The Neoconservatives and the “Coming World”: A response to the questions of a virtual friend

by Amir Nour (1)

« In the emerging world of ethnic conflict and civilizational clash, Western belief in the universality of Western culture suffers three problems: it is false; it is immoral; and it is dangerous »

Samuel Phillips Huntington

« The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order »

Dear friend, I have just read the great question you have asked me about the world’s future according to the American Neo-conservative’s vision. This question came quite naturally to your mind when reading the interview (2) given by one of the most impassioned advocates of this school of thought – Thomas Barnett – author of the controversial book “The Pentagon’s New map: War and Peace in the twenty-first century”.

Assuredly, we’re dealing here with a major issue whose understanding is a sine qua non condition for deciphering both the contingencies and the dominant trends characterizing the evolution of international relations, particularly since the end of the Cold War.

Indeed, the turmoil and convulsions the world is experiencing since the turn of the third millennium, more particularly in the region that should be of a paramount interest to you – i.e. the Arab-Muslim world – are one of the most significant manifestations of the process of multidimensional change underway. Most probably, they are harbingers of the “coming world”- in the words of Malek Bennabi- one radically different from that which we have known since the end of the Second World War to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet empire in 1992.

The ensuing new international reality -the emergence of the United States of America as the sole global superpower- has also been a long shot since it has in turn faded as a result of both the financial and economic crisis that erupted in 2007-2008 and continues to this day, and the rise of new assertive international actors, including the BRICS members (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa).

In all likelihood, this new “coming world” will be multipolar. This is a frightening prospect for the proponents of the perpetuation of the Old Order established by and for the West several centuries ago. And it is quite naturally therefore that the West, under the aegis of its American hegemon leader, is fiercely trying to hinder the realization of this inexorable prospect.

In the first chapter of my aforementioned book (3), I tried to analyze the reasons for this “fear”. At the core of those is undoubtedly the persistence of the imperial ideology that took over American policy after World War II: Neo-conservatism.

As explained in a related Wikipedia article, neoconservatism is a political movement born in the United States during the 1960s of the twentieth century, among conservative-leaning Democrats who became disenchanted with the party’s foreign policy and the “New Left” culture. The first writings of the neo-conservative current appeared in the Jewish monthly New York Monthly Review Magazine Commentary, published by the American Jewish Committee. And the first neo-conservative theorist to have adopted this word and is considered therefore as the founder of this ideology is Irving Kristol (who was militant Trotskyist in his early days!). He is the founder of the famous neo-conservative think tank: Project for the New American Century (PNAC).

Neo-conservatism peaked in influence during the Republican presidential administration of Ronald Reagan whose doctrine was guided by anticommunism and opposition to the global influence of the USSR. It reached its climax at the turn of the last century with the Bush Doctrine of exporting democracy, including by means of military force if necessary. The prominent neo-conservative newspapers are Commentary and the Weekly Standard. There are also neo-conservative think tanks on foreign policy, including American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the Heritage Foundation, JINSA (Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs) and, of course, the PNAC (4).

In foreign policy, the Neocons defend “the military power of Democratic States in international relations in order to establish a new international order”. In a PNAC manifesto published in 1996, they laid out their quintessential thought and principles as follows:

-Moral clarity and benevolent hegemony;
-Preventing the emergence of a rival power;
-End of “complacency” towards dictatorships;
-Refusal of the decline of the American power because it is the first democratic power of the world;
-Upgrading of the military tool to respond to aggression.

The Neo-conservatives say they want a new international order based on freedom, according to the designs that are not those of Kant and Wilson, to which they reproach the impotence, but which take their source in the writings of Moses Maimonides and Saint Augustine. They criticize the United Nations and international law in the name of morality. At major international conferences, they prefer smaller coalitions according to the “mission-defines-the-coalition” principle. They support Israel. Their creed is interventionism. Therefore, the United States “must be recognized as the flagship nation of human rights and export democracy and freedom all over the world if need be by force”.

Among the emblematic ideas of the Neo-conservatives, features prominently the theory of “creative chaos” -developed mainly by Michael Ledeen, a former correspondent in Rome of the New Republic. It is a project aiming to “establish a state of war and permanent instability in the Middle East that would enable the Americans and Israelis to preserve their geostrategic objectives in the region, even by re-redrawing it’s map”. Neo-conservatives do not consider the stability of the world a good to maintain but instead advocate the virtues of destabilisation.

Such was the opinion of Robert Kagan, co-founder with William Kristol of the PNAC. He was the originator of the letter of 26 January 1998 sent to Bill Clinton asking him to conduct another policy in Iraq, one with a view to toppling Saddam Hussein to preserve American interests in the Gulf. The same can be said about Robert Cooper, a British partisan of neoconservatism who advocated a doctrine of “imperialist liberalism” granting the “right” to “civilized countries” to use force against their “foreign ennemies” (5).

It was, however, President G. W. Bush who is notoriously known for having endorsed and put in practice these neo-conservative principles. He did so by invading Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 through an extreme instrumentalization of the unfortunate though “miraculous” events of 11 September 2001. In his 31 December 2005 State of the Union Address, he explained that there is no question of satisfying the “false comfort of isolationism”, which ends in “danger and decline”. America must “lead” the world. It’s a security imperative. “The alternative to American leadership is a much more dangerous and anxious world.” In his view, America must therefore continue to “act boldly in favour of freedom”. And as in 1945 “when she liberated the camps of death, she must accept the call of history to deliver the oppressed”, Half the world lives in a democracy, he said. “We do not forget the other half, in countries like Syria, Burma, Zimbabwe, North Korea and Iran because the demands of justice and the Peace of the world also require their freedom” (6).

To do so, the Security Council of a United Nations, although until then so decried by the neo-conservatives, becomes the privileged instrument for conducting hazardous military expeditions with chaotic consequences for some “recalcitrant” States and their peoples, particularly in the MENA region (7). George W. Bush named as his Ambassador to this important UN body John Bolton, a neo-conservative “hawk” who recounts his UN experience in a book with a very significant title (8).

Almost a decade later, and notwithstanding the debacles of unilateralism and military interventionism he has been preaching ceaselessly, Robert Kagan continues to exert a strong influence on the American establishment. In his book (9) published in 2012, he strived to refute the thesis of the “Decline of America”. This book is said to have become the bedside book of President Barack Obama, who stated in his State of the Union Address in January 2012: “America is back. Anyone who tells you otherwise, anyone who tells you that America is in decline or that our influence has waned doesn’t know what they’re talking about”.

