A Nuclear War Against Russia Will Never Happen

Provoked NATO-Russia Conflicts’ Possible but ‘No One Needs Nuclear Apocalypse

Sputnik

13:24 22.08.2017(updated 15:18 22.08.2017) Get short URL

Occasional incidents between Russian and NATO military forces are fairly possible, and some of them may be intentionally provoked, Russian International Affairs Council expert Prokhor Tebin told Sputnik.

“Our relations with the US and NATO will certainly remain tense  and I do not expect any reset like the one we had after the 2008 conflict in Georgia happening any time soon. Limited local-scale military incidents between Russia, the US and NATO, or its individual members, with real fighting and losses,” Tebin said while presenting a report in Euro-Atlantic stability at the recent meeting of the Valdai Discussions Club.

“Moreover, some of these incidents could be intentional,” he added.
Prokhor Tebin highlights the November 2016 incident when Turkey shot down a Russian warplane in Syria as an example of such a conflict.

Tebin added that “both sides have a chance to pragmatically resolve such conflicts before they spill over to full-blown war confrontation or a Cold War.”

He proposed closer dialogue between politicians, diplomats, experts and military men on both sides and the need “to outline their priorities and national interests they will not budge on and the “red lines” they’re not willing to let each other cross.
Tebin continuedsaid that “a major war between Russia and the West is “extremely unlikely because no one needs a nuclear apocalypse.”
US and Canada Institute’s deputy director Pavel Zolotarev likewise ruled out the possibility of Russia and the West actually coming to blows.

“Even if we imagine that [the US] goes to war with Russia, it would have to enlist the help of its NATO allies in Europe, which is unrealistic,” Zolotarev said.

He mentioned how reluctantly America’s fellow NATO members in Europe supported Washington’s military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“Where was NATO when the US was preparing to invade [Iraq]? The Americans were forced to cobble together the so-called ‘Coalition of the Unwilling’. In Afghanistan Russia acted as a partner, but NATO didn’t,” he added.

Zolotarev believes that aside from the post-Soviet territory, there is really nothing Russia and NATO can’t agree on.

NATO-Russia relations have been complicated over the past few years, as NATO has set a sustainable course for the alliance’s expansion by engaging Eastern European states since 2014.
NATO justified its eastward expansion as a response to Russia’s alleged meddling in the Ukrainian conflict.
Moscow has repeatedly and vehemently refuted these allegations.

Why a U.S.-Russian War is NOT in Prophecy

PUTIN WARNS U.S.-RUSSIA NUCLEAR WAR WOULD LEAVE NO SURVIVORS

Damian Sharkov
Russian President Vladimir Putin has dismissed the idea that the U.S. would claim victory in a conflict with Russia, noting that “nobody would survive” such a clash.
Speaking to U.S. movie director Oliver Stone for The Putin Interviews, a four-part series on Showtime, Putin shared a negative view of U.S. military action and its NATO alliance.
“NATO is a mere instrument of U.S. foreign policy,” Putin says in a clip of the interview, aired by the Showtime channel. “It has no allies, it has only vassals. Once a country becomes a NATO member, it is hard to resist the pressures of the United States.”
Russian officials frequently claim that the U.S. commands European allegiance through NATO, despite the alliance arguing that participation in the alliance is voluntary and that allies merely agree to broad military cooperation upon entry, rather than to specific deployment or combat obligations.
Troubled by Moscow’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, NATO has reoriented resources to defend allies near Russia. The Kremlin has vowed to respond with its own deployments and argued the move is aggressive.
Poland and Romania have claimed they volunteered to host elements of a U.S. missile shield—but speaking to Stone, Putin says this is just another example of U.S. dictated policy.
“In this case we have to take countermeasures,” Putin tells Stone. “We have to aim our missile systems at the facilities that are threatening us. The situation becomes more tense.”
In 2015, the deputy head of Russia’s Security Council Yevgeny Lukyanov warned that countries that accept the U.S. missile shield system “ automatically become targets ” for Russia.
“Romania cannot be intimidated by threats! The Missile Defense System is fundamental for the national and regional security,” Romania’s then Prime Minister Victor Ponta said in response.
Meanwhile, the Polish Ministry of National Defence refused to refer to Lukyanov’s hypothetical conflict scenario—concluding that “the Ministry of National Defense refers to the facts.”

