factors can diminish in time to avoid a nuclear confrontation in the Middle East.
 
A Response from Tim Benton on Quora:
 
I must say, what a bunch of nonsense. First, you conveniently leave out that Iran is the one sponsoring, training, supplying arms and finances to every Terrorist group in the region that is arrayed against Israel.
 
You also forgot to add that they are not only doing this against Israel but Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Arab world.
 
[Vince: In my response, I did not address this accusation that Iran is “sponsoring, training, supplying arms and finances… to every terrorist group in the region that is arrayed …. against Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Arab world.” This is a very important part of the propaganda used by Israel to persuade America to attack and invade Middle Eastern countries, and it is a bold-faced lie because the non-Arab Iran is absolutely not a threat to the “rest of the Arab world,” as Israeli propagandists want us to believe. In fact it is an ally of Syria, Iraq and Lebanon and a partner in the fight against Al-Qaeda and ISIS, the real terror in Syria and Iraq. In fact, without Iran, Lebanon would have been totally destroyed by Israel in 2006. Now why would Israel be concerned about a threat to the most brutal dictatorship – Saudi Arabia – in the Arab world? Israel falsely claims it is “the only democracy in the Middle East. So why does it so wholeheartedly support one of the few countries in the Middle East that is not a democracy? It has very close ties to Saudi but its propaganda ignores the fact that the people of Saudi Arabia do not agree with its policy of rapprochement to Israel. They do not even accept that Israel is a nation. Only the royals accept this and the only reason the people have not overthrown these dictators is that they are paid an extravagantly high living wage out of the massive revenues from Saudi oil. This is hush money, a bribe intended to keep them restful, but it is slowly evaporating as the oil is depleted. Saudi has a shelf life. The same applies to the Gulf statelets, whose people also reject the statehood of Israel. But that is not based so much on hatred of the Jews but rather on the fact that they perceive the founding of Israel as an illegal and immoral displacement of the Arabs who inhabited that land for centuries before the Zionists brutally took it over (and if you don’t think the Zionists were brutal, view this video.  Israeli propaganda ignores the fact that the majority of Arabs reject Israeli statehood and even most of their presidents do not recognize Israel. This fact is hidden from view in the West because most of the leaders do not blatantly and openly state their opinion on Israel. One of several such examples is Algeria, whose media do not often openly discuss its non-recognition of Israel for fear of US reprisals. 30 UN member states do not recognize Israel and are to some degree in line with Iran’s position. Thus it is Tim Benton’s response that is “complete nonsense” because it implies that Iran is arrayed against the Arab world when in fact, most Arabs are silently cheering it on as it boldly opposes Israel’s criminal actions in their neighbourhood. Remember: without US support, Israel would have to stop its illegal behaviour. The real criminals are US Christians who “stand with Israel” in support of its crimes and brutality]
Tim’s response resumed:
Iran at the present time has at max 250 missiles that could reach Israel, to fire any of the rest, they would have to move them either towards the Iraqi coast, that would draw the US in, or they would have to move them to Syria, that would draw massive attacks, possibly an invasion by Israel. [Vince: Yes, Israel has been attacking Iranian positions since the start of the war, but these are all illegal since Iran is not attacking Israel and is in Syria as a guest of the Syrian people, who are grateful for its support against the terrorists who almost defeated the Syrian army in 2015 (despite the US’ phony “war on terror”) when Russia stepped in and saved the day. Of course, Trump insists HIS administration defeated the terrorists.]
Since I deal with Christians, my father happens to be one, I know what they believe, they believe that not only Daniel, the New Testament or Christian scriptures teach that as well, the king spoken of will come later, not as Israel forms, suggest you read what they call the book of revelations, seems your timing is way off. [Note the total lack of specifics here, making it impossible for me to address this]
But none of this is the real reason they support Israel, the reason is the verse that says if you bless Israel you will be blessed, if you curse or stand against them you will be cursed. Genesis 12:3.
The myth that Christians are supporting Israel for the sake of the event they call the rapture, for the most part, that is false, but they do believe that when you see the Jews returning that it is nearing the end of time.
I am Jewish, but my father knows this much better than I, you seem to be off on your facts, although I am without a doubt some “Christians” believe as you state. [Note, I am supposedly off on my facts but Tim, a typical Israeli propagandist, does not say which facts are “off” or on what basis. Israeli propaganda is some of the most poorly stated in the world because they rely on US military support for Israel, not on factual evidence, and they have become used to any opponents being muzzled by the accusation of “anti-Semitism,” which is liberally applied to anyone who points out their flaws. This ability to crush opponents without mustering facts and cogent arguments has greatly weakened their propaganda base, which is now collapsing as the “anti-Semitism” accusation is challenged]
 
 
https://www.quora.com/How-do-you-envision-that-a-war-between-Israel-and-Iran-would-play-out-were-it-to-break-out-in-Syria/answer/Vince-Dhimos?__nsrc__=4&__snid3__=3929452493&comment_id=86079151&comment_type=2
Vince responds:
Tim writes:
“I must say, what a bunch of nonsense. First, you conveniently leave out that Iran is the one sponsoring, training, supplying arms and finances to every Terrorist group in the region that is arrayed against Israel.”
 
Firstly, when you open up with an insult, calling the opponent’s view nonsense, that insults not only your opponent but also the reader. Ad hominem should be avoided UNLESS you have no cogent argument and are forced to use an ad hominem approach. The best approach by far is to present FACTS that disprove what the opponent said and then let the reader decide who is spouting nonsense.
 
Your second error is not naming a single terror group that is supported by Iran. I suppose you were thinking mainly of Hezbollah perhaps? Hezbollah – along with Iran -- is only considered a terrorist group in the US, Saudi Arabia and Israel. In Lebanon, Hezbollah is honoured as the group that saved the country when Israel invaded in 2006. Hezbollah is now one of the major political parties in Lebanon and is respected by both branches of Islam and by Christians. It is hard to hate a group that has saved your country.
 
Now let’s back up and look at those three countries that hate Iran and Hezbollah.
 
The US
 
In the US, the largest voting bloc is Evangelicals, 80% of whom are “Christian” Zionists, whose misreading of the Old Testament makes them believe that the present day Israel is the Israel prophesied in Ezekiel 37. But verse 24 of that chapter clearly dispels that notion, prophesying that this Israel will be obedient to God, whereas 65% of Israelis have no religion whatsoever. The US is a free country so no one can prevent people with a completely false exegesis of the Bible from proclaiming their beliefs. Sadly, though, in the case of “Christian” Zionists, these beliefs are the fuel that keeps the fires of war burning in the Middle East. Not until American Christians learn to read or analyse texts will this monstrous threat to world peace be tamed.
 
You say that God says in Genesis that He will curse them who curse “Israel” and bless them that bless her. Actually, it does not say that at all. Here is the passage you and most Evangelicals are misreading (NOT misinterpreting, misreading):


12 Now the Lord had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee:
 
2 And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing:
 
3 And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.
 
Now here is your quiz: Whom was God addressing? Was he addressing Israel, as most Establishment mega-church pastors will tell you?
 
Verse 1 clearly says he was addressing Abram.  He was not addressing Israel because Israel did not yet exist. So God was saying He would bless those how bless Abram (Abraham), NOT Israel, and curse them that curse Abram, not Israel. The use of “thee” in the KJV quoted here reflects the use of the Hebrew manner of addressing a single person as opposed to several.
 
As for Revelation, you say I am ignoring it but you did not say what passage I am ignoring. That makes it impossible to address this, which is convenient for you. There is one verse in Revelation that specifically speaks of Jews, and that is versue 3:9, but that verse refers to false Jews and reads as follows:
 
9 I will make those who are of the synagogue of Satan, who claim to be Jews though they are not, but are liars—I will make them come and fall down at your feet ...
 
If I were to attempt to tie this in with Ezekiel 37, perhaps I could theorize that this illustrates how we should interpret Ezekiel 37:24, which says the resurrected Israel will obey God, whereas there are Jews – 65% of Israelis – who do not worship God. But since I do not know what passage of Revelation you are referring to, and perhaps you are not too sure either, I will consider that beyond the scope of this discussion.
 
Nonetheless, if you wish to pursue your Revelation discussion, I will try to oblige you.
At any rate, the US is one of the three countries that are trying desperately to make the case that Iran and Hezbollah are somehow linked to terror.
 
Another is Saudi Arabia, and when you consider that all the major terror groups in Syria and Iraq are Wahhabists – the main religion of Saudi – and that Iran is fighting these terror groups, your argument is rather weak.
 
The other country is, of course, Israel, which, according to the IDF chief, has fired at least 800 missiles into Syria. Thus it is hard to conceive of Israel having the moral authority to call another party a terrorist.
 
So to sum it up, we have one country that pretends Iran and Hezbollah are terrorists because of a misreading of the Bible – in other words, out of rank religious fanaticism, another country, Saudi Arabia, whose credibility is nil as a judge of terrorism – because it is a terror supporter itself, and finally, a country that kills unarmed protesters in Palestine, settles illegally on Palestinian land, bullies Palestinians by raiding homes and arresting underage children as “terrorists” for throwing stones (!), drafts Orthodox women into the IDF whose religion forbids them from serving, attacks a sovereign country unprovoked, has attacked Lebanon unprovoked and almost destroyed that sovereign country, has accrued many UN resolutions and condemnations against if and generally acts as a state terrorist.
 
And the religious fanatics in the US and the terror supporters in Saudi Arabia are the only others who call Hezbollah a terrorist group? Isn’t that about it?
 
Finally you say:
 
“The myth that Christians are supporting Israel for the sake of the event they call the rapture, for the most part, that is false, but they do believe that when you see the Jews returning that it is nearing the end of time.”
 
It is not clear what you are calling a myth. Is the rapture a myth or is it a myth that Christians support Israel because of the rapture idea.
 
However, here again, “Christian” Zionists are way out of line. Their name “Christian” Zionists implies that they are supporting Christ’s teachings about the Jews. However, Christ said very little to his followers about how they should relate to the Jews. His most important statement that provides a clue is in Matthew 23:
 
37 “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.38 Look, your house is left to you desolate. 39 For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’[c]”
 
The clue as to how the followers should relate to the Jews is NOT a statement that they should help God fulfil a prophecy about Jerusalem, as “Christian” Zionists want you to believe. As you said, they think Christians are supposed to support a secular state called Israel that does not obey God’s rules, and if they support this secular state and make Jerusalem the capital (as Trump wants to do), this will hasten his return. He never even hinted that this might be so.
 
Instead, He implied that Christians should evangelize among the Jews, and only when the Jews have accepted Him – calling Him blessed – can He come again, and they will see him again.
 
US pastors are brainwashed and support the Establishment, which in turn supports Israel with guns to kill their neighbours – though this is forbidden in their own Torah (in Leviticus, God commands the Jews to love their neighbours as themselves!) and hence in the Christian Bible as well.
 
Christ was saying in this key passage that unless Jews come and worship Him, they will not see him again. But He also taught that the only way people can learn of the Gospel is if they are taught. So clearly, Christians are supposed to evangelize among the Jews.
 
Instead they send them guns. If they believed Jesus’ words, they would realize that they themselves are holding up the Second Coming and the Jews are the ones paying the price for the sins of Christians!

Afterword:

Tim’s response included this text:
 
“Now in regards to your claim of Christian teaching, I am Jewish, so stop with that stupidity.”
 
I deliberately drew out Tim’s feelings toward Christianity by addressing “Christian” Zionism and quoting from the NT to show how un-Christian their views on Israel are. I did not endorse Christianity, just showed how these “Christians” are disregarding Christ’s teachings in their support for the warlike Israeli Establishment.
 
What Tim calls “that stupidity” is in fact, as he makes abundantly plain, the teachings of Christ, which all “Christian” Zionists respect. Thus, Tim perfectly illustrates the fact that Israel accepts the money and weapons supplied thanks to the efforts of “Christian” Zionists like Mike Pence, and his millions of supporters, for example, but at the same time, many Israelis viscerally despise Christ’s teachings. BTW, note the difference between the respect that Muslims show Jesus, believing that He is a prophet, and the utter undisguised hatred toward Him of some of the people US “Christians” support unconditionally. Yet American Christians are taught to hate and distrust Muslims and support Israel. My point is not that Jews must accept Jesus, but that Evangelicals must see the reality of how some (probably many) pro-Israel propagandists completely despise the people who support them the most.
 
Why do they so publicly display their hatred of Christian teachings?
 
It is not their fault. US Christians and other supporters of the secular state of Israel never criticize this total lack of respect for the beliefs of the people who work the hardest to support Israel and its horrible policies toward the Palestinians and their Arab and Iranian neighbours.
 
US Christian Zionists show the utmost respect for Israeli propagandists but get no respect at all in return.
 
But really, isn’t this what they ask for?
 

Our translation below is from nation-news.ru. Commentary is by Vince Dhimos.

Despite the yawning gap between rich and poor, there is still the tenacious belief in the Western world that the US and aligned states are places of opportunity where anyone can strike it rich. Thus when Westerners hear of elected officials helping the poor, they immediately get their hackles up and feel a certain resentment of the poor who receive help. Even many Westerners who cannot receive medical care due to pre-conditions and lack of funds simply can't see past their political indoctrination. Yet these same people watch their hard-earned tax money squandered on useless weapons and wars abroad that seem to target the poor and they think nothing of it. Their reasoning is that if a foreign people has a government not approved by Washington, it's their own fault and they deserve to have their homes bombed and their children blown to bits. It is surreal.


Psychologists call this normalcy bias. America sufferrs from a collective form of normalcy bias that has gripped the nation and left us in a group stupor. No war is too grotesque for us as long as only far-away people whom we've never met are the ones getting blown up. So far, by a conservative estimate, the US has murdered perhaps a half-million civiians from the air and left their homes a shambles.


This firm conviction that it is all their fault is why we feel nothing when we hear Trump threaten to resort to the military option in Venezuela.


But these are real people and the situation is not an abstraction. Real people will die for supporting a president who got 76% of the vote.


And refused to accept a US-backed self-appointed "president" who never ran for that office. But we're the good guys, right?


BEGIN TRANSLATION

Support for the government in Venezuela is strong: social worker from Caracas explains why people are for Maduro
 
11 February 2019
 
https://nation-news.ru/431224-gospodderzhka-v-venesuele-silnaya-socrabotnik-iz-karakasa-rasskazala-pochemu-lyudi-za-maduro
 
In the poor areas of Caracas, the opposition has no support, everyone is in favour of Maduro, a member of the San José Clara Uribe Political Coordinating Council said in an exclusive interview with the Nation News special correspondent in Venezuela. From our correspondent.
 
The poor do not support Guaidó and his associates, said Clara Uribe, a member of the political coordinating council of the San José commune, in an interview with the Nation News special correspondent in Venezuela which is on the outskirts of Caracas.
 
Clara Uribe knows this first hand. She works in the field of assistance to the local poor, distributes monthly 15 thousand food packages in the Epujisito sector. It is located within the limits of the most disadvantaged and criminal regions of Caracas. Poverty has prevailed in this suburb for more than half a century, and only when the socialists came to power, first Hugo Chavez and then Nicolas Maduro, did they pay attention to these people, and the state helped them.
 
“Thanks to the government of Hugo Rafael Chávez, a gas pipeline was installed in our area and 750 houses were connected to it. At the same time, residents pay only one-tenth of one bolivar per month for all this. We can assume that the government supplies gas here for free, since the project is fully subsidized by the government. And the authorities do not intend to stop there. The plans include connection of 17 communes to the gas line. There are 39 of them here in all. The rest will continue to receive gas in cylinders, said Clara Uribe.
 