This vision is shared by Steve Bannon, the mastermind of the new administration (before being excluded from it) of President Donald Trump. As explained in the excellent article by Pepe Escobar (10), Steve Bannon “a man who eats history and political theory essays for breakfast (…) a post-truth Machiavelli behind the most powerful of Princes”, sees our current geopolitical juncture as “the ultimate battle between Good and Evil (no, Nietzsche’s verdict, for him, does not apply) ‘Good’ in our case is Christian civilization and its history of two millennia – with a possible place of honor for the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. Its opposite, ‘evil’ is conveyed by a whole series of ‘existential threats’ – from the post-modern, technocratic/secular elites (the inner enemy) to Islam (the enemy in general)”.

For more insight into the roots of this neo-conservative ideology and its impact on the policy that characterizes the United States today, I recommend reading the analysis written by Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould (11). Armed with a razor-sharp writing style and remarkably documented references, they dissect the history of the Neocon take over of the United States, through a four-step-process presented as follows:

– American Imperialism Leads the World into Dante’s Vision of Hell
– How Neocons Push for War by Cooking the Books
– How the CIA Created a Fake Western Reality for ‘Unconventional Warfare’
– The Final Stage of the Machiavellian Elites’ Takeover of America

The Neocons, the Arab World and Israel

Dear friend, after outlining this long but indispensable historic and geostrategic overview, I come to the other major question underlying the issue you raised: Why is the Arab-Muslim world the main victim of this American neo-conservative ideology, one that is supposedly the bedrock of the New World Order and the ultimate culmination of a long process of a history coming to an end – according to another neo-conservative theorist: Francis Fukuyama? We now know that History did not end; on the contrary, it is witnessing an unprecedented acceleration, and the American Empire, far from bringing peace and prosperity to the world, has led all mankind on the road to the great disorder in the world and destructive chaos in the Arab-Muslim world, especially through the ill-named “Arab Springs”.

Aided by a formidable “media compressor roller” in its enterprise of global domination on behalf of a so-called messianic “manifest destiny”, the American empire undertook to redesign the world map in order to be able to establish, in the long term, a kind of « World State » or a « World Government ». This presupposes the destruction of nations by dissolving them into regions and continental poles. This is probably what Herbert Marshall McLuhan, the Canadian sociologist and Vatican adviser – notably known for coining the expression « the medium is the message » – had in mind when he wrote in 1968 “War and Peace in the Global village” (12) his revolutionary book in which he depicted a planet made ever smaller by new technologies, and used the concept of “glocal”, a mixture of global and local, foreshadowing the fundamental architecture of the New World Order.

As is well explained in an article (13) published in 2012, after the fall of communism, the epicenter of this policy was set in the Middle East “where not only the great reserves of hydrocarbons are located, but also the State of Israel, the real mother house of Globalism, which has been impeding all attempts of peace in this region of the world since its creation”. The map of this part of the planet has long been redesigned within Judeo-American think tanks as well as by military commands whose ultimate goals are the fragmentation of nations on ethnic and religious bases (leaving Israel as the only regional superpower), but also by pushing Islam to operate its “Vatican II” so as to be integrated tomorrow into the vast global market in gestation. Because Europe « is being in Dormition, whether we like it or not, Islam is the only bulwark against the total stranglehold of the Tel-Aviv and Washington traders on the world”. This desire to subdue Islam also aims to “create a single religion” (which should bring together all religious currents). This will only be achieved through the division of Muslims, Sunnis and Shiites. In view of this, one can easily understand why the sacred Islamic State (14) is also planned, including Mecca and Medina, to better control Islam and integrate it into a new world order, which is not possible today. Indeed this religion does not have an identified hierarchy (15).

In his excellent book “Black Terror White Soldiers: Islam, Fascism & the New Age”, David Livingstone states that because they are far too ignorant of the histories of the rest of the world, and being aware of only the accomplishments of Greece, Rome and Europe, Westerners have been made to believe that their societies represent the most superior examples of civilization. This idea, he continues, derives from the hidden influence of those who believe in and teach that history would attain its fulfillment when man would become God, and make his own laws. Livingstone concludes that this is the basis of the propaganda which has been used to foster a Clash of Civilizations, whereby the Islamic world is presented as stubbornly adhering to the anachronistic idea of “theocracy”. Where once the spread of Christianity and civilizing the world were used as pretexts for colonization, today a new White Man’s Burden makes use of human rights and democracy to justify imperial aggression. And because, after centuries of decline, the Islamic world is incapable of mobilizing a defense, the Western powers, as part of their age-old strategy of Divide and Conquer, have fostered the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, to both serve as agent-provocateurs and to malign the image of Islam.

Few weeks after the Amercian invasion of Iraq, Ari Shavit wrote a thought-provoking piece in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz under the significant title « White Man’s Burden » (16). He stated that the war against Iraq was based on an « ardent faith disseminated by a small group of 25 or 30 neo-conservatives, almost all of them Jewish, almost all of them intellectuals (a partial list: Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, William Kristol, Elliot Abrams, Charles Krauthammer), people who are mutual friends and cultivate one another and are convinced that political ideas are a major driving force of history. They believe that the right political idea entails a fusion of morality and force, human rights and grit. The philosophical underpinnings of the Washington neo-conservatives are the writings of Machiavelli, Hobbes and Edmund Burke. They also admire Winston Churchill and the policy pursued by Ronald Reagan ».

Quoting William Kristol, he added that this war was also based on « the new American understanding that if the United States does not shape the world in its image, the world will shape the United States in its own image ». At a deeper level, according to Kristol, it is « a greater war, for the shaping of a new Middle East. It is a war that is intended to change the political culture of the entire region. Because what happened on September 11, 2001, Kristol says, is that the Americans looked around and saw that the world is not what they thought it was. The world is a dangerous place. Therefore the Americans looked for a doctrine that would enable them to cope with this dangerous world. And the only doctrine they found was the neo-conservative one ».

This opinion is obviously shared by Charles Krauthammer for whom « the war in Iraq is being fought to replace the demonic deal America cut with the Arab world decades ago. That deal said: you will send us oil and we will not intervene in your internal affairs ». That deal effectively expired on September 11, 2001, Krauthammer says. Since that day, the Americans have understood that “if they allow the Arab world to proceed in its evil ways – suppression, economic ruin, sowing despair – it will continue to produce more and more bin Ladens”. America thus reached the conclusion that it has no choice: it has to take on itself the project of rebuilding the Arab world. Therefore, the Iraq war « is really the beginning of a gigantic historical experiment whose purpose is to do in the Arab world what was done in Germany and Japan after World War II ».

