With less than two months until the U.S. presidential election on Nov 5, the ruling Party in the White House is stepping up its witch hunt for ‘Russian agents’ who toil around-the-clock on behalf of the Kremlin and its ‘candidate’, Donald Trump, who seek to subvert U.S. ‘democracy’ and inflict havoc on our trembling nation.
Last week, the U.S. government’s so-called ‘Justice Department’ unveiled official accusations against a number of Russian media companies whose content are deemed a threat to national security. (The Truth is indeed dangerous to those in power in Washington DC).
Singled out as the main threat to U.S. ‘democracy’ is the Moscow media company, RT, which for over a decade has been the bogeyman stalking the nightmares of the American ruling class.
Also, last week Dmitri Simes, an American citizen and a leading U.S. foreign policy expert, was officially accused of acting as a Russian agent and violating sanctions. His house in Virginia was ransacked by the Gestapo FBI and valuable art works were stolen. What was Simes’ crime? He hosts a talk show in Moscow where global affairs and U.S. foreign policy are discussed freely, without censorship. Dangerous!
This follows the Gestapo FBI ransacking Scott Ritter’s house in New York State on Aug 7 as payback for his criticizing U.S. foreign policy and calling for friendship with Russia and other dangerous ideas. An investigation is ongoing, and focuses on Ritter’s recent travel to Russia and allegedly serving the Kremlin for the $300 he received while writing articles for RT.
How fortunate for us Americans that the White House is vigilant, protecting us from dangerous information, saving us the anguish of thinking for ourselves. Today’s ‘progressives’ certainly know better than those ‘far-right’ Founding Fathers who were obsessed with extremist notions of “freedom of speech” and “freedom of the press”.
Those devious Russians are so sneaky that they can seize control of your mind and turn you into one of their agents without you ever suspecting a thing. The minds of most Americans are fragile — for example, one witty meme on social media planted by Russian agents can turn many of us into Kremlin bots.
Apparently, President Putin is building an army of Kremlin stooges inside the Land of the Free, and it could soon be marching across the American heartland to the sound of balalaika music, dancing the kazachok, vodka bottles in hand and calling for world peace. What horror!
Therefore, to lend a hand to the Gestapo FBI, I’ve compiled a Russian Agent Test. Take it and see whose side you’re on in this epic battle between Good and Evil.
Do you want world peace?
Are you against nuclear war?
Do you think it’s wrong to dominate other countries, steal their natural resources and carpet bomb them into submission?
Do you think friendship with Russia is in the interests of the American people?
Do you believe in justice and freedom for the people of Donbass?
Do you think that Ukraine is a dangerous totalitarian state?
Are you against sending more weapons and cash to Zelensky’s corrupt regime?
Do you think Russians are human and have human rights?
Do you believe in Freedom of Speech?
Do you believe in Freedom of the Press?
Are you capable of thinking for yourself?
Have you ever read or watched RT content or any Russian media?
Do you like memes that mock Biden, Clinton, Harris, or Obama, and then share them with friends?
If you answered “Yes” to even one of these questions, then certainly you’re a ‘Russian agent.’ And you’re likely to be a person of interest to the Gestapo FBI.
Remember — the most important task before the American nation is to ‘protect our democracy’, and this demands zero tolerance toward anyone who thinks freely and critically. We will save ‘Democracy’ by seeking out and mercilessly destroying anyone who disagrees with our ruling class.
We would like to share with our readership a recent interview with renowned scholar Dmitri Simes about the FBI raid on his home in the United States a short while ago.
Dr. Simes is a distinguished writer and thinker and was head of the Center for National Interest in Washington DC for over 30 years. This think tank was founded by former US President Richard Nixon following his detente with the Soviet Union and the signing of the ABM treaty. It was part of the effort by President Nixon to promote better understanding and better relations between the US and Russia.
Please review the interview and make your own judgment. In our hope for better US Russia relations, it is important that all voices be heard, dissent not be seen as a threat, and freedom of expression be honored. In this interview, you will have the opportunity to listen personally to what Dr. Simes has to say, and the challenges facing those who seek a better environment of peace and security between the US and Russia….
Respectfully,
Krishen, Paula and Pamela Center for Citizen Initiatives
Russia’s budget deficit declined to just 331 billion rubles ($3.7 billion) or 0.2% of GDP for the first eight months of the year, according to Bloomberg. Russia recorded a budget surplus of 767 billion rubles ($8.5 billion) in August, thanks to almost 1 trillion rubles of increased revenue from non oil-and-gas sectors compared to July, this news agency reported. The Russian government’s revenues from taxes on oil and gas surged too, totaling 778.6 billion rubles ($8.7 billion) last month, up by 21% from a year ago, according to Bloomberg. In good news for Russian consumers, consumer prices in the week through Sept. 2 fell 0.02%, according to data from the Federal Statistics Service release, this news agency reported. On the negative side, S&P Global’s Purchasing Managers’ Index for Russian manufacturing fell to 52.1 last month compared to 53.6 in July, according to MT.