According to her, in addition to gas and food supplies, the government provides the poor people with medical care. In the suburbs of Caracas, eight primary medical care centres, two rehabilitation centres and one hospital have been opened.
 
Another area of ​​state assistance is the fight against illiteracy of the population. For these purposes, in 2005, under Hugo Chavez, a special Mission Robinson was formed. Thanks to this work, illiteracy in Venezuela was eliminated. When asked by the correspondent whether the state aid would remain for the poor if Guaidó came to power, Clara replied that they were even afraid to think about such an outcome.
 
“God forbid that this should happen. No one has elected this Guaidó president, he has appointed himself, so we don’t even want to consider this possibility. President Maduro won the election. 67% of Venezuelans voted for him. And the impostor Guaidó, a member of parliament, only received 9 thousand votes. At the same time, I want to stress that our parliament does not execute the decision of the Supreme Court. The fact is that during the 2015 elections, serious irregularities were found in the state of Amazon. And until this issue is resolved, the legitimacy of the parliament is questionable,” explained Clara Uribe.
 
When asked how she felt about Russia, Clara replied that our country is a friend of Venezuela and is providing great assistance to the country.
 
“Russia is our best friend, who helps Venezuela, helps its efforts to turn Venezuela into a real power. Russia and China are our best friends,” Uribe emphasized.
 
Posted by: Julio Cezan

END TRANSLATION

Vince on Quora (open link to see other comments):
 
https://www.quora.com/How-would-you-explain-Russias-pledge-to-support-Maduro-in-the-current-Venezuelan-situation-Is-that-pledge-comparable-to-what-happened-in-Syria-since-the-apparent-rallying-point-is-legitimacy-of-the-current

Very accurate comments by Dima and Alexander. So true.
 
And BTW, Maduro won the election by around 70% of the vote and the polls were observed by a lot of foreign observers.
 
There is a subtlety here that is lost on almost every Westerner who is used to – and generally supports -- years and years of US invasion and regime change, and that is, as was mentioned by Dima:
 
Russia, does not support candidates or politicians. They support peoples, ie, nations. That is, they support sovereignties, ie, the old Westphalian principle of letting states decide for themselves, for better or worse. If the Venezuelans choose Maduro, then their vote is sacred, no matter how bad WE think the guy is.
 
When asked if he supports Assad, for ex, Putin always says he supports whoever the Syrian people support. He NEVER comes out in support of a person. That is the source of his strength and the prestige and trust he enjoys. I get the impression that the average Westerner doesn’t even realize this or understand the concept. It is part of the multipolar world idea that Putin shocked the world with in Munich in 2007.
 
This approach, ie, respecting sovereignties, is too simple for Westerners. We want rocket science. We want to be the final arbiters of foreign people's fates. We don't care what the people want. We know what's best for them. Right?
 
Thank God more and more people understand the elegantly simple concept of the multipolar (multicentric) world that no longer looks to the US to tell other people what to do. Oh, the puppets in places of Western power bow to the US, just as the European powers – with the exception of Italy – banded together to support the completely unknown Guaidó, who could be a serial rapist for all they know or care. But we are talking about the grassroots, a different animal, who are becoming increasingly isolated from their political “leaders.”
 
The Trump administration was skating on thin ice when Pence called Guaidó the night before he declared himself president, and told him the US would support HIM and consider him president. That was in a subtle way the kiss of death for the US in Venezuela, where people -- even those who dislike Maduro -- are leery of US intervention. Trump’s hint that the US might go and bomb them was also not well received. The Bolivarian revolution still has wide support and it is generally anti-yanqui.
 
Bush was more subtle about supporting regime change, but Trump just charges right in. He behaves this way only because he is used to dealing with Americans who still support the monopolar world with US as the hegemon and also are imbued with the notion that socialism is tantamount to child abuse. Polls around the world show that this American guns-blazing approach is now a very hard sell, and Venezuela is now showing signs of pulling away from Guaidó because of this plate shift in world opinion that most Americans know nothing about and could care less. If we don't crawl out of our shells and start looking at the real world out there and seeing it for what it really is, we will wake up in a very cold shower. The dollar is threatened now like never before. Jim Rickards says the IMF is plotting to trot out the SDR as the new world reserve currency, but even if it decides not to do that, there is the Special Purpose Vehicle, now known as ISTEX. I am willing to bet that the average American knows nothing about this and what it spells for the USD and America’s ability to wage war and continue throwing US weight around -- not because they’re dummies, but because they only read the standard fare in the WSJ and other economic msm and ignore the rumblings in the background).
 
Here is an email I received from Venezuelanalysis.com, ie, from on the ground in Venezuela that might just signal the way the wind is blowing:
 
Dear readers,
 
Nearly two weeks have gone by since Juan Guaido swore himself in as "interim president" of Venezuela and the previously little-known back-bench legislator appears no closer to sitting in Miraflores Palace. Indeed life continues much as normal here in Caracas (well if now long-established hyperinflation can be considered "normal"). Saturday saw dueling pro- and anti-government marches, which went ahead without incident. Guaido, who had no new announcements for his supporters, appears to be losing momentum, rallying fewer people than on January 23, while Nicolas Maduro has been more successful in mobilizingthe Chavista rank-in-file in nation-wide marches over the course of last week.
 
Meanwhile, international developments are proceeding with great dynamism. This Thursday is set to kick off an international dialogue summit hosted by Mexico, Uruguay, and the EU in Montevideo, while a host of European countries voiced their support for Guaidó this Monday. In the face of the ongoing failure to overthrow Maduro, Donald Trump reiterated Sunday morning that US military intervention remains an "option" for Venezuela.
 
We at VA have been in overdrive trying to break the mainstream media blockade and bring you voices from the ground. We have put together regularly updated pages compiling international solidarity statements as well as testimonies from the Bolivarian grassroots against the coup. We are also proud to present you the 10th episode of our Ear to the Ground podcast bringing you up-to-date analysis of the current conjuncture from our Venezuela-based team. Additionally, we once again partnered with Merida-based Tatuy Tv to produce a series of short video interviews with Venezuelans expressing their views on the coup, national sovereignty, and possible scenarios for resolving this crisis. Lastly, we have not one, but two exclusive interviews for you: one with Luis Britto Garcia on the stakes of the current standoff with Washington and another with Jessica Dos Santos on the realities of daily life in besieged Venezuela. Catch all this and much more below!
 
 
Also, we encourage you to follow us on our social media. Check out our Facebook and Twitter pages to learn more about the Bolivarian Process.
 
This information was not posted to the site https://venezuelanalysis.com/. Apparently only subscribers receive these valuable sitreps. 

https://www.quora.com/What-do-you-think-about-Trump-wanting-to-keep-troops-in-Iraq-to-watch-Iran-Do-you-support-this-Why-or-why-not/answer/Vince-Dhimos
​
What do you think about Trump wanting to keep troops in Iraq to 'watch' Iran? Do you support this? Why or why not?

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/428226-trump-wants-to-keep-troops-in-iraq-to-watch-iran
 
Vince Dhimos, Editor-in-Chief at New Silk Strategies (2016-present)

Answered 13m ago

Iran is hated by the US because it does not recognize Israel and has made threats against Israel in the event they should be attacked by that country. In traditional international relations, it is perfectly acceptable for a state to retaliate against an unprovoked attack by another state. However, the US treats Israel with a special set of standards that apply ONLY to Israel. It is a classic case of a double standard. Israel has admitted to attacking Iranian assets and people in Syria at least 200 times since the start of the Syrian war. These assets and troops are there legally at the invitation of the Syrians and have every right to remain unmolested. Further, they have never attacked Israel proper (thought they have fired a missile into the Golan Heights, which is illegally occupied by Israel. The US is there illegally. The US has not raised a finger or an eyelash to reprimand or stop Israel from making these unprovoked attacks. Thus, they tacitly condone what clearly amounts to a crime. It is a matter of might makes right, a policy that is failing and causing the US to lose the trust of the world. Both Israel and Saudi Arabia, which exercise major control over US foreign and military policy, are enemies of Iran. This article at Quora helps explain how Israel and SA influence US policy:

https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Isr...

Trump is acting as a puppet of Israel and SA by opposing Iran. The US people are in no way threatened by Iran, but US media and politicians keep up a steady chorus of anti-Iran propaganda, confusing and convincing the people that Iran is an enemy. For many Evangelical Americans, Trump is a god-appointed figure similar to Old Testament heroes. He is frequently compared to Cyrus the Great.

Trump either does not know or does not care that the majority of Iraqis are Shiites and therefore are natural allies of Iran. Therefore his idea of watching Iran from Iraq is fraught with risks and prone to fail. If the Iraqi people are able to organize, they may eventually throw out the Americans. This would be to the benefit of the Amerian people, Iraq and the entire Middle East.

Unfortunately, it does not matter whether the US people agree or disagree on foreign policy issues. These are decided not by the people but by a shadow government consisting of several groups as explained here on Quora:
​
https://www.quora.com/Is-China-a...
 

Vince answered a question at Quora:

https://www.quora.com/How-important-is-it-to-you-that-the-next-president-in-2020-be-strongly-pro-NATO-pro-EU-and-supportive-of-Americas-allies-while-also-skeptical-of-Putins-Russia/answer/Vince-Dhimos
 
It depends on whether that “you” is plural or singular. I assume no one would ask what is important to one respondent, so let’s assume for now that you mean a collective “you.” The problem then becomes what group you are referring to. Just Americans or Americans and Europeans? The only way to be fair is to include the larger group. So let’s do that.
 
But we are then left with this hard-to-define term “sceptical of Russia.” In the standard Democrat interpretation, this could mean do we want to continue accusing Russia of “meddling in elections” and of “aggression.” To focus on the possibility of “meddling in elections” presupposes one of the following:
 
1 – The American people are so gullible that their vote can be determined more by a foreign influencer exerting only the subtlest influence, via a web site, for example, in Russia, that does not openly endorse any one candidate.  If the US people are really this weak minded that they would be influenced more by a foreign country whose contribution in dollars is, for example, less than 1% of the money spent by US influencers in the same election, we have to seriously consider whether there is any hope for US democracy at all.
 
2—on the other hand, there is the possibility that the Russians have better arguments and are better able to muster facts, logic and reason to show beyond a doubt that their viewpoint is correct and superior to that of the political party they supposedly are trying to  defeat. In this case, how can you defeat a party that makes a lot of sense vs a political party that makes much less sense to the US public? Is it fair to the voters to censor this more reasonable party?
 
For example, Russia was accused of exposing dirty tricks of the Clinton campaign that were used to unfairly damage the Bernie Sanders camp. Seth Rich admitted to providing WikiLeaks with this information and Wikileaks CEO Julian Assange stated that the info did not come from a state actor. And wouldn’t he know? But even so, which is more important: exposing this bad behaviour of one of the candidates or the allegation (unproven) that a foreign country had exposed the dirty tricks? You should not have to think very long and hard over that question. It is hard to avoid the impression that anyone – whether foreign or domestic – who was able to dig up the dirt on a candidate who is guilty of behaviour that the voting public would generally consider vile and disgusting, is not behaving reprehensibly but would in fact be praiseworthy.
 
But this question of what I or – let’s assume – we consider important also creates a dilemma because certainly none of us can know what Westerners collectively want. Generally, Europeans may have something of a consensus, because they have a lot to gain by maintaining the Iran Deal, for example, which they generally consider potentially lucrative. But then, in a way, Germany is a special case. In their case, there is virtually a consensus in Germany that when Trump’s ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, threatened them — and specifically BASF and Uniper — not to continue their work on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project for delivery of Russian natural gas or face new sanctions, this was an underhanded way of bullying them into buying US LNG, which is prohibitively more expensive. Thus there is a consensus among German business people against this ham-handed bullying to stop the project because they generally believe buying US LNG would threaten their economy. They believe they need the Russian gas to remain in the no. two position in world exports. After all, gas is the main source of energy in production, which is energy intensive at best, and no sane person would choose the most expensive energy source over another significantly cheaper one. So we can know for a certainty that German business people would not want to adopt the standard US anti-Russian policy on that issue. As for German politicians, they too tend to support the business community. Some have taken a strong position and this will no doubt become a political hot button issue that will garner votes for whichever politicians promise to support Nord Stream 2 and stand up to the US.
 
As for a “president who would support allies,” it is no longer clear from what I have said above, what allies the US has left. The abandonment of the Iran Deal cost the US considerable credibility in Europe, the Middle East, Asia and elsewhere. The profligate imposition of sanctions was also a major detriment to US credibility. In fact, China (and hence also Russia) has been able to capitalize on these sanctions and on the tariffs, which were generally hated worldwide. In fact, it will be a boon to Russia as well as China that the sanctions and tariffs were so widely rejected. There are two considerations:
 
1--Countries threatened with sanctions should they buy the Russian S-400 systems – ie, countries like Turkey, India and others have just thumbed their noses at the sanctions and gone ahead and bought them. This cost the US major face and credibility. After all, if a cop threatens speeders with fines and then fines no one, drivers will scoff at the police and keep speeding.
 
2—The sanctions, tariffs and demands to stop trading with Iran have induced Europe, China, Russia and Iran to boost the use of local currencies such as the euro and yuan, etc. in international trade settlements and thereby bypass the US dollar. Whenever the dollar is used less in international trade, its value and credibility as a reserve currency are reduced. Inversely, when another currency is used to substitute the USD in international settlements, that currency gains in value and credibility as a reserve currency. Thus, the sanctions intended to hurt Russia and its partners are indirectly harming the USD.
 
In fact, China has persuaded Europe, most African, most Middle Eastern and most Asian states to establish currency swap mechanisms, and many of these countries are already bypassing the US dollar in all of their international trade. For instance, Iran, Syria, Venezuela, China and Russia are deliberately avoiding use of the USD while others, like India, are using non-dollar currencies in significant percentages of their trade. This is just the beginning. One expert has predicted that the US dollar could soon lose 30% of its value. This is the price of US bullying.
 
As for NATO, this organization was founded for the sole purpose of countering the Soviet Union. James Baker had promised Russia that NATO would never move into the former Warsaw Pact countries, but that promise was broken. NATO is now at the RF border and this cavalier attitude toward the RF has induced Russia to build up their arsenal significantly, adding wonder weapons such as missiles that cannot be intercepted by any known method and supercavitating torpedoes and subs that can travel significantly faster than any of their Western analogues.
 
So what is NATO doing these days? Well, NATO is responsible for the deaths of 13,500 people, mostly civilians, in Kosovo and for causing a humanitarian crisis there that exists to the present day, where Serbs residing in Kosovo generally do not dare leave their homes for fear of attacks by radical Islamists, who have not only harmed the Serbs but have all but destroyed all Orthodox churches and cemeteries in the region. NATO used genocide by Serbs as a pretext, but UN appointee Carla de Ponte conducted a thorough study after the war and concluded that the actions of the Serbs did not rise to the level of genocide but the alleged victims were committing horrific crimes such as organ harvesting. NATO also killed 60-90 civilians and wounded 150 in their aerial bombardment aimed at taking out Ghadaffi, who had led the most prosperous and one of the most stable governments in the Middle East. The country has been a shambles since 2011 as a result of NATO’s intervention. No Western leader has been able to articulate any sensible reasons for this atrocity. So rather than me telling the reader whether the next president should support NATO, I have given the sensible reader information with which to mull that question yourself.
 
In view of all this, intelligent and moral people will be able to decide whether NATO deserves our support.
 
Finally, the question as to whether the next president should be “sceptical” about Russia depends, again, on how you define sceptical, but the West has generally been anti-Russian and the question would therefore be whether our next president should continue to seek to impoverish the Russian people with sanctions and threaten the country with war, as the Western governments and NATO have been doing.
 