The article ends with a slightly divergent opinion expressed by Thomas Friedman, The New York Times columnist, who is not part of the group, although he didn’t oppose the war and was convinced that « the status quo in the Middle East is no longer acceptable. The status quo is terminal. And therefore it is urgent to foment a reform in the Arab world ». Friedman thought « it’s the war the neo-conservatives wanted. It’s the war the neo-conservatives marketed. Those people had an idea to sell when September 11 came, and they sold it. Oh boy, did they sell it. So this is not a war that the masses demanded. This is a war of an elite (…) I could give you the names of 25 people (all of whom are at this moment within a five-block radius of this office) who, if you had exiled them to a desert island a year and a half ago, the Iraq war would not have happened ». Still, he was of the opinion that « it’s not some fantasy the neo-conservatives invented. It’s not that 25 people hijacked America. You don’t take such a great nation into such a great adventure with Bill Kristol and the Weekly Standard and another five or six influential columnists. In the final analysis, what fomented the war is America’s over-reaction to September 11; the genuine sense of anxiety that spread in America after September 11. It is not only the neo-conservatives who led us to the outskirts of Baghdad. What led us to the outskirts of Baghdad is a very American combination of anxiety and hubris ».

Echoeing Ari Shavit, Stephen Green affirms (17) that since 9-11, a small group of neo-conservatives –many of whom are senior officials in the Defense Department, National Security Council and Office of the Vice President– have effectively gutted–they would say reformed–traditional American foreign and security policy. After reviewing the internal security backgrounds of some of the best known among them, he concludes that they had dual agendas, while professing to work for the internal security of the United States against its terrorist enemies.

Bill Christison (18) and Kathleen Christison reach the same conclusion (19). They say that since the long-forgotten days when the State Department’s Middle East policy was run by a group of so-called Arabists, U.S. policy on Israel and the Arab world “has increasingly become the purview of officials well known for tilting toward Israel”. These people, “who can fairly be called Israeli loyalists, are now at all levels of government, from desk officers at the Defense Department to the deputy secretary level at both State and Defense, as well as on the National Security Council staff and in the vice president’s office”.

An examination of the cast of characters in Bush administration policymaking circles, they say, reveals a “startlingly pervasive network of pro-Israel activists, and an examination of the neo-cons’ voluminous written record shows that Israel comes up constantly as a neo-con reference point, always mentioned with the United States as the beneficiary of a recommended policy, always linked with the United States when national interests are at issue”.

The two authors point out to a telling example of the drafting by Feith, Perle, and both David and Meyrav Wurmser of a policy paper issued, in 1996, by an Israeli think tank and written for newly elected Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. Through this document, they urged Israel “to make a ‘clean break’ from pursuit of the peace process, particularly its land-for-peace aspects, which the authors regarded as a prescription for Israel’s annihilation”.

The document’s authors saw the principal threat to Israel coming, we should not be surprised to discover now, from Iraq and Syria and advised that focusing on the removal of Saddam Hussein would kill two birds with one stone by also thwarting Syria’s regional ambitions.

According to the Christisons, Elliott Abrams is “another unabashed supporter of the Israeli right, now bringing his links with Israel into the service of U.S”, after his appointment as Middle East director on the NSC staff.

Interestingly enough, the Christisons were of the view that the dual loyalists in the Bush administration “have given added impetus to the growth of a messianic strain of Christian fundamentalism that has allied itself with Israel in preparation for the so-called End of Days”. These crazed fundamentalists, they say, see Israel’s domination over all of Palestine as a “necessary step toward fulfillment of the biblical Millennium, consider any Israeli relinquishment of territory in Palestine as a sacrilege, and view warfare between Jews and Arabs as a divinely ordained prelude to Armageddon”, which raises the horrifying but very real prospect of an apocalyptic Christian-Islamic war”.

Writing a commentary in a recent issue of Foreign Policy magazine (20), Elliott Abrams –in his capacity as a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relation-, predicts that “even in the best-case scenario, with the Islamic State defeated and losing its control over a “state,” it may continue to exist as a terrorist group — and in any event al Qaeda and other jihadi groups will not disappear”. This, he concludes, “will not end our involvement in Middle East conflicts and may in fact lead it to increase. There will be no repeat of the Iraq wars, with vast American armies on the ground, but there will need to be a long continuation of the sort of commitment we see today”.

As is explained by Alison Weir in her book (21), « Few Americans today are aware that US support enabled the creation of modern Israel. Even fewer know that US politicians pushed

this policy over the forceful objections of top diplomatic and military experts ». Prodigiously documented, this book brings together « meticulously sourced evidence to illuminate a reality that differs starkly from the prevailing narrative. It provides a clear view of the history that is key to understanding one of the most critically important political issues of our day ».

All of the above fits perfectly with the thesis of the “New Sykes-Picot” that I develop in my book.

In conclusion, I believe I can assert that if Men are the main driving force of the events that make world history, they are certainly not the movers and shakers of its destiny. This -as the great Algerian thinker Malek Bennabi wrote in the past century in his flagship book “l’Afro-asiatisme” (22) – is realized “in spite of the will of men (for) human reason would be futile if it did not coincide with the processes of facts that impose God’s will on History. And it would be sacrilegious if it wanted to deflect the course of history as if it wanted to oppose God’s will and purposes”.

* *
*

Notes:

