TERRORISTS RULE OK?

Why NATO is Terrified of Russia
By Pepe Escobar 
May 02, 2015 "Information Clearing House" - "RT" - - The twin-pronged attack - oil price war/raid on the ruble – aimed at destroying the Russian economy and place it into a form of Western natural resource vassalage has failed.
Natural resources were also essentially the reason for reducing Iran to a Western vassalage. That never had anything to do with Tehran developing a nuclear weapon, which was banned by both the leader of the Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini, and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei.
The ‘New Great Game’ in Eurasia was always about control of the Eurasian land mass. Minor setbacks to the American elite project do not mean the game will be restricted to a mere “war of attrition”. Rather the contrary.

All about PGS

In Ukraine, the Kremlin has been more than explicit there are two definitive red lines. Ukraine won’t join NATO. And Moscow won’t allow the popular republics of Donetsk and Lugansk to be crushed.
We are coming closer to a potentially explosive deadline – when EU sanctions expire in July. An EU in turmoil but still enslaved to NATO – see the pathetic “Dragoon Ride” convoy from the Baltics to Poland or the “Atlantic Resolve” NATO show-off exercise - may decide to expand them, and even try to exclude Russia from SWIFT.
Only fools believe Washington is going to risk American lives over Ukraine or even Poland. Yet let’s plan a few steps ahead. If it ever comes to the unthinkable – a war between NATO and Russia in Ukraine – Russian defense circles are sure of conventional and nuclear superiority on sea and land. And the Pentagon knows it. Russia would reduce NATO forces to smithereens in a matter of hours. And then would come Washington’s stark choice: accept ignominious defeat or escalate to tactical nuclear weapons.
The Pentagon knows that Russia has the air and missile defense capabilities to counter anything embedded in the US Prompt Global Strike (PGS). Simultaneously though, Moscow is saying it would rather not use these capabilities.
Major General Kirill Makarov, Russia’s Aerospace Defense Forces’ deputy chief, has been very clear about the PGS threat. Moscow’s December 2014 new military doctrine qualifies PGS as well as NATO’s current military buildup as the top two security threats to Russia.
Unlike non-stop Pentagon/NATO bragging/demonizing, what Russian defense circles don't need to advertise is how they are now a couple of generations ahead of the US in their advanced weaponry.
The bottom line is that while the Pentagon was mired in the Afghanistan and Iraq quagmires, they completely missed Russia’s technological jump ahead. The same applies to China’s ability to hit US satellites and thus pulverize American ICBM satellite guidance systems.
The current privileged scenario is Russia playing for time until it has totally sealed Russia’s air space to American ICBMs, stealth aircraft and cruise missiles – via the S-500 system.
This has not escaped the attention of the British Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) – as it gamed sometime ago whether Washington might launch a first strike against Russia.
According to the JIC, Washington might go rogue if "a) an extreme government were to take over in the United States, b) and there was increased lack of confidence by the United States in some if not all of her Western allies owing to political developments in their countries, c) and there was some sudden advance in the USA in the sphere of weapons, etc. that the counsels of impatience may get the upper hand."
US ‘Think Tankland’ spinning that Russian military planners should take advantage of their superiority to launch a first strike nuclear attack against the US is bogus; the Russian doctrine is eminently defensive.
Yet that does not exclude Washington doing the unthinkable the next time the Pentagon thinks of itself to be in the position Russia is now in.

SWIFT changes

The whole game used to be about who ruled the waves – the geopolitical gift the US inherited from Great Britain. Control of the seas meant the US inheriting five empires; Japan, Germany, Great Britain, France, the Netherlands. All those massive US carrier task forces patrolling the oceans to guarantee “free trade” – as the hegemonic propaganda machine goes – could be turned against China in a flash. It’s a mechanism similar to the carefully choreographed “leading from behind” financial op to simultaneously crash the ruble/launch an oil war and thus smash Russia into submission.
Washington’s master plan remains deceptively simple; to “neutralize” China by Japan, and Russia by Germany, with the US backing its two anchors, Germany and Japan. Russia is the de facto only BRICS nation blocking the master plan.
This was the case until Beijing launched the New Silk Road(s), which essentially mean the linking of all Eurasia into a “win-win” trade/commerce bonanza on high-speed rail, and in the process diverting freight tonnage overland and away from the seas.
So NATO’s non-stop Russia demonizing is in fact quaint. Think about NATO picking a fight against the constantly evolving, complex Russia-China strategic partnership. And in a not so remote future, as I indicated here, Germany, Russia and China have what it takes to be the essential pillars of a fully integrated Eurasia.
As it stands, the key shadow play is Moscow and Beijing silently preparing their own SWIFT system while Russia prepares to seal its air space with S-500s. Western Ukraine is doomed; leave it to the austerity-ravaged EU – which, by the way, doesn’t want it. And all this while the same EU tries to handicap the US commercially with a rigged euro that still doesn’t allow it to penetrate more US markets.
As for an irrelevant NATO, all it can do is cry, cry, cry

