The WW3 is beginning thread

[Nordic]

FBI whistleblower Coleen Rowley, whom I respect a great deal, wrote this the other day in a comment on FB:

FBI whistleblower Coleen Rowley, just now:

The proxy war between U.S.-NATO and Russia is about to go full blast and maybe in the Ukraine as well as Syria. The Lame Ducks are paving the way for Killary. The threat of nuclear winter will grow and there is almost no room at 3 minutes to midnight on the Doomsday Clock for the threat to get much worse. Unfortunately, no matter what world opinion is, it won't matter if one side desides to utilize their "first strike" option. Stupid Killary and her gang don't understand that they can't win a nuclear war. Even if all US missiles hit their target and all enemy nukes are stopped by the missile shield (which is impossible), everyone dies, both sides. They are crazy if they think they can win a nuclear war but yes, they are just crazed by pursuit of power.

[Nordic]

And there's this, from The Saker (the whole article is very good):

http://thesaker.is/russian-options-agai ... -on-syria/

The only remaining logical steps left for the USA in Syria is to accept Russia’s terms or leave. The problem is that I am not at all convinced that the Neocons, who run the White House, Congress and the US corporate media, are “rational” at all. This is why the Russians employed so many delaying tactics and why they have acted with such utmost caution: they are dealing with professional incompetent ideologues who simply do not play by the unwritten but clear rules of civilized international relations. This is what makes the current crisis so much worse than even the Cuban Missile Crisis: one superpower has clearly gone insane.

Are the Americans crazy enough to risk WWIII over Aleppo?

Maybe, maybe not. But what if we rephrase that question and ask

Are the Americans crazy enough to risk WWIII to maintain their status as the “world’s indispensable nation”, the “leader of the free world”, the “city on the hill” and all the rest of this imperialistic nonsense?

Here I would submit that yes, they potentially are.

After all, the Neocons are correct when they sense that if Russia gets away with openly defying and defeating the USA in Syria, nobody will take the AngloZionists very seriously any more.

How do you think the Neocons think when they see the President of the Philippines publicly calling Obama a “son of a whore” and then tells the EU to go and “f*ck itself”?

Of course, the Neocons can still find some solace in the abject subservience of the European political elites, but still – they know that he writing is on the wall and that their Empire is rapidly crumbling, not only in Syria, the Ukraine or Asia, but even inside the USA. The biggest danger here is that the Neocons might try to rally the nation around the flag, either by staging yet another false flag or by triggering a real international crisis.

[norton ash]

From Jeff's FB page.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 45461.html

Russia launches huge nuclear war training exercise that 'involves 40 million people'

The Russian government has launched a nationwide civil defence training exercise to ensure the country is properly prepared in the event of a nuclear, chemical and biological attack from the West.

Amid growing international tensions, particulary over Russia's conduct in Syria, the Defence Ministry-run Zvezda TV network announced last week: "Schizophrenics from America are sharpening nuclear weapons for Moscow."

[tapitsbo]

Russians may have been more sane by a long shot than the US in this conflict but their takes often exaggerate plenty.

Turkey is like "we'll *think* about reining in the anti-Assad forces, maybe..."

No way is Russia dictating the course of the conflict yet, if anything they lost their biggest chance to when Euphrates Shield started.

Russia made a lot of concessions to the US with the phoney ceasefires that were ignored by al-qaeda and friends; there are obviously limitations on what Assad's allies can do and their political will, given all the different concerns they have to balance

I get the impression this war and others are having major consequences around the world and are anything but a controlled demolition where everything has been planned down to the tiniest detail by one lofty cabal

[JackRiddler]

I get the impression this war and others are having major consequences around the world and are anything but a controlled demolition where everything has been planned down to the tiniest detail by one lofty cabal

On that we can agree!

[slimmouse]

I get the impression this war and others are having major consequences around the world and are anything but a controlled demolition where everything has been planned down to the tiniest detail by one lofty cabal

On that we can agree!

It would appear that Albert Pike completely wasted his time writing morals and dogma

[8bitagent]

For those writing off the latest conspiracy hand wrangling over "WW3" talks...consider over half a million human beings, souls if you're religious, have died in five years alone from this Syria-US-Russia war. Thats a lot of people. Trump's VP Pence touted on live tv how he envisions military action to topple Assad, as Clinton's main foreign policy picks are saying how she will have a much more "muscular" policy toward Russia and the Middle East than Obama.
So either way, with Clinton, or Bill Clintons pal Trump, mass death is coming...whether you want to call it WW3 or not

[km artlu]

This is what makes the current crisis so much worse than even the Cuban Missile Crisis: one superpower has clearly gone insane.