[1] Algerian researcher in international relations, author of the book « L’Orient et l’Occident à l’heure d’un nouveau Sykes-Picot » (“The Orient and the Occident in time of a new Sykes-Picot”), Editions Alem El Afkar, Algiers, 2014. He is a fervent advocate of the henceforth vital “dialogue of civilizations”, the alternative option of which in today’s increasingly globalized and polarized world, is a catastrophic “clash of civilizations.
[2] “A future worth creating: Interview with Dr. Thomas Barnett“:
Http://www.checkpoint-online.ch/CheckPoint/Forum/For0078-InterviewBarnett.html
[3] Downloadable free of charge, in French and Arabic languages, by clicking on the following links: Http://www.mezghana.net/amir-nour.pdf and
Http://www.mezghana.net/Sykes-Picot.jadeed-REAL.LAST.pdf
[4] Read the presentation made by l’Observatoire européen des think tanks:
Http://www.oftt.eu/think-tanks/monographs/article/pnac-project-for-the-new-american-century
[5] Robert Cooper “The Breaking of Nations: Order and chaos in the twenty-first century“, Atlantic Monthly Press, New York, 2003.
[6] Read the article in the French newspaper Le Monde of 01/02/2006 entitled ” L’Amérique doit conduire le monde, selon Bush» (America must lead the world, according to Bush).
[7] This episode is superbly analyzed by Hardeep Singh Puri, Permanent Representative of India in Geneva and New York (between 2002 and 2013) in his book “Perilous Interventions: the Security Council and the Politics of chaos“, Harper Collins, 2016.
[8] John Bolton, “Surrender is not an option: Defending America at the United Nations and abroad“, Threshold Editions, 2008.
[9] Robert Kagan, “The World America made“, Alfred A. Knopf, 2012.
[10] Pepe Ecsobar, “Will Andrew Jackson Trump Embody the Benno doctrine” Entelekheia, March 21, 2017.
[11] A four part analysis titled “The history of the Neocon takeover of America “, the Francophone Saker, 10 May 2017.
[12] “War and Peace in the global Village“, Bantam Books, New York, 1967.
[13] Read “Les coups tordus de l’Empire“, in the French magazine “Réfléchir et agir”, No. 40, Winter 2012.
[14] According to a readjustment of the boundaries of the Islamic geographical area imagined by Ralph Peters, member of the PNAC, in an article in the military journal Armed Forces newspaper of June 2006 entitled “How a better Middle East would look“.
[15] In “L’Iran, un pays en sursis “, French magazine ‘Nexus 66’, January-February 2010.
[16] See article « White Man’s Burden », Haaretz newspaper, April 3, 2003.
[17] See Stephen Green, « Neo-Cons, Israel and the Bush Administration », Counterpunch, February 28, 2004.
[18] Bill Christison was a senior official of the CIA. He served as a National Intelligence Officer and as Director of the CIA’s Office of Regional and Political Analysis.
[19] See « The Bush Neocons and Israel », Counterpunch, September 6, 2004.
[20] See « The United States Can’t Retreat From the Middle East », Foreign Policy magazine, July 10, 2017.
[21] Alison Weir, « Against Our Better Judgment: The hidden history of how the United States was used to create Israel », CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, February 2014.
[22] Malek Bennabi, «L’Afro-Asiatisme, conclusions sur la Conférence de Bandoeng », Cairo, Imprimerie Misr S.A.E, 1956.

Anonymous on August 01, 2017 · at 9:06 am EST/EDT

Dmitry Orlov posted
The Laughing Gas War
There are many ways to kill one’s enemies: nuke them, bomb them with conventional weapons, make them fight each other in a civil war, starve them out using blockades and sanctions, undermine their economies through market manipulation and so on. Or, failing all that, you can try to make them bust a gut laughing. Previous attempts by the US to destroy Russia have failed. The use of nukes against Russia would reliably result in the US becoming annihilated in about 30 minutes. Conventional weapons wouldn’t make much of a difference unless the US staged a land invasion, and invading Russia has always been and remains to this day an act of suicidal stupidity. American attempts at isolating Russia internationally have failed. Sanctions imposed on Russia have caused little damage the Russian economy, which is continuing to boom. With no other options left, it would appear that the Washingtonians have decided to resort to the one and only trick still available to them: to resort to antics that might make Russia collapse from laughing too hard.

The Washingtonians’ clown act involves pretending, in all seriousness, that they are going to stop Russia from supplying Europe with natural gas and to take over this market themselves, which they plan to supply with their liquefied natural gas exports obtained through fracking. (Conventional natural gas resources in the US have peaked and shale gas obtainable through fracking is all that is left.)

Importing liquefied gas across oceans via tankers when the same product is available on the same continent via pipelines is a dumb idea on every level: cost, risk, reliability, technological complexity and, last but not least, energy efficiency because shipping gas is a waste of energy. Undaunted, the US Congress has just ignited an intercontinental gas war by imposing new sanctions on Russia and, incidentally, on any European company eager to ensure Europe’s energy security by working together with Russia’s energy sector. The US is also spending close to $50 billion to convert its existing liquefied natural gas import terminals to export terminals, and has approved plans for over 40 new export terminals and capacity improvements to existing ones.

The Russians, who make it their business to understand the natural gas industry, find this plan laughable. To be sure, not all Russians are laughing. First, there is a large number of Russians—especially those whose job is to “protect the Motherland”—who lack any discernible sense of humor, especially when it comes to threats emanating from the US. The latest Washingtonian shenanigans may add some amount of condescension and derision to their innate suspicion and mistrust, but we shouldn’t expect them to even crack a smile. Second, there are Russia’s forlorn pro-Western liberals who have never achieved much of anything politically, but at least they got to clean up on Western grant money while being coached by American diplomats and NGOs on ways to overthrow Putin. They are now plumbing the depths of despair. Lastly, there are all the Americaphobes among the general Russian population, who are forever talking up the American threat to democracy and world peace. It is hard for them to get their point across when everyone is so busy laughing at the ridiculous noise emanating from Washington.

What’s so funny? The humor of this situation needs to be explained carefully because it lies buried under a dense mass of technical details of which American politicians and Western mass media seem blissfully unaware. As usual, explaining a joke often renders it unfunny in the laugh-out-loud sense, but it can remain funny in the sense appreciated by professionals in the field of comedy who are able to declare that something is indeed funny while remaining perfectly serious. If you are an energy business nerd and have the time and the inclination to peruse a detailed and decidedly unfunny analysis of the situation, you should read this excellent article by Arthur Berman. If you are neither an energy business nerd nor a professional comedian and just want to get the joke, then read on.

To recap, the Americans want to sell natural gas to the Europeans, forcing out the Russians. So, what’s the joke? It is the fact that in so doing the Americans, unwittingly, are going for a nonsensical trifecta, along the lines of the classic lazy schoolboy multiple mutually exclusive excuses of

1. he lost his homework;

2. his dog ate it; and

3. he didn’t know it was assigned.

In the case of American gas sales to Europe, the trifecta consists of the following:

1. the Americans will find no buyers for their gas;

2. the Americans can’t afford its production costs; and

3. the Americans have virtually no gas to sell.

The Americans keep repeating to themselves that they have cheap, plentiful natural gas from fracking shale, which they can liquefy at gas export terminals and ship to Europe in gigantic refrigerated tankers, to be turned back into gas at import terminals at the destination. Much of this infrastructure is yet to be built. If it ever gets built, it won’t see much use, because the claims of “cheap” and “plentiful” are hollow.

Currently in the US natural gas is relatively cheap, averaging $4 per million BTUs, and the reason it is cheap is indeed thanks to fracking. But herein lies our first bit of hilarity: during the first quarter of 2017 US energy companies in the shale gas sector have spent $2.12 for every dollar they earned. They have been able to stay in business because industry analysts have consistently misled investors into believing that the large difference between costs and revenues is a “sunk cost”—an investment in future production.

What these analysts have neglected to mention is that production from fracked gas wells declines at a rate of around 30% per year. Do the math: if a fracked gas well produces x during its first year, a 30% annual depletion rate means that it will ultimately produce no more than about 1.5x. Even if the remaining 50% of production were free (which it isn’t) at current prices the investors would still lose around $1.5 for every dollar they earn, giving them a return on their investment of around minus 60%. All of this would indicate that at current, historically normal producing natural gas by fracking shale is a good way to go bankrupt.