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• In recent days, a member of the Thomas Harte Cumann, Republican Sinn Féin North Armagh, was stopped and approached by British Intelligence while driving in his car with his young child. He was driving his car towards Portadown when he noticed an RUC/PSNI bike sitting at the side of the roadroad just before the roundabout on the Armagh road.

He continued: “The RUC/PSNI bike pulled out and followed me and then pulled me over asking for my licence and where I was going. I gave the RUC/PSNI member my licence and he walked to the rear of the car. It was then I noticed two other men. They came from behind and ran up to my car, one on each side.

“One of them tried to enter the car by the passenger side which was locked so he rushed round to the driver side. At this stage I was trying to put the windows up but he kept grabbing it pulling it down saying we only want a minute of your time.

“I told them to go away. I was not interested in speaking to them. One was holding my licence. I asked for my license back to which he replied that I needed ‘to get my address on it changed over’ and would I hear them out ‘for one minute’.

“I was very angry at this stage and told them to keep the license. I pulled back onto the main road with one still leaning into the car. The other one threw my license back on my lap saying ‘hold on, there's your license.’ I continued driving and he finally let go of the door and stepped away from the car. I drove off but the RUC/PSNI bike followed me as far as Portadown.
“I had a child in the car with me, but thankfully the child slept through it all.”

Daire Mac Cionnaith, Vice President of Republican Sinn Féin and member of the Thomas Harte Cumann, said in a statement on April 2, that this latest approach was “a sinister development” though this was not the first attempt by the British Intelligence to recruit him as an informer”.

He continued: “This behaviour by the RUC/PSNI is a sinister development. The Republican and Nationalist community in British Occupied Ireland need to be cautious and withstand these attempts. It is clear that the RUC/PSNI member was just a stalking horse for British Intelligence who was obviously attempting to recruit our member as an informer. This is only one of many attempts by the RUC/PSNI to recruit informers in the North Armagh area

“We urge all people to report similar attempts to Republican Sinn Féin immediately,” Daire Mac Cionnaith said.

Críoch / Ends

Dee Fennell interned

Ardoyne residents’ spokesperson Dee Fennell was effectively interned by a judge at Craigavon court on Friday, confirming fears of republicans since his arrest two weeks ago.

Mr Fennell was refused bail in connection with incitement charges and ordered to be held indefinitely at Maghaberry jail. The republican activist was arrested last month in connection with a speech he delivered to a commemoration of the 1916 Easter Rising in Lurgan, County Armagh, on Easter Sunday.Mr Fennell is chairperson of the Greater Ardoyne Residents Collective, which campaigns against anti-Catholic parades in the area. He also works on behalf of republican prisoners. His supporters said he intends to challenge the decision to deny him his liberty to the High Court.
Activists have pointed to the draconian nature of the legislation being used to erode the right of republicans to speak out against British rule. Peter Corrigan, representing Mr Fennell, also pointed out that he was a father with a very young family and had not been charged with membership of an illegal organisation.
The Irish Republican Prisoners Welfare Association offered its support to Mr Fennell’s family.
“Once again we have witnessed the full force of the British judicial system utilised against an Irish citizen,” IRPWA spokesperson Mandy Duffy said.
“Historically, British courts have been utilised to deny Irish people, and in particular Irish Republicans, their rights and their freedom. Today is no different, as we observed an all too willing so-called judicial system pander to the wishes of the British government and its security agencies.”
“Let us be clear. This is internment, regardless of how they might try to disguise it. Dee Fennell has been interned because he is a dedicated Irish Republican activist who dared to challenge the false narrative, carefully fostered by the British Government and its willing Irish natives, that exists in Ireland today.”
She called on all republicans, at home and abroad, to challenge this new aspect of Britain’s strategy in Ireland and organise to end the internment of Irish republicans.
Mr Fennell’s imprisonment was “an attempt to silence and suppress a genuine republican narrative,” she said. “This is nothing new to republicans. They will fail.”
BOMB ALERTSMr Fennell’s detention coincided with a bomb alert in the Ardoyne area on Friday. A local priest said he received a phone call indicating that a device intended to target a passing PSNI patrol had been abandoned. The alert caused traffic chaos after several main roads into the city were closed. A British army bomb squad team carried out an elaborate sweep of the area for most of the day before it was reported that a “significant” device had been recovered.
A smaller device at a Probation Service office in Derry on Monday also prompted a lengthy alert. According to the PSNI, one improvised home-made pipe bomb partially detonated, while a second failed to explode.
There was no claim of responsibility for either incident.