I defer the answer to this question to CFR president Richard Haass, arguably the most respected and influential foreign policy expert in the US. Haass wrote in December 2018 a paper titled How a World Order Ends, in which he stated that the “US cannot defeat Russia.” He therefore recommended that the US learn to treat Russia with respect and to confer with its leadership rather than issue insulting and juvenile ultimatums. I think you can imagine how Haass, a foreign policy expert, would answer this question.
 
We can easily infer from Putin’s speech before the Federal Assembly and from the recent tests of Russian hypersonic missiles that Haass was not merely speculating but was fully justified in making this statement.
 
As for whether the president should be strongly pro-EU, any US president should support the will of the Europeans themselves. Remember how bulling people has cost the US prestige and credibility, so he must be well informed but willing to bow to the wishes of the people. In the case of the UK, a referendum showed that they wanted to separate from the EU. Obama had made great efforts to dissuade them, but it made no difference. Some Europeans even said his interference helped persuade them to vote to leave! Several minor parties in various countries are also Euroseptics and they seem to be growing in popularity. The Europeans are the ones who have to put up with the consequences of being in the EU. If at some point, a country decides it wants out, the US president should use his influence to urge them to do what is best for them, but he is, after all, the president only of the US, not of the world.
 
 
That is the end of my point-by-point analysis. But that is not the good part. If you open this quora page you will see that Glenn Anderson, the person who asked the question, was unable to articulate a rational response to my points, merely accusing me of being a Russian agent! That was the whole purpose of the exercise, to humiliate anyone who dared to dissent.

This seems to be what the "debate" has sunk to in the US and much of the West. The game has not ended with a clear winner or with a draw. It has simply disintegrated as the losing side capitulates to its own innate reasoning power and declares itself the winner on the grounds that it owns the football. The US is at a new low point. The West has been called "post-Christian," "post-capitalist," "post-historic" and so on, but we are now beyond any of that. We are post-reason. We are at the knuckle-dragging "I don't need no stinkin' brain" stage. And this applies to both sides of the left-right divide. Because the debate has never ever been about left vs right. It has always been about the ability to think for oneself vs capitulation to Corporate America and letting the Elites do our thinking for us. If you are with Corporate America, you really don't need a brain and if you try to use yours you will get slapped down. You literally do not need a brain. Because Corporate America has several different sides, to accommodate the witless no matter where they find themselves on the politial spectrum. Their arguments are pre-fabricated modules handed to us by our "leaders." We are actors in the Time Machine, either the Eloi or the Morlocks, neither of which is fully human, just machines existing for the pleasure of their creator. we are no longer subjects, just objects to be moved like chess pieces by outside forces.

This is the reason I have said and will say: there is no hope that the US will heal itself. It will, however, be healed by outside forces.

Richard Haass was right. A world order has ended.

The good news: The healing will be painful but complete and a new America will rise from the ashes. There's nowhere to go but up.
 

Below is our translation from news.rambler.ru on Washington’s desperate measures to keep the Russians from enjoying Arctic resources, and Russia's success in exploiting them, with commentary by Vince Dhimos. You will recall that yesterday’s contribution showed how US sanctions and tariffs were aimed not so much at protecting US interests from any tangible enemy but rather at keeping other states from enjoying their own resources. We hope that by now you will have understood that this attitude “if we can’t have it you can’t either” is an immutable feature of US foreign policy and is one of the peculiarities that are dragging America down – even to the extent of threatening its very sovereignty and existence as a state.
 
Today’s example is right along these same lines.
 
QUOTE:
 
“[The US]…at the end of the presidency of President Barack Obama, began to make efforts to step up their activities in the Arctic. However, none of these plans produced practical results.

Suffice it to say that the US Navy is not designed for operations in the Arctic region - the Pentagon does not have the necessary ships to operate in these latitudes, nor even the icebreaker fleet. For example, there are only two ships of this type at the disposal of Washington, and one of them is built to operate in Antarctica; therefore, they cannot be compared with Russian icebreakers.”
 
Clearly, when it comes to Russia, the US government is psychologically incapable of minding its own business.
 
But there seems to be another immutable feature of US foreign and military policy, and that is something we focus on regularly at NSS, ie, Washington’s intense fear of actual military confrontation of other world powers, such as Russia and China, and even Iran. The wanton – actually habitual – use of sanctions and tariffs instead of military action against powerful adversaries. This now seems to be a hard-and-fast policy and Russia, for example, apparently no longer fears a possible military confrontation with the US.
 
There is a hitch, though. Israel seems to be the latest US proxy. They just now fired missiles at the Damascus International Airport again.
 
The last time Russia decided the Israelis had crossed a line, they sent the S-300 system to the Syrian Arab Army. It slowed down Israel’s hostility to Syria but failed to stop it. Russia can be expected to ratchet up its countermeasures to the Israeli attacks, but it will not jeopardize its tattered relations with Tel Aviv either. The main reason Russia tolerates the attacks on Syria is that Putin wants to consolidate Russia’s reputation as a peace maker and does not want to be seen as taking sides in Middle East conflicts. It is a brilliant strategy, particularly as contrasted with the US policy of siding with dictators and war mongers in the region for short term gain.
 
https://news.rambler.ru/troops/41548552-uglevodorodnye-bogatstva-arktiki-tolkayut-ssha-na-proigryshnoe-protivostoyanie-s-rf/
 
BEGIN TRANSLATION
 
Hydrocarbon wealth of the Arctic pushes the United States to a losing confrontation with the Russian Federation
 
Source: FBA Ekonomika Segodnya
 
The Arctic region today is one of the most important areas of the Russian state strategy, which can be seen both in the military component and in the civilian component – one need only recall the project of the Northern Sea Route.
 
The Arctic is essential for Russia
 
This circumstance immediately provoked a reaction from the United States, which, at the end of the presidency of President Barack Obama, began to make efforts to step up their activities in the Arctic. However, none of these plans produced practical results.
 
Suffice it to say that the US Navy is not designed for operations in the Arctic region - the Pentagon does not have the necessary ships to operate in these latitudes, nor even the icebreaker fleet. For example, there are only two ships of this type at the disposal of Washington, and one of them is built to operate in Antarctica; therefore, they cannot be compared with Russian icebreakers.
 
It's no secret that a large-scale icebreaking program is being implemented in Russia, which is superimposed on the extensive experience of Soviet shipbuilding in this area, with the result that Moscow will soon be able to control the entire Arctic region.
 
This is important both in terms of cargo handling - the Northern Sea Route is actually shorter than traditional routes through the Pacific and Indian Ocean, as well as in a military-strategic sense, because you can travel from Russia to American territory through the Arctic.
 
Americans stepping up activity in the Arctic area
 
Accordingly, Russia's activity in the Arctic can give our country a significant strategic advantage, which is well understood in the Pentagon, and as a result, there various campaigns are regularly conducted to simulate the activity of the United States and NATO in this region.
 
Let us recall how the aircraft carrier "Harry Truman" became, in October 2018, the first American aircraft carrier in 27 years to enter the Arctic Circle in the context of NATO exercises called Trident Juncture.
 
These exercises were implemented as part of the training of the alliance forces in the event Article 5 of the NATO Charter, that is, the rules on joint actions in the event of aggression against one of the member countries, should be enforced. It is clear that in the case of the Arctic this could only be a simulation of actions against Russia, which once again confirms the importance that the alliance attaches to this confrontation with Moscow.
 
As a result, it is not surprising that the US Navy Minister Richard Spencer said that next summer, American warships would go to the Arctic, which is necessary for the Pentagon to test the prospects for operational hostilities in the Arctic.
 
In US strategy, the Arctic competes with the South China Sea
 
Konstantin Blokhin, leading researcher at the Centre for Security Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences in a conversation with the FBA Economy Today, noted that the importance of the Arctic for the American military strategy is constantly increasing due to the strengthening of our country in this region.
 
“There is a comprehensive US strategy to increase its military presence in the Arctic. In fact, Washington has a catastrophic situation with the Arctic fleet, and this causes acute irritation to the Pentagon,” states Blokhin.
 
According to Konstantin Vladimirovich, this represents a stalemate for the United States, since, despite all the rhetoric and actions of NATO along with the US Navy, in the short term, the Pentagon cannot change the situation here in any way.
 
“In this matter, it is necessary to understand that the Arctic, though an important region for the United States, is still not paramount. For example, now we can say that in the near future the main focus of the Pentagon will be on the South China Sea,” concludes Blokhin.
 
The Americans don’t want to yield to Russia in the Arctic
 
According to the expert, in this aspect we are talking about the growing power of China, about the Spratly Islands and other geopolitical issues, where Washington intends to contain Beijing, and which are already included in the grand design of US foreign policy.
 
“The Arctic, of course, is also of great importance for the United States, if only because there is a huge amount of useful resources - for example, hydrocarbons there. Here you can even say that the future of the world will be determined by the struggle for these resources, as a result of which this strategic interest arose from the Pentagon and the political leadership of the United States,” summarizes Blokhin.
 
In addition, weather conditions are changing in the Arctic now - glaciers are melting, making it possible to intensify the global economy. And here the American side also does not want to give in, especially in view of the serious strategic efforts on the part of Russia.
 
“The United States even came up with the idea that the Arctic should be controlled not by Russia, but by the international community, and this, of course, is a substitution of concepts. Just in this way, Americans usually promote their interests,” states Blokhin.
 
However, as experts believe, it is unlikely that Americans will find opportunities to realize their large-scale tasks in the Arctic and the South China Sea, and the saying “too many irons in the fire” is perfectly applicable.[1]
 
Accordingly, it is not yet possible to say that these efforts of the United States can lead to any practical result, just that the Americans want to show they will not leave Russia alone with the riches of the Arctic.
 
END TRANSLATION
                                                                     
[1] Translator’s note: The expression used in the original Russian text here is a Russian saying that could be rendered literally as “he chased two rabbits but caught none.”

Vince Dhimos answered the following question on Quora:
​
Do you see China as a legitimate threat to US hegemony? If not, what does China lack that the US possesses?
​
https://www.quora.com/Do-you-see-China-as-a-legitimate-threat-to-US-hegemony-If-not-what-does-China-lack-that-the-US-possesses/answer/Vince-Dhimos?__nsrc__=4&__snid3__=3730298000
 
It’s not that China lacks anything, it’s just that China does not apply the concept of “hegemon” to itself. This is why Westerners, indoctrinated to believe world powers must all want to be the hegemon, in imitation of the US, which now shows signs of failure precisely because of its obsession to control every country and region, keep thinking China or Russia wants to be the next hegemon in a succession of global bosses.
 
Therefore, they mistakenly think China “lacks” something if it does not become the next world bully in history. China in fact has something the US lacks, ie, diplomatic skill that enables it to get along with others instead of bullying them with ultimatums, sanctions and bombs.
 
Like Russia, it accepts the concept of a multipolar world, in which there can be no hegemon because a hegemon implies a monopolar world (the world controlled by the US), which China and Russia both reject. I would remind the reader that Russia and China are well balanced against each other and neither could overcome the other sufficiently to become a hegemon. Neither side wants this either. They don’t want to follow the pattern of failure of the US.
 
The following is our translation of an article from a government owned Chinese site (sohu.com) that reflects the thinking of China’s leadership:
 
BEGIN TRANSLATION
 
https://m.sohu.com/n/475983817/?wscrid=95360_6
 
After the end of the bipolar political pattern, the world entered a period of multi-polarization.
 
1. The main reasons for promoting the development of multipolarization in the world are
 
(1) The multi-polarization of world economic power has promoted the development of multi-polarization in world politics
 
In today's world, with the rapid development of science and technology and economy, there is no power that can have the absolute advantage in all areas and control the world as desired. The process of economic globalization has greatly reduced the possibility of constructing a unipolar world; balance has led to changes in the political status and role of countries, so that China’s comprehensive national strength has increased. Russia is committed to revitalizing the economy and restoring its status as a world power; developing countries are adjusting accordingly, and the EU as a whole is increasingly influencing global affairs. The Japanese economy is strong and is attempting to become a political power and a military power. These countries and regional groups invariably advocate a trend in the world toward multi-polarization.
 
(2) The United States dominates the world in a unpopular manner and is opposed by most countries in the world.
 
Hegemonism and power politics are the main sources of danger to world peace and stability. Promoting the development of multi-polarization in the world is the only correct way for human society to avoid the harms of the unipolar world. The United States is currently in a relatively weak period; the European powers have become the main force that constrains US world hegemony; Russia and China are the main opponents of American world hegemony; Japan is unwilling to continue to be a US political pawn, and is eager to play the role of a political power in the world; the Chinese nation has become an important force in the world; We desire world peace, the growth of democratic forces, and the widespread existence and functioning of international organizations and regional organizations. US domination of the world is not only reversing the trend of world history, but reducing its own strength, making it incapable to build its unipolar world. The diversification of various forces in the world and the profound adjustment of relations between major powers are conducive to the development of multipolarization.
 
2. The characteristics of today's international landscape are mainly reflected in the following aspects
 
(1) A variety of strategic forces jointly lead the world affairs, and the international pattern shows a trend toward “one super and many strong”.
 
(2) Each activist pays more attention to national interests and dilutes ideological differences. National interests are fundamental factors that constrain and influence the behaviour of the state in international relations.
 
(3) In international competition, the military role has been declining, while the role of the economy and science and technology has become increasingly prominent, and competition for comprehensive national strength is fierce.
 
3. The formation of a multi-polarization pattern will be a long-term process
 
First, the hegemonism of the United States and the attempt to build a unipolar world are the biggest obstacles to the development of multipolarization. Second, the continuation of the Cold War mentality in the world, the widening gap between the rich and the poor in the North and the South, and ethnic divisions and religious disputes will also have various disturbances and shocks to the multi-polarization trend. Third, the formation of a multi-polarization pattern is a process of recombination and redistribution of interests among various forces in the world. This will lead to various uncertainties, and the process of multi-polarization in the world will be full of contradictions and struggles.
 
END TRANSLATION

Below is our translation of an article from baltnews.lv originally published in Russian, with commentary by Vince Dhimos. By now all Westerners with a few brain waves left after the decades-long 24-7 assault on intelligence by the msm know that virtually the entire Western elite is making a supreme effort to denigrate and destroy Russia. It turns out that the Cold War was not about the Soviet Union or communism after all, it was about Russia and all things Russian, which the obedient sheeple are supposed to hate with all their mind, soul and heart in accordance with the wishes of the Elites who control Washington, the main ones of which are listed here.

It is racism pure and simple but we are given a million and one excuses to make it look like something rational and to paint Russia as an enemy even though it never was and, Lord willing, never will be. The propaganda campaign waged all around us is so overwhelming that a recent poll finds only about 5% of Americans who think Russia is more friend than foe. This is perhaps Russia's darkest hour. Yet the Russians remain undaunted, just as they did in the darkest moments of WW II.

Church matters are inherently arkane, and mind-numbing, to outsiders and I will not attempt to explain the tedious details of this matter. The main thing to know is that this movement is not religious but purely political and rooted in Russophobia.

Suffice it to say that this whole plot was initiated by arch-Russophobe President Poroshenko, who is currently stirring up war between the US and Russia in the Black Sea -- with the blessings of the US Empire. He prevailed upon the church fathers in Constantinople to declare the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, previously subordinate to Moscow, autocephalous, or independent. At first, perhaps nothing will change, but there will be a powerful movement and powerful propaganda in Ukraine to turn the Ukrainian Christians against their old patriarch, thereby creating a division against Moscow. The cultural is political.


Why autocephaly in Ukraine is dangerous for the entire Orthodox world
 
https://baltnews.lv/riga_news/20180925/1022303992/Ukraine-autokefalia-opasna-dlya-pravoslavnogo-mira.html
 
Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople promised to provide Ukraine with autocephaly. He stated that the Constantinople Orthodox Church is not intimidated by any threats. What will happen to the Ukrainian church after its split?
 
