2014 is the one-hundred year anniversary of the beginning of World War I, a conflict of such savagery, really the first time in history that mass slaughter was industrialized and the resulting carnage was unprecedented. The war itself was the result of a series of events that rapidly careened out of control. The spark that ignited the whole conflagration being the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand of Austria that was followed by a cascading series of events that led to a conflict of empires that forever changed the world. WW I in particular leading to the rise of the Nazis and the resultant post-World War II global structure that is still playing out although now in it's latter stages. There have been many who have written of similarities between 1914 and 2014 and the increasingly unstable regime in Washington, with ongoing hostilities with Syria, Iran, Russia-Ukraine and now Iraq again is dragging the world, and billions of people closer to the brink of what could be history's next great disaster.
President Barack Obama, his fanatic packed State Department and the neocons in the state-corporate media who keep up the pressure in instigating him to launch another war in Ukraine, Syria or the opportune location of the week - right now it is Iraq are recklessly lurching towards an Archduke Ferdinand moment. It is only a matter of what exactly it will be. While the hew and cry of the chattering classes with their preying upon the fears of timid Americans of the new "caliphate" being established by the mysterious ISIS it would seem that a reentry into Iraq could be the catalyst. This will be the topic of of choice during the Sunday morning circle jerk where neocon war criminal after war criminal will inevitably be trotted out to make their case for war. My money however is on Obama doing something historically stupid over the ongoing resistance to the US installed junta in Kiev and his colossal inferiority complex over being punked repeatedly by Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
While nearly completely overwhelmed in the US media by the necessity to push the ISIS story Ukraine is on the brink of something extremely ugly. The recently crowned US puppet Petro Poroshenko aka "the Chocolate King" has indicated that the violence in the east is about to be be unleashed after his phony cease fire, basically a call for complete surrender of anti-austerity, anti-fascist rebels was rejected. In an article at Russia Today Porshenko is quoted as being ready to go to "plan B" which inevitably will lead to an increased use of the Kiev junta's military forces against civilians. Russia has responded to the Poroshenko's cease-fire offer and implied threat with both an acknowledgement as well as a huge one of those military exercises that are so often utilized by the USA!, USA! USA! and NATO who are predictably crying foul. According to a story in The Guardian entitled "Vladimir Putin backs Ukraine ceasefire but orders huge military exercise":
Putin’s qualified backing for Poroshenko's effort to halt the conflict was another in a series of shifting moves and statements by the Kremlin that still leave unclear Moscow's level of commitment to de-escalating the conflict.
Putin's conciliatory words on Saturday were made on the same day as he ordered large-scale military exercises that NATO criticised as likely to raise tensions. United States officials also accused Russian troops of moving back into positions near the border with Ukraine's troubled east.
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On Saturday, a NATO spokeswoman, Oana Lungescu, lamented Moscow’s military exercises, saying that “it can be seen as a further escalation of the crisis with Ukraine”.
The insanity isn't just limited to Washington and the Obama gang and that only increases the danger of some massive fuckup by some lunatic - for example NATO boss Anders Fogh Rasmussen delusional assertion that the Russians have infiltrated the anti-fracking movement. Per a story in The Guardian entitled "Russia 'secretly working with environmentalists to oppose fracking'" from which I excerpt:
The head of one of the world’s leading groups of democratic nations has accused Russia of undermining projects using hydraulic fracturing technology in Europe.
Anders Fogh Rasmussen, secretary-general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato), and former premier of Denmark, told the Chatham House thinktank in London on Thursday that Vladimir Putin’s government was behind attempts to discredit fracking, according to reports.
Rasmussen said: “I have met allies who can report that Russia, as part of their sophisticated information and disinformation operations, engaged actively with so-called non-governmental organisations - environmental organisations working against shale gas - to maintain European dependence on imported Russian gas.”
He declined to give details of those operations, saying: “That is my interpretation.”
This is the man in charge of fucking NATO for Christ's sake - and with the ongoing provocation of Russia over the fiasco in Ukraine this is a man who could start World War III - why isn't this insane accusation of not only Russia but the accusation of US environmental groups as being essentially "terrorists" an illustration of his manifest unfitness for his job? It is like Dr. Strangelove is now our reality in 2014 and Rasmussen could be General Jack D. Ripper.
