US Leaves INF Because "Russia," But Points Missiles at China

August 9, 2019 (Gunnar Ulson - NEO) - We're told that the US withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty singed in 1987 between the US and Soviet Union was based on claims that Russia had violated it.



While we continue waiting for Washington to provide evidence to prove these claims, the US itself admitted it had already long begun developing missiles that violated the treaty. 

A February 2018 Defense One article titled, "Pentagon Confirms It’s Developing Nuclear Cruise Missile to Counter a Similar Russian One," admitted that:

The U.S. military is developing a ground-launched, intermediate-range cruise missile to counter a similar Russian weapon whose deployment violates an arms-control treaty between Moscow and Washington, U.S. officials said Friday. 

The officials acknowledged that the still-under-development American missile would, if deployed, also violate the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.

Just as the US did when it unilaterally walked away from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002, the goal is to blame Russia for otherwise indefensible and incremental provocations aimed at Moscow. For example, after the US walked away from the ABM Treaty in 2002, the US began deploying anti-missile systems across Europe.

But if Russia is the problem, why did the US also begin deploying similar missiles in Asia?

It is Washington's goal of hemming in its competitors anywhere and everywhere that is at the heart of these serial treaty terminations, not any particular "violation" on Moscow's part.

China Too   

That the US already had missiles under development that would undoubtedly violate the INF Treaty before it accused Russia of such violations, is one indicator of Washington's true intentions. Another is the fact Washington is rushing to encircle China with both defensive and offensive missile systems as well.

China is not a signatory of either the ABM Treaty or the INF Treaty. Its missiles are deployed strictly within its mainland territory with no plans by Beijing to deploy them anywhere else in the future.

The only threat they pose is to any nation that decides to wage war on China, in or around Chinese territory.

Washington's behavior post-INF Treaty indicates that it was its intent to violate the treaty all along, creating the same precarious security crisis in Asia the treaty sought to prevent in Europe.

New US Ambassador to Australia Obsessed with China

March 17, 2019 (Joseph Thomas - NEO) - US Ambassador to Australia Arthur Culvahouse Jr. wasted no time at his new diplomatic post to begin strong-arming Canberra into adopting Washington's confrontational policy vis-à-vis Beijing.

A Reuters article published by the South China Morning Post titled, "China using ‘payday loan diplomacy’ in the Pacific, claims new US ambassador to Australia," would claim:

China is using “payday loan diplomacy” to exert influence in the Pacific, the new US ambassador to Australia said on Wednesday, in comments that threaten to inflame regional tensions. 

The United States and its regional allies have been battling China for greater influence in the Pacific – a region that has votes at international forums like the United Nations and controls vast swathes of a resource-rich ocean.

The geopolitical competition has seen both sides increase foreign aid to the region in recent months, which the West says is needed to prevent the Pacific falling into financial distress and becoming susceptible to diplomatic pressure from Beijing. 

The Reuters article would continue by claiming:

The arrival of Culvahouse, the first US ambassador to Australia in more than two years, comes at time of bilateral tensions between Canberra and Beijing. 

In 2017, then Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull accused China of meddling in domestic affairs. In 2018, Canberra banned companies linked to foreign governments from investing in its nascent 5G network, effectively blocking China’s Huawei.

The article also mentions counter-pressure applied on Australia regarding coal China imports, but describes it instead as, "how Beijing is using trade to punish Canberra for its criticism," despite already admitting it is in direct retaliation for Australia's use of trade to punish China first.

The American people for whom Ambassador Culvahouse is a representative, must be perplexed over this diplomat's obsession with China rather than fulfilling his duties of representing the United States in Australia itself.

As the United States does with many other allies, it is attempting to turn Australia into a partner-proxy in Washington's own confrontation with China.

In the process of this otherwise unsustainable confrontation, Washington risks dragging Australia down with it, when Australia could instead be bilaterally resolving issues with China and building constructive relations throughout Asia-Pacific, all while redefining for itself a more positive role in the region, breaking free from its historical role as an extension of Anglo-American hegemony.

Geography 101: China is Located in Asia, the United States is Not 

Interestingly enough, Reuters failed to notice that China is actually located in Asia-Pacific, while the United States is not.

Just as the US is expected to exert a certain amount of influence in North America where it is actually located, it is not unreasonable to expect China to do likewise in Asia. That US foreign policy seems formed around the notion that the US, not China, should hold primacy in Asia is both counterintuitive and fundamentally flawed.

Who Gains from Turning Europe into a Potential Nuclear Battlefield?

February 20, 2019 (Tony Cartalucci - NEO) - The United States and its NATO partners are attempting to make the case for Washington's decision to abandon the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.

Claims that the Russian Federation has been violating the treaty have yet to be substantiated with anything resembling credible evidence. Also missing is any rational explanation as to why Russia would develop or deploy nuclear weapons capable of launching a nuclear strike on Europe without warning - a scenario the INF Treaty was created to deter.

Bloomberg in its article, "Nuclear Fears Haunt Leaders With U.S.-Russian Arms Pact's Demise," would claim:

Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s top civilian, cited recent Russian deployments and evoked a Cold War-style threat of nuclear destruction at a global conference of security and defense officials this weekend in Munich, the baroque German metropolis that’s one of Europe’s richest cities.  

“These missiles are mobile, easy to hide and nuclear-capable,” Stoltenberg said. “They can reach European cities, like Munich, with little warning.”

Stoltenberg, the rest of NATO, Washington, and the many media organizations that work for and answer to both have failed categorically to explain why Russia would ever use nuclear-capable missiles against cities "like Munich, with little warning."

Would Moscow Nuke Russia's Closest Trade Partners? 

While Russia has invested greatly in recent years to expand its economic trade with Asia, it is still heavily dependent on trade with Europe.

The Harvard Atlas of Economic Complexity reveals not only Europe as the most important region for Russian trade, particularly for Russian exports, but nations like the Netherlands, Germany, and Italy as among Russia's top trade partners.

Russia is currently working with Germany on its Nord Stream 2 pipeline - a pipeline transporting Russian hydrocarbons to Western Europe without passing through politically unstable nations like Ukraine. The project is a keystone of recent Russian efforts to modernize and adapt its hydrocarbon industry around complications arising from US interference across Europe - particularly in the form of the US-engineered 2014 coup in Ukraine and NATO's constant US-led expansion along Russian borders.

And Russian companies aren't the only ones benefiting from Nord Stream 2 or other economic ties between Russia and Europe. Russia imports more from Germany than any other European nation, and Germany is only second to China among all nations Russia imports goods from.