An Al Mayadeen investigation of July 19th laid bare the US Navy’s crushing defeat by Yemen’s AnsarAllah, in Washington’s initially-vaunted Operation Prosperity Guardian. Western media has finally acknowledged the Empire’s comprehensive trouncing by God’s Partisans, in an epic David vs Goliath triumph. Elsewhere, reporting on the much-hyped USS Eisenhower aircraft carrier strike group’s return to base after months of relentless bombardment by the Resistance amply underlines how aircraft carriers – the core component of US hegemony for decades – are quite literally dead in the water.
The New York Timesinnocuously headlined USS Eisenhower’s humiliating retreat as, “the end of a strategic deployment”, while simultaneously hailing a heroic homecoming. The article records how as the grand vessel neared Virginia’s Norfolk Harbor, one of the world’s largest US naval installations, a plane carrying National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan touched down on its deck. He addressed “thousands” of returning sailors, “all eager to be home”, in what the outlet dubbed “an extraordinarily pumped ‘all hands’ call’.”
USS Eisenhower
Recounting “how he would walk into the Oval Office and tell President Biden about the exploits of the Eisenhower and its strike group, shooting down all manner of Iranian-made drones and rescuing sailors attacked by the Houthis,” Sullivan volubly burnished the Navy’s courage and successes. “Man, what stories I got to tell: You guys played defense, you played offense,” he boasted. “When somebody comes at us, we come back harder at them.”
Similar bombast was present in remarks Sullivan madein an accompanying “exclusive” interview with The Times. He spoke of how in the immediate aftermath of “Oct. 7”, his White House national security team decided strident “military muscle movements that could show decisiveness” were absolutely vital. As such, Washington sought to “over-deliver on speed, and scope and scale of American power protection to reassure the Israelis, and to deter adversaries.” USS Eisenhower’s dispatch was considered the boldest “military muscle movement” possible.
Sullivan expressed delight with the results of Operation Prosperity Guardian, suggesting USS Eisenhower’s “fight” with AnsarAllah in the Red Sea “showed that [aircraft carriers] could still battle effectively at close ranges.” This appraisal was echoed by US Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro. He dismissed “critics” who “predicted the end of the usefulness of carriers”, claiming Operation Prosperity Guardian was a “valuable lesson” demonstrating that US aircraft carrier naysayers had gotten it badly wrong.
‘Imperfect Result’
This is a truly bizarre analysis. Operation Prosperity Guardian can only be considered a deeply embarrassing cataclysm. As NBC reported following the effort’s launch, USS Eisenhower’s mere presence in the Mediterranean was initially calculated by White House apparatchiks to be a “blunt message” that would scare off Iran, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, and Yemen’s AnsarAllah from striking the Zionist entity. However, the Resistance was not deterred one iota from its collective anti-genocide crusade. And now the flagship aircraft carrier has beaten a hasty retreat back to base.
A ship attacked by AnsarAllah
The Times understatedly concedes the conclusion of the US Navy’s Red Sea “strategic deployment” was “obviously an imperfect result”. As the outlet acknowledges, the Zionist entity’s 21st century Holocaust in Gaza continues apace, “fighting between Hezbollah and Israel could spiral”, and AnsarAllah’s blockade not only endures, but may expand if and whenever the movement’s leaders deem it necessary. Meanwhile, official figures indicate vast numbers of difficult-to-reproduce missiles, costing millions each, were expended shooting down low-cost AnsarAllah drones throughout the failed operation.
A far more rational conclusion to draw from Operation Prosperity Guardian is that US aircraft carriers have been proven beyond any reasonable doubt to be a redundant relic of a bygone, unipolar age. The Empire’s bloated, exorbitantly expensive military machine built in recent decades, exclusively suited to one-sided gang-beatings of adversaries that can’t retaliate, is now unable to meet the challenges of modern warfare. By contrast, the Resistance have effortlessly innovated and equipped themselves for 21st century battle.
If the effusive endorsements of Operation Prosperity Guardian issued by Del Toro and Sullivan are truly sincere, then unambiguous, urgent takeouts from the fiasco evidently have not been heeded. Eerily, such cecity was precisely foreshadowed by the July 2002 Millennium Challenge. Largely forgotten today, it remains one of the grandest war games ever mounted by the Pentagon. Costing $250 million – almost $500 million in today’s money – it involved both live-action exercises and computer simulations. In all, 13,000 real-life US troops participated.
The Millennium Challenge’s simulated combatants were the US – “Blue” – and a fictitious West Asian state, led by a tyrannical maniac – “Red”. Under the war game’s auspices, a vast US expeditionary fleet headed to the Persian Gulf, in preparation for invading “Red”. The effort was widely considered to be an advance test of US military readiness for “intervening” in Iran and/or Iraq. Red was led by Paul Van Riper, a retired Marine Corps lieutenant general.
Paul Van Riper
Believing Blue would launch a surprise attack, Van Riper opted to strike first. A vast swarm of computer-generated small civilian boats and propeller planes at his disposal were dispatched on a kamikaze blitz against both US military bases in the region, and the advancing expeditionary force, while cruise missiles fired upon the flotilla from mobile launch points, on land and at sea. Before Blue even reached Red territory, its aircraft carrier and 16 accompanying vessels were sunk, with 20,000 fictional US soldiers killed.