Celebrating for Nothing (Revelation 15)

Celebration as UN adopts historic nuclear weapons ban
Tim Wright
For more than seven decades, the international community has grappled with the threat of nuclear weapons. At the United Nations on Friday, July 7th, the vast majority of the world’s governments made clear their total rejection of these abhorrent devices, concluding a treaty to prohibit them, categorically, for all time. It was a moment of great historical significance.
Prolonged applause broke out as the president of the negotiating conference, Costa Rican ambassador Elayne Whyte Gomez, gavelled through the landmark accord. “We have managed to sow the first seeds of a world free of nuclear weapons,” she said. Diplomats and campaigners who had worked tirelessly over many years to make the treaty a reality embraced in celebration of the extraordinary achievement.
Setsuko Thurlow, a survivor of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and long-time champion of disarmament, became overwhelmed with emotion as she welcomed the formal adoption of the treaty, backed by 122 nations. She asked delegates to pause to feel the witness of those who perished in 1945 or died later from radiation-related illnesses. She was a 13-year-old schoolgirl when hell descended on earth.
“Each person who died had a name. Each person was loved by someone,” she told the crowded conference room. “I’ve been waiting for this day for seven decades, and I am overjoyed that it has finally arrived. This is the beginning of the end of nuclear weapons.” She urged nations never to return to the failed policy of nuclear deterrence, and never to return to funding nuclear violence instead of meeting human needs.
The treaty recognizes the harm suffered both from nuclear weapons use and the two-thousand-plus nuclear test explosions that have been conducted across the globe since 1945. It obliges nations to provide assistance to the victims of these heinous acts. Its overriding mission, as reflected in the preamble, is to ensure that no one else ever suffers as they have.
Abacca Anjain-Maddison, from the Marshall Islands—a Pacific nation devastated by US nuclear testing in the 1940s and 1950s—delivered a powerful closing statement on behalf of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, whose 400 non-governmental organizations in 100 nations worked for more than a decade to bring about the treaty.
“The adoption of this landmark agreement today fills us with hope that the mistakes of the past will never be repeated,” she said, emphasizing the special meaning that it has for those who have suffered nuclear harm. “The international community has at last acknowledged what we have always known: that nuclear weapons are abhorrent and immoral.”
Governments, too, delivered impassioned statements in celebration of the treaty’s adoption. Among them was South Africa, which played a pivotal role during the negotiations and is the only nation to have built a nuclear arsenal before eliminating it completely. “Working hand in hand with civil society, [we] took an extraordinary step [today] to save humanity from the frightful specter of nuclear weapons,” its ambassador, Nozipho Mxakato-Diseko, said. “For us, as a country, it was a duty to vote ‘yes’ for this treaty … to have voted ‘no’ would have been a slap in the face to the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”
One nation participating in ban negotations, the Netherlands—which hosts US nuclear weapons on its territory—did opt to vote against the treaty. Its government opposes meaningful disarmament efforts, despite overwhelming public support.
All nine nuclear-armed nations boycotted the negotiations, and therefore were absent for the vote. Some had exerted great pressure on other nations not to participate. But ultimately they failed to thwart the process. The commitment and resolve of the international community to declare nuclear weapons illegal was evident from the beginning of negotiations.
The treaty prohibits its state parties from developing, testing, producing, manufacturing, transferring, possessing, stockpiling, using, or threatening to use nuclear weapons. It also prohibits them from assisting, encouraging, or inducing anyone to engage in any of those activities, and they must not permit nuclear weapons to be stationed on their territory.
A nation that possesses nuclear weapons may join the treaty, so long as it agrees to remove them from operational status immediately and destroy them in accordance with a legally binding, time-bound plan. One that hosts another nation’s nuclear weapons on its territory may also join the treaty on condition that it will remove them by a specified deadline.
The treaty will open for signature in New York on September 20th, when world leaders meet for the annual opening of the UN General Assembly. “If you love this planet, you will sign this treaty,” said Setsuko Thurlow. Fifty nations will need to ratify it before it can enter into full legal force. Much work will then be needed to ensure that it is implemented and becomes universal.
With close to 15,000 nuclear weapons remaining in the world—and efforts underway in all nuclear-armed nations to bolster their arsenals—the ultimate goal of eliminating this paramount threat to humanity is far from being realized. But now, the United Nations has established the foundations for making a nuclear-weapon-free world possible.
The treaty establishes a powerful norm that, many expect, will prove transformative. It closes a major gap in international law. Nuclear weapons—like other indiscriminate weapons, including biological and chemical weapons, anti-personnel landmines and cluster munitions—are now categorically and permanently banned.
This post is part of Ban Brief, a series of updates on the historic 2017 negotiations to create a treaty banning nuclear weapons. Ban Brief is written by Tim Wright, Asia-Pacific director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, and Ray Acheson, director of Reaching Critical Will.

Russia’s New Super Nuclear Bomb

Russia’s Satan Nuclear Missile Said Capable of Destroying Countries, but It’s Taking a Long Time to Get Right

By Tom O’Connor On 7/10/17 at 3:37 PM

Russia has faced numerous delays in building its “Satan 2” nuclear missile said to be capable of taking out entire countries at once, but another devastating weapon of mass destruction system may soon be in the works as well.