It is highly unlikely Russia is going to launch nuclear missiles at "Munich, with little warning" - because to do so would be entirely without rational justification. Characters like Stoltenberg and the rest of NATO gloss over this obvious gap in their narrative to sell Russia as an unpredictable adversary and an enduring threat to Western Europe, as well as the United States. But by filling in this obvious gap in NATO's logic, we can see who really benefits from turning Europe into a potential nuclear battlefield by stationing short-range nuclear weapons across the region.

Nuclear Battlefield Europe

It is Washington, not Germany nor Russia that opposes the Nord Stream 2 project. It is Washington who seeks to drive a wedge between Western European and Russian economic trade. It is Washington who seeks to galvanize - or coerce - Europe into a united front against Russia - even if it means compromising regional stability - both in terms of economics and security.

Washington - by withdrawing from the INF Treaty - doesn't jeopardize the security of its own territory - but opens up a new dimension to an already ongoing nuclear arms race in the heart of Western Europe. It will be Western Europeans and Russians who face the consequences that emerge from the abandoning of the INF Treaty and any unpredictable - or even accidental - incidents that result from the stationing of short-range nuclear weapons across the region.

As pointed out many times before - NATO itself more than any external threat - represents the greatest danger to its member states in terms of pilfering national treasuries, miring nations in protracted wars and occupations thousands of miles from their own shores, and exposing member nations to the consequences of these wars including the deluge of refugees fleeing to Europe from them.

The US - by causing chaos and division both within Europe and between Europe and its trade partners - is able to continue exercising control over the continent - literally an ocean away from Washington DC.

The withdrawal from the INF Treaty and the dangerous arms race sure to follow is another example of the US playing the roles of arsonist and fire brigade as a means to maintain the relevance of the international order it constructed over the last century - an order the US serves as the self-appointed leader of.

In terms of simple economics and genuine European security - the United States could not be more irrelevant.

While Germany maintains the United States as its top export destination - the overall European and Asian regions by far contribute more to the German economy. Any instability or crisis in Europe would have an impact on the German economy its trade with the US would in no way compensate for. In terms of imports, the role of the US is even less.

While European trade with Russia is relatively small in comparison to inter-European trade, or with partners in Asia or even the US - Russian hydrocarbons serve an important role in European energy security. And while the cutting of ties between Europe and Russia would certainly hurt Russia more - the chaos used to cut those ties may disrupt stability within Europe itself - chaos that would impact inter-European trade - trade that ties with the US or Asia would not compensate for.

Washington plays a dangerous game, with short-range nuclear missiles being the latest point of leverage it seeks to use in prying Europe away from Russia. It is another illustration of just which nation's government truly poses the greater threat not only to Europe, but to global peace, security and stability in general.

Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.     

US Snatches Chinese Executive - Sets Dangerous Precedent

January 10, 2019 (Tony Cartalucci - NEO) - Claiming that prominent Chinese telecommunications company Huawei had violated US sanctions on Iran - Canada was requested to arrest and hand over Huawei Chief Financial Officer, Meng Wanzhou, who was transferring planes in Vancouver.

The arrest was described even by the Washington Post as "unusual" in its article titled, "Arrest of Huawei executive triggers stock market turmoil and unsettles U.S.-China trade talks."  

The article would also claim:

Meng was arrested on a U.S. extradition warrant because Huawei is suspected of evading American sanctions on Iran, according to multiple news reports. U.S. prosecutors have been investigating since 2016 whether Huawei violated U.S. export and sanctions laws by shipping U.S.-origin products to Iran. 

The arrest, on the same day President Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping met for dinner in Buenos Aires for trade and national-security talks, is being viewed in China as politically motivated.

And very clearly the move made against Huawei - along with a barrage of similar legal moves made to cripple rising Chinese companies competing against their waning US counterparts - is politically motivated - as are the sanctions the US has imposed on Iran in the first place.

Part of a Wider Pattern of Trying to Provoke, Humiliate China  

Reuters in an article titled, "U.S. probing Huawei for possible Iran sanctions violations: sources," would lay out previous examples of US attempts to cripple China's largest tech companies, claiming:

The probe of Huawei is similar to one that China’s ZTE Corp says is now threatening its survival.The United States last week banned American firms from selling parts and software to ZTE for seven years. Washington accused ZTE of violating an agreement on punishing employees after the company illegally shipped U.S. goods to Iran.

Nowhere on the websites of the US State Department, US Department of Treasury, or the US Justice Department is any information available regarding the alleged sanctions Huawei supposedly violated or how Huawei selling US technology to Iran allows the US to snatch Chinese citizens at Canadian airports.

China, for its part, has demanded the immediate release of Meng Wanzhou. Chinese state media portal, the Global Times in an article titled, "China urges release of Huawei executive," would report:

Chinese officials are urging the US and Canada to clarify why Meng Wanzhou, a senior executive of Huawei Technologies, has been detained and to immediately release her, slamming the arrest as a violation of her rights. 

Experts said on Thursday that Meng's detention is a move by the US to heat up the ongoing trade war between China and the US.

The sudden and so far unexplained arrest on the same day US President Donald Trump and other high-level US representatives met with their Chinese counterparts in Buenos Aires, Argentina fits into a larger pattern of politically-motivated coercion, intimidation, and provocations that has increasingly dominated the shape of US foreign policy.

Snatching Foreign Executives for Violating Criminally-Motivated Sanctions 

The US sanctions against Iran themselves are transparently aimed at stripping Iran of its sovereignty and influence in the Middle East and transforming the nation into either a client state of US interests or a failed state allowing the US to springboard chaos and subversion into southern Russia and beyond.

The US has leveled a myriad of sanctions against Iran since 1979 in an attempt to cripple the nation's economy and collapse Iran's ruling political order.

US policymakers have openly and repeatedly admitted that Iran poses no actual security threat to the United States and that attempts to pursue regime change are aimed instead solely at enhancing Washington's unwarranted influence in the Middle East. They also have openly conspired to frame Iran through a number of schemes to justify Washington's agenda of regime change.

In a 2009 Brookings Institution report titled, "Which Path to Persia? Options for a New American Strategy toward Iran," US policymakers would conspire to offer Iran a peace deal they then planned to intentionally walk away from while accusing Tehran of having violated it.

US Has Little to Offer Southeast Asia

December 29, 2018 (Joseph Thomas - NEO) - Any productive relationship between two nations must include mutual benefits for both. A proposed alliance that includes no incentive for a partner nation cannot otherwise move forward save for threats and coercion.