Ukraine can get autocephaly. This occurred after the Sunday service in the temple of St. Foka Mesahoru in Istanbul, said the Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew. Video recordings of the speech can be seen on the Patriarchal page on Facebook. So, on April 17, President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko asked the Patriarch of Constantinople to provide the autocephaly of the united local Ukrainian church.
 
"Now it is the turn of Ukraine, which will receive the status of autocephaly after a short time, I hope, despite the existing opposition, which there will be, because it is its right," said Bartholomew.
 
What is autocephaly and why does Ukraine need it?
 
Now the Ukrainian Orthodox Church is considered self-governing as part of the Moscow Patriarchate. Also in Ukraine there are churches that are not recognized by world Orthodoxy - "Kyiv Patriarchate" and the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church. Petro Poroshenko is trying to achieve recognition of all structures and the creation on their basis of a single autocephalous church.
 
 
In preparation for the granting of autocephaly, Constantinople decided to appoint Archbishop Daniel of Pamphylia of the United States of America and Bishop of Edmonton Hilarion of Canada [this was most certainly done under pressure from the US--Vince] to be appointed Exarchs in Kiev. The Russian Orthodox Church broke off diplomatic relations with Constantinople and stopped the commemoration of Patriarch Bartholomew, finding the actions of Constantinople unnatural and illegal.
 
The German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung notes that if the ROC (Russian Orthodox Church) breaks off relations with Constantinople, it will be the largest conflict between Orthodox structures since the separation of the Roman and Byzantine churches almost a thousand years ago. Thus, the largest church schism will occur.
 
If autocephaly is granted, then ...
 
“This will mean, firstly, a break in relations between Constantinople and Moscow, and secondly, it will without exaggeration, entail a religious war in Ukraine,” says historian Vladislav Petrushko to the Orthodox and Peace portal. According to him, the Patriarch of Constantinople should be aware that such a step would lead to a great conflict.
 
 
Doctor of Law, Professor of HSE [Higher Secondary Education] Alexander Domrin is sure that the granting of autocephaly in a country where a civil war is taking place is against the rules.
 
“The loss of the Russian Orthodox Christians thanks to the Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew, who cease to recognize him as the ecumenical patriarch, is also not very good.
 
Recall that in 1054 there was a Great Church schism, when the Christian church disintegrated into Western (Roman Catholic) and Eastern (Greek-catholic).


Previously at New Silk Strategies: 

CAN THE POPE EVER PUT THE SCHIS BEHIND HIM?
http://www.newsilkstrategies.com/opinion/can-the-pope-ever-put-the-schism-behind-him

and elsewhere
​
Why Russian Orthodox chief left his chair empty at pope’s summit
https://cruxnow.com/news-analysis/2018/07/11/why-russian-orthodox-chief-left-his-chair-empty-at-popes-summit/

Vince responded on Quora, commenting on an accurate response by professor Quentin Poulsen to the question: Has Putin totally out-manoeuvered the US in Syria?
 
Please first read what Quentin says.
 
https://www.quora.com/Has-Putin-totally-outmaneuvered-the-US-in-Syria
 
Thank you, Quentin. You hit the highlights for us.
 
I note the following from your response:
 
“America is a white, Christian-dominated nation. There is no reason on this earth for them to be *intervening *in the Middle East and killing millions of people. & neither are they wanted, evidently.”
 
Unfortunately, the US is not Christian-dominated, nor is it dominated by its people. Its Evangelical church endorses “Christian” Zionism, which to a believer in the scriptures, is a heresy based on a misreading of the Bible, as explained here.
 
If it were truly Christian, none of this nightmare in the Middle East and its spill-over in the West would be happening. Nor would it force its religion on anyone else.  However, the US is dominated by a cabal of agents, such as think tanks, the CIA, the msm, “Christian” Zionist mega-churches, etc, most of which are listed in a recent article. Unfortunately, however, this list does include segments of the grassroots whose domination by this cabal causes them to unwittingly cooperate fully with it in creating anti-Christian mayhem.
 
It is obvious that America’s excuses for waging war do not hold water, as Mr. Poulsen points out. Much has been written about the underlying motives behind US wars, including theories focussing on oil and theories about Israel or the Saudis and notably the petrodollar agreement concluded between Nixon and King Faisal. But beneath even these possible hidden motives, an analysis of the outcomes shows that the salient outcome of US wars has been in fact the elimination of Christianity in the Muslim world (pleasing to the Saudis for sure, and not a drawback for Israel either – which recently chose Christmas day to launch a missile attack near Damascus airport) and the weakening of Christian culture in Europe due to the massive migrations of Muslims to that continent (also pleasing to the Saudis and not contrary to Israeli interests). Even Trump has failed to keep his promise of admitting Middle Eastern Christians to the US, and as revealed here.
 
It is impossible for this outcome to have been achieved unintentionally, ie, without the specific intent of the aforementioned cabal (not counting the grassroots components thereof).
 
The list of agents who actually control the US (which does not include the grassroots, except as it includes “Christian” Zionists), shows that none of them would have any reason to support the existence of a “Christian America,” and it is my belief that the motive at the very bottom was to achieve what has in fact been achieved thus far, and that is an extreme reduction in the Christian population of the Muslim world and a drastic dilution and attenuation of Christian culture in the West.
 
Were it not for Russia, a self-proclaimed Christian nation whose elites clearly do not wish for the elimination of Christianity, the process would have gone on to completion. This is precisely why the elites have declared war on Russia in every way but militarily. But now, Russia has demonstrated, by touting its formidable non-interceptable arsenal, that the US cannot defeat it. The list of the aforementioned agents is gradually acknowledging this. None less than Richard Haass, president of the CFR, has admitted this in his seminal article How a World Order Ends.
 
This provides a glimmer of hope for peace as we go into 2019.

 Vince answered this question on Quora:

WHAT SIX WAYS IS THE GOVERNMENT IMPORTANT AS AN INSTITUTION?
 
https://www.quora.com/What-six-ways-is-the-government-important-as-an-institution/answer/Vince-Dhimos
 
If you know enough to know that there are exactly 6 ways that government is important, then this is not a legitimate Quora question because you already know -- or think you know -- the answer, whereas the purpose of Quora is to consult experts on issues that you do not know enough about.

On the other hand, it all depends on which government and of which country we are talking about. In other words, whether you mean a legitimate or an illegitimate government. If you mean the US, then the government is a fraud. That is, it is controlled not by the people — as it purports to be — but by a number of agencies that attempt to control the minds of the people and hence, policies that run counter to the people’s interests. It is for this reason that the US is constantly involved in disastrous wars and has a perennially increasing debt burden that will eventually crush the US economy and the world economy.

The following is a list of those agents that illegitimately control — or rather supplant — the “government”:
 
 
Saudi Arabia, working silently in the background to implement the petrodollar agreement (as explained previously at NSS: http://www.newsilkstrategies.com/news--analysis/israel-and-saudi-joined-at-the-hip-and-writing-failed-us-policies)
 
Israel, via AIPAC lobby and ADL and media (AIPAC is an unregistered foreign lobby, operating unregistered in contravention of US law. As detailed here: http://www.newsilkstrategies.com/news--analysis/a-foreign-power-writes-us-legislation-you-ok-with-that)
 
The Corporate Media, which works overtime to foment anti-Russia hate that can lead to war and disastrous economic and financial policies that are bankrupting the country, creating economic bubbles and threatening the world economy.
 
The terminally gullible public that swallows the swill of said Corporate Media
 
The arms manufacturers, via their lobbies (breaking the national bank with runaway defence spending)
 
Big Business (which, together with Wall Street – see below – has blown a stock market bubble that seems to be collapsing at this very moment)
 
Wall Street (which, like Big Business, together with Wall Street – see below – has blown a stock market bubble that seems to be collapsing at this very moment)
 
The Federal Reserve Board, whose policies have led to an irresponsible unpayable debt, galloping inflation and dangerous bubbles, for example, in stocks and housing. The existence of the Fed is in fact unlawful in that Art. 1. Sect. 8 of the Constitution declares that the Congress is to coin currency and determine the value thereof.
 
Opinion-shaping think tanks like the Atlantic Council (the propaganda arm of NATO), the CFR and many others, the vast majority of which have declared Russia a “threat” and condemn the announced pull-out from Syria, never mind that ISIS was on the verge of driving the Syrian army into the sea when the Russian air force arrived just in the nick of time in September 2015. Funny how ISIS had grown so strong despite the valiant efforts of the US Coalition’s War on Terror purportedly waged to eliminate it.
 
Big Religion (which has rammed “Christian” Zionism down the throats of most Evangelicals, who are considered heretics if they fail to embrace it, even though it is clearly non-scriptural. I explained previously at Quorum why this is so https://www.quora.com/Why-does-Israel-support-terrorists-in-Syria/answer/Vince-Dhimos)
 
The gullible followers of the above-mentioned Big Religion who, in the Evangelical community, instead of heeding what their Commander-in-Chief said in Matthew 23:39, send the modern secular Israel the message: you are the Chosen Ones and can do no wrong. We will send you lethal arms with which to kill your neighbours. Never mind the commandment in Leviticus, in your scriptures, to love God with all your heart and all your mind and all your soul and to love your neighbour as yourself. We mega-church goers decide who goes to heaven and who does not. So is he Catholic Church less belligerent in this regard? No. The Pope has called the Putin-Assad alliance “dangerous” (without specifying why) but has never criticised the Saudi-US alliance. Assad is the most Christian-friendly Muslim leader in the world, while Christian worship (even in the private of one’s home!) is banned in Saudi. Further discussion here.  
 
The White House and its bully pulpit, which – via the msm – constantly supports disastrous warlike foreign policies and disastrous economic policies that widen the gap between rich and poor and lead to even deeper debt. Even though the president is elected by the people, the choice of candidate is completely out of the people's hands, controlled as it is by the groups on this list.
 
The Congress and Senate, which likewise spread propaganda – via the msm – that have the same effect as the White House’s policies, persuading voters to accept these bad policies by making them appear rational even though they are insane. Even though the Congress and Sentat are elected by the people, the choice of candidate is completely out of the people's hands, controlled as it is by the groups on this list.
 
The CIA, NSA and other agencies beyond the control of the elected officials, of the public, and of the law
 
Hollywood. Generally, with few exceptions, when a popular US movie includes a scene involving the US armed forces, the bias is positive. For example, in the movie Bird Box, there is a scene with an Iraq war vet who describes how he and his men lovingly escorted an Iraqi man and his son to the local school every day to protect them from terrorist attacks. The vet never even hints at the extreme violence perpetrated by the US that bombed hundreds of thousands of civilians in that country. Sure, there were lots of good men among the US troops in Iraq, but the impression created by the movie is that the US military was only doing good in Iraq.
The Guardian posted a whole article dedicated to the unsavory close ties between Hollywood and the US military.
 
The sad thing about this story is that Americans are almost fully absorbed in a left-right tug of war, with conservatives blaming liberals for the loss of their republic “of the people, by the people and for the people,” and liberals and Neocons blaming conservatives for the loss of their “democracy.” Democrats and Neocons alike blame Russia, their favourite whipping boy, for their loss. Yet if they were correct that Russia was able to influence Americans to vote for the conservative candidates that they fear and hate so passionately, then their fellow Americans would have to be the most weak-minded people on the planet, allowing an “enemy” to capture their minds almost completely using God knows what sort of dirty tricks and sinister mind control methods. If this kind of mind control is possible, then the US public must be the most gullible people on the planet, vulnerable to the wiles of these clever Russians. But if they are so weak minded and easily captured by an enemy, what chances does the US have of survival? Slim to none, wouldn’t you say? So would such dimwits even be worth saving?
 
On the other hand, according to this conspiracy theory, the conservatives as a group would be collectively traitors willing to sell out their country – an outlandish theory.
 
In fact, this scenario would mean that the Russians have sinister plans for everyone.
 
But what would Russia want with such a bunch of losers on their hands? How would they administer this motley bunch of simpletons who are so easily deceived?
 
Further, if we analyse all the instances of “Russian aggression,” we clearly see that in each case – South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Ukraine, Syria. Crimea – the Russians were invited to aid a group of vulnerable people who had begged Russia for protection. Even in the case of Chechnya, there were ethnic Russians who were being harmed by terrorists.  If Russia really wanted to take over Ukraine, as some claim they do, then given the superiority of Russian weapons, Russia would have been able to do so. It would be like taking candy from a baby. But they aren’t snatching up the candy, are they? Thus there is something terribly wrong with the theory held by Neocons, the Democrats, NATO, the Theresa May government and the Balkan states hysterical over the possibility of a Russian invasion.

The only possible answer is simple. This theory exists solely in the mind of its creators.
 
So what is the solution? Simply stop the hysteria, fomented by the press and by ambitious unscrupulous politicians, and wind down the rudeness, and then sit down with the Russians, who want to be friends, or at least partners, and talk, with respect, the kind of respect they have always shown toward the wayward obnoxious West.
 
Working together, we can solve the problems the US has always pretended could never be solved, notably the Israel-Arab conflicts and the terror problem. Iran is another bugaboo partly invented by the West. And it is clear which side refuses to budge. Iran has held out the olive branch to the Saudis but the latter refuse to talk. If the US and Russia both prevailed upon Saudi and Israel to stop being stubborn, they would both eventually come around. The danger of an Iran-Israel conflict would be neutralized in short order. The refusal of these two nations to budge is due almost exclusively to their confidence that the US will always stand by them, no matter how many unarmed Palestinians Israel kills or how many Yemeni citizens Saudi bombs. Or for that matter, how many journalists Saudi saws up.
 
The standoff could end tomorrow if only one world power could stop pretending – and that is all it is – pretending, that the other world power is the aggressor and needs to be kept in its place by threatening it with NATO ships and planes and slapping it with sanctions designed to impoverish its people and deny them much needed medicines.
 
But you, dear reader, must insist on it. Otherwise, the Russian military industrial complex will keep cranking out novel weapons that can neutralize the Pentagon and the US will keep shrinking back, shaking in its boots, while pretending it is tougher than Russia and can keep everyone safe by issuing empty threats and provoking the arguably most powerful nuclear power in the world.
 
Does this policy make sense to you? If not, then stop buying the fairy tales and start demanding a major change. 2019 could be the year that peace emerges on planet earth. Or it could be the last year of earth’s existence.
 
It’s up to all of us. We decide. But only if we can do it together.

Vince Dhimos answered a question on Quora at:
 
All Ukrainian signs, government documents and schools use only Ukrainian language, does this cause trouble for the large number of Russian-speaking residents in Ukraine?
 
I had a bit of a dust-up with Glenn Anderson, a Peace Corps volunteer in Lvov (Lviv), Ukraine, who answered the above question saying that governments in other countries – he used China and US as examples – do not post street signs in languages other than the majority languages used in those countries. I pointed out that Russian has been spoken in Ukraine for many years, alongside Ukrainian and that the new law banning the use of Russian was a provocation.
 
I reminded him that in China’s Xinjiang Province, street signs are written in both Chinese and Uyghur and that in the US, street signs in areas with a high concentration of certain ethnic groups, are written in the pertinent languages as well as English.
 
He responded as follows:

BEGIN GLENN
 
I do seem to attract Russian employees from the Internet Research Agency to my posts.

I’ve been fighting this anti-Ukrainian propaganda for a while. Believe me Vince there is nothing original about your pro-Putin screed.
Straight from the talking points.
 

END GLENN


I checked out Glenn’s posting recorde at Quora and found that he often accuses people who disagree with him of being paid members of Russian troll factories. He also suggests that Quora should censor those who disagree with him. I responded as follows [redacted]:
 
You are suggesting to readers that only a person paid to support the Russian viewpoint could possibly support it.
 