Even if US dollars grew on trees (which, in a sense, they do, given the current ultra-low interest rates) and even if shale gas producers could continue to produce at a loss forever, shipping liquefied natural gas would still be a rather expensive proposition—far more expensive than delivering gas via pipelines. It raises the price by about $1.5 per million BTUs—to around $5.5 at current prices. This is 2.5 times more than Russia’s Gazprom currently charges the Europeans—while still managing to make money. Why would the Europeans want to pay $5.5 per million BTUs for American gas when they can buy it from the Russians for around $2.2? We are therefore forced to conclude that American gas is not competitive with Russian gas and will find no buyers in places that are within reach of Russian gas pipelines.

So much for “cheap”; how about “plentiful”? There is a 10-month lag in production response to price changes. Gas price was high for a time, justifying the large investment in drilling for shale gas, but the price fell below $4 by the end of 2014. Ten months later revenue shortfalls had a chance to work their way through the system, curtailing drilling activity while the 30% annual depletion rate decreased output from existing wells, and production growth fell from 4% per year to 1%. At this rate, it would take the US 70 years to double production—which it would have to do in order to displace Gazprom in Europe. Incidentally, 70 years is approximately how long Russia can sustain its current production rate from its proven reserves. For the US to achieve meaningful production increases natural gas prices would have to rise substantially—to at least $6—the level that produced the temporary growth spurt in fracked natural gas back in 2014. But at $6 per million BTUs the Europeans would have to pay $7.5, or close to 3.5 times what the Russians charge. Why would the Europeans ever want to do that?

But quantity is not just a function of price. As mentioned, shale gas wells deplete at around 30% per year, and the production profiles of entire shale gas provinces are a composite of many wells. Exploring and producing a gas province is not like harvesting wheat from a field because particularly promising and productive parts of each province are exploited first. Whatever is left usually turns out to be impossible to produce profitably, at any price, and is abandoned. Because of this dynamic, all of the shale gas provinces in the US except one—Marcellus—have already reached a production plateau, with some already in decline.

Still, a sustained period of high prices could provoke another growth spurt. But the Russians are unlikely to sit idly by and let this happen. If high prices is what it takes for Americans to compete with Russia on volume, what is to stop the Russians from opening up their valves in response to higher prices, bringing them back down and handing the American energy sector another batch of disastrous financial results? American energy industry analysts, who are basically industry cheerleaders and have minimal hindsight and a long and proud history of being continuously wrong in their predictions, will unwittingly assist the Russians in playing this game.

Beyond quantity and price, there is yet another important ingredient to being a successful natural gas exporter: reliability. The only problems the Europeans have ever experienced with the Russian gas supply had to do with political issues centered on the Ukraine: the Ukrainians thought that they could endlessly extort money from Russians for the privilege of using Soviet-era pipelines that run through their territory. The Russians have had enough of such games and are now planning to circumvent the Ukraine using new pipelines, currently being built, that run under the Baltic and the Black Sea. At no point were Russian gas exports supply-constrained or their prices unpredictable. Gazprom negotiates long-term delivery contracts with stable pricing while American liquefied gas has to be purchased on the spot market, where prices fluctuate rapidly. If Europe cares about its energy security, which supplier should it prefer?

At the moment, the Americans prefer to remain in denial about the near-term phase-out of the Ukrainian gas transit route. They have been busily hatching plans to “privatize” (or is it “colonize”?) this last bit of Soviet industrial legacy, hoping to profit from it by inserting themselves between the Russian suppliers and the European consumers. The rapid pace at which the new South Stream and Nord Stream pipelines, which circumvent the Ukraine, are being built has clearly taken them by surprise. They don’t like this one bit: this is the last, tentative scrap of potential windfall from their expensive, and failed, political intervention in the Ukraine, and even it is about to fall through.

Without oversimplifying one bit, it is fair to say that the US is not a reliable natural gas supplier. While Russia’s gas supply has held steady, in the US it has whipsawed between gluts and shortages. Each time, American industry analysts have been unable to see beyond the next corner and as a result the industry has consistently planned for situations that have failed to occur.

When gas was expensive and in short supply, the Americans built lots of expensive liquefied natural gas import terminals, which didn’t see much use because as soon as they were completed domestic supply surged. And now that there is a temporary glut from fracking they are wasting money on converting these import terminals into export terminals.

The total planned export capacity is around 75% of total US natural gas production. There is no reason to believe that so large a production surplus will ever exist and so these export terminals will rust away unused just like the import terminals did. Thus, it is clear that the Americans are incapable either of long-term production planning or of supplying their own needs over the long term. Why should the Europeans hitch their fortunes to such an unreliable supplier?

What do you do when a customer refuses to buy a product you don’t have at a price the customer can’t afford? Why, blame Russia, of course, and attempt to impose a fresh set of economic sanctions on it! Russia must stop meddling in American elections, or Europe gets cut off from Russian natural gas! The new sanctions bill just passed by US congress attempts to achieve just that: it claims US jurisdiction over EU energy policy and attempts to force European companies to stop doing business with Russia.

It also seeks to prevent the US president from lifting these sanctions without congressional approval. Unlike just about any other issue before Congress, this legislation had strong bipartisan support. It aims to boost the domestic energy sector and suck money out of Europe, plus it plays the perennially popular trump card of “blaming Russia.” This plan won’t work for the economic and geological reasons listed above. It also won’t work because there is zero chance that the Europeans will stand idly by and let the Americans destroy their energy security. A change is going to come, and it will end with the sound of one hand fracking.

And then there is one more secret ingredient in this special legislative sauce: the whole thing is blatantly illegal. The only place this brain-dead, still-born piece of legislation is headed is the courtroom, both in the US and the EU. In the EU, the extraterritorial nature of this legislation must be addressed because, as a matter of principle, the laws of one nation should have no force on the territory of any other nation. The EU will be forced to draw a line on this vital matter of energy security and reclaim its sovereignty, pushing back against America’s extraterritorial claims.

In the US, legislation that places restrictions on the prerogatives of the executive branch to negotiate international treaties. It is unconstitutional because it violates the principle of separation of powers enshrined in the constitution. It is a matter for the supreme court to resolve—unless, that is, this branch of the US government is by now as defunct as the other two.

The new sanctions bill is just one piece of legislation, but it nicely showcases what has become of the great and fearsome United States, the erstwhile global hegemon. Its government now consists of a president who tweets pathetically but can’t get anything done, a congress that can’t accomplish anything except for passing legislation that violates both domestic and international law. Its national media is stuck in screaming feedback loop of blaming Russia based on zero evidence. Meanwhile, its energy and finance sectors are busy lobbying the government to force foreigners to buy a product it can’t produce at a price they can’t afford. Let’s face it, the country has become a joke!