The United States and its "pivot toward Asia" is an ongoing demonstration of this simple reality. The US seeks primacy over Asia-Pacific (now often called Indo-Pacific to reflect wider US aspirations) yet offers very little to prospective partners except costly confrontation with China and any other nation in the region or around the globe impeding American hegemony.

Lacking incentives, the US instead pursues coercion through a massive regional network of opposition groups, agitators and even militants seeking to destabilise and piecemeal replace existing political orders with those obedient and dependent on Washington.

Western-leaning online magazine, The Diplomat, in an article written by Prashanth Parameswaran titled, "Strengthening the US-Thailand Alliance for an Indo-Pacific Future," attempts to sell a US-Thai alliance, minus any actual reason for Thailand to take part in it and omitting the very real coercion the US uses to pressure Thailand to reduce partnerships with other nations actually producing tangible benefits. 

Is there really a US-Thailand Alliance Past or Present?

Parameswaran cites the Cold War as the starting point for what he calls the "US-Thailand alliance." However, it was an alliance Thailand was given little choice to join. The alternative was joining instead the list of Southeast Asian states being mercilessly bombed amid Washington's ongoing war with Vietnam.

The article fails to mention any significant, specific examples of US-Thai relations since its hosting of US troops decades ago.

The article notes Thailand's growing ties with China.

These ties include the replacement of Thailand's military inventory of aging US hardware with Chinese main battle tanks, armored personnel carriers, infantry fighting vehicles and even submarines. It also includes Thai-Chinese infrastructure projects such as high-speed railways that will connect Thailand to China via Laos and the purchase of rolling stock for existing and planned domestic mass transportation networks.

None of these necessities Thailand seeks are on offer by the US save for weapons, but at a substantially higher monetary and political price Bangkok has no motivation or reason to pay.

Throughout the entirety of Parameswaran's article, no tangible project or area of cooperation between Thailand and the US is mentioned. Instead, ambiguous and otherwise meaningless terms like "meetings," "recalibrated ties" and "collaboration" are used in place where actual, tangible ties and specific projects should be listed and discussed.

Thailand's internal politics are also mentioned as a subject of "concern" for Washington, one area that is actually none of Washington's business, but one in which Washington has invested deeply.

NATO's Aggression Reaches for Russian Waters

December 7, 2018 (Tony Cartalucci - NEO) - The recent Kerch Strait incident marks a new low amid the US-led expansion of NATO eastward.

The intentional provocation executed by Kiev saw three Ukrainian naval vessels seized by Russia. The vessels were intentionally violating protocol for passing through the Strait - protocol previously agreed upon by Kiev and previously observed by Ukrainian naval vessels.

The extent to which Ukraine was aware of these protocols and the 2003 agreement that put them in place includes entire events organized in Ukraine by NATO-sponsored "think tanks" discussing the necessity to "rip them up" and attempt to assert greater control over the current joint-use of the Sea of Azov.

In the wake of this incident - predictable calls are being made to use it as a pretext to expand NATO even further east, with senior American Foreign Policy Council fellow and former professor at the US Army War College Stephen Blank declaring the need for the US to "lease" Ukrainian ports in the Sea of Azov, patrol the sea with US warships,  all while committing to the "full-fledged" arming of Ukrainian forces.

Blank's commentary - published in The Hill in a piece titled, "Russia’s attack on Ukraine is an act of war," predicates an anti-Russian narrative and NATO's eastward expansion into Ukraine upon a number of blatant falsehoods.

He mentions Russia's "seizure" of Crimea, its "claiming that Crimea, the Sea of Azov, and the Kerch Strait are exclusively Russian waters," and the building of the Crimean Bridge which Blank claims is impeding Ukrainian commerce in the Sea of Azov - all as Russian provocations.

However, Blank conveniently omits the US-NATO backed putsch that seized power in Ukraine in 2013 - setting off Ukrainian-Russian tensions in the first place. Nowhere in Blank's commentary does he mention the prominent role paramilitary Neo-Nazi organizations have played in both overthrowing the elected government in 2013 and militancy carried out against Russian businesses, institutions, and even Ukrainians of Russian decedent - particularly in Donbass, eastern Ukraine.


Blank would even feign ignorance over Russian President Vladimir Putin's motives in repatriating Crimea and taking measures against a now fully hostile Ukraine sitting on Russia's borders.

Also conveniently omitted from Blank's commentary was any mention of decades of NATO's eastward expansion along with various episodes in NATO's history where it waged wars well beyond its jurisdiction and mandate, including in Libya and Afghanistan.

Coupled together with Blank's prescription for a "response" - it is abundantly clear who stood most to benefit from the Kerch Strait incident - especially considering the systematic expansion of NATO that has been ongoing long before President Putin ever came to power.

Ukraine Provokes Russia to What End?

November 27, 2018 (Tony Cartalucci - NEO) -  Russia has seized three Ukrainian military vessels violating its territory near Russia's newly completed Crimean Bridge. The incident is a clear provocation carried out by Kiev and possibly engineered by Kiev's Western sponsors - particularly those in Washington and London.

Ukrainian military vessels are in fact permitted to pass from the Black Sea into the Sea of Azov provided they notify Russian authorities beforehand. The Sea of Azov - according to a joint agreement signed by Kiev and Moscow in 2003 - is considered internal waters of both Ukraine and Russia.

With the completion of the Crimean Bridge connecting Russian Crimea to the rest of Russian territory across the Strait of Kerch, security measures have understandably increased.

According to Russian state media, Ukrainian military vessels have previously observed agreed upon protocol when transiting the Strait of Kerch with military vessels. For the sake of provocation, they chose not to this time.

TASS would explain in its article titled, "All three Ukrainian Navy vessels that violated Russia’s border detained in Black Sea," that:

The FSB [Russian Federal Security Service] stressed that Ukraine was aware of the procedure for warships’ passage through Russia’s territorial sea and Kerch-Yenikale Canal. "They have already used that procedure for innocent passage," it said.  

This incident is just the latest amid growing tensions in the Sea of Azov.

Tensions in the Sea of Azov are not New 

Tensions have been brewing since Ukraine's NATO-backed regime seized power in 2014. Articles across the Western media and NATO-sponsored conferences predating the most recent clash near the Strait of Kerch have obsessed over shredding past treaties signed by both Kiev and Moscow regarding the use of the Sea of Azov - as well as Ukraine's militarization of the Sea particularly in regards to reasserting some illusion of control over Russian Crimea.

In August of this year, US State Department's Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) in an article titled, "Sea Of Troubles: Azov Emerging As 'Tinderbox' In Russia-Ukraine Conflict," would admit that Ukraine was building up a military presence and not only called the 2003 agreement regarding the joint use of the Sea of Azov "controversial," but also admitted that there have been calls within Ukraine to "rip it up."