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said Thursday that Moscow’s defense ministry was immediately prepared to begin work on both the oft-delayed  RS-28 Sarmat (NATO calls it the SS-X-30 “Satan 2”) and on the Barguzin railroad combat missile complex, a train system said to be able to deliver nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) to targets thousands of miles away. Both weapons, which have origins in the country’s Soviet past, may soon be resurrected amid heightened tensions between Moscow and Washington—if Russia’s government and technological capabilities allow.
The RS-28 Sarmat and Barguzin are “on the level of absolute readiness…for their implementation, should the relevant decision be made to include the projects in the state armament program,” Rogozin told Pravda, the official newspaper of Russia’s Communist Party.
Visitors walk past an R-36 or SS-18 SATAN intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) at the Strategic Missile Forces museum near Pervomaysk, some 186 miles south of Kiev, Ukraine, August 22, 2011. Russia has been working on a new and improved version of the nuclear-capable missile known as “Satan 2” for some time, as well as a train-based system capable of launching thermonuclear ICBMs from a mobile platform. Gleb Garanich/Reuters
The RS-28 Sarmat can reportedly hold up to 10 nuclear warheads, enough to effectively decimate an area the size of the entire state of Texas, or even the whole of France. Despite Rogozin’s remarks, however, the missile’s production has been continuously delayed since being announced in 2014, and Russia’s Defense Ministry last week said testing would be further postponed until later this year, according to another report by Pravda. The missile is intended to replace the R-36 Voevoda, dubbed “Satan” by NATO in the 1970s. It was supposed to enter service between 2019 and 2020, but setbacks and bugs may affect this projection.
The Barguzin is also said to be an improvement on a previous design, known to NATO as “Scalpel.” Earlier versions of the railroad-based weapon were first considered in the 1960s and later developed in the 1980s, but the systems were largely forgotten after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Now the so-called ghost trains may be brought back to life, as a new and improved nuclear weapons system capable of traveling across the largest country on Earth, significantly protecting it from detection. The Barguzin can reportedly be equipped with up to six 55-ton RS-24 Yars thermonuclear ICBMs, an upgrade from the previous three, and it could be seen in the field by 2019, according to The National Interest. Missile testing for the weapons system reportedly took place in November.
With an estimated 7,300 and 6,970 warheads, Russia and the U.S, have the largest and second-largest nuclear weapons arsenals in the world, respectively. These massive nuclear stockpiles were largely developed amid a post-World War II arms race that saw the world’s leading superpowers compete for global military dominance. The rivalry cooled after the fall of the Soviet Union, but has picked up again in recent years as the U.S. backs Western military alliance NATO in a regional battle of influence with Russia over the political future of Europe.
Amid these deteriorated relations, President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin met Friday for the first time during the highly anticipated G-20 Summit in Hamburg, Germany. The two vowed to cooperate more closely on various issues, such as their countries’ roles in the conflict in Syria and cyber crime, which the U.S. frequently accuses the Kremlin of sponsoring. In December, Trump and Putin separately called for the expansion of their respective nuclear weapons arsenals.

Too Little Too Late (Revelation 15)

122 Nations Approve Treaty to Ban Nuclear Weapons

Aria Bendix

More than 120 nations adopted the first international treaty banning nuclear weapons on Friday at the United Nations headquarters in New York City. The initiative—led by Austria, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, and New Zealand—was approved by 122 votes, with only the Netherlands opposed, and Singapore abstaining. The nine countries generally recognized as possessing nuclear weapons—the U.S., Russia, Britain, China, France, India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Israel—were noticeably absent from the negotiations, as were most members of NATO.

Despite being a victim of atomic attacks in 1945, Japan also boycotted the meeting. Nevertheless, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki informed Friday’s dialogue—and the conversation thereafter. “It’s been seven decades since the world knew the power of destruction of nuclear weapons,” the president of the UN conference, Elayne Whyte Gómez, told The Guardian. The agreement, she added, “is a very clear statement that the international community wants to move to a completely different security paradigm that does not include nuclear weapons.”