Do Americans realize that their country has become a joke? There are few signs that they do, and this is where the joke stops being funny. America is ill—mentally ill. Both the Europeans and the Russians, once they stop laughing, will need to come to a certain realization: in dealing with the US, in its current deranged, demented state, they face not so much a nation-state as a nation-sized mental health condition. Be that as it may; there is little doubt that the Europeans and the Russians will continue to work together while allowing this mental patient to convalesce in a padded cell on the other side of the ocean.

51 Comments

Anonymous on July 31, 2017 · at 11:22 pm EST/EDT

Sorry, but the philosophy called Neocon existed well before the 1960s, arising at the end of the 19th century, rapidly growing during WW1, almost beaten back by The People during the 1930s, only to get a fresh lease on life thanks to WW2. Its core members ensured their power with the 1947 National Security Act by having instituted what would become the Cold War in 1943. The Dulles Brothers would be quite at home with todays Neocons.
- Anonymous on August 01, 2017 · at 1:08 am EST/EDT
  
  “The LORD frustrates the plans of the nations and thwarts all their schemes.” Psalm 33:10
  and
  Man plans, God laughs.
- Solon on August 01, 2017 · at 2:41 am EST/EDT
  
  Philosophy is incorrect term. Ideology is the correct word for it.
- tsuki on August 01, 2017 · at 3:09 pm EST/EDT
  
  “The Dulles Brothers would be quite at home with todays Neocons.” And so would their Grandfather, John Foster, Sec. of State under Grant. He supervised their education. Neocultism has a very lengthy past.
- Jonathan David on August 01, 2017 · at 3:44 pm EST/EDT
  
  No doubt they would. The Dulles brothers were Sullivan and Cromwell Wall Street lawyers. Loyal servants of the Rockefellers and the global banking oligarchy, as are the neocons.
- 5 dancing shlomos on August 01, 2017 · at 5:52 pm EST/EDT
  
  neocons are jews with neopets.
  the neocon state is the jew state – israel.
  america’s wars conceived, driven by neocons/jews are for israel.
  
  9/11 was for israel. neocons/jews at every important point of that operation.
BRF on August 01, 2017 · at 4:54 am EST/EDT

Dress it all up with all the modern nuances as able but it all comes down to the same ol’ same old imperial racist greed disguised so that those pursuing such policies can deceive themselves of a greater calling. The average western family man has more in common with his Palestinian counterpart than he does with his fellow countrymen with their visions of empire built on this crusader’s delusion. The neo cons are fascists who want to rule the world in their own interests and peccadilloes, plain and simple and would send a death squad against any western family just as easily as they have any Iraqi family.
Nussiminen on August 01, 2017 · at 5:38 am EST/EDT

“The philosophical underpinnings of the Washington neo-conservatives are the writings of Machiavelli, Hobbes and Edmund Burke.”

I think that’s slightly misleading, actually. The neocon slobs, just like any self-worshipping coterie worth their salt, are self-sufficient with regard to ideology in the way a “team” of loud, smelly drunkards tend to be. Collective megalomania has little use for printed material of any sort; it’s mostly a frill. Of course the writings of BHL and Adolf Hitler are available for “intellectual stimulus”, but arch-reactionary Zionazi Pindos are hell-bent on genocide, mayhem, and exceptionalism regardless. It’s an inseparable part of the US national character for obvious reasons.
_smr on August 01, 2017 · at 8:37 am EST/EDT

Zion is the undisputed master of fiction – be it religions, movies, novels, scientific theories or political ideologies. Fiction is its natural habitat. While Zion has taught the goyim to take their gods, theories and favorite Star Trek episodes as gospel, Zion is well aware that even its ‘heroes’ Jahwe, Abraham, Moses exist only to the extent that they have been scripted and re-scripted and re-scripted.

The Reformation, the Jesuits, the Freemason, the Enlightenment, Communism, Marxism, Feminism and hundreds of others fancy mind-viruses cooked up by Zion’s agents, have flabbergasted the goy students for centuries. Never really able to wrap their minds about the true meaning Star Wars and Das Kapital, they mistook these frivolous fictions as sacrosanct and became it sturdiest followers.

Which only propelled Zion’s smooth-talkers, entertainers, and stage magicians to expand their trade into a full-blown social engineering and culture manufacturing industry to everyone’s puzzlement and delight.

Which brings us to the topic at hand, one of Zion’s latest cons – the Neocons! Can you hear me laughing?
- James Speaks on August 01, 2017 · at 10:06 am EST/EDT
  
  Correct!
  
  The name “Neo-con” is a ruse. It’s the big lie, right up there with “Land without a people.”
  
  As long as we look where these Zionist say to look, ” …Over there, now over here, it’s a political philosophy, now look up there!” we do not see that every move they make, every alliance, every smear, slander, bride, is to bring more power to the Rogue State. Non-Jewish neocons are useful idiots, nothing more.
  
  A better name than Neocon would be Faux-tribal narcissism. Faux b/c as the Saker has pointed out, membership is by choice, and narcissistic b/c Goy aren’t even people.
  
  Let’s face it. No nation is indispensable, and the least of the unneeded is one that is totally artificial.
  
  I agree that a goal of Neocons is to keep the Levant in disarray, at least until they steal it all, but the current actions on the part of Russia under Putin to secure a stable southern border also make Neocons totally irrelevant.
  
  Putin is a genius, and the best friend America ever had.
  - Davi on August 03, 2017 · at 5:46 pm EST/EDT
    
    Absolutely correct, sadly few Americans are even aware of how similar (at least to thier ancesters) they are to Russians. And now the neo bolsheviks are again in the drivers seat. God bless Putin and the Russian land and heroic people.
Anonymous on August 01, 2017 · at 9:06 am EST/EDT

Dmitry Orlov posted
The Laughing Gas War
There are many ways to kill one’s enemies: nuke them, bomb them with conventional weapons, make them fight each other in a civil war, starve them out using blockades and sanctions, undermine their economies through market manipulation and so on. Or, failing all that, you can try to make them bust a gut laughing. Previous attempts by the US to destroy Russia have failed. The use of nukes against Russia would reliably result in the US becoming annihilated in about 30 minutes. Conventional weapons wouldn’t make much of a difference unless the US staged a land invasion, and invading Russia has always been and remains to this day an act of suicidal stupidity. American attempts at isolating Russia internationally have failed. Sanctions imposed on Russia have caused little damage the Russian economy, which is continuing to boom. With no other options left, it would appear that the Washingtonians have decided to resort to the one and only trick still available to them: to resort to antics that might make Russia collapse from laughing too hard.