In October of this year, the "New Europe Center - a US government-funded (pages 32 and 33, .pdf) front that claims to "increase support of Ukraine’s European and Euro-Atlantic prospects among opinion leaders and officials of the EU and the NATO" - held an event titled, "Treaty with Russia on Azov: How Should Ukraine Act?" 

The New Europe Center would summarize claiming:

Kyiv should comprehensively explore the issue of denunciation of the Agreement between the Russian Federation and the Ukraine on cooperation in the use of the sea of Azov and the strait of Kerch since 2003, but on the whole this agreement does not correspond to Ukrainian interests.

The consensus among US-funded "experts" was that Kiev should denounce the agreement but had no means to follow through in its desire to pressure Russia out of the the Sea of Azov or change the current status quo in any meaningful way upon denouncing the agreement.

Washington's Dirty Fight Against China's OBOR

November 21, 2018 (Joseph Thomas - NEO) - Five years into China's ambitious One Belt, One Road (OBOR) initiative sees analysts and political circles around the globe taking stock of Beijing's progress.

This includes the Wall Street Journal in its article, "U.S. Fights China for Influence, One Project at a Time: Washington prods private sector and focuses on financing as Beijing’s ‘Belt and Road’ hits obstacles."

What the article reveals and what the article omits, speaks volumes of America's response, or lack thereof. 

The article claims:

The U.S. has launched a new strategy aimed at ramping up investment in Asia to vie with Chinese President Xi Jinping’s overseas infrastructure-building spree, as Beijing grapples with setbacks to its sprawling program.

The WSJ would explain:

In October, President Trump signed into law the Build Act, which creates a new development finance agency that offers loans, loan guarantees and political-risk insurance to private companies.

And that:

The Build Act allows for $60 billion in U.S. development financing around the world under the new agency, the U.S. International Development Finance Corp. The IDFC merges existing programs, doubles the current agency’s spending cap and has the authority to own equity stakes in projects, giving it more flexibility to choose and guide them.

Yet what development this scheme will fund was curiously absent from both the WSJ's article, and has been consistently absent from statements being made by Washington. While the article claims China has a "head start," the reality is that Washington has had a head start of about half a century in the realm of both primacy over Asia and in spurring development.

For a variety of reasons, Washington failed to exploit either advantage.

America's gutting of its own industrial capacity, its favoring of global loan sharking and war over actual development as well as its corporate-financier sectors seeking monopolies and profits over any tangible measure of real societal progress squandered this immense head start.

Predatory Lenders: It Takes One to Know One 

The WSJ would sum up Washington's claims regarding the China's OBOR initiative, claiming:

The U.S. sees Belt and Road as a tool used by Beijing to advance its strategic and military interests. A number of Trump administration officials and U.S. lawmakers describe the risks of China using “debt traps” to gain control of sensitive infrastructure and “predatory economics” to undermine the autonomy of debt-burdened countries.

Predatory economics, however, is how many across Asia would describe the US and European-dominated International Monetary Fund's (IMF) activities in the window following World War II and ending with the start of China's OBOR initiative.

The OBOR initiative most certainly creates the risk of debt for Beijing's partner nations and undeniably expands China's influence across Eurasia, but each project is producing tangible infrastructure that will spur development within and between partner nations, an aspect consistently absent from America's half century of "development financing" via the IMF.

Washington's Campaign of Subversion, Disruption and Sabotage 

Just as the US failed for half a century to spur genuine development and instead used the IMF as a vehicle to advance the interests of Western corporations and financial institutions while stripping nations of their resources and sovereignty, Washington's new strategy to compete with China's OBOR initiative also lacks anything resembling actual development. It is instead a campaign simply to impede China's plans for the sake of containing China's rise.

Does US Withdrawal from another Nuclear Treaty Really Benefit Russia?

October 31, 2018 (Tony Cartalucci - NEO) - No. Obviously Russia does not benefit from the scrapping of yet another treaty designed to prevent a nuclear exchange amid a war with the United States.

Yet, as an attempt to frame blatant US provocations as somehow "Russia's fault," a narrative has begun circulating - claiming that not only does the US withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty somehow benefit Russia - it was via Russia's "puppet" - US President Donald Trump - that saw the treaty scrapped.

Spreading this scurrilous narrative are political provocateurs like former US ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul who has re-branded himself recently as a prominent anti-Trump voice - feeding into and feeding off of America's false left-right political paradigm.

In one post on social media, McFaul would claim:

Why can’t Trump leverage his close personal relationship with Putin to get Russia to abide by the INF Treaty?

In other posts, he would recommend followers to read commentary published by US corporate-financier funded think tank - the Brookings Institution - on how the US withdrawal "helps Russia and hurts US."

The commentary - penned by former US ambassador to Ukraine, Steven Pifer - admitted that no evidence has been made public of supposed "Russian violations." It also admits that America's European allies - those who would be in range of Russian intermediate range missiles if deployed - have not raised a "stink" with the Kremlin, publicly or privately.

But Pifer claims that the US has no missiles to match those supposedly being developed by Russia, and even if it did, the US would have no where to place them - claiming that NATO, Japan, and South Korea would not allow the US to place such systems on their shores. This, he and McFaul suggest, is why the US' withdrawal from the treaty "benefits" Russia by granting it a monopoly over intermediate range missiles.

Washington's Other Withdrawals Prove Otherwise 

Yet the US has already withdrawn from treaties and twisted the arms of allies to allow newly developed missile systems to be deployed on their shores.

In the aftermath of Washington's unilateral withdrawal from another Cold War-era agreement - the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty scrapped by US President George Bush Jr. in 2002 - the US developed and deployed the Lockheed Martin ashore Aegis ballistic missile defense system in Europe along with the deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-ballistic missile defense systems to South Korea - also manufactured by Lockheed Martin.

It is clear the unilateral treaty withdrawals under Bush and Trump, as well as the deployment of anti-ballistic missile systems to Europe and East Asia under the Obama administration, represent a continuity of agenda regardless of who occupies the White House.

Coupled with these treaty withdrawals and the subsequent deployment of US missile systems to ring Russia and China - there has been a constant build-up of US troops directly on the borders of both nations.

While those claiming Russia has violated the INF Treaty - and has been doing so for "8 years" as claimed in a 2017 op-ed by US Senator Tom Cotton published in the Washington Post, it should be noted that 8 years previously, it would be revealed that in addition to the US placing Patriot missile systems along Russia's borders, plans for wider military deployments in the Baltic states were also in the works.