Ok, so what are the Russian propagandists telling us in their English language online publications like Sputnik and RT?
 
The Russians support, for example, the following views:
 
That the US invasion of Iraq, now universally recognized as disastrous and wrong, was disastrous and wrong;
 
That NATO’s invasion of Kosovo, now generally accepted as wrong, was wrong because it was based on the accusation that Serbia committed egregious offenses against the Kosovars, whereas the UN’s Carla del Ponte determined post-war that the Kosovars were committing even more egregious crimes (eg, organ harvesting) than those that the Serbs had been accused of;
 
That the US’ intervention in Ukraine led to the impoverishment of that country, as we all know now since the IMF reported that Ukraine is the poorest country in Europe (the IMF blames this poverty on corruption, not on the Russians);
 
That the US’s involvement in Syria was illegal because the US was not invited — as everyone knows;
 
That the killing of Ghadaffi was a horrible mistake that has plunged Libya into chaos and terror — as is now generally recognized.
 
That Russia now has electronic warfare systems that can disable the operation of an enemy aircraft, as confirmed by US Special Operations commander Gen. Raymond Thomas, who complained that his EC-130 recon aircraft are being disabled over Syria.
 
That Russia has weapons that cannot be overcome (such as its Avangard nuclear capable glide missile that can fly at 27 Mach in a zigzag trajectory and cannot be intercepted by any known means), as confirmed by CFR President Richard Haass in his paper titled How a World Order Ends, which states that Russia cannot be defeated.
 
Now since these viewpoints are all generally recognized by good people everywhere, does this mean that all good people are paid by the Russian government to have these opinions? BTW, did I suggest or state that I thought I was trying to be original? Common sense is never original. It is an inherent trait of humanity that, sadly, we are losing, thanks to the Elites who control our minds via the msm, political entities, think tanks, lobbies, Russophobic trolls (there are none of those here, of course), etc. I would remind the readers (not Glenn, whose mind is made up) that the worm is turning as we write. The Elites are now starting to admit that the US cannot defeat Russia. This was brought about by a series of factors, all related to Russia, and not determined by paying anyone, including the EW systems in Syria that Gen. Raymond Thomas admitted were disabling the operation of his aircraft. Did the Russians pay Gen. Thomas to admit this? Recently, as mentioned above, CFR president Richard Haass wrote an article titled How a World Order Ends in which he states that the US cannot defeat Russia and that the US must dialogue with that country. He was obviously drawing the correct conclusion from the fact that Russia now has missiles that cannot be intercepted by any known means and can destroy the US. Should we allow the Neocons/Neoliberals in charge of the Pentagon and State Department to challenge Russia to a war that the US cannot win? If you agree that we should not, does this necessarily mean that you are being paid by Russia to have this opinion? Some people seem to think so.
 
Now think really hard, Folks, and answer this question in your own minds: Did the Russians pay Mr. Haass to write this article postulating that the US-dominated world order is ending? Haass even used a term that Putin made famous in his Munich speech of 2007, ie, “multipolar world.” Is Haass a Kremlin plant? He used to be a run-of-the-mill Neocon. What has happened?
 
Is Russia buying out the entire US Elite?
 
Is common sense now a proprietary mental process of the Russian Federation?
 
Of does common sense predate Russia?
 
If common sense predates Russia, then why would any intelligent person accuse people who have common sense of being paid by Russia to have it?
 
Could it be that these accusers are being paid by someone? Just saying.

The above video, from Ria Novosti, portrays the Pantsir system in action. The Pantsir is the weapon of choice for Russia and Syria to deal with incoming cruise missiles. It uses two arms to shoot down the missiles at relatively close range, namely, cannons and small guided missiles. Both fire systems are extremely accurate. The system downed 14 of the 16 missiles fired by the Israelis from Lebanese air space, which Israel invades frequently, illegally and with impunity, since the US supports everything Israel does, for 2 reasons: the powerful lobby AIPAC and the cult of “Christian” Zionism that dominates the Evangelical community in the US, as detailed here. (The Bible is not the problem, it’s the misreading of it that has led to the Evangelical community’s blind support for the secular state of Israel and its crimes, such as the IDF’s shoot-to-kill order against unarmed protesters).
 
Commentary and [notes in square brackets] by Vince Dhimos.
 
Our translation of an article from rusnext.ru provides details on the latest Israeli attack on Syria that are hard to find in the Western media and sheds light on what we might expect in the Middle East next now that the US has promised to pull out of Syria.
 
The author reminds us that Netanyahu is under investigation for corruption, like his predecessor Ehud Olmert (who was jailed). He is in the same position as Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko, both of whom are leading their nations into dangerous warlike moves intended to garner points for them in an election they are not likely to win.
 
The article in rusnext.ru is a rather accurate translation from raialyoum.com, an alternative news source in Arabic that publishes from London. According to Wikipedia, raialyoum editor Abdel Bari Atwan has been repeatedly censored “in several Arab countries for his vocal criticism of what the paper alleges is their autocratic rule and excessive deference to Israel and the United States.”
 
When reading news from outlets in Saudi Arabia, the Gulf statelets or Jordan, or others controlled by pro-US editors (such as the rabidly anti-Assad Syrian Observatory for Human Rights) you need to be aware that the viewpoint and the sorting of news items to be covered may be influenced by the alignment of these countries with the US government, and the viewpoint purveyed in these sources will likely be intended to sway the reader to support US-backed “moderate” terrorists and US wars. Typically, these outlets omit any report on the progress of the anti-terror efforts in Syria. This is obviously because most such reports would reveal that there still are large pockets of ISIS left in Syria (at variance with the US story that “we have defeated ISIS”), and that Russia and Assad (not the US) are winning against the terrorists. Also generally omitted are reports of the murder of unarmed protesters in Palestine by the out-of-control IDF and the Israeli missile attacks on sovereign Syrian territory. All of which make the US and its allies look bad.
 
Middle East Sources that are reasonably objective and do not eschew news items on the war in Syria and Yemen, or on Saudi or Israeli atrocities, include the following:
 
Southfront
 
 Al Masdar
 
 Middle East Eye
 
EJ Magnier
 
and for insight into the real Syria on the ground check out this video site:
 
Syriana Analysis
 
 
 
 BEGIN TRANSLATION
 
Source: http://rusnext.ru/news/1545986041
 
Arab media:
 
judging by Russia’s furious reaction, the Israeli air strike at 11:34 on 12/28/2018, we can’t rule out the possibility that the Israeli missile attack, which on Tuesday evening hit a military warehouse to the west of Damascus, injuring three people, is the very last Israeli attack on Syria, given the response of Russia and Syria and the possible consequences of another such strike in the future, writes raialyoum.com. Before detailing our point of view, it should be noted that the F-16 aircraft launched these missiles during a flight in Lebanese airspace. They did not dare to penetrate the Syrian airspace, as they had done before, ie, before the Syrian Arab Army had received Russian S-300 missiles. Perhaps the next step will be to counter these aircraft in Lebanese airspace. There are three important circumstances that should be noted in connection with what happened.
 
14 of 16: The Ministry of Defense reported the number of intercepted Israeli missiles.
 
Firstly, there is Russian discontent, which was expressed by the official representative of the Russian Ministry of Defence of Russia Igor Konashenkov. As he put it, this is a “provocative violation” of Syrian sovereignty. The statement said that Israeli aircraft fired 16 missiles, 14 of which were intercepted, and the other two hit the target - a military depot. Konashenkov confirmed – and this is very important – that this bombardment coincided with the landing of six civilian aircraft at Beirut International Airport and threatened the safety of two of them.
 
Secondly, the Israeli military leadership acknowledged a strike by a Syrian missile near the city of Haifa, which reveals the ineffectiveness of the Israeli iron domes, which were built at a cost of tens of billions of dollars with the support of the United States.
 
Thirdly, there has been significant progress in terms of the effectiveness and accuracy of Syrian anti-aircraft missiles, since the Russian military representative confirmed the elimination of 14 enemy missiles.
 
Netanyahu, who suffered a major defeat in the Gaza Strip a month ago, is awaiting parliamentary elections in April. A noose of corruption is tightening around his neck, so he wants to restore his reputation and once again present himself to the Israeli electorate as a strong Israeli capable of ensuring his country’s security. Therefore, he defends the missile strike on Syria, which is a provocation not only for the Syrian leadership, but for President Vladimir Putin personally. It is true that the Israeli invasion of Lebanese airspace and its threat to air traffic at the Beirut airport did not harm Russian or other aircraft. However, this hands a weighty political and diplomatic excuse to the Lebanese government and its chairman, Saad Hariri, to appeal to the UN Security Council to discuss the dangerous Israeli step. Will they do it?
 
Israeli attacks on arms depots in the Latakia area near the Khmeimim airbase led to the crash of a Russian spy plane and the death of 11 people on board. President Putin immediately decided to transfer the C-300 air defence system to Syria. He refused to accept Netanyahu, despite all the latter’s fawning requests. This raise the question: what will be the decision of the Russian leadership in connection with this Israeli provocation that caused damage to the Russian reputation in Syria? Will Moscow give a green light to using S-300 missiles to fight Israeli planes not only in Syrian airspace, but also in Lebanon, and, possibly, in the occupied Palestinian territories?
 
At the moment we have no answers to these questions, but the fierce reaction of Russia and how it sounded it can shed light on much of what we learn in the new year and, possibly, in the case of another Israeli missile attack. For the Israeli leadership, the American decision to withdraw all its troops from Syria within two months, despite the fact that the two objectives set before them were not achieved was a fatal blow. The first objective was the final liquidation of the “Islamic State” (banned in the Russian Federation - approx. Ed.) East of the Euphrates, and the second is to force Iran to withdraw its forces and subordinate groups from Syria. American troops in the east of the Euphrates and in northern Syria hampered the supply of pro-Iranian forces in Syria, and their withdrawal means the disappearance of this obstacle and the opening of the road from Mazar-i-Sharif in Afghanistan through Iraq, Syria and Lebanon to the shores of the Mediterranean. It would not be an exaggeration to say that this blow may be Netanyahu’s last shot before he finds himself where his predecessor Ehud Olmert is now, that is, in prison [actually, Olmert was released in 2017]. Even if he avoids this fate, his chances of winning the next parliamentary elections seem insignificant. Will the Israelis elect a leader who lost in the Gaza Strip and whose theatrical production around Hezbollah tunnels in southern Lebanon was exposed when the UN Security Council did not issue a single statement on this issue? Will they choose a leader in which the Jewish state lost the support of Russia? Netanyahu’s days are numbered, and we do not think that the situation for his successors will be better: the time when Israel could show its military arrogance has passed and will not return, and in the new year we will see this.

END TRANSLATION

​The video linked above, reposted from Russian site FAN by Jewish Telegraph Agency, shows a march in Kiev featuring an oversize poster with the face of Hitler collaborator Stepan Bandera. The marchers are said to be chanting “Jews out” in German. It is incredible that, some 75 years after Hitler’s defeat in WW II, Europe and America would be supporting a regime tainted with Nazism. Franz Kafka could have written the play book.
 
Vince Dhimos

I answered a question at Quora.
 
I tend to write quickly on Quora and do not provide as many links as I do on New Silk Strategies. Therefore, I am adding a bibliography below to fill in any missing details:
 
Who Provoked whom in Ukraine, by Pat Buchanan
https://www.unionleader.com/opinion/columnists/pat-buchanan-who-provoked-whom-in-ukraine/article_c61be6b0-5e2b-597d-8dd1-b5566431f485.html
 
While Neocon/Neoliberal anti-Russian hawks insist that there is no ban on Russian language in Ukraine, even the Voice of America admits there is: https://www.jta.org/2017/01/03/global/ukrainian-marchers-in-kiev-chant-jews-out
 
Critics Blast Lviv [also written Lvov] Ban on Russian Language, Culture
https://www.rferl.org/a/critics-blast-lviv-ban-on-russian-language-culture/29500756.html
 
 
I was specifically responding to a respondent who tried to compare Ukraine, where a veritable language-centred war rages, with China and the US, claiming these countries do not have street signs in languages other than Chinese and English, respectively. He was wrong, of course, as anyone who has visited a large China-town or Hispanic-majority urban site in the US knows. This respondent’s Quora record shows he is extremely combative, accusing people who disagree with him of being trolls and suggesting that Quora should ban their writings. This is the kind of person who fits in perfectly with the US-backed Ukrainian regime minions. He is a Peace Corps volunteer stationed in Lviv.
 
The Quora URL:
 
https://www.quora.com/All-Ukrainian-signs-government-documents-and-schools-use-only-Ukrainian-language-does-this-cause-trouble-for-the-large-number-of-Russian-speaking-residents-in-Ukraine
 
All Ukrainian signs, government documents and schools use only Ukrainian language, does this cause trouble for the large number of Russian-speaking residents in Ukraine?
 
Vince Dhimos
 
28m ago
 
It is hopelessly simplistic to compare Ukraine with the US or China.
 
China, the US and other countries with very large populations of other ethnicities normally do post street signs in the pertinent languages depending on demographics of the area in question. You can see signs in Spanish and Chinese in areas of the US with majorities of those ethnicities.
 
The new language law banning Russian in Ukraine shortly after the illegal and violent US-backed coup in Kiev was one of the main reasons Donbass refused to go along with this obvious provocation. Russian has been spoken as a second language even in Kiev for many years and Ukrainians were used to having their laws, street signs and public education in both Russian and Ukrainian. Laws banning the official use of Russian are nothing but a provocation, based on encouragement by the US, which is wrongly believed to be willing and able to use its military to support provocations in Ukraine. The Kerch Strait incident shows the US has no intentions of intervening militarily, even though it will send token amounts of lethal arms to Ukraine to maintain a semblance of support.
 
This whole anti-Russian movement, supported by Ukrainian fascists such as the Pravy Sektor and the Azov Battalion and the revival of fascist symbols like Hitler collaborator Stepan Bandera is what is causing much of the fuss and has led to the separatist movement. It is a demand made in response to US demands to provoke the Russian speakers. Bullying is NOT the solution. BTW, Lviv is probably the most anti-Russian area in Ukraine. There are attacks on people who dare to speak Russian on the street and there are attacks on Russian Orthodox property, as reported by the Church’s Department for External Church Relations Department for External Church Relations. Click on the link to see a photo of the burned out church. Remember that the US has also indirectly supported such anti-Orthodox vandalism in Kosovo, where it is widespread. See our article on Kosovo church desecration here.
 
This language law is pure KKK-type ethnic bias and has no place in a civilized country. Here is a headline to ponder:
 
Ukrainian region bans Russian language songs, films, books… and more
 
The US-backed Ukraine regime is defending an indefensible policy and it is already backfiring. The US will support you with lip service but will not go up against Russia militarily and that is where they will lose this silly game. The Russia-baiting Poroshenko has only 11% approval, and that shows where all this fascist nonsense can lead to.

From The Guardian. Why is Putin so happy and everyone else so glum?
 

​On December 17, 2018, foreign minister Sergey Lavrov held an interview with Radio Komsomolskaya Pravda.
                 
In this long (ca 10,000 word) interview, linked above, in an excellent Kremlin-made translation, Lavrov was asked some hard questions, mostly about why the foreign ministry did not get tougher on various western agencies and why the Russian delegations don’t just walk out of certain international organizations where they are ignored and have no voting rights. It was reminiscent of how the democrats and Neocons criticise Trump for not getting tougher on the Russians. Indeed a lot of Russians (as well as pro-Russian Westerners, like Paul Craig Roberts) level this kind of criticism at the RF government, targeting Putin, Lavrov and others. (Western critics who do this reveal more about their ignorance of the Russian mind-set than about the Russian government.)
 