During that 1962 crisis Kennedy prevailed over batshit crazy LeMay and the Joint Chiefs tending to advocate a first strike. Thirteen months later Kennedy was removed from office.

Since that time the crazies have steadily consolidated power and we're now once again discussing the probabilities of unspeakable horror. There are apparently people who do, somehow, conceive of "winning" a nuclear conflict. A backstage pass to the bunker could be a factor in that thinking.

Russian casualties in WW2, both military and civilian, were so catastrophic as to resonate in the population and its leaders to the present day. In America the resonance of war is arguably determined more by Hollywood triumphalism.

October - an interesting month.

[Luther Blissett]

FWIW , i believe that that latest round of WWE is not going to end up well for the majority of humanity

Our so called leaders are very sick, and its high time we come to terms with this.

More important than releasing physical health records, imo.........political candidates undergo a requisite mental health exam (including psychopathic tendencies; the Hare Psychopathy Checklist, for example), with the results available to the public before an election. Just so voters have a better idea 'who' they're voting for.

No one would pass. Not even Stein, Baraka, or Sanders. I'm not even sure many above the managerial class in american capitalism would pass.

[Rory]

https://sputniknews.com/news/20161006/1 ... -army.html

"A number of Western media outlets have published "leaks" about the talks held in the White House administration about the possibility to hold missile and airstrikes on the positions of the Syrian army," Konashenkov said. "As history has shown, such "leaks" often prove to be a preface to real action."

"Russian S-300, S-400 air defense systems deployed in Syria's Hmeymim and Tartus have combat ranges that may surprise any unidentified airborne targets. Operators of Russian air defense systems won't have time to identify the origin of airstrikes, and the response will be immediate. Any illusions about "invisible" jets will inevitably be crushed by disappointing reality."

Just got a statement from @mod_russia that basically says Russia wd shoot down coalition jets if US launches airstrikes against Assad.

https://twitter.com/RolandOliphant/stat ... 49697?s=09

[JackRiddler]

.

8-bit, you have such a decontextualized view of things in isolation that I am forced to speak the heartless reality in the vein of Stalin's evil but somehow true observation that "one man's death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic."

Syria is noticed because of its positioning and involvement of all of the empires and regional power clubs. It is a particularly dangerous situation for the probability of prompting a global conflagration, which is greater than zero but something a great deal less than 50-50 and probably less than 5%.

400,000 perhaps dead there, the country certainly destroyed, most of the population displaced, most internally with 4 to 5 million refugees outside its borders, and a lot of spillover of the suffering in Iraq (where it actually started, afaiac).

Not as big as what has happened in the Congo in the last 5 years, which were an extension of the last 19 years. More people were killed in Rwanda in three months in 1994.

Taking post-WW2 history in five-year sets, and looking at the world as a whole, the last 5 have not had more such conflicts or produced more casualties than any other five-year period since 1945. Most likely below average. World War III started on Aug. 6, 1945, has been hot in many places since then, and depending on how you want to periodize we may at this point already be in WW4 for more than a decade.

Again this is not to preclude chain-reaction cataclysms that have not happened until now, but may be more likely at present than they were in 1995, although probably not less likely than they were in 1955 or 1965. It's not to suggest this is a "natural" or acceptable state for humanity to find itself in. It's not to deny levels of responsibility for specific conflicts remote from us. But it is to question an orientation of our concern and action around some imminent teleological conflict that has been scheduled by invisible PTB.

To conclude with another heartless but true observation, conventional war is not a very effective global depopulation strategy beyond the region of the war during the period of hostilities, after which population usually goes back up within a generation. In case you have not noticed. Plague and famine is what that would take.

.

[slimmouse]

Lest we forget



25 years ago apparently. These guys certainly play the long game, dont they Albert?

[divideandconquer]

I get the impression this war and others are having major consequences around the world and are anything but a controlled demolition where everything has been planned down to the tiniest detail by one lofty cabal

Well, the "cabal"--"power elite" "predatory elite"--wields the power to animate mobs, to set things in motion, but they don't always have the power to control events once these events start to take a life of their own. However, they are smart enough to know this, hence the need for plans b, c, d, e...., and invisible "clean up" agencies, etc.. Not to mention, the reason for the accelerated wealth, resource and power grab since 9/11, So, yes, although their power is limited, they still wield, in my humble opinion, more power than they've ever had before, however that power does depend on ignorant, fearful and distracted populations, unfortunately, something they're pretty good at creating.