WILL U.S. PEACE PROCESS ENVOY DO THE RIGHT THING

Oh, croppies ye'd better be quiet and still

Ye shan't have your liberty, do what ye will

As long as salt water is formed in the deep

A foot on the necks of the croppy we'll keep

And drink, as in bumpers past troubles we drown,

A health to the lads that made croppies lie down

Down, down, croppies lie down.

The Irish Peace process has encouraged Irish people to accept, to tolerate and to understand the Orange Order culture as practiced by hundreds of thousands of Orange men, since the creation of their sectarian state almost a hundred years ago. Heaven knows Irish people have tried for centuries to understand the planters and be patient with their culture, that seems to be based exclusively on prejudice, bigotry and “Croppie lie down” mentality. But the hatred is as overwhelming and simply unbearable to sensitive souls, as their massive bonfires and sectarian killing rituals drag on year after year. Their tactics are straight out of a KKK manual and they are now once again parading in KKK garb as above. This eternal marching chant, continues to rant through Irish streets, in several thousand marches annually.

They burn anything from thousands of effigies of his holiness, to anything remotely Celtic or green, to native property, accompanied by huge Lambeg drums with viriolic “hate speech,” which the British seem to selectively mentor or ignore while censoring the Irish. They scrawl vile racism on the Irish flag. They flaunt KKK slogans, such as, “Wee are not racist we just hate cotton picken N..”. which are paraded down Irish streets, while the vast majority of Irish people, are expected to accept and encourage this culture, for the sake of the Peace Process. Turn the other cheek they say but if you observe carefully, people from that part of Ireland, you will notice they are disfigured, from winding in their necks and talking out of the side of their mouths. A rude generalization you may exclaim but I have scrutinized them carefully firsthand.

This is not culture, it is simply pure hatred and bigotry, it has no place in a civilized Ireland from any quarter, including the resulting reactionary politics, which is far easier talk than walk, when it is marching down your streets for most of the year. So in this context, as Gary Hart is a very welcome envoy from the the US to people craving a solution, sits down to negotiate with these British mentored power brokers and ruling elite. However, let there be no illusions about what he is dealing with and let him honestly call them by their correct names in plain English rather than be seduced, by the rhetoric of the British gravy train of political careerists.

He is dealing with racists not a culture. He is dealing with hate speech not free speech. He is dealing with sectarian incitement to violence, not empty and harmless slogans.The sooner Gary Hart faces these realities, the better the odds, of Ireland avoiding a looming, sectarian, civil war. Denial of these hard facts, of what the Orange Order consider acceptable behavior, will simply lead us further down the road to the abyss. Like the Middle East Peace Process, the Irish version remains in eternal gridlock, because of the intransigence of supremacist ideology. It must be called out. The Orange Order bretheren of the KKK is not acceptable in the States why should it be in Ireland. Republicans in the States are permitted to bear arms for self-defence, while any republican in Ireland is deemed a terrorist who protects his home on such hate filled streets. Don't get me wrong, I do not advocate a military solution but in a sectarian state, where police walk in, and liquidate whole families, people are entitled to defend their flesh and blood.

Objective political analysts, that include the Unionist and British tradition, are slowly coming to the realization, that the only realistic road to a lasting peace is a Federal Ireland. London is tiring in a time of contrived austerity of it's 10 billion annual subsidy, to the non-viable, artificial 'statelet'. That is the trump card for any honest broker of substance to face down the Orange Order bullying and bluff. If Gary Hart himself cannot do the right thing and he does carry enough clout to do it, then the only realistic alternative for the ordinary people, who are being held hostage to this anomaly, is that the European Union starts to assume it's political and financial responsibilities, if the British continue with their hands off approach and continue to enable this Orange Order monstrosity, to ruin the lives of generations of Irish people to come.  