‘Scripted Exercise’
The Empire had been comprehensively defeated by day two of the two-week-long simulation, in a worse drubbing than Pearl Harbor. So the Pentagon simplyrestarted the exercise, and began changing the rules, to rig US victory. A “control group” steadily imposed constraints on Van Riper. First, his military was forced to use unencrypted cellphones to coordinate and plan missions, to ensure Blue could closely monitor what its adversaries were saying. Red simply opted to use motorcycle messengers, and coded messages broadcast via local mosque minarets.
This was just one troublesome, unorthodox tactic Van Riper deployed to frustrate Blue’s incursion, which was blocked by the war game’s Pentagon-directed referees. Meanwhile, constraints and demands on Red’s operations grew ever-wilder. Van Riper was compelled to switch off his side’s air defences, and move Red forces away from simulated beaches and other areas where Blue’s marines and soldiers were scheduled to swoop in from aircraft carriers, allowing them to invade unmolested. The restrictions imposed became so onerous, and ludicrous, Van Riper quit in disgust.
Millennium Challenge was initially hyped by Pentagon chiefs as a resounding success, and validation of the Empire’s aircraft carrier-dependent war-fighting doctrine. So it was Van Riper embarrassingly blew the whistle, exposing the effort as a scam consciously contrived to produce a desired, bogus result. He expressed grave concerns about US forces being sent into battle based on strategies that either hadn’t been properly tested, or were outright proven to end in defeat:
“It was scripted to be whatever the control group wanted it to be….Instead of a free-play, two-sided game…it simply became a scripted exercise. They had a predetermined end, and they scripted the exercise to that end…Nothing was learned from this…A culture not willing to think hard and test itself does not augur well for the future.”
Today, in light of AnsarAllah’s triumphant victory over the US Navy, Van Riper’s warnings reverberate as a prophet’s curse come true. But it seems that once again, the imperial braintrust has learned nothing from the experience. While one might be tempted to scoff at the Empire’s enduring hubristic delusions, when the reality of its decline is writ so large, we must remain vigilant. Washington’s inability to fight wars doesn’t mean it won’t keep provoking or launching them, with devastating consequences for the world.
Military veteran Lawrence Wilkerson has testified how, while chief of staff to US Secretary of State Colin Powell 2002 – 2005, he participated in a large number of war games exercises pitting the Empire against China, in defence of Taiwan. Every scenario ended in nuclear war, typically within a matter of days. One might expect this inevitable outcome would discourage any and all prospect of conflict with Beijing. Yet, fast forward to today, and US military chiefs openly discuss all-out conflict with China with alarming regularity. God help us all.
The U.S., U.K. and France have continued to debate this week whether to allow Ukraine to use some Western-supplied long-range missiles for long-range strikes at targets inside Russia, such as U.K.-built Storm Shadows and their French-made equivalents, Scalps, that rely on U.S. equipment for navigation, thus, giving Washington the right of veto for their use. The Biden administration is reportedly poised to approve Storm Shadows and Scalps for such use (though not on Sept. 13), but it remains divided on whether to allow use of U.S.-made Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) for the same purpose. The U.S. State Department is open to Kyiv’s request for use of ATACMS, while the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies are skeptical, according to FT. But even the use of Storm Shadows and Scalps inside Russia would mean NATO countries are at war with Russia, according to Vladimir Putin’s Sept. 12 remarks, which were echoed by his spokesman Dmitry Peskov and his U.N. envoy Vasily Nebenzia. The fear in the White House is that hardliners in the Kremlin could insist this retaliation take the form of attacking transit points for missiles on their way to Ukraine, such as an airbase in Poland in what would lead to invoking of NATO’s Article 5, meaning the alliance would be at war with Russia, according to the BBC.
Asked on Friday about Russia’s threats, John Kirby, the White House spokesman, said that Mr. Putin “has obviously proven capable of escalation over the last now going on three years. So yeah, we take, we take these comments seriously.” “But,” he added, “it is not something that we haven’t heard before.” (NYT, 09.13.24)
Lord Kim Darroch, Britain’s former national security adviser, said western allies should think carefully about Putin’s warnings of a war between Moscow and NATO. “We really don’t want to escalate this,” he told FT.
Matthew Savill of RUSI believes lifting restrictions on use of Western-made long-range missiles by Ukraine would pose a dilemma for Russia as to where to position its precious air defenses. Ultimately however, such use is unlikely to turn the tide, according to Savill. If Savill’s estimate is accurate, then as was the case with prior steps in the ladder of arming Ukraine, the use of Storm Shadows and Scalps would be a morale booster for the Ukrainian leadership and would also generate some benefits on the battlefield, but wouldn’t be a game changer.*1
William Burns of CIA and Richard Moore of MI6 said it would be wrong to take Putin’s threats of nuclear escalation lightly but that the West should not be unnecessarily intimidated, according to FT.