Liberals Leap to Defend Neo-Con Henchman McFaul

July 29, 2018 (Tony Cartalucci - NEO) - Were one to read the Washington Post's article on a Russian proposal regarding the questioning of suspects in various, ongoing US and Russia investigations, they would have imagined former US ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul was about to be shipped to a dungeon beneath the Kremlin for interrogation.

The Washington Post's article, "Outrage erupts over Trump-Putin ‘conversation’ about letting Russia interrogate ex-U.S. diplomat Michael McFaul" fueled anti-Russian hysteria, claiming:

At this week’s summit in Helsinki, Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed what President Trump described as an “incredible offer” — the Kremlin would give special counsel Robert S. Mueller III access to interviews with Russians who were indicted after they allegedly hacked Democrats in 2016. In return, Russia would be allowed to question certain U.S. officials it suspects of interfering in Russian affairs.

One of those U.S. officials is a former U.S. ambassador to Moscow, Michael McFaul, a nemesis of the Kremlin because of his criticisms of Russia’s human rights record.

The Washington Post would compound confusion and hysteria by also claiming (emphasis added):

The willingness of the White House to contemplate handing over a former U.S. ambassador for interrogation by the Kremlin drew ire and astonishment from current and former U.S. officials. Such a proposition is unheard of. So is the notion that the president may think he has the legal authority to turn anyone over to a foreign power on his own.

In reality, the proposal never entailed the US or Russia handing anyone over for interrogation. Bloomberg in an article titled, "Trump ‘Looks Weak’ by Considering Putin’s Interrogation Idea, McFaul Says," would more accurately summarize the deal, stating:

Putin proposed letting Russians observe interrogations of McFaul and other Americans. In exchange, U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller could send members of his team to watch Russian questioning of 12 Russian intelligence agents indicted by a U.S. grand jury last week in connection with hacking Democratic Party email accounts and disseminating those messages before the 2016 presidential election.

Americans of interest would be questioned in the United States, by Americans, merely with Russian representatives present, in exchange for American representatives travelling to Russia to watch a Russian interrogation of suspects relevant to ongoing US investigations.

Further evidence is the transcript of the actual statement by Russian President Vladimir Putin himself, posted by Politico, which states unequivocally (emphasis added):

We can actually permit representatives of the United States, including the members of this very commission headed by Mr. Mueller, we can let them into the country. They will be present at questioning. In this case, there's another condition. This kind of effort should be mutual one. Then we would expect that the Americans would reciprocate. They would question officials, including the officers of law enforcement and intelligence services of the United States whom we believe — who have something to do with illegal actions on the territory of Russia. And we have to request the presence of our law enforcement.

Despite these facts, the hysteria has continued to spread in part due to a dishonest media eager to fan the flames of conflict with Russia and Western audiences eager to believe them.

Who is McFaul? And Why are Liberals Defending Him? 

Americans convinced Russia interfered in American elections must then be acutely aware that meddling in another nation's internal political affairs is unacceptable. Thus, McFaul's role in doing precisely this before and during his appointment as US ambassador to Russia from 2012-2014 should elicit condemnation and outcries from these same Americans.

Instead, many Western liberals have leaped to McFaul's defense.

The short answer as to why many in the West are defending McFaul is out of a reflexive response to their blind hatred of US President Donald Trump and Russia. McFaul has positioned himself both as a critic of President Trump and of Russia, fulfilling the only two prerequisites required to garner support among circles entertaining the current anti-Russia hysteria.


Yet McFaul represents special interests and activities that many Americans, left or right of the political spectrum, would find unacceptable - and perhaps especially for those outraged over alleged Russian meddling in American politics.

McFaul's Role in Supporting Global Political Meddling  

Before McFaul served as US ambassador to Russia from 2012-2014 he served on the board of trustees of Freedom House (page 30, PDF).

Freedom House is a US government and corporate-financier funded front that imposes the interests of its sponsors on nations abroad under the guise of expanding "freedom and democracy around the world." This process entails the creation and support of opposition groups to undermine and eventually either oust or overthrow targeted governments.

When McFaul served as trustee for Freedom House, its 2005 annual report indicated the US State Department and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) as sponsors. It also included Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, and pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly.

Additionally, Freedom House is a subsidiary of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) which is chaired by a variety of career, pro-war Neoconservatives - Neoconservatives who promoted many of the Bush-era wars Western liberals opposed.

NED is also funded by the US government as well as corporations (page 126, PDF) including Goldman Sachs, convicted financial criminal George Soros' Open Society, Coca-Cola, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and the US Chamber of Commerce which itself serves as a collective lobbying front for some of the largest corporations in the US. 

Bloomberg: "America's New World Order is Officially Dead"

July 23, 2018 (Tony Cartalucci - NEO) - Hal Brands - the Henry Kissinger Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies and a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments - pines of waning American hegemony in his op-ed in Bloomberg titled, "America's New World Order Is Officially Dead."

The sub-headline would further elaborate, "China and Russia have fully derailed the post-Cold War movement toward U.S.-led global integration."

And while Brands blames Russia and China for America's decline - it should be noted that the "US-led global integration" Brands and others within the halls of corporate-financier funded policy think tanks promote, was little more than modern day empire.

Post-Cold War, the United States abused and squandered its monopoly over military and economic power. It led serial wars of aggression across the globe, destroying entire regions of the planet. It proved that whatever the rhetoric was used to sell its unipolar world order to rest of the world, it was in practice an order that ultimately served Wall Street and Washington at the expense of everyone else on the planet.

Russia and China's vision of a multipolar world order is not predicated on institutions the world must surrender its sovereignty, trust, and future to. It is an order built on a much more realist balance of power - where national sovereignty holds primacy and a balance of economic and military power defines and protects the boundaries of international norms. This is in stark contrast to America's vision in which an easily co-opted and manipulated UN made it easy for the largest, most powerful nations to sidestep national sovereignty and even international law, and expand wealth and power through sanctions, invasions, perpetual military occupations, and the creation of subordinate client states.

An Order Built on Betrayal and Brutality 

The international order Brands mourns began with the immediate betrayal of Western promises not to expand its NATO military alliance eastward toward Russia's borders. At the time of the Soviet Union's collapse, a buffer zone existed between Russia's borders and NATO member states - many of these states choosing to benefit from the best of both Eastern and Western relations.

Today, NATO sits on Russia's borders, particularly in the Baltic states where US troops train just shy of the Russian border - in Lithuania which surrounds Russia's Kaliningrad oblast, and in Ukraine where US and NATO members have installed a regime in power dependent on literal Neo-Nazi militants and their respective political wings. 