Perhaps this writer has become cynical, with the amount of hot air, that has been expended around the Irish Peace Process, so I hope our American friends can forgive me, when I write, that searching through the US envoy's speech yesterday, around negotiations in Belfast currently, I can find nothing of substance, that offers hope that the monster of the Orange Order Veto will finally be faced down. I sincerely hope I am wrong and I would be happy to see any evidence from anyone, who can demonstrate it simply and clearly, that the US is truly being an honest broker of substance and prove my analysis incorrect. Meanwhile in such avoid, I remain a proponent of of moving on to a Federal solution, rather than remain stuck in the eternal, internal, problem of a sectarian contrived entity. Below is a copy of Gary Harts speech of yesterday, where he asks people to do the right thing. Mr Hart, with all due respect, I urge you, with all the resources that a reformed pacifist can command, to lead by example.

GARY HART 14 NOVEMBER 2014

I've been honoured to represent United States Secretary of State John Kerry on issues related to Northern Ireland. It is well-known that the current talks span a great number of issues from finance to parades, flags, and the past to implementation of previous agreements to restructuring political institutions. Given the wide array of group interests, fashioning any kind of comprehensive resolution of all these subjects, each one more dear to one group than another, is an immense challenge to those seeking negotiated solutions.
As we in America have done for more than two decades, we continue to try to be helpful. The United States Government does not bring a preconceived solution to the table. The citizens of Northern Ireland well know by now that we are an outside presence simply seeking to support these negotiations. Other than a peaceful and prosperous future for all the people of Northern Ireland, we have no agenda of our own.

Her Majesty's Government and the Government of the Republic of Ireland have been very welcoming to a continued US presence. They both understand that we have no political agenda of our own. The ability of the United States Government to add encouragement, ideas, and assistance is dependent on this collective trust among our governments and we will continue to build upon it.

After many years of public service at home and engagement in projects in nations around the world, I find a concern that virtually all human beings share - the love of our children and the hope for a better future for them. This is perhaps the most powerful common human instinct. We can build upon it.

All of us must appreciate this: we do not have to sacrifice the common good and the interests of future generations in order to maintain our identity. My nation, a nation of immigrants, did not demand that immigrant groups give up their cultures and histories in order to become American. But we have promoted the idea that all in America, regardless of their origin, had an interest in achieving a better common future as a nation.

The ghosts of the past must not be allowed to haunt the future of those yet unborn. Despite historic differences, I am struck by the intelligence and goodwill of all the party leaders I have met. Yes, they have their respective party agendas. But there is in each and all of them a desire to move beyond the past. It is not a question of whether; it is a question of how.


We in the United States can seek to encourage private investments, and thus employment opportunities, to Northern Ireland. But our success in that effort will require political stability and a functioning, problem-solving government operated by men and women of goodwill.

As a frequent visitor to Northern Ireland, I am finding citizens organising themselves around a common future, a future that will be better in every way for their children. Pursuing a sense of the common good requires us to place the interests of traditional politics at a distant second.

Northern Ireland's great poet, Seamus Heaney, once described a "republic of conscience" in which there were "no porters, no interpreter, no taxi". In this republic, he wrote, "you carried your own burden and very soon your symptoms of creeping privilege disappeared". And as to public leaders, he said, they "must swear to uphold unwritten law and weep to atone for their presumption to hold office".

This republic is what Vaclav Havel called "a politics above politics". It is the realm where we must do what is right and not what is politically advantageous to us and our group.

As the years have passed - in my case many years - I have come to pay attention to the republic of conscience more than the republic of traditional politics. And in doing so I have found an increasing number of people shedding any notion of power in the form of creeping privilege and putting the common good above the presumptions of political office.

Perhaps if we all keep our eyes on the republic of conscience, a place where politics and power are kept in perspective and we atone for our presumption to hold office, those in Northern Ireland and those of us in America, can escape the worst of our past. A friend of mine once said that each of us is better than the worst thing we have ever done.

Americans must always be cautious in our interventions. We must always keep in mind that we killed hundreds of thousands of our own citizens in a bloody civil war. We are still atoning for our early history of slavery and that has not been easy. But each generation of Americans has produced a few citizens of the republic of conscience who have led us to higher things and who have urged us to keep our eyes on the stars.

So too with Northern Ireland. You have some remarkably capable and visionary leaders in office and in the public square. You have every right to be optimistic, to hope for a better future for your children, to say, in the words of Martin Luther King's memorable speech: "I have a dream today."

The people of America wish for you to achieve that dream and to be with you when it happens. As President Obama put it in his speech in June 2013 at the Waterfront Hall: "And you should know that so long as you are moving forward, America will always stand by you as you do."