The Washingtonians’ clown act involves pretending, in all seriousness, that they are going to stop Russia from supplying Europe with natural gas and to take over this market themselves, which they plan to supply with their liquefied natural gas exports obtained through fracking. (Conventional natural gas resources in the US have peaked and shale gas obtainable through fracking is all that is left.)

Importing liquefied gas across oceans via tankers when the same product is available on the same continent via pipelines is a dumb idea on every level: cost, risk, reliability, technological complexity and, last but not least, energy efficiency because shipping gas is a waste of energy. Undaunted, the US Congress has just ignited an intercontinental gas war by imposing new sanctions on Russia and, incidentally, on any European company eager to ensure Europe’s energy security by working together with Russia’s energy sector. The US is also spending close to $50 billion to convert its existing liquefied natural gas import terminals to export terminals, and has approved plans for over 40 new export terminals and capacity improvements to existing ones.

The Russians, who make it their business to understand the natural gas industry, find this plan laughable. To be sure, not all Russians are laughing. First, there is a large number of Russians—especially those whose job is to “protect the Motherland”—who lack any discernible sense of humor, especially when it comes to threats emanating from the US. The latest Washingtonian shenanigans may add some amount of condescension and derision to their innate suspicion and mistrust, but we shouldn’t expect them to even crack a smile. Second, there are Russia’s forlorn pro-Western liberals who have never achieved much of anything politically, but at least they got to clean up on Western grant money while being coached by American diplomats and NGOs on ways to overthrow Putin. They are now plumbing the depths of despair. Lastly, there are all the Americaphobes among the general Russian population, who are forever talking up the American threat to democracy and world peace. It is hard for them to get their point across when everyone is so busy laughing at the ridiculous noise emanating from Washington.

What’s so funny? The humor of this situation needs to be explained carefully because it lies buried under a dense mass of technical details of which American politicians and Western mass media seem blissfully unaware. As usual, explaining a joke often renders it unfunny in the laugh-out-loud sense, but it can remain funny in the sense appreciated by professionals in the field of comedy who are able to declare that something is indeed funny while remaining perfectly serious. If you are an energy business nerd and have the time and the inclination to peruse a detailed and decidedly unfunny analysis of the situation, you should read this excellent article by Arthur Berman. If you are neither an energy business nerd nor a professional comedian and just want to get the joke, then read on.

To recap, the Americans want to sell natural gas to the Europeans, forcing out the Russians. So, what’s the joke? It is the fact that in so doing the Americans, unwittingly, are going for a nonsensical trifecta, along the lines of the classic lazy schoolboy multiple mutually exclusive excuses of

1. he lost his homework;

2. his dog ate it; and

3. he didn’t know it was assigned.

In the case of American gas sales to Europe, the trifecta consists of the following:

1. the Americans will find no buyers for their gas;

2. the Americans can’t afford its production costs; and

3. the Americans have virtually no gas to sell.

The Americans keep repeating to themselves that they have cheap, plentiful natural gas from fracking shale, which they can liquefy at gas export terminals and ship to Europe in gigantic refrigerated tankers, to be turned back into gas at import terminals at the destination. Much of this infrastructure is yet to be built. If it ever gets built, it won’t see much use, because the claims of “cheap” and “plentiful” are hollow.

Currently in the US natural gas is relatively cheap, averaging $4 per million BTUs, and the reason it is cheap is indeed thanks to fracking. But herein lies our first bit of hilarity: during the first quarter of 2017 US energy companies in the shale gas sector have spent $2.12 for every dollar they earned. They have been able to stay in business because industry analysts have consistently misled investors into believing that the large difference between costs and revenues is a “sunk cost”—an investment in future production.

What these analysts have neglected to mention is that production from fracked gas wells declines at a rate of around 30% per year. Do the math: if a fracked gas well produces x during its first year, a 30% annual depletion rate means that it will ultimately produce no more than about 1.5x. Even if the remaining 50% of production were free (which it isn’t) at current prices the investors would still lose around $1.5 for every dollar they earn, giving them a return on their investment of around minus 60%. All of this would indicate that at current, historically normal producing natural gas by fracking shale is a good way to go bankrupt.

Even if US dollars grew on trees (which, in a sense, they do, given the current ultra-low interest rates) and even if shale gas producers could continue to produce at a loss forever, shipping liquefied natural gas would still be a rather expensive proposition—far more expensive than delivering gas via pipelines. It raises the price by about $1.5 per million BTUs—to around $5.5 at current prices. This is 2.5 times more than Russia’s Gazprom currently charges the Europeans—while still managing to make money. Why would the Europeans want to pay $5.5 per million BTUs for American gas when they can buy it from the Russians for around $2.2? We are therefore forced to conclude that American gas is not competitive with Russian gas and will find no buyers in places that are within reach of Russian gas pipelines.

So much for “cheap”; how about “plentiful”? There is a 10-month lag in production response to price changes. Gas price was high for a time, justifying the large investment in drilling for shale gas, but the price fell below $4 by the end of 2014. Ten months later revenue shortfalls had a chance to work their way through the system, curtailing drilling activity while the 30% annual depletion rate decreased output from existing wells, and production growth fell from 4% per year to 1%. At this rate, it would take the US 70 years to double production—which it would have to do in order to displace Gazprom in Europe. Incidentally, 70 years is approximately how long Russia can sustain its current production rate from its proven reserves. For the US to achieve meaningful production increases natural gas prices would have to rise substantially—to at least $6—the level that produced the temporary growth spurt in fracked natural gas back in 2014. But at $6 per million BTUs the Europeans would have to pay $7.5, or close to 3.5 times what the Russians charge. Why would the Europeans ever want to do that?

But quantity is not just a function of price. As mentioned, shale gas wells deplete at around 30% per year, and the production profiles of entire shale gas provinces are a composite of many wells. Exploring and producing a gas province is not like harvesting wheat from a field because particularly promising and productive parts of each province are exploited first. Whatever is left usually turns out to be impossible to produce profitably, at any price, and is abandoned. Because of this dynamic, all of the shale gas provinces in the US except one—Marcellus—have already reached a production plateau, with some already in decline.

Still, a sustained period of high prices could provoke another growth spurt. But the Russians are unlikely to sit idly by and let this happen. If high prices is what it takes for Americans to compete with Russia on volume, what is to stop the Russians from opening up their valves in response to higher prices, bringing them back down and handing the American energy sector another batch of disastrous financial results? American energy industry analysts, who are basically industry cheerleaders and have minimal hindsight and a long and proud history of being continuously wrong in their predictions, will unwittingly assist the Russians in playing this game.