It is also an international order which saw in Russia's moment of weakness, an opportunity to impose its order by force on former Soviet client states. This not only included NATO's process of expansion in Eastern Europe through sanctions, subversion, and all out war, but also in the Middle East and Central Asia.

It would be US Army General Wesley Clark who best summarized US foreign policy in the proper, realist context it was actually executed in.

In a 2007 Flora TV talk titled, "A Time to Lead," General Clark would reveal this post-Cold War agenda by relating a conversation he had as early as 1991 with then US Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Paul Wolfowitz, by stating (emphasis added):

I said Mr. Secretary you must be pretty happy with the performance of the troops in Desert Storm. And he said, well yeah, he said but but not really, he said because the truth is we should have gotten rid of Saddam Hussein and we didn't. And this was just after the Shia uprising in March of 91' which we had provoked and then we kept our troops on the side lines and didn't intervene. And he said, but one thing we did learn, he said, we learned that we can use our military in the region in the Middle East and the Soviets wont stop us. He said, and we have got about five or ten years to clean up those all Soviet client regimes; Syria, Iran, Iraq, - before the next great super power comes on to challenge us. 

And of course, that is precisely what the US embarked upon doing. General Clark would also mention a later conversation he had at the Pentagon, regarding how the US planned to use the attacks on September 11, 2001 as a pretext to expand from military operations in Afghanistan and accelerate this process to invade and overthrow the governments of at least seven other nations.

General Clark would state (emphasis added):

 I came back to the Pentagon about six weeks later, I saw the same officer, I said why why haven't we attacked Iraq? We are sill going to attack Iraq, he said, oh sir he says, its worse than that. He said he pulled up a piece of paper of his desk, he said, I just got this memo from the Secretary of Defense's office, it says we are going to attack and destroy the governments in in seven countries in five years. We are going to start with Iraq and then we are going to move to Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran seven seven countries in five years.

While all of these nations were part of a singular, cynical, hegemonic agenda, each nation has been targeted and attacked under false pretenses ranging from false accusations regarding "weapons of mass destruction," to the use of the "responsibility to protect" (R2P) - leveraging "human rights" as a pretext to intervene in wars of Washington's own engineering.

Shangri-La Dialogue: Mattis Hawks Weapons and Hegemony

June 29, 2018 (Tony Cartalucci - NEO)  - The International Institute for Strategic Studies's (IISS) annual Shangri-La Dialogue brings together diplomats, ministers, and representatives from around the world to discuss Asian security.

Researchers at Western think tanks including from the IISS itself have been promoting this year's forum as an opportunity to sell Washington's re-branded "Indo-Pacific" strategy and the continued primacy of the US and its "rules-based international order" across the region.

IISS researcher Lynn Kuok in her piece, "Shangri-La Dialogue: Negotiating the Indo-Pacific security landscape," would also attempt to spin America's strategy as anything but "anti-China."

Yet US Defense Secretary James Mattis' remarks at the forum opened almost immediately by referencing the 2018 National Defense Strategy (.pdf) in which China is described as:

...a strategic competitor using predatory economics to intimidate its neighbors while militarizing features in the South China Sea.

Mattis would draw heavily from the NDS document throughout his opening remarks and repeatedly during the following question and answer session.

By the end of his session it had become abundantly clear that the US sought to maintain the status quo including enduring security threats the US would use to justify its military presence across the region and to arm its various allies, treaty members, and other partners to meet - much to the delight of the Shangri-La Dialogue's sponsors this year - including Boeing, Raytheon, Airbus, Lockheed Martin, and BAE Systems.

Hawking Weapons 

Repeatedly referring to China and the South China Sea, as well as North Korea and Taiwan - Mattis declared that part of American leadership in the Indo-Pacific region would be the building up of allied military, naval, and law enforcement capabilities.

He also stated that the US seeks military integration through "the promotion and sales of cutting-edge US defense equipment to security partners."

As if to dispel any doubts regarding the context of Mattis' comments, Bloomberg would make mention of the forum - and forum sponsor Raytheon - in its article, "Raytheon Sees Demand for Patriot Missiles as U.S. Pushes Exports," stating:

In Singapore for the Shangri-La Dialogue, an annual Asian security conference that this year includes defense ministers and military chiefs from more than 20 countries including U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, [John Harris, chief executive officer of Raytheon International Inc.] said “last year about 32 percent of our sales were international and 30 percent of that was here in the Asia Pacific region. We see this as a growth market.”

The article also noted:

Harris [said] some of that growth was coming from emerging regional customers, and from providing new capabilities to longstanding customers such as South Korea and Japan, which continue to pursue their defensive capabilities even as they endorse Trump’s efforts to seek a deal for North Korea to give up its nuclear arsenal.

Bloomberg's article highlights the intertwined relationship between security risks the US intentionally cultivates throughout the region and the profits of US and European arms manufacturers like Raytheon.

The US itself cultivates several of Asia's most pressing security challenges.

Tales of North Korean Abuses: No Facts, All Fiction

June 16, 2018 (Tony Cartalucci - NEO) - Claims of North Korean human rights abuses spearheaded attempts to undermine US-North Korean negotiations in Singapore. While the talks are unlikely to change the long-laid agendas of special interests across the West who have cultivated and profit from the ongoing conflict, it is important to confront these claims and diminish the intended effect they are meant to have in buttressing the notion of American exceptionalism and justifying American interventionism. 

Tales of North Korean human rights abuses are so pervasive and persistent that even those opposed to US exceptionalism and interventionism have shied away from confronting and refuting them. 

Rumors Built Upon Rumors 

One would expect such significant accusations to be backed up by an equally significant amount of evidence. Yet - like most of what the Western media produces and spreads among the public consciousness - there is little evidence at all. 

In most cases, tales of North Korean abuses are derived from hearsay by alleged witnesses and supposed defectors who no longer reside in North Korea.

The New York Times provides a prime example of the sort of abuses unquestioningly cited and repeated by pundits, politicians, and political "experts" alike. In its recent article, "Atrocities Under Kim Jong-un: Indoctrination, Prison Gulags, Executions," the New York Times would claim:

Mr. Kim rules with extreme brutality, making his nation among the worst human rights violators in the world. 

In North Korea, these crimes “entail extermination, murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions and other sexual violence, persecution on political, religious, racial and gender grounds, the forcible transfer of populations, the enforced disappearance of persons and the inhumane act of knowingly causing prolonged starvation,” concluded a 2014 United Nations report that examined North Korea.

The source of the New York Times' assertions is admittedly a "2014 United Nations report that examined North Korea," officially titled the, "Report of the detailed findings of the commission of inquiry on human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea" (PDF).