This is serious foray into John Birch Society tin-foil hatter territory for Rasmussen although with the masturbatory glee with which big US energy companies have seized upon the potential disruption in Russian gas supplies to Europe to continue to frack away in America in the orgasmic quest for energy export profits while pushing similar horseshit propaganda designed to transform anti-fracking activists into the increasingly catch-all category of "terrorists" it is just another indicator of how rotten that the entire system is. Rasmussen, the former Danish Prime Minister was an outspoken supporter of Bush's Iraq adventure and the descent into frenzied Cold War conspiracy theories (remember back when the Russians were accused of infiltrating the Civil Rights Movement to sow discontent?) shows why he got the gig with NATO in the first place.
But while the NATO militarists with their 20th century European worldviews and their itchy trigger fingers ready to shoot at anything Russian represent a grave threat to order the real danger is Obama himself. There has been more talk of economic sanctions against Russia due to the Empire's fury that the Russian leader will neither back down and lick Uncle Scam's red, white and blue jackboots nor take the bait by invading eastern Ukraine to stop the atrocities. This could very well be the week that Obama green-lights the dropping of that "financial neutron bomb" that the Wall Street swine who are embedded within the US Treasury have been working on. I excerpt the following from The Telegraph article by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard entitled "US financial showdown with Russia is more dangerous than it looks, for both sides":
The United States has constructed a financial neutron bomb. For the past 12 years an elite cell at the US Treasury has been sharpening the tools of economic warfare, designing ways to bring almost any country to its knees without firing a shot.
The strategy relies on hegemonic control over the global banking system, buttressed by a network of allies and the reluctant acquiescence of neutral states. Let us call this the Manhattan Project of the early 21st century.
"It is a new kind of war, like a creeping financial insurgency, intended to constrict our enemies' financial lifeblood, unprecedented in its reach and effectiveness," says Juan Zarate, the Treasury and White House official who helped spearhead policy after 9/11.
“The new geo-economic game may be more efficient and subtle than past geopolitical competitions, but it is no less ruthless and destructive,” he writes in his book Treasury's War: the Unleashing of a New Era of Financial Warfare.
Bear this in mind as Washington tightens the noose on Vladimir Putin's Russia, slowly shutting off market access for Russian banks, companies and state bodies with $714bn of dollar debt (Sberbank data).
The stealth weapon is a "scarlet letter", devised under Section 311 of the US Patriot Act. Once a bank is tainted in this way - accused of money-laundering or underwriting terrorist activities, a suitably loose offence - it becomes radioactive, caught in the "boa constrictor's lethal embrace", as Mr Zarate puts it.
This can be a death sentence even if the lender has no operations in the US. European banks do not dare to defy US regulators. They sever all dealings with the victim.
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The US Treasury faces a more formidable prey with Russia, the world's biggest producer of energy with a $2 trillion economy, superb scientists and a first-strike nuclear arsenal. It is also tightly linked to the German and east European economies. The US risks endangering its own alliance system if it runs roughshod over friends. It is in much the same situation as Britain in the mid-19th century when it enforced naval supremacy, boarding alleged slave ships anywhere in the world, under any flag, ruffling everybody's feathers.
President Putin knows exactly what the US can do with its financial weapons. Russia was brought into the loop when the two countries were for a while "allies" in the fight against Jihadi terrorism. Mr Putin appointed loyalist Viktor Zubkov - later prime minister - to handle dealings with the US Treasury.
Mr Zarate said the Obama White House has waited too long to strike in earnest, clinging to the hope that Putin would stop short of tearing up the global rule book. "They should take the gloves off. The longer the wait, the more maximalist they may have to be," he said.
This would be a calibrated escalation, issuing the scarlet letter to Russian banks that help Syria's regime
This would seem to be a perfect time for Obama to issue a devastating strike against Russia's economy by the use of what Zarate is referring to - it would likely be justified by finding some bogus tie between Putin and ISIS in Syria and the corrupt media will eagerly provide cover for it. Such a move however will like everything that Barry and the boys have touched blow up in their faces when Russia inevitably retaliates. Such a strike against the Russian financial system, largely based on Obama's petty narcissistic tantrums and a festering grudge against Putin (who is not a stupid man and understands exactly what this is all about) would be an act of war and as history has shown, the act of a desperate man like Gavrilo Princip busting a cap into the Archduke's ass things can spiral out of control very, very quickly.
Unless Obama gets a grip we are all about to fine out exactly how bad that things can really get when fools, lunatics and charlatans have a monopoly on power.
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