The interview was revealing from 2 standpoints:
 
1) It gave Lavrov an opportunity to explain from a diplomat’s standpoint why Russian diplomats need to be patient with their boorish counterparts in the US and treat them with more respect than they deserve, and also to explain why Russia needs to retain its membership in international organizations that allow it little or no meaningful participation. Basically, this is because leaving the organization completely cuts off the Russians’ ability to have any influence at all on their adversaries.
 
2) It gave the lie to Western accusations that Russia lacks freedom of the press. In fact, a comparison of Russian press freedom with US press freedom reveals some surprising facts.
 
We checked out interviews with US news outlets and Mike Pompeo, for example, and found none of the hardball tactics of the kind on display in the Komsomolskaya Pravda-Lavrov interview. In an interview reported by Voice of America, for example, Greta van Susteren, focusing mostly on the caravan of immigrants from Honduras, was very gentle on Pompeo and did not ask him anything controversial.
 
In another interview on Fox and Friends, Pompeo was asked innocuous questions on China, illegal immigration and terror. On the other hand, Steve and friends really gave Pompeo a hard time over his tolerant posture on the murder of Jamal Kashoggi, presumably on orders from Saudi crown prince MBS.
 
Yes, this was a tough interview and Pompeo kept dodging the question. However, it was decades too late to question Saudi-US relations. The Kashoggi murder was the tip of the iceberg. The Saudis have been murdering Houthis in Yemen from the air for years, using US arms and even receiving refuelling thanks to the US Air Force (which kindly declined to bill SA for the service). The Saudis are also a major factor in the Wahhabist Sunni terror that has been ravaging the Middle East for decades. After all, Wahhabism originated in Saudi, where it is the dominant religious sect, and has provided the ideological foundation for ISIS, Al-Qaeda and other jihadist terror groups. Yet no major news purveyor dares to question why the US supports this infamous entity.
 
Thus, while Fox did manage to throw Pompeo a hard ball in this interview, it was the wrong hardball, addressing a very secondary issue in the grand scheme of geopolitics.
 
The big issue here is the fact that the US has always favoured the Saudis and ignored their barbarian behaviour, at least ever since President Nixon concluded what I call the petrodollar agreement with King Faisal in 1973, which essentially made the US military a mercenary force in the hire of the Saudis. I have posted both here at New Silk Strategies and at Quora a common sense explanation of the relationship between this petrodollar agreement and  US military policy since the conclusion of the agreement in 1973. Naturally, no news outlets, including of course, Fox News, and no US politician has ever touched upon the relationship between the coddling of the Saudis and the US Wars waged against Saudi enemies who were, however, in no way enemies of the American people. And let’s face it: refusing to cover critical areas in news reporting is censorship and has no place in a republic claiming to be of the people, by the people and for the people.
 
Now you may recall that, when Putin met MBS at the G20 summit, he high-fived the prince, grinning from ear to ear. Western Neocons/Neoliberals predictably commented that the two leaders were kindred spirits because they were both murderers, and reminded the readers for the umpteenth time that Putin had supposedly ordered the poisoning of Sergey Skripal and his daughter Yulia. But this commentator needs reminding that no link between this poisoning and the Russian Federation was ever established and that the MI6 would have had all the motive in the world to perpetrate the murder – in order to frame Russia – while Russia certainly did not need another sanction slapped on it.  The UK government said it was “highly likely” that Russia had ordered the poisoning, just as the West had declared it highly likely that the Russians had shot down Malaysian flight MH-17 over eastern Ukraine, although that was not at all likely since Russia had no motive for doing this, while Ukraine had every reason to do so and lay the blame on Russia. Further, the shoot-down was done with a Buk, with which Ukraine’s arsenal bristles. Lavrov likes to repeat this phrase “highly likely” derisively, even when speaking Russian.
 
But getting back to Putin’s overly friendly greeting for MBS, the big story regarding Saudi has always been its exclusive use of the US dollar in international oil trade and its keeping all reserves in Treasuries – whereas from the Russian and BRICS standpoint, the story is how to persuade Saudi to wean itself off the dollar and start using non-dollar currencies such as the rouble or the yuan, or even the euro, in its oil trade. This desire to bring Saudi over to its side would explain why Putin wants to be friends with MBS, and this critical juncture, with the US Senate condemning MBS for his suspected involvement in the Kashoggi murder and the shunning of MBS by most Western leaders at the G20, is the obvious time for Putin to turn on the charm to an isolated MBS, who would be emotionally vulnerable to any friendly gesture at this summit. Hence Putin’s big friendly grin and high five. Yet all msm commentaries remained on the superficial level, never mentioning the fact that Putin was trying to win MBS over to his (and China’s) side in the geopolitical chess match, and particularly the de-dollarization effort.
 
This issue is really key, even more so than the military issues in Syria. Once the dollar is unseated as the world reserve currency, the US is just a step away from losing its ability to lash out with sanctions at insubordinates. The world would be infinitely more economically and politically secure and the sovereignty of nations would be greatly enhanced in such a multipolar world. But the msm never even grazed this issue. CNN's political analyst for example, made it all about Trump, who, as Russia knows, is irrelevant in this and most other geopolitical contexts.
 
Newsweek also completely failed to see beneath the surface, making the Putin-MBS high-five about morality – as if US msm had ever condemned Saudi for its central role in ISIS and Al-Qaeda terror and in the slaughter of innocent civilians in Yemen. As if the US, including the Senate – which has always embraced Saudi wholeheartedly and even aided and abetted it throughout its long bloody history in the Middle East, and had in the decades since the 70s, been party to the slaughter of a half-million civilians in different countries without being able to articulate why – had been the moral standard bearer all along!

Vince Dhimos answered the question on Quora: Is China a bigger threat to Western democracy than Russia?
 
Quora: https://www.quora.com/Is-China-a-bigger-threat-to-the-western-democracy-than-Russia/answer/Vince-Dhimos
 
Answer:

False question. There is no such thing as democracy in the West and there is therefore no way either Russia or China could threaten said democracy. (The US is ruled by state and non-state agents beyond the control of the US people).

Here is a list of agents (the Shadow Government) who rule the US, ignoring and defying the will of the people:
 
 
Saudi Arabia, working silently in the background to implement the petrodollar agreement, foisting disastrous foreign policies and wars on the US (as explained previously at Quora: https://www.quora.com/What-were-the-US-and-Wests-interests-for-the-removal-of-Mr-Bashar-al-Assad-and-the-funding-and-arming-of-the-groups-that-opposed-him)
 
Israel, via AIPAC lobby and ADL and media (AIPAC is an unregistered foreign lobby, operating unregistered in contravention of US law to induce lawmakers and presidents to support Israeli policy, including the shoot to kill policy against unarmed protesters— see Big Religion below)
 
The Corporate Media, which works overtime to foment anti-Russia hate that can lead to war and disastrous economic and financial policies that are bankrupting the country, creating economic bubbles and threatening the world economy.
 
The terminally gullible public that swallows the swill of said Corporate Media and tacitly accepts the interference of AIPAC in the government. You need to understand that the so-called "Deep State," or Corporate America, could not survive another day without the support of indoctrinated Americans.
 
The arms manufacturers, via their lobbies (breaking the national bank with runaway defence spending)
 
Big Business (which, together with Wall Street – see below – has blown a stock market bubble that seems to be collapsing at this very moment)
 
Wall Street (which, like Big Business, together with Wall Street – see below – has blown a stock market bubble that seems to be collapsing at this very moment)
 
The Federal Reserve Board (whose policies have led to an irresponsible unpayable debt, galloping inflation and dangerous bubbles, for example, in stocks and housing)
 
Opinion-shaping think tanks like the Atlantic Council (the propaganda arm of NATO), the CFR and many others, the vast majority of which have declared Russia a “threat” and condemn the announced pull-out from Syria, never mind that ISIS was on the verge of driving the Syrian army into the sea when the Russian air force arrived just in the nick of time in September 2015. Funny how ISIS had grown so strong despite the valiant efforts of the US Coalition’s War on Terror purportedly waged to eliminate it.
 
Big Religion (which has rammed “Christian” Zionism down the throats of most Evangelicals, who are considered heretics if they fail to embrace it, even though it is clearly non-scriptural. I explained previously at Quorum why this is so https://www.quora.com/Why-does-Israel-support-terrorists-in-Syria/answer/Vince-Dhimos)
 
The gullible followers of the above-mentioned Big Religion who, in the Evangelical community, instead of heeding what their Commander-in-Chief said in Matthew 23:39, send the modern secular Israel the message: you are the Chosen Ones and can do no wrong. We will send you lethal arms with which to kill your neighbours. Never mind the commandment in Leviticus, in your own scriptures, to love God with all your heart and all your mind and all your soul and to love your neighbour as yourself. We mega-church goers decide who goes to heaven and who does not.
​So is the Catholic Church helpful in this regard? No. The pope has called the Putin-Assad alliance “dangerous” (without specifying why) but has never criticised the Saudi-US alliance. Assad is the most Christian-friendly Muslim leader in the world, while Christian worship (even in the private of one’s home!) is banned in Saudi. The pope is simply rubbr-stamping US foreign policy. Further discussion here.  
 
The White House and its bully pulpit, which – via the msm – constantly supports disastrous warlike foreign policies and disastrous economic policies that widen the gap between rich and poor
 
The Congress and Senate, which likewise spread propaganda – via the msm – that have the same effect as the White House’s pronouncements, persuading voters to accept these bad policies by making them appear rational even though they are insane
 
The CIA, NSA and other agencies beyond the control of the elected officials, of the public, and of the law.

Hollywood. Generally, with few exceptions, when a popular US movie includes a scene involving the US armed forces, the bias is positive. For example, in the movie Bird Box, there is a scene of an Iraqi war vet who decribes how he and his men lovingly escorted an Iraqi man and his son to the local school every day to protect them from terrorist attacks. The vet never even hints at the extreme violence perpetrated by the US that bombed hundreds of thousands of civilians in that country. Sure, there were lots of good men among the US troops in Iraq, but the impression created by the movie is that the US military was only doing good in Iraq. There is a whole article dedicated to the close ties between Hollywood and the US military. ​https://www.theguardian.com/film/2009/jul/06/us-military-hollywood

The first above video, from nuwan.net shows the NATO bombing of the Grdelica bridge in the NATO war against Serbia. The footage stops just before the train is deliberately hit by the NATO bomb. 14 were killed in this senseless slaughter from the air. NATO claims it was an accident. The second video, from annatar, is for those who wish to learn the history of the NATO crimes against Serbia. It is mind-boggling that anyone anywhere still wants their country to be part of NATO after the devastation they caused in Europe. It's ok to cry...

 

Our translation from eadaily.com/ru with a commentary [and notes in square brackets] by Vince Dhimos follows.
 
About 13.5 thousand people were killed or went missing during the NATO war against Serbia known as the Kosovo war. It was apparently fought for no other reason than to punish the Serbian Orthodox for their brotherly association with the Russian Christians and for daring to fight back against the ethnic Albanian terrorists in Kosovo.
 
Just imagine if Russia had had at that time the military power it has today. Probably none of the urban devastation would have happened and Serbia would still be intact. Today, almost every one of the ancient churches in Kosovo, the cradle of Serbian Christianity, has been either destroyed or badly damaged by the Muslim terrorists who now rampage in that region. Ethnic Serbs are persecuted and live precariously. The Muslim terrorists enjoy the full protection of NATO, the US and the EU.
 
Here is a report on some of the destruction of Serbian churches since the war:
http://www.spc.rs/eng/list_churches_destroyed_kosovo_and_metohija_thus_far_mar_1719_2004_death_serbs
 
QUOTE:

“Together with the 112 churches already destroyed or heavily damaged since the beginning of the UNMIK "peace mission" in June 1999, over 130 Orthodox holy shrines in Kosovo and Metohija have been destroyed or demolished.”
 
Now, to make matters worse, the Muslims in the self-proclaimed Republic of Kosovo want their own army, which will threaten the rest of Christian Serbia. Will the Russians help this time?
 
They will if invited. Russia does not invade countries – despite Western lies to the contrary.
 
Dear Reader, you saw how GW Bush’s war in Iraq led to the banishment, persecution and murder of the Assyrian Christians who had lived in relative peace with their Muslim neighbours for millennia. And you saw how the US-instigated wars in Iraq, Syria and Libya led not only to more persecution and death of Middle Eastern Christians and other minorities, but also to the mass migration of Muslims, many of them radical Islamists, to Europe, where they dilute and displace Christian culture and are allowed special privileges to impose their own culture, aided by local governments. This should raise all kinds of red flags as to the true intentions of the bipartisan US elitists who instigate and wage the wars in the Middle East and elsewhere and who govern the entire West. Yet, the absurd notion that this can all be changed by voting for one of the parties that wreaked this havoc in your lives, or that a member of the elite class and oligarchy can save the world still prevails. The fact is, without Russia’s intervention, starting in September 2015, there would have been no significant change in US and NATO policies anywhere. At that time, despite the phony "War on Terror," ISIS was about to drive the Syrian army into the sea. Without Russia, Syria would be inundated with ISIS head choppers and the US military would be saying it is unfortunately unable to stop them but “we are trying,” just as they now say about Afghanistan.
 
We have shown here that the very elites who brought on the destruction have been the ones to recognize the superiority of Russian power and have warned that it is well past time to negotiate instead of constantly provoking the Russians with sanctions and negative press.
 
 
BEGIN TRANSLATION
 
Viktor Kolbanovsky
 
Serbia needs a Russian military contingent
 
Russian military presence in Serbia will prevent military escalation of the conflict in Kosovo
 
The fact that the situation in the Balkans was included in the agenda of the December 17 meeting of the Security Council of the Russian Federation indicates that this region is a focus of Russian national security interests. In addition to the military-political problems associated with the expansion of NATO in the Balkans, the likely military exacerbation of the Kosovo conflict will lead to massive refugee flows, a sharp increase in the activity of terrorist and extremist groups, as well as increased drug trafficking. In provoking the bloody chaos in the Balkans, which threatens to collapse the EU itself, the Americans obviously aim to teach a lesson to their own European allies, who do not always follow the American course, and establish their position as a continental gendarme of Europe. But for Moscow, for which many European countries still remain economically important partners, such a scenario is completely unacceptable. Therefore, the Kosovo conflict now holds a special place in the sphere of the interests of the Russian Federation’s national security.
 
Adopted under the auspices of the United States in Pristina on December 14 this year, the decision to transform the Kosovo Security Forces into a fully-fledged Kosovo “army” essentially throws the military exacerbation of the Kosovo conflict into high gear. However, it is still possible to prevent a direct clash of the Serbian military with the Kosovo Albanians. This will require the creation of military-strategic parity, in which any armed provocations of Kosovo-Albanian separatists will be dealt a crushing retaliatory strike by the Serbian army. The main problem lies in the American military aid to Pristina [capital of the self-proclaimed Republic of Kosovo], as well as the possibility of direct intervention in the conflict by the NATO military group on the side of the Kosovo Albanians, as already occurred in 1999. In this scenario, the Serbian army will not be able to cope with the military tasks assigned to it to defend the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the state. However, there is a way out of this dangerous situation that will minimize the likelihood of direct military intervention by the United States and NATO in a possible regional conflict.
 