Friday’s ten-page treaty is extensive in its demands, prohibiting signatories from developing, testing, manufacturing, possessing, or threatening to use nuclear weapons. Nations are also prohibited from transferring nuclear weapons to one another. Having now been approved by the UN, the treaty will be open for signatures on September 20, at which point it will need to be ratified by 50 states before entering into international law.The major obstacle, of course, is that many prominent members of the international community—and their allies—remain vocally opposed. In a joint statement on Friday, the UN ambassadors for the U.S., Britain, and France said they had no intention of joining the treaty, arguing that it “clearly disregards the realities of the international security environment.” Of particular concern, they said, was the fact that the treaty failed to address of the growing threat of North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs. Earlier this week, North Korea claimed to have tested its first intercontinental ballistic missile, which experts say may be capable of striking Hawaii and Alaska. The nation has also conducted five nuclear tests since 2006—and could be preparing for its sixth.Rather than ban nuclear weapons and risk vulnerability to a North Korean attack, the U.S., Britain, and France hope to strengthen the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), which provides nations other than the five original nuclear powers—the U.S., Russia, Britain, France, and China—from pursuing nuclear programs. In exchange, the five powers have pledged to make steps toward nuclear disarmament and give non-nuclear states access to nuclear technology for producing energy. But many nations have criticized the NPT for failing to elicit a speedy disarmament. At the very least, Friday’s treaty introduces the concept of a nuclear-free world, and could even put pressure on nuclear powers to adopt a new set of standards. “The key thing is that it changes the legal landscape,” Richard Moyes, the managing director of Article 36, a U.K.-based organization that aims to prevent harm caused by nuclear weapons, told Agence France-Presse. As Moyes sees it, the newly-approved treaty “stops states with nuclear weapons from being able to hide behind the idea that they are not illegal.”

World War 3 Will Soon Happen (Revelation 15)

Could World War 3 actually happen? How chemical warfare and nuclear weapons could lead to a global conflict

By Neal Baker, Tom Gillespie and Mark Hodge

PEACE OUT

Tensions between the US, Russia, China and North Korea continue to escalate

TENSIONS between the US, Russia, China and North Korea continue to escalate, with each power refusing to back down.

And after Kim Jong-un tested the country’s first intercontinental ballistic missile – are these signs of an outbreak of World War 3?
Tensions between US, Russia, China and North Korea are increasing.
Kim Jong-un laughed as he fired North Korea’s first ICBM declaring it was a special “gift for American b******s” on July 4 – the nation’s Independence Day.
It launched the Hwasong-14 – said to be capable of hitting the US – as Donald Trump warned of “severe consequences” for his “bad behaviour”.
Prior to that, North Korea conducted two nuclear tests and 24 ballistic missile tests in 2016 alone, defying six UN Security Council resolutions banning any testing.
And this year, one of the nation’s additional missile tests failed when it blew up soon after launching.
The secretive country has shown no signs of slowing down, warning that it is ready for “full out war”.
It has even warned that it would be a “piece of cake” to nuke Japan – and that anyone supporting their detractors would also be in the firing line.
The hermit state has threatened that “nuclear war could break out at any moment”, but most experts believe it would not launch an attack as it would not survive a revenge strike by the US.
Paranoid Kim Jong-un has even dubbed America’s leaders a bunch of “rats sneaking around in the dark” amid claims the CIA plotted to wipe him out.
The tyrannical country has threatened the US with a “full-scale” nuclear war and claims the superpower is running scared of Kim Jong-un’s missiles.
Russia, along with China, is said to have sent a spy ship to the area to ward off the task force amid rising tensions in the region.
And Putin urged the US to show “restraint”.
There was a time when it seemed like the prospect of war with the likes of Russia and China had disappeared with the end of the Cold War.
But tense relationships between the world’s major military players means the outbreak of another global conflict has been raised higher than ever before.

Russia and America’s involvement in the war in Syria has created a situation where the two nations’ planes are reportedly flying dangerously close to each other on bombing runs.
Putin threatened in June to shoot down all RAF and US jets in western Syria in retaliation for a US Navy fighter downing a Syrian plane.
If World War Three does kick off it seems the Russians could have something to do with it.
But it is more likely that if it ever did happen, it would be sparked hundreds of miles away from Syria.
One expert claimed Latvia will be Ground Zero — the country where the next global conflict will begin.
Professor Paul D Miller of the National Defence University in Washington DC — who predicted the invasion of Crimea and the Ukraine conflict — said the Baltic state is next on Russia’s hit list.
But Putin won’t use conventional troops. Instead, he will recreate what happened in Ukraine and stir up the patriotism of ethnic Russians in the country.
“Putin will instigate an ambiguous militarised crisis using deniable proxies, probably in the next two years”, he said.
A Russian jet came within just five feet of a US reconnaissance plane in the Baltic in June, reports claimed, with one official quoted as saying the SU-27 was “provocative”, “unsafe” and flying “erratically”.

It is impossible to say who would win with any certainty, but the US has the best arsenal.
The US is the only country in possession of fifth-gen fighter jets – 187 F-22s and an F-35 that is not yet out of the testing phase.
Russia is developing one stealth fighter and China is working on four.
In terms of submarines the US Navy has 14 ballistic missile submarines with a combined 280 nuclear missiles.
They also possess four guided missile submarines with 154 Tomahawk cruise missiles each and 54 nuclear attack submarines.
Russia has only 60 submarines but they are said to have outstanding stealth capabilities.
They are also developing a 100-megaton nuclear torpedo.
China has five nuclear attack submarines, 53 diesel attack submarines, and four nuclear ballistic missile submarines to date.
But the emerging superpower is developing more.