The 372-page report - however - admits under an introductory section titled, "Methods of work," that (emphasis added):

In the absence of access to witnesses and sites inside the DPRK, the Commission decided to obtain first-hand testimony through public hearings that observed transparency, due process and the protection of victims and witnesses. Victims and witnesses who had departed the DPRK, as well as experts, testified in a transparent procedure that was open to the media, other observers and members of the general public. More than 80 witnesses and experts testified publicly and provided information of great specificity, detail and relevance, sometimes in ways that required a significant degree of courage.   

In other words, the entirety of the UN's 372-page report - cited as "evidence" of North Korean "atrocities" by prominent media organizations like the New York Times - is based on hearsay gathered by an investigation that never stepped foot once inside North Korea. Despite a lack of actual evidence to substantiate these claimed abuses, the New York Times depicts the UN report's conclusions as fact.

US Claims of "Russian Meddling" Exposes Its Own Global Meddling

May 1, 2018 (Tony Cartalucci - NEO) - After well over a year of accusing the Russian government of interfering in the 2016 US presidential elections, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has finally indicted 13 Russians for what it calls "interference operations targeting the United States."

The 13 Russians indicted allegedly represent  the "Internet Research Agency" merely referred to as "the organization" throughout the FBI's highly publicized indictment (PDF). The Internet Research Agency was allegedly run by Concord Management and Consulting.

However, the FBI failed to establish any link between the Internet Research Agency's supposed operations and the Russian government. It attempts to claim that Concord Management and Consulting and Concord Catering are "related Russian entities" with various Russian government contracts - however the FBI failed to detail what this statement meant, merely insinuating that the Internet Research Agency may have been another Russian government contract.

The "Russian meddling" described in the FBI indictment consists of Facebook ads and the creation of accounts posing as American social media personalities commentating on US political issues. The FBI's indictment failed to list any instances of Russian government money, or money from an alleged intermediary being funneled into any actual US political parties, opposition or activist groups, or any US-based media organizations.

Putting the "Full Shape" of "Russian Meddling" Into Perspective 

The FBI indictment claims that monthly funding for the Internet Research Agency's "influencing operations" peaked at $1.25 million, but did not provide any additional information regarding the organization's budget, or how significant this peak was when compared to monthly averages.

The Western media has presented this number as significant. The BBC in its article, "Russia-Trump inquiry: Russians charged over US 2016 election tampering," would claim (emphasis added):

On Friday, Robert Mueller's team released a slate of indictments that lays bare what it asserts is the full shape of the Russian meddling apparatus.

And what an apparatus it was. In the run-up to the US presidential election "Project Lakhta", as it was called, had an operating budget of more than $1m a month.

Yet, to put that "$1m a month" budget into perspective, the BBC alone operates on an annual budget of between 4-6 billion - or up to $500 million a month. This is a monthly budget up to 400 times larger than that of what the BBC calls the "full shape of the Russian meddling apparatus."

Considering that the BBC coordinates its own "influence operations" with other multi-billion dollar media corporations in the United Kingdom, across Europe, and of course in the United States, the gargantuan disparity between the "full shape of the Russian meddling apparatus" and that of the West's own "influencing operations" is put into proper perspective.

When considering the role of US-based corporate lobbyists and their role in influencing both political candidates and the American public ahead of elections - this disparity widens even further.

To suggest that "the full shape of the Russian meddling apparatus" had any significant effect on the outcome of the US election is far fetched at best. To suggest that the Russian government would have conducted such feeble attempts to influence the US presidential election when it is fully aware that large, corporate-financier interests actually determine US policy, is also implausible.

That accusations against Russia are meant to deflect away from America's own growing problems both domestically and abroad, including its attempts to justify a wider confrontation with Russia itself, is a much more likely explanation.

US Exposes the Illegitimacy of its Own Global Meddling 

Should the Russian government have intentionally and directly attempted to interfere in US elections or America's internal political affairs, it would constitute an attack upon American sovereignty and warrant a vigorous US response. However, nothing of the sort has been established yet, with the US having sought to target Russia with wider sanctions and provocations long before the 2016 US elections appeared on the horizon.

That the US has attempted to use what it calls "improper foreign influence on US elections and on the US political system" as a pretext for attacking Russia, its media both in Russia and its US-based networks, its diplomatic mission in the United States, as well as the Russian economy through sanctions, indicates that Washington is more than aware of how inappropriate it is for one nation to attempt to interfere with or influence the internal political processes of another nation.

Yet this is precisely what the United States itself has done - for decades, openly - around the globe.

US Political Meddling is Very Real, Spans the Globe

March 14, 2018 (Ulson Gunnar - NEO) - The United States has spent over a year now leveling accusations against the Russian Federation regarding alleged political meddling during the 2016 US elections. While accusations range from everything including "fake news" spread across the Internet to direct ties to the administration of US President Donald Trump used to assist him into power, no evidence has yet to surface to prove Russia has meddled at all in America's internal political affairs.



And while Russia certainly possesses a large and growing presence across the international media, concerted attacks against this presence stems more from the fact that decades of uncontested control over global public opinion by the US and Europe is now shifting toward a multipolar balance of power in information space.

In stark contrast to the whispers of shadows cited by the US and Europe regarding Russia, to begin understanding the scope of US political meddling abroad, one needs only to visit the US State Department and corporate-funded National Endowment for Democracy's (NED) own website.

Industrial-Scale Meddling 

US meddling is so extensive that NED is broken into multiple subsidiaries (National Democratic Institute (NDI), International Republican Institute (IRI) and Freedom House) which in turn, are joined by parallel organizations such as George Soros' Open Society Foundation, USAID, the UK's DFID and many more.

The NED website is broken into several regions including:

Africa;
Asia;
Central and Eastern Europe;
Eurasia;
Global;
Latin America and Caribbean and;
Middle East and Northern Africa.

Within each region, NED lists its extensive funding for organizations and fronts in over 100 different nations around the globe.

Within each nation, NED funds between a handful to several dozen organizations posing as legal firms, media platforms, environmental groups and human rights advocates. They collectively create the components of a political machine used to pressure incumbent governments to heed US interests, or overthrow them if they fail to.

Because the NED and recipients of its funding are increasingly exposed as a form of political subversion, NED has opted to list its funding in some nations in very general terms, never revealing the actual organizations or individuals receiving US money. Many organizations in targeted nations refuse to disclose their funding to the public. Many even possess the gall to solicit public donations despite receiving (and concealing) extensive funding from the US government.