This approach would be to deploy a Russian military contingent on the territory of central Serbia, to provide operational control of the situation and assistance to the Serbian military in the modernization and technical re-equipment of the country's armed forces. To date, the American military base Bondsteel, located on the occupied Serbian territory, has actually become the training centre for the shock fist of the Kosovo Albanians. A Russian military presence would be able to ensure parity in Serbia and the region, so that the incitement of military provocations with proxy [Muslim] Kosovo-Albanian separatists by the US and NATO would have negative consequences for the warmongers themselves. Creating a military balance in Serbia is necessary as a starting point for the further de-escalation of the Kosovo conflict, and for the protection of Serbian citizens living in the occupied territories [the Russian author is referring to Serbian territory actually occupied by the US and NATO. This will sound odd to Westerners who have been indoctrinated to think of NATO as an ally of the Serbs rather than an occupier, but indeed, it is occupation and it is dangerous to the interests of Serbs].
 
Currently, the EU foreign service with the support of the United States and NATO insists that the Serbian leadership sign a so-called “agreement on a general normalization of relations” with Pristina, which would become the basis for accepting a self-proclaimed Kosovo to NATO, the UN and other international organizations. The movement in Belgrade in the wake of Western demands is causes a split in Serbian society and great dissatisfaction in the Serbian Orthodox Church. The thousands of processions that took place in Belgrade on December 8 and 15 of this year clearly demonstrate that the social conflict in Serbia has turned into open forms of civil protest.
 
All these Serbian domestic political circumstances are an unfavourable backdrop for the visit of the Russian President to Serbia, on which official Belgrade actively insists. However, in the current situation, a coordinated reboot may occur if Belgrade decisively refuses to sign any kind of separate deals with Kosovo Albanians and requests Moscow to provide military assistance, including the deployment of Russian troops in Serbia to ensure the security of the country and the region.
 
Victor Kolbanovsky

Vince Dhimos answered a question in Spanish at Quora. Our translation below.
 
V. Dhimos on Quora:
 
What do you think of the current situation of Jerusalem and the fact that Trump recognizes it as the capital of Israel?
 
https://es.quora.com/Qu%C3%A9-opinas-de-la-situaci%C3%B3n-actual-de-Jerusal%C3%A9n-y-el-hecho-de-que-Trump-la-reconociera-como-capital-de-Israel/answer/Gonzalo-Perez-9/comment/80795364
 
BEGIN TRANSLATION
 
There are two important reasons why Trump – along with every other US president – is pro-Israel.
 
1 - AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby that operates illegally in the US. All foreign lobbies are required by law to register as foreign lobbies with the US government. But the entire US government, including Congress, the Senate, the White House and all bureaucracies have great fear of AIPAC and do not dare to enforce the law to force this organization to register as a foreign lobby. Thus, the American public is led to believe that the lobby is not foreign. Almost all presidents have been elected thanks to the campaign donations of AIPAC.
 
According to the law, a nonconnected PAC (political action committee like AIPAC that is not associated with a party) can only make a donation per candidate of $5,000. However, AIPAC bypasses this law by forming subordinate PACs, which then each donate as much as $5,000 to any candidate. Because of this loophole, these scofflaws are able to donate unlimited funds, giving them virtually unlimited power.
 
If a candidate refuses to support Israel if elected, such a candidate almost always loses because AIPAC, in this case, wages an all-out smear campaign against the candidate, investigating his background and exposing anything in his past history that could be construed as offensive, or calling him anti-Semitic. Trump, for example, made a speech before AIPAC and promised to support Israel unconditionally. In effect he was saying that he would support the state even in its crimes, such as shooting unarmed Palestinian protesters, illegally building settlements in Palestine, and launching rocket attacks on Syria. And since Israel (along with Saudi Arabia) considers Iran an enemy, Trump continually said that Iran was a “terror sponsor,” even though this was not true (Iran not only opposed ISIS and Al-Qaeda for religious reasons but in fact sent troops to fight these terrorists in Syria). In fact, the most egregious supporter of terror in the Middle East have always been American “allies” such as Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, which Trump also supports unconditionally. Thus Trump was willing to risk a disastrous war with Iran just to please Israel.
 
2 - “Christian” Zionism. It is estimated that about 80% of all American Evangelicals believe that modern Israel is the Israel prophesied in Ezekiel 37 and therefore believe that God wants them to support this secular state -- even though Jesus never suggested his followers should do this (and even indicated quite the opposite in Matt. 23:39). The vast majority of Evangelicals supported Trump as a candidate and many of them still support him as president because they knew that, of all American presidents, he is the strongest supporter of modern Israel. The problem with Evangelical Zionism is that it is not supported on the actual text of the Bible. Ezekiel 37:24 says:
 
And David my servant shall be king over them; and they all shall have one shepherd: they shall also walk in my judgments, and observe my statutes, and do them.
 
So what is the problem here? The problem is that Ezekiel’s description of the resurrected Israel does not correspond to the real modern Israel in any way at all. Firstly, David is not the king of Israel (in fact, Israel does not have a king, and King David has been dead for millennia). Secondly, according to Haaretz, a Reuters poll shows that 65% of Israelis do not have any religion and therefore could not possibly be “walking according to God’s laws”. American Evangelicals are clearly deceived.
 
However, because these confused people support Trump, he believes that he must do whatever they want, and they want Jerusalem to be the capital of Israel. The problem here is that Jerusalem is also a holy city for the Muslims because it is the site of the al-Aqsa mosque, from where, according to legend, Mohammed rode a black horse to heaven.
 
Like the US Congress, the UN must respect the sovereignty of each member, and therefore cannot recognize only one religion. Thus there is no way the world could ever be forced to accept a religion-based policy regarding Jerusalem or Israel. Trump’s policy is therefore wishful thinking and will not succeed in the long run. But it has already led to bloody conflicts between the Jews and Arabs in Jerusalem and the conflict will not end there.
 
If a war breaks out with Iran, this will be perhaps the most egregious example of a religious war of the kind that has plagued humankind since the beginning of time.

END TRANSLATION

Have you ordered your Putin calendar yet? Amazon has them:

​https://www.amazon.com/Calendar-President-Russia-Vladimir-Putin/dp/B07GXG7FBL

Following is our translation of an article from ria.ru by analyst Ivan Danilov with commentary by Vince Dhimos. Danilov’s article is a commentary on an article by Richard Haass from Foreign Affairs entitled How a World Order Ends.
 
This article will come as a shock for those who recall that Haass worked in GW Bush’s National Security Council and that prior to that, Bush had considered Haass for the post of Secretary of State but that this idea was criticised severely due to a paper Haass had written entitled Rethinking Sovereignty suggesting that national boundaries were superfluous and should be “rethought.” For this reason, Bush voters rightfully thought of Haass as a radical liberal who was out of touch with the real people.
 
This earlier idea was miles removed from the Richard Haass we encounter in the latest article on which Danilov’s commentary is based. Though Danilov’s analysis does not include it, the following quote from Haass’ Foreign Affairs article is a nod to the concept of the multipolar world as enunciated in Putin’s Munich address of 2007:
 
 “From 1815 until the outbreak of World War I a century later, the order established at the Congress of Vienna defined many international relationships and set (even if it often failed to enforce) basic rules for international conduct. It provides a model of how to collectively manage security in a multipolar world.”
 
In this multipolar world that Putin advocates, it is precisely the sovereignties of all nations that are valued. Thus Haass seems to have turned 180 degrees since suggesting “rethinking sovereignty.” I wrote previously at New Silk Strategies:
 
QUOTE:

“Putin was born into a monopolar world and has meanwhile ushered in a multipolar world, a concept referenced since then by the documents of almost all major Western academic and political institutions, eg, the EU, prestigious universities such as Yale, Royal Institute for International Relations, University of Oslo, and many more. A paper by the World Economic Forum has a chapter devoted the Multipolar World. The World Bank has published a document titled ‘Multipolarity: The New Global Economy.’ And so on. Western institutions are giving credit to Putin’s Russia for its creation of the concept of a Multipolar World, even as the politicians of the countries represented by these institutions are still obsessed with “stopping Putin.’” 
 
Now Richard Haass adds his name to the list of distinguished thinkers bowing to Putin.
 
The CFR has long been identified as part of the Deep State. Now, in the Age of Trump, it is perhaps fitting that this group should split with the president over his tenacious insistence on preserving America’s hegemon status. After all, Trump is thought by his acolytes to be embattled by the Deep State.
 
In reality, though, both political parties are equally invested in the maintenance of US power and prestige at all costs, and, as Haass reminds us, the fanatical dedication to the concept of America First by this administration, and also by the rest of the US elites, is actually causing the US to lose power and prestige faster than any outside agency could do. And yet we may not forget that Bush, Clinton and Obama were no less dedicated to the abuse of US power, as witnessed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo and Syria, where the emphasis was less on fighting terror than on taking out governments that failed to bend to American demands and expectations.
 
START TRANSLATION
 
Head of the "factory of American power": we will not defeat Russia
 
Ivan Danilov, author of the blog Crimson Alter
 
When the leader of the most famous, influential, and elite "think tank" of the United States declares that the world order based on American hegemony is dying and cannot be saved, it is worth listening to its position. If the head of the same analytical centre, who became famous for drawing up strategies for the CIA and the State Department, declares that the success of Vladimir Putin in Crimea was a moment of "dramatic failure" of the new world order, then such an analysis should be heeded twice. And the most interesting thing is that the entire leading article, in which the chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations (Richard Haass) outlined all these thoughts, more closely resembles the monologue of a doctor trying to reassure a hysterical patient who has just been informed about a terrible diagnosis.
 
In order to understand how important the addition of such uncharacteristic theses to the American information repository is, it is necessary to briefly recall how the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) differs from other American NGOs. Firstly, this is a very old analytical centre created by the American-British political elite in 1921, under the auspices of the Woodrow Wilson administration. Secondly, the CFR is an organization whose signatory members sometimes could not hide their extremely contemptuous attitude towards democracy and ordinary people of the planet and promoted the idea that a certain club or class of “chosen” intellectuals should make key decisions themselves - or to supply elected politicians with properly interpreted information that will shape their decisions. One of the founders and perhaps the main public face of the Council on Foreign Relations, an American columnist, presidential adviser of Wilson and eminent propaganda theorist Walter Lippmann became famous for inventing the concept of “building consent” - that is, scientifically based mass use of the media as an instrument for managing public opinion and political processes. Lippmann himself wrote in 1922 that the ability to "build consent" (that is, achieve consent without the audience noticing manipulation, and doing it literally "by a mass production method") is a technology that will radically overturn democratic systems "more powerfully than any revolution." Thirdly, the Council on Foreign Relations is an NGO in which the Rockefeller clan, the Ford dynasty and the Warburg family (through Warburg Pinkus) have invested and are still investing serious funds, and the think tank itself is very proud of it and is the coordinator of research programs of the Rockefeller Foundation. And the final stroke in the picture: The Council on Foreign Relations prepares personnel for the American political system. Notables amongst the analysts and researchers of the council who owe their career to it, are CIA Director Allen Dulles and his brother, Secretary of State John Dulles. At the height of the Cold War, more than half of State Department employees were members of this Rockefeller think tank and thus it might not be very clear where key decisions on US foreign policy are actually made. Many conspiracy theories are associated with the activities of the Council, but conspiracy is not required to explain and evaluate its impact. It will suffice to look at the list of the current members of this organization and note the amount of research that it conducted for various government agencies to conclude that such a “collective outsourced brain” will under any circumstances greatly influence the political decisions of the American elite.
 
For the reasons outlined above, the chairman of the CFR has the moral right to speak with the American elite in an instructive tone and lecture it about how the world really works. In a sense, the article by Chairman Richard Haass is a kind of distilled position of that intellectual part of the American elite, which played practically a key role in the US victory in the Cold War. Mr. Haass strongly urges the American elite to calm down and accept the fact that the train has left and that trying to salvage the world order with the American hegemon at its head is useless, dangerous and pointless. Moreover, the chief American analyst has a proposal for a constructive strategy for Washington, but it is unlikely to find understanding among American politicians.
 
The key thesis of the article is: “World orders expire by long-term deterioration, not by sudden collapse. And just as maintaining the order depends on effective statecraft and effective action, good policy and proactive diplomacy can help determine how that deterioration unfolds and what it brings. But for this to happen something needs to happen beforehand: recognition that the old world order is never coming back and that efforts to resurrect it will be in vain. As with any ending, acceptance must come before one can move on."
 
The CFR chairman points to the parallels between the death of the Vienna system of international relations (the so-called Concert of Europe after the Napoleonic Wars) and the decline of the current world order. Mr. Haass even argues that there is a symbolic connection between these situations - the Vienna system died in the context of the Crimean War, and the current order was dealt a serious blow precisely after Crimea returned to Russia. It is noteworthy that this influential American expert does not share the official American propaganda line: he stresses that from the Russian standpoint, NATO expansion (as well as intervention in Iraq and especially in Libya) was a violation of the rules of the game and this explains the subsequent actions of the Russian side. He also emphasized that throughout the world, including in its “liberal” part, discontent with the United States is growing: “Resentment over the United States’ exploitation (status – Ed.) of the dollar to impose sanctions is growing, as is concern over the country’s accumulation of debt.”
 
According to Mr. Haass, the US has made a huge number of mistakes in foreign and domestic policy, and the economic changes caused by globalization are creating additional problems for America. In addition, the United States has lost its positive global image and now it must pay the price for it.
 
The recommendations of the CFR Chairman are straightforward and rational: since the degradation of the world order cannot be stopped and reversed, this process needs to be managed. The US is invited to work on “integrating China and Russia” into the new configuration of world relations, and this integration must necessarily involve a mixture of compromises, incentives and resistance to China and Russia. At the same time, the American political elite is trying to convey an important idea: what the 21st century will be like depends largely on the success of these integration efforts.
 
Americans continue to look through the list of existential - that is, deadly - threats to their country. Russia was on it already, so was China ... What remains?
 
Mr. Haass reserved the bitterest pill for the end of his text: the American elite is being asked to start holding back at last in foreign and domestic policy and try to restore (!) at least some of the lost respect and image of the "power of good." This will require "reducing US public debt, rebuilding infrastructure, improving public education, investing in social programs, attracting talented immigrants" and many other measures that the American elite definitely will not take. “The United States cannot effectively promote order in the world if they are divided at home, if they are distracted by internal problems and lack resources,” Richard Haass writes. But, looking at the current American elite, it is difficult to dismiss the feeling that he will not find within it understanding listeners who are ready to restore the American image, restrain themselves from foreign policy adventures, and also seek compromises and offer concessions to Russia and China.
 
The American expert community has long cultivated a sense of exclusivity in the American elite and is now reaping the bitter fruits of its effective work. Pride is a great drug, but a very bad adviser. However, regardless of whether American politicians listen to the advice of analysts of the "Rockefeller think tank" or not, an important conclusion can be made: even the best American minds do not see a realistic way to save the old world order. Thus, all of Moscow’s efforts to dismantle American hegemony should be continued. On the ruins of American autocracy, Russia will be able to leave beautiful graffiti, and, as practice shows, dismantling the old world order is a profitable business. At least the Americans were able to earn good money by dismantling the USSR. What goes around comes around.

​Have you ordered your Putin calendar yet? Amazon has them:

​https://www.amazon.com/Calendar-President-Russia-Vladimir-Putin/dp/B07GXG7FBL

9-23-2018
 
Following is our translation from newzfeed.ru with a commentary by Vince Dhimos,
 
We showed you here how Ukraine became the poorest state in Europe by following the US and EU Pied Pipers at the Maidan and staging an illegal and violent coup against a democratically elected but pro-Russian president. Kiev had no experience working closely with the US and Europe but followed the lure of potential EU and NATO membership and the glitter of US wealth.
 
And they got exactly what they asked for from these con artists, who neither gave them EU membership nor allowed their Nazi sympathizers to join NATO. It was a blind date. Neither side knew what awaited them, which turned out to be very little. Like much of the former Soviet Bloc, the naïve citizens assumed that, since the US hated and feared Russia, all they had to do was play along and they would be rewarded richly. But it turns out that Russophobia is a thankless job. You get no real protection and the Western prosperity doesn’t wear off on you. In fact, being a US puppet has just the opposite effect, ie, poverty and tears of remorse.
 