North Korea say U.S. bombers push tension ‘to the brink of nuclear war’

On the brink

Of Course There Will Be a Nuclear Armageddon (Revelation 15)

FactCheck Q&A: Could there be a nuclear Armageddon?

By Martin Williams
4 JUL 2017
After a successful missile test, North Korea claims it is now a “full-fledged nuclear power” which is “capable of hitting any part of the world”.
Russia and the US believe this is a slight exaggeration, saying the missile actually had a medium-range and posed no immediate threat to either country.
But the development has scared many about the prospect of nuclear war. So how likely is it?
Who’s got nuclear weapons?
The US and Russia both reduced their nuclear weapon arsenal after the Cold War. But since the 1990s, the speed of this reduction has slowed down.
What’s more, because of constantly improving technology, the potential impact of each warhead is now far greater than it once was.
The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) says: “Comparing today’s inventory with that of the 1950s is like comparing apples and oranges; today’s forces are vastly more capable.
“The pace of reduction has slowed significantly. Instead of planning for nuclear disarmament, the nuclear-armed states appear to plan to retain large arsenals for the indefinite future.”
As far as we know, nine countries have nuclear weapons: Russia, the US, France, China, the UK, Pakistan, India, Israel and North Korea. Between them, they are thought to have around 15,000 nuclear weapons.
Of these, Russia and the US have by far the most. But the FAS says that China, Pakistan, India and North Korea appear to have been increasing their stockpiles, while the others are either reducing the numbers or making no significant changes.
We can’t be sure of exact numbers because of the high level of secrecy, not least in North Korea.
Israel has also refused to confirm or deny its arsenal, but it is widely suspected to have about 80 nuclear warheads and enough plutonium to make many more.
Out of the 15,000 nuclear weapons in the world, the majority are not immediately deployable. A report by the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research in 2012 estimated that the US, UK, France and Russia had around 1,940 warheads which were “ready for use on short notice”.
The report said the numbers were so high because of “circular (though flawed) logic”.
“US nuclear forces are maintained on alert because Russian nuclear forces are on alert, and vice versa for Russian forces. Put in another way, if nuclear forces were not on alert, there would be no requirement to keep nuclear forces on alert.”
What would happen in a nuclear war?
After the US dropped a nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, an initial report said that two-thirds of the people who were within half a mile of the blasts had been killed. People suffered skin burns up to two miles away.
The final death toll of Hiroshima alone is now estimated to be between 66,000 and 150,000.
That was more than 70 years ago, though. Nuclear weapons today can be many, many times more powerful.
And that’s to say nothing of the economic, political and social consequences, which could potentially be monumental.
Bill Perry, a nuclear weapons expert who served as President Clinton’s Secretary of Defense spoke to Vice earlier this year. He said a worst case scenario would now mean nothing short of a total Armageddon.
“An all-out general nuclear war between the United States and Russia would mean no less than the end of civilisation,” Perry said. “That’s not being dramatic; that’s not being hyperbolic. That’s just what would happen.”
How likely is a nuclear war?
The world survived the Cold War without nuclear weapons being used. And with the main two nuclear powers reducing their arsenals, it might be tempting to think the risk is reducing.
But global security threats are very different to what they once were. And one bomb could lead to retaliation strikes.
Bill Perry said he believes the most likely scenario for a nuclear attack would be if a terrorist group got hold of a small amount of enriched uranium, allowing them to make an improvised nuclear bomb.
“Of all of the nuclear catastrophes that could happen, this is the most probable,” he said. “I think I would say it’s probably an even chance that this will happen sometime in the next ten years.”
He added: “We have the possibility of a regional nuclear war, between Pakistan and India, for example. Even if they used only half of their nuclear arsenal, those bombs would put enough smoke in the air – enough dust in the air – that will go up and settle in the stratosphere and then distribute itself around the planet and would block the rays of the sun for years to come.
“It could be millions of people who die from that alone.”

Russia is Ready for Nuclear Holocaust (Revelation 15)

Russia has ‘enormous’ underground bunkers ready for nuclear war

By Ruth Brown

Russia is maintaining giant bunkers underneath Moscow where Kremlin bigwigs can live underground for months after a nuclear attack, because the administration is convinced the U.S. plans on overthrowing President Vladimir Putin, according to a newly revealed Pentagon report.