Continuity of Agenda: US Encirclement of China Continues Under Trump

January 20, 2018 (Ulson Gunnar - NEO) - The United States has pursued a decades-long policy of encircling, containing and if possible, undermining China as part of a larger strategy of achieving and maintaining what US policy papers call "primacy" over Asia.

US policy has led to deeply-rooted networks operating within China's borders and along China's geopolitical peripheries to divide and destabilize the immense and increasingly powerful Asian state. These networks are funded and supported regardless of who occupies the White House. While the rhetoric shifts from president to president regarding "why" the US is providing so-called "activists" and "opposition" fronts aid, the aid and the agenda it serves continues.

Under current US President Donald Trump's predecessor President Barack Obama, this ongoing policy was marketed to the American and international public as the "Pivot to Asia." It was spun as a means for the US to reengage with Asia but in reality constituted an overt attempt to co-opt the governments of China's neighbors and break up the region's growing ties with Beijing.

Obama's "Pivot" was a failure, but one within the greater context of a general decline in US primacy both in the Asia Pacific region and around the world.

Under Trump, this policy of encircling and containing China continues. It is now marketed to the public as an "Indo-Pacific" strategy, with the US forced to court India, Australia and Japan on the fringes of Asia Pacific after failing to make progress within Asia Pacific itself.

It is important to understand just how long-term these polices are so that when Trump announces them to the public, the public understands that it is not "Trump's" policy, but simply Trump continuing to carry out the agenda of the very special interests (the so-called "Deep State") he vowed to resist upon taking office.

Understanding that these policies serve special interests and at the cost of the American public helps inoculate the public to rhetoric claiming that confronting China and destabilizing Asia is somehow part of "making America great again."

Tibet

Tibet is one of the oldest and most clear-cut examples of a political controversy used by Washington to target and undermine Beijing's credibility.

The centerpiece of US strategy in Tibet has been an independence movement led by the Dali Lama, the so-called spiritual leader of Tibet and a political figure the US through the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has backed both politically and militarily since at least as early as the 1950s.

USAID and Wall Street: Conflicts, Coups, and Conquest

November 17, 2017 (Tony Cartalucci - NEO) - In 1928 when the US-based United Fruit Company - now known as Chiquita Brands International - faced labor issues in Columbia, it had at its disposal Colombian troops which gunned down hundreds of strikers to maintain production and profits.

Ensuring that Columbia protected "American interests" was the US State Department who hosted company representatives at the US embassy in Bogotá, which in turn was in contact with Washington.

The United Fruit Company's actions in Columbia was far from an isolated incident. US Marine Corps General Smedley Butler would write a book regarding his personal, first-hand experience in fighting wars on multiple continents for oil companies, bankers, and fruit companies.

Nearly a century ago large corporate interests already possessed full control over the mechanisms of American governance, determining its domestic and foreign policy, and readily using the nation's military might for their own personal gain across the globe.

The arrangement has not disappeared over time. It has simply evolved.

The US Chamber of Commerce and USAID 

The US Chamber of Commerce on its own website admits it is a lobbying organization and while it claims it represents millions of businesses big and small - it is an organization dominated by, and existing solely for it largest members.

These include Chevron, Citi, Coco-Cola, Chevrolet, McDonald's, Ford, Dow, Exxon, Honeywell, Proctor & Gamble, Visa, Yum, Monsanto, and many more.

The Truth About Radical Islam

November 5, 2017 (Tony Cartalucci - NEO) - There are approximately 1.8 billion Muslims on Earth. That is approximately 24% of the world population. They live in regions spanning North Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, and reaching as far as Southeast Asia. There are Muslim communities in virtually every nation - and in many - they have played a pivotal, constructive, and welcomed role in national development.

If even 1% of the world's Muslims were violent terrorists bent on conquering the world, that would constitute an army 18 million strong - or in other words - larger than the next 20 largest armies on Earth combined. Most critics of Islam infer that the number is actually much higher than 1% - many suggesting that the majority of Muslims either are engaged in or support terrorism. It is logical to conclude that if even 1% were dedicated to terrorism and the "conquest of infidels," the war would have ended in their favor long ago.

It is clear that there is not even 1% across Islam engaged in or supporting terrorism. Across the Arab World, the vast majority of Muslims, Christians, other sects, and the secular, stand united against terrorism. It is clear that a mountain of lies stands between many and the truth - a mountain built so tall that it leaves entire segments of targeted populations in the perpetual darkness of ignorance.

From Whence Terror Flows

The source of terrorism is not the Qu'ran - a book that few critics of Islam have even picked up let alone genuinely read - but rather a very easily traced money trail that leads to Washington and London.

It is indeed the Western World that has created, branded, and marketed "radical Islam," which is for all intents and purposes a strictly political tool designed to provoke direct Western military interventions where possible, and fight conflicts by proxy whenever direct military intervention is not possible.

In Syria and Iraq, the US has used its terrorist proxies to do both - first to fight the government of Damascus and its allies by proxy, and when that failed, to set a pretext for direct US military intervention.

Another Mass Shooting, Another Grab For Guns: 6 Gun Facts

October 3, 2017 (Tony Cartalucci - LD) - Nothing is more deplorable than hijacking human tragedy to push an unrelated political agenda. A mass murderer taking the lives of some 60 people in Las Vegas this week has nothing to do with the majority of lawful firearms owners in the United States who aren't and have no intention of ever killing another human being.

Yet the knee-jerk reaction of many emotionally-driven people in the face of an overwhelming tragedy is to shift public debate back to gun control and even banning guns altogether. 

Emotional and irrational responses in the face of overwhelming circumstances is part of human nature and require patience.

Yet another part of being human is then appealing to our ability to reason. To reason we must have facts. 

Upon examining the following 6 facts, we will see that access to firearms has no significant relationship to violence - and that violence is driven by another entire set of factors that must be addressed if we honestly want a more peaceful and prosperous world.

1. According to the FBI, more people die of barehanded assaults in the US per year than all rifle violence ("assault rifles" included) combined. In fact, homicide via personal weapons like hands and feet is more than double homicides carried out with rifles.  

Most gun homicides are carried out by handguns in some of America's most destitute communities where national and local governments have failed to keep up with infrastructure, providing education, or economic opportunities - cities like Detroit who have had their industry shipped overseas and their infrastructure left to - in some cases literally - rot.

2. According to the Small Arms Survey conducted by the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland, the United States has the most guns per capita of any other nation on Earth at 112 guns per 100 people. Second place goes to Serbia at 58.21 guns per 100 people.

Based on this and assumptions that access to firearms equates directly to more violence, we would expect to find the United States and Serbia at the top of list regarding both homicides, and gun related homicides, yet this is not the case at all.