[Nordic]

Best news I've seen in a while: the bully, when confronted by actual strength, backs off.

http://theduran.com/us-backs-down-over- ... -aircraft/

CONFIRMED: U.S. backs down over Syria after Russian threat to shoot down American aircraft

Alexander Mercouris
ALEXANDER MERCOURIS
7 hours ago 9 616
Following Russian warning of American aircraft being shot down, White House spokesman confirms plan for U.S. air strikes on Syria has been rejected.
Following yesterday’s Russian warning that Russia stood ready to shoot down US aircraft or missiles attacking Syria, the US has confirmed all plans for military action against Syria have been dropped.

[seemslikeadream]

I guess Obama wants to pass that opportunity off to Clinton

Slouching Toward War With Russia in Syria?

The proposed Obama-Putin cooperation was killed by its enemies in Washington, with dire implications.
By Stephen F. CohenYESTERDAY 12:48 PM

The John Batchelor Show, October 5, 2016.


Nation Contributing Editor Stephen F. Cohen and John Batchelor continue their weekly discussions of the new US-Russian Cold War.

(Previous installments are at TheNation.com.) The focus is on the Obama administration’s termination of months-long negotiations with Moscow for a joint US-Russian campaign against jihad terrorist forces in Syria. The discussion ranges from Syria to other fronts in the new Cold War, with Cohen making the following points:

§ Cooperation in Syria would have been the first major episode of détente in the new Cold War, indeed the first US-Russian military alliance since World War II, whose spirit might have spread to the dangerous conflicts in Ukraine and on Russia’s border with Eastern Europe, where NATO continues to build up its forces. The long-negotiated Syrian agreement was sabotaged not by Russia, as is alleged in Washington and by the mainstream media, but by American enemies of détente, first and foremost in the Department of Defense. DOD’s opposition was so intense that one of its spokesmen told the press it might disobey a presidential order to share intelligence with Moscow, as called for by the agreement, in flagrant violation of the US constitution. (A New York Times editorial not only failed to protest this threat but seemed to endorse it. Other major media seemed not even to notice the possibility of such a constitutional crisis, another indication of how badly the new Cold War, and the demonization of Russian President Putin, has degraded the US political-media establishment.)

§ The consequences of failed diplomacy in Syria are already evident. American politicians and media are calling for military action against Russian-Syrian forces, in particular, imposition of a “no-fly zone,” which would almost certainly lead to war with Russia. Others call for more economic sanctions against Russia, perhaps to ward off growing West European attitudes favoring an end to existing sanctions. In any event, developments in Syria have now deepened the new Cold War in words and deeds, and this is the case in Moscow as well. Putin, who has long pursued negotiations with the West over the objections of his own high-level hardliners, now seems resolved to destroy the jihadist forces encamped in Aleppo without the American partner he had hoped for. Meanwhile, talk of war also fills Russian media, and the Putin government has just began a highly unusual nation-wide “civil defense” exercise to prepare the country for that eventuality.


§ In short, the collapse of diplomacy in Syria has fully remilitarized US-Russian relations and brought the countries closer to war than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Unlike during the preceding Cold War, none of this is being discussed critically in establishment American media. The Times and The Washington Post, for example, publish articles and editorials, one after the other, declaring Putin to be an “outlaw” and “rogue” leader unfit to be an American partner on any front. In the mainstream, no one proposes § or is permitted to propose—any rethinking of US policies that may have contributed to this dire situation. No one asks, for example, if the Kremlin might be right in insisting that the overthrow of the Assad government, the primary US goal, would only strengthen terrorist forces in Syria, whose defeat is Moscow’s primary objective. In this connection, Moscow charges that détente in Syria failed in large part because Washington and its allies continue to arm and coddle, directly or indirectly, Syrian terrorists and their “moderate” anti-Assad abettors. This factor, for which there is considerable evidence, also is not explored or discussed in the US media, even in a presidential election year. Instead, CBS News’s 60 Minutes, which, like the Times, was once a gold standard of professional American journalism, recently broadcast a nuclear warmongering segment giddily marveling that the United States would soon have more “usable” nuclear weapons to deploy against Russia.

§ Cohen and Batchelor end by wondering, yet again, where was the publicly silent President Obama while his proposed détente was being killed by members of his own administration? Russians and West Europeans are also asking this question. https://www.thenation.com/article/slouching-toward-war-with-russia-in-syria/