“A deep underground facility at the Kremlin and an enormous underground leadership bunker adjacent to Moscow State University are intended for the national command authority in wartime,” says the report, according to the Times of London.
“Highly effective life-support systems may permit independent operations for many months following a nuclear attack.”
The Defense Intelligence Agency report on Moscow’s military might — the first since the Cold War — says the “enormous” bunkers are 985 feet underground and can house as many as 10,000 people in the case of nuclear Armageddon, according to the paper.
The shelters are linked to other bunkers outside of the city — as well as the VIP terminal at Vnukovo airfield, in case the honchos need to flee, the report said.
The report, which predates President Trump’s election but was released Wednesday, says Putin believes the U.S. is intent on regime change as part of our “efforts to promote democracy around the world.”
“The Kremlin is convinced the United States is laying the groundwork for regime-change in Russia,” the report says.

US Deploys Itself Against Russia

US deploys all its nuclear-capable bombers to Britain

Daily Mail

By Luke Barnes For Mailonline

Published: 21:07 EDT, 13 June 2017 | Updated: 21:32 EDT, 13 June 2017

The US has deployed several nuclear-capable strategic bombers to Britain for the first time as tensions with Russia continue to grow.

Two B-2 stealth bombers, which cost more than half a billion each three B-52H Stratofortress aircraft and three B-1B Lancers are currently stationed at RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire.

A spokesman for the base said the aircraft are being used ‘in support of exercises BALTOPS (Baltic operations), Saber Strike and Arctic Challenge taking place in the U.S. European Command area of responsibility.’

Show of force: The B-1 Lancer (left), B-2 Spirit (centre) and B-52 Stratofortress (pictured right) together at RAF Fairford

He told the Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard: ‘The deployment of strategic bombers strengthens the effectiveness of RAF Fairford as the U.S. Air Forces in Europe and Air Forces Africa’s forward operating bomber location’ and the deployment of the bombers provide: ‘important integration and interaction with our joint partners, UK and NATO allies.’

Despite their use solely being for exercise purposes currently, the aircraft are capable of delivering a nuclear strike and have been used in Iraq and Afghanistan in the past.

The decision to deploy the bombers on UK soil comes as tensions are mounting with Russia as it adopts more a aggressive military front.

Russian Tupolev Tu-95 ‘Bear’ strategic bombers have repeatedly been intercepted in recent months by NATO aircraft, including RAF Typhoons.

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American power: The B-2 Spirit stealth bomber is the world’s most advanced strategic bomber

Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit

• Cruising Speed: Classified – believed to be high subsonic
• Range: 6,000 miles, 10,000 miles with one aerial refueling
• Payload: Capable of carrying 16 B61 Nuclear free fall bombs or 80 conventional 500lbs bombs 
• Crew: Two

One of the most advanced aircraft ever built, the B-2 Spirit America’s premier strategic bomber. It’s ‘flying wing’ design allows it to penetrate enemy radar systems to deliver either nuclear or conventional weapons.

The project was originally conceived during the Carter administration in 1976 as a way to counter the Soviet threat. It was shrouded in secrecy and cost nearly $45billion to develop until it’s first flight in 1989.

With just one air-to-air refueling the B-2 is capable of flying an astonishing 10,000 miles. This means that there is rarely a need to deploy it outside the U.S., except in cases where the American government wants to project a show of force.

The long-range, multi-mission B1-B Lancer has been part of the US Air Force since 1985

Rockwell B1-B Lancer

• Top Speed: 900-plus mph
• Range: Intercontinental 
• Payload: Capable of carrying nuclear weapons and up to 75,000lbs of ordnance internally -the equivalent of 24 misiles
• Crew: Four

Nicknamed ‘The Bone’ for its sleek look, the swing-wing B-1B Lancer was originally designed as an incredibly fast strategic bomber that could penetrate the Soviet Union’s airspace.

However, the collapse of the USSR meant that there was a reduced need for the United States’ nuclear bombers, so the B-1 was assigned a conventional role in the mid-1990s. In the 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia six B-1Bs flew two per cent of strike missions but dropped 20 per cent of the total ordnance.

It has been nearly continuously deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001. It has also recently seen action in Libya and Syria. Upgrades will ensure the plane is in service up until at least 2040.

The Terrorism of These End Times

Why Americans Don’t Understand Terrorism, At All

We live in an invisible empire, and so the mechanics of the empire are never openly discussed with the rabble. Americans don’t comprehend how power actually works across the planet that their country seeks to control. They live from momentary headline to headline without any honest, in-depth analysis of why events like the Manchester bombing occur and keep occurring.

When it comes to terrorism it is dire, urgent, and desperate that the public understand, if anything is to change. But it certainly appears that Americans never will. Perhaps Britons may, and then lead the effort to stop it.

In the United States, a bigoted faction demonizes all Muslims. That faction calls for more weapons and for their own wanton terror to be perpetrated everywhere. An opposing faction absolves all Muslims and calls for peace and reconciliation… with suicide bombers? The two sides mindlessly shout clichés back and forth at one another in a cacophony, and they drown out the larger global issues that have transpired for many years. The public is thus rendered impotent, irrelevant and ignored: divided and conquered.