In all cases where these former satellites of the Soviet Union peeled off and cleaved to the West, their dreams were shattered. It turns out that their former close ties to resource-rich Russia had been their bread and butter. But there was no turning back. Weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth are their future.
 
The tragedy is that, thanks to their naïveté, they only learned too late. Ukraine was doing fairly well thanks to its ties to Russia. It only makes sense. Russia was right next door and was relatively rich, and the US was far away and was reeling under a massive debt from profligate spending on bombs, ships and planes to murder countless souls throughout the world. Who would trust such a nation?
 
According to the below article, not only Ukraine, but the Baltic states also trusted it, and now they are paying the price.

​

BEGIN TRANSLATION

09-23-2018
 
After many years in the Baltic States, they finally began to calculate the losses from Moscow’s response to sanctions. Local experts concluded that there was no longer any “Russian money” but they could not earn their own either. In the end, the Balts began to observe real panic over the fact that the country's economy is on its deathbed. Experts note that the Baltic countries have ceased to be dependent on Russia, and now they have fallen on really hard times.
 
As a result, following Moscow’s political and economic retaliatory measures, the state of the Republics is extremely critical. However, retaliatory sanctions were imposed by Moscow only after the Baltic states themselves challenged Russia, introducing a list of their restrictive measures against it.
 
At first, the Balts were inspired by the magnificent beginning of their development in the period of 2000–2008, having a GDP growth of about 10% per year. At that time, these Republics could compete even with China and the countries of Europe in terms of this index.
 
Latvia began to develop the service sector and to ship imported goods. In the port of Riga alone, more than 20% of the country's GDP was earned. Thus the Russian side actively used these sea harbors to transport their cargoes. Companies from Europe also invested in them, thanks to which the state literally “thrived and prospered” until 2008. And the locals were happy with their income, which had grown more than 10 times.
 
Oil exports accounted for about 25% of GDP in the Baltics, which was a quarter of the income of the population of the Republics. Therefore, we can safely say that it was thanks to Russian oil that the inhabitants of the Baltic countries then had such high salaries. Coal, household goods and chemical products also went through Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. It seems that Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia mediated between the Russian Federation and Europe, earning more than half of their GDP from this.
 
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Lithuania was nevertheless in a rather precarious position. However, the Europeans provided the country with investment and cheap loans, thanks to which it could, like Latvia, earn income through transit between the Russian side and European countries.
 
In time, despite this assistance from the Russian Federation, anti-Russian sentiments continued to be observed in the Baltics. In the end, after all the unjust actions of the Baltic states, Moscow also decided to retaliate, gradually declining he services of the Baltic ports and switching to its own.
 
In the Russian Federation, the modernization of domestic harbours and the construction of new ones began at an accelerated pace. Moscow has increased the capacity of its ports from 10 million to 236 TEU. It was then that the prosperity of the Baltic countries began to end. Countries have lost both GDP growth of 10% and a large part of the working-age population, which simply did not want to sit by and watch how their state decline.

END TRANSLATION

Following is our translation of an article from mirnovostey.info.
 
QUOTES from translated text below:
 
“I hope this basic text [Putin’s 2007 Munich speech] will be included among those recommended by American intelligence on the eve of the meeting.”
 
and
 
 “The crucial moment is now. The need to ‘take a fresh look at foreign policy’ is being discussed today, even in the United States.”
 
The author is right that even US commentators are talking about the need for a new foreign policy. Examples:
 
The Atlantic does indeed discuss the need for a new foreign policy but contends that the new policy must be written by the Democrats, the party that insists that Russia is an enemy. Not much can be expected from the partisans on either side of the aisle.
 
Many articles in Foreign Policy demand changes in US foreign policy, and one criticises Trump’s refusal to talk to Putin at the G-20 summit. Of course, FP takes the standard view that Russia is an “aggressor” and says that a meeting between Trump and Putin would have given Trump a chance to confront Putin, so this article is misguided because it ignores the fact that the recent incursion of Ukrainian military vessels into the Russian territory was an illegal provocation.
 
The bad news is this. Firstly, the Russian author optimistically hopes that US intel will brief Trump on Putin’s 2007 Munich speech. This will not happen. To US policy makers and pols, Putin’s statements are anathema, they are all propaganda, and listening to or reading them will “threaten democracy” or worse. Secondly, the author of the translated article claims that there is discussion of the need for a new foreign policy in the US, and though this is true in general, there is no evidence that policy makers want to relinquish US power or even wage fewer wars than in the past. Things are therefore much more critical than many Russian observers think. I did a search with the search terms
 
us needs new foreign policy
 
and found not even the slightest hint that the publications informing foreign policy makers in the US even know what Putin’s “multipolar world” is, let alone understand the need for a world that is not virtually fully controlled by Washington and Wall Street. I have always said that no necessary change in US policy will ever come from within the US, ie, from the higher levels of political power or from the clueless grassroots. The change must come, for better or worse, from the other two main world powers, China and Russia, and from their partners, such as Europe.
 
As for how the Russians and Chinese might eventually influence the US, the salient example is found in the words of Special Operations chief Gen. Raymond Thomas, who, in a high level speech, let slip that Russia [he did not name the country but it was understood] had created in Syria “the most aggressive electronic warfare environment on the planet.” He bitterly lamented that the EW systems were disrupting the operation of his EC-130 recon planes, rendering them virtually useless. US politicians and influencers only understand power, and any change in US foreign policy will come about thanks to a show of power by the countries they mistakenly call “adversaries.” These “adversaries” are by no means the enemy of the American people but only of the warmongering elites.

Gen. Thomas is one of the few US officials who may, perhaps, see the handwriting on the wall, and not because he listened to reason but because he ran up against that wall.


BEGIN TRANSLATION

Putin's prophecy came true. The whole West is abuzz
 
12-5-018
 
The need for a wonderful Russian radar station would not have emerged if 10 years ago America and the West led by it had listened to Putin’s speech at the Munich Security Conference. At that time, the president of Russia warned the United States against striving for world domination through sole leadership. Instead, Putin proposed to ensure global security through international law as a derivative of the moral and ethical basis of mankind. No other approach will work.
"I believe that for the modern world, a unipolar model is not only unacceptable, but impossible in the first place. And not only because with sole leadership in the modern world, neither military-political nor economic resources will be enough. But more importantly, the model itself is not workable, because there is not and cannot be a moral basis of modern civilization on its basis,” said the head of the Russian state.
 
 
 
That is, nothing amoral will work. This seems to be a simple idea, but it was beyond the scope of both George W. Bush and Barack Obama. For world domination, they got involved in shameful wars and lost them. The United States itself paid its price for this disastrous policy.
 
I'm not talking about waste of resources here. The country has been split, losing its moral unity. The price is the lying American press and the hate rampaging across America. Actually, exactly this result was predicted by Putin ten years ago, speaking of the destructiveness of the unipolar world.
"No matter how this term is embellished, it ultimately means only one thing in practice: it is one centre of power, one centre of military might, one centre of decision-making. This is the world of one owner, one sovereign. And this is ultimately pernicious not only for everyone within this system, but also for the sovereign itself, because it destroys it from the inside,” said Putin.
 
These words could be called prophetic, because they came true. But a seer relies on some guesswork, astrology, or faith. Not so with Putin. His support is knowledge and respect for human civilization, its experience and potentials. Plus, of course, the awareness of Russia as a stronghold, which will not allow anyone to penetrate it, completely ignoring everything. The Americans, however, throughout these last ten years, have pushed into the Middle East, North Africa, in Ukraine – hoping for something new. The result is the same. Putin’s words, spoken 10 years ago, sound impeccably accurate today.
 
“And what’s the result? Unilateral, illegitimate actions often failed to solve a single problem. Moreover, they became a generator of new human tragedies and hotbeds of tension. Judge for yourself: there are no fewer wars and local and regional conflicts than before – many more in fact," said Putin.
 
In general, if Trump really wants “to get along with Russia,” as he says, then it is better to rely on generally accepted principles on which to build relationships.
Now they are saying on both sides that preparations for the meeting of the leaders of our countries are not yet underway. If so, then Trump can start by personally familiarizing himself with the speech of Russian President Putin on the program in Munich in 2007. I hope that basic text will be included among those recommended by American intelligence in the lead-up to the meeting. Without it, the report package will definitely be incomplete, especially since there is a lot about the USA in the text.
 
 
"We see an increasing disregard for the fundamental principles of international law. Moreover, certain norms, and almost the entire system of law of one state, above all, of course, the United States, crossed the national borders in all spheres: in economics, in politics, and in the humanitarian sphere, and is imposed on other states. Who would want this?" said Vladimir Putin.
 
 
Actually, then he directly proposed to discuss, “painstakingly” work out and agree upon a new, modern architecture of global security. "I am convinced that we have come to the crucial moment when we should seriously think about the entire global security architecture," said the Russian president.
 
The crucial moment is now. The need to "take a fresh look at foreign policy" is being discussed today, even in the United States. In this sense, Putin’s speech in Munich 10 years ago is an indispensable guide. It sounds fresh.
At the same time, the old American policy of supporting coups, eliminating countries and peoples is still ongoing by inertia. It has not made anyone happy yet. But a lot of blood is still flowing. Petro Poroshenko still expects that he will receive a pat on the head by America for the war, and he keeps killing.

END TRANSLATION

Vince Dhimos
 
As I was writing about the Saudi connection to US foreign policy, I was keenly aware that many Westerners think of Israel as having more clout in US affairs than Saudi, and to some extent they are right. The reason I focus so heavily on Saudi is that the petrodollar agreement signed in 1974 between Nixon and King Faisal is believed by the most prolific Western investors in Treasuries to be responsible for propping up the value of the US dollar. However, I showed here and here that the Saudi share of Treasury holdings amounts to only about one-fortieth of the value of the US sovereign debt and could not possibly have anywhere near the significance assigned to it. Certainly not enough to make US presidents bow to its kings and the US Congress, Senate and White House mould its foreign policy in the Saudis’ favour. So there is definitely something fishy going on here.
 
And indeed, US foreign policies favour not only the Saudis but also Israel, and roughly to the same extent. But does it not seem logical that the myth of the US-Saudi petrodollar agreement was no doubt crafted in large part for the purpose of pleasing Israel? Thus, the myth of the petrodollar agreement gave the policy makers in Washington and their Deep State drivers an excuse to forge policy that served the ulterior purpose of changing Western culture while extirpating Christianity from the Muslim world (as explained here and here). And whether or not you believe that this ulterior purpose really underlay the machinations of policy makers, you will admit it was indeed implemented and was fulfilled to a t, as witnessed by the enormous exodus of Christians from the Middle East and Kosovo and the waves of mass immigration of Muslims to Europe as a result of US-instigated or US-waged wars.
 
Just one of myriad examples of the enormous power wielded by Israel is the fact that this country, which boasts of being the “only democracy in the Middle East,” has an official Military Censor, of which the Jerusalem Post wrote:
 
“The Israeli military censor banned the publication of 271 articles in 2017 and partially or fully redacted another 2,087 news stories that had been submitted for review.”
 
But Israel has a long arm and its censorship also extends to other parts of the world, including the “Land of the Free,” as shown here and here (we would encourage you to click on the latter link and also to click on the link to the video embedded in the article it will bring up).  In fact, many Westerners who have sought to expose Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians have been shut out of social media.
 
 
Counterpunch reports (my highlighting):
 
“In January of this year, MintPress News reported that Facebook spokespeople admitted that Facebook was deleting accounts, as directed by Israel and the United States. This was a natural outcome of meetings that Facebook had with some of the most extremist of Israeli officials, to establish which Facebook accounts of Palestinians and their supporters around the world were to be deleted.”
 
I was one of those whose pro-Palestine posts were eliminated from Twitter and I lost my account as a result. When I emailed the censor and asked why, the people behind the curtain simply sent me a list of Twitter’s rules. Which is like a prosecutor telling an accused that he violated the law and when the accused asks which one, the prosecutor sends him to the local law library and says “see for yourself.” When I asked which of the rules, I had violated, I got no further response. This total refusal to dialogue is reminiscent of the way the US and other Western governments treat foreign governments like Russia, calling it an “adversary,” blaming it for misdeeds without proof and then issuing sanctions against it.
 
But you know what? Censorship is a sign that the censor is incapable of debate under fair rules, and is losing the hearts and minds of the people it censors. When you can’t think of any way to defeat the truth through honest straightforward debate, you have already lost the debate and can only await the final collapse of the construct that you are defending based on ignorance of the public and information blackouts.
 
In the case of Palestine, the world now knows that the IDF has issued a shoot to kill order against unarmed Palestinian protesters. The Guardian was only one of many outlets to report on the IDF’s shoot to kill orders.
 
The Jerusalem Post reported on the IDF gleefully killing unarmed protesters and then cheering as the victims fell. The journalist quotes Israeli authorities endorsing this outright murder. The article closes:
 
“ ‘No wonder the soldiers behave this way when ministers, lawmakers, the media and public opinion are party to the jubilation at the mass killing of Palestinians in Gaza,’ Zahalka said.”
 
If it were not for the misreading of the Bible that holds Evangelicals in thrall to “Christian” Zionism, this apocalyptic nightmare would not be happening because while the US – the staunchest supporter of Israeli policies – rarely protests anything done by the Israeli government or military, this is an indirect result of a populace that believes that present day Israel is the one prophesied by Ezekiel – even though modern secular Israel in no way meets Ezekiel’s description of a people obedient to God.  (If you wonder why I say this religiously based Zionism is based on a misreading of the Bible, see my straightforward explanation here).
 
The UN has issued more condemnations against Israel for human rights violations than against any other country since the all-white regime in South Africa fell. It is only a matter of time before the US joins the rest of the world in recognizing Israel's crimes.
 
Relevant:
 
Christians, it’s time for a frank, loving dialogue with our Jewish friends
 
http://www.newsilkstrategies.com/news--analysis/christians-its-time-for-a-frank-loving-dialogue-with-our-jewish-friends
 
“Christian” Zionists (about 80% of all Evangelicals) say they support Israel, but they do so out of fear, not love. Fear that God might withdraw His blessing. This is based on a misreading of the verse in Genesis referring to Abram, not to Israel. It is also based on a misreading of Ezekiel 37 prophesying the resurrection of Israel. Verse 24 of that chapter says the resurrected nation will be obedient to God. A Reuters poll shows that 60% of Israelis self-describe as “irreligious.” Ezekiel was obviously not talking about today’s Israel. That is where the whole construct collapses. But when Jesus said to Jerusalem “you will not see me again until you have said blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord,” He was sending a clear message to His followers to evangelize among the Jews – not send them arms to kill their neighbours. Today’s Evangelicals are too preoccupied with idolizing the secular, irreligious Israel and sending them arms to murder Palestinians to even think about evangelizing among them. This is the great sin of modern Evangelicals and if they truly loved the Jews they would not forsake this great commission.
 
Putinology 102. Israel sees the light
 
http://www.newsilkstrategies.com/news--analysis/putinology-102-israel-sees-the-light
 
According to Bloomberg, a ranking Israeli official, has admitted the US is not “in the game” with regard to controlling Iran in Syria and that they are counting on Russia to handle the diplomatic dealing.
 
QUOTE:
 
“The American part of the equation is to back us up,” but the U.S. currently “has almost no leverage on the ground,” Michael Oren, Netanyahu’s deputy minister for public diplomacy and a former ambassador to Washington, said in a phone interview Sunday. “America did not ante up in Syria. It’s not in the game.”