Gross historical ignorance leads to this inability to see what should be glaringly obvious: the deep state—covert intelligence agencies operating in secret—play a “double game.” They are in bed with terrorists, whom they see as useful proxies. The terrorists do their dirty work for them in places like Libya, Syria, Chechnya and Dagestan.

Americans are largely incapable of comprehending what a proxy is. It’s one level too abstract. Ask people on the street about such matters, and the results would be akin to the 64% who cannot even find North Korea on a map. Korea’s location is in no way a secret, and the government doesn’t officially deny its existence.

The corporate media has been criminal in distracting the public from the role of western allied intelligence agencies in these terror games. Despite the decade-long Afghanistan Jihad against the Soviets, the similarities of multiple current conflicts do not make it onto the evening news shows. This default censorship extends into so-called “alternative” media too. There is an unspoken air of collusion with intelligence in the United States. Some matters, for example Operation Gladio, are simply never, ever brought up. That chapter has been tossed down Orwell’s Memory Hole.

Just what is a “proxy” and “proxy war?”

The Cambridge Dictionary says:

“a war fought between groups or smaller countries that each represent the interests of other larger powers, and may have help and support from these.”

Al Qaeda has been a proxy for US, Saudi and Pakistani interests since at least 1979, when Jimmy Carter’s CIA began aiding them and setting up the largest logistical support network in its history: Operation Cyclone. While official government claims mislead the public into assuming that the relationship ended in the late 1980s, it did not.

Al Qaeda maintains relationships with US allies, notably Saudi Arabia and Pakistan (where bin Laden lived for a decade and Ayman Zawahiri is assumed to be right now). Other states in the Persian Gulf region such as Qatar, Kuwait and Turkey are also implicated. These nations receive US arms and US protection. Although they are repeatedly exposed for aiding and abetting Al Qaeda and associated groups operating under various names, these countries are tolerated and rewarded by US administrations and other Western powers.

This absurdity can only continue because of the gross ignorance and the distractibility of western populations.

“Saudis Bankroll Taliban, Even as King Officially Supports Afghan Government”
-NY Times, Dec. 6 2016

The Manchester bombing produced some uncharacteristically revealing news reports in the UK, but these are censored to US audiences. US media is more tightly controlled, apparently, when it comes to the shenanigans of western intelligence services protecting terrorists.

Here is what we learned about Manchester:

• There were no fewer than five warnings that Abedi was a dangerous Jihadist, including warnings from the US FBI in January!
• The Libyan Al Qaeda franchise LIFG has cells living in Manchester England, allowed to remain by UK intelligence.
• Abedi, his father and his brother were known to be members of LIFG, and yet he was still allowed to return to Britain.
• An Al Qaeda bomb maker was also allowed to live in the UK.
• As many as 23,000 Jihadists are right now inhabiting Britain, and MI5 knows this.
• MI5 encouraged Jihadis to travel to Libya to fight and then later to Syria.
• Current UK Prime Minister Theresa May had a direct role in these open door policies, as Home Secretary.
• Similarly, 18 further warnings were ignored by MI5 concerning the London Bridge attackers of the following week, including one of them appearing in a TV news investigation about British Jihadists!

One of the friends who called the anti-terrorism hotline about one of the London Bridge attackers said, “’He was not arrested and was allowed to keep his passport. I did my bit, I know a lot of other people did their bit, but the authorities did not do their bit.”
Previously, and related, a radical Muslim cleric named Anjem Choudary was protected from arrest by MI5 for nearly twenty years!

“Met counter-terror officers often felt they enough evidence to build a case against the radicalising cleric, only to be told to hang fire by MI5, because he was crucial to one of their on-going investigations, a source has claimed… After almost 20-years at the forefront of radical Islam in Britain, Choudary was finally convicted of a terrorism offence last month and faces up to ten years in prison when he is sentenced on September 6. But following his conviction it was revealed that the 49-year-old former lawyer had been linked to at least 15 terror plots dating back as far as 2001.”

Needless to say, those five warnings flagging Manchester bomber Salman Abedi were completely ignored by authorities—for some reason. This is very similar to the warnings about the Tsarnaev Brothers in 2013. The pattern is almost identical to the Boston Marathon Bombing.

Russia sent the FBI two warnings about the Tsarnaevs including one that was ignored after Tamerlan met with a known extremist guerrilla leader in Dagestan. Israel’s DEBKAFile suggested at the time that the Tsarnaevs were being recruited by US intelligence to go stir up trouble in the Russian provinces of Chechnya and Dagestan. This was confirmed by Michele McPhee in her recent book Maximum Harm: The Tsarnaev Brothers, the FBI, and the Road to the Marathon Bombing.
Warnings were ignored, systematically, in both cases. Numerous warnings were also ignored concerning the 9/11 attacks, and for similar reasons. FBI chief division counsel Coleen Rowley explained in painstaking detail how her efforts to stop the 9/11 attacks were blocked by her own headquarters.

“Within days of terrorist suspect Zaccarias Moussaoui’s arrest in Minnesota on Aug. 16, 2001, French intelligence confirmed that Moussaoui had been fighting under and recruiting for [Chechen Al Qaeda leader] Ibn al-Khattab, raising concerns about Moussaoui’s flight training. Yet FBI Headquarters officials balked at allowing a search of his laptop and other property, still refusing to recognize that: 1) the Chechen separatists were themselves a “terrorist group” for purposes of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act’s (FISA) legal requirement of acting “on behalf of a foreign power” and 2) that Moussaoui’s link to Ibn al Khattab inherently then linked him to bin Laden’s well-recognized Al Qaeda group for purposes of FISA (the point in my memo).”

The Minnesota FBI agents were thwarted from investigating Moussaoui’s intelligence, and it remained untouched when hijacked planes crashed into the World Trade Center and Pentagon a month later.

Those are three clear examples of interference in the fight against terrorism on western soil. A fourth example is the Berlin 2016 Christmas attack, which killed 12 and injured 56 others. “The attack was carried out by a man whom security officials across Germany were very well aware of,” according to the Interior Minister Ralf Jäger. Anis Amri was investigated seven times before striking, and yet officials claimed that nothing could be done about him. The public is to believe that the entire law enforcement and intelligence apparatus of Germany is powerless against one man. Police knew prior to his attack that he had traveled through Germany under 14 different aliases.
Newsbud compiled a timeline to dispute the claims of German officials:

26 September 2016:
Tunisian and Moroccan security authorities inform the North Rhine-Westphalia LKA that Amri is an Islamic State supporter, that he is in contact with suspected Tunisian terrorists in Libya, “wants to carry out a project” in Germany and is staying in Berlin. German authorities receive similar information on October 14 and October 26.

Coincidentally, that December, German intelligence produced a report that “10,000” Salafists were living in Germany. The report pointed the finger at Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait for their direct funding and support to “mosques, religious schools,” and “hardline preachers.”

The corporate media in the US today is a cacophony of irrelevant distraction. There, 99% of what is broadcast about terrorist attacks is completely unrelated to why it actually happened or how to stop it from happening again. TV news serves only as propaganda and does not inform its viewers of these otherwise knowable facts above.

The public would be far more attuned to these security breaches, and the impunity which surrounds them, if they understood modern history, and particularly the history since 1948 with the creation of the CIA and the “National Security State.” Soon after, we have it on the record, that the CIA began engaging in false-flag terrorism. It was a key component of Operation Ajax, the criminal plot to overthrow the democratically elected president of Iran.
New York Times revealed, in 2000 (47 years late):

“The [CIA’s own] history says agency officers orchestrating the Iran coup worked directly with royalist Iranian military officers, handpicked the prime minister’s replacement, sent a stream of envoys to bolster the shah’s courage, directed a campaign of bombings by Iranians posing as members of the Communist Party, and planted articles and editorial cartoons in newspapers.” (emphasis added)

Upon this “success,” the destruction of Iranian democracy and the installation of a murderous tyrant, the Central Intelligence Agency was thus encouraged to engage in more anti-communist false-flag attacks. That was Operation Gladio, a “forty year” spree of state-sponsored terrorist attacks across Europe, according to the BBC investigation.
Clearly we should be listening to meticulous experts like Dr. Nafeez Ahmed, rather than the barrage of talking heads who obfuscate on CNN. The Strategy of Tension persists and is the conceptual foundation of the perpetual “War on Terrorism.”

“The ‘strategy of tension’ denotes a highly secretive series of interconnected covert operations conducted jointly by the CIA and MI6 largely in Western Europe during this period. Well-documented by several respected historians, confirmed by official inquiries, and corroborated by former intelligence officials, the ‘strategy of tension’ is one of those unsavoury moments in contemporary history that we don’t learn about in school, or even university… The objective was to galvanize public opinion against leftwing policies and parties, and ultimately to mobilize popular support for purportedly anti-Soviet policies at home and abroad – most of which were really designed to legitimize brutal military interventions against nationalist independence movements in the ‘Third World’.”

Terrorism serves those who would destroy civil liberties at home and wage wars of aggression abroad. Attacks on random civilians have been allowed to proceed, and the efforts of lower-level law enforcement officers halted in their tracks, over and over again in multiple allied nations. That is the main reason we see repeated high-profile attacks perpetrated by people who are well-known to the security-intelligence complexes that are supposed to stop them but choose not to.

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Joe Giambrone publishes Political Film Blog, where all these stories were tagged and compiled.