Beyond quantity and price, there is yet another important ingredient to being a successful natural gas exporter: reliability. The only problems the Europeans have ever experienced with the Russian gas supply had to do with political issues centered on the Ukraine: the Ukrainians thought that they could endlessly extort money from Russians for the privilege of using Soviet-era pipelines that run through their territory. The Russians have had enough of such games and are now planning to circumvent the Ukraine using new pipelines, currently being built, that run under the Baltic and the Black Sea. At no point were Russian gas exports supply-constrained or their prices unpredictable. Gazprom negotiates long-term delivery contracts with stable pricing while American liquefied gas has to be purchased on the spot market, where prices fluctuate rapidly. If Europe cares about its energy security, which supplier should it prefer?

At the moment, the Americans prefer to remain in denial about the near-term phase-out of the Ukrainian gas transit route. They have been busily hatching plans to “privatize” (or is it “colonize”?) this last bit of Soviet industrial legacy, hoping to profit from it by inserting themselves between the Russian suppliers and the European consumers. The rapid pace at which the new South Stream and Nord Stream pipelines, which circumvent the Ukraine, are being built has clearly taken them by surprise. They don’t like this one bit: this is the last, tentative scrap of potential windfall from their expensive, and failed, political intervention in the Ukraine, and even it is about to fall through.

Without oversimplifying one bit, it is fair to say that the US is not a reliable natural gas supplier. While Russia’s gas supply has held steady, in the US it has whipsawed between gluts and shortages. Each time, American industry analysts have been unable to see beyond the next corner and as a result the industry has consistently planned for situations that have failed to occur.

When gas was expensive and in short supply, the Americans built lots of expensive liquefied natural gas import terminals, which didn’t see much use because as soon as they were completed domestic supply surged. And now that there is a temporary glut from fracking they are wasting money on converting these import terminals into export terminals.

The total planned export capacity is around 75% of total US natural gas production. There is no reason to believe that so large a production surplus will ever exist and so these export terminals will rust away unused just like the import terminals did. Thus, it is clear that the Americans are incapable either of long-term production planning or of supplying their own needs over the long term. Why should the Europeans hitch their fortunes to such an unreliable supplier?

What do you do when a customer refuses to buy a product you don’t have at a price the customer can’t afford? Why, blame Russia, of course, and attempt to impose a fresh set of economic sanctions on it! Russia must stop meddling in American elections, or Europe gets cut off from Russian natural gas! The new sanctions bill just passed by US congress attempts to achieve just that: it claims US jurisdiction over EU energy policy and attempts to force European companies to stop doing business with Russia.

It also seeks to prevent the US president from lifting these sanctions without congressional approval. Unlike just about any other issue before Congress, this legislation had strong bipartisan support. It aims to boost the domestic energy sector and suck money out of Europe, plus it plays the perennially popular trump card of “blaming Russia.” This plan won’t work for the economic and geological reasons listed above. It also won’t work because there is zero chance that the Europeans will stand idly by and let the Americans destroy their energy security. A change is going to come, and it will end with the sound of one hand fracking.

And then there is one more secret ingredient in this special legislative sauce: the whole thing is blatantly illegal. The only place this brain-dead, still-born piece of legislation is headed is the courtroom, both in the US and the EU. In the EU, the extraterritorial nature of this legislation must be addressed because, as a matter of principle, the laws of one nation should have no force on the territory of any other nation. The EU will be forced to draw a line on this vital matter of energy security and reclaim its sovereignty, pushing back against America’s extraterritorial claims.

In the US, legislation that places restrictions on the prerogatives of the executive branch to negotiate international treaties. It is unconstitutional because it violates the principle of separation of powers enshrined in the constitution. It is a matter for the supreme court to resolve—unless, that is, this branch of the US government is by now as defunct as the other two.

The new sanctions bill is just one piece of legislation, but it nicely showcases what has become of the great and fearsome United States, the erstwhile global hegemon. Its government now consists of a president who tweets pathetically but can’t get anything done, a congress that can’t accomplish anything except for passing legislation that violates both domestic and international law. Its national media is stuck in screaming feedback loop of blaming Russia based on zero evidence. Meanwhile, its energy and finance sectors are busy lobbying the government to force foreigners to buy a product it can’t produce at a price they can’t afford. Let’s face it, the country has become a joke!

Do Americans realize that their country has become a joke? There are few signs that they do, and this is where the joke stops being funny. America is ill—mentally ill. Both the Europeans and the Russians, once they stop laughing, will need to come to a certain realization: in dealing with the US, in its current deranged, demented state, they face not so much a nation-state as a nation-sized mental health condition. Be that as it may; there is little doubt that the Europeans and the Russians will continue to work together while allowing this mental patient to convalesce in a padded cell on the other side of the ocean.
- Uncle Bob 1 on August 01, 2017 · at 11:37 am EST/EDT
  
  What an awesome article. Dmitry Orlov is always a great read. His wit and sarcasm cuts right to the heart of an issue.
  - LZ99 on August 03, 2017 · at 11:11 am EST/EDT
    
    Yes, amusing man of wit. Fun to read.
    
    Though useful, his topic is, some might say, superficial. Well, everything is superficial in some sense…
    
    The gas affair and the “sanctions” , the impending shattering of the US/EU relations and the incoherent actions and the characters involved all, more deeply, paint a picture of systemic institutional failure.
    
    This would explain Ivan showing the fellas the door, as (people say) Ivan does when a guest has been rude enough – or simply never dealing with a party again, ever – while remaining polite and resolute.
    
    But the point is that the “laughing gas” scene – viewed from a height – is a scene of catastrophic collapse – a snapshot of a sketch of battle in one center of global war.
    
    Pity.
    
    LZ
- Anonymous on August 01, 2017 · at 2:45 pm EST/EDT
  
  The fundamental problem with fracking is the very short profitable lifetime of each well – maybe 3 – 6 years. The scam only works because there are readly available sites for new wells, aided by creative accounting. The proponents hope to profit in the first few years then pass on the dying wells and increasing debt to some sucker. It is the ultimate Ponzi come pump-n-dump scam. The marginal costs of operation leave it very vulnerable to gas price drops such those that ossurred when the US/Saudis had the bright idea of flooding the market to bankrupt Russia. It was the frackers that were bankrupted.
- Red Ryder on August 01, 2017 · at 3:01 pm EST/EDT
  
  Here’s a link to the Arthur Berman article in Orlov’s piece:
  
  http://oilprice.com/Energy/Natural-Gas/The-Shale-Gas-Revolution-Is-A-Media-Myth.html
- T1 on August 01, 2017 · at 7:44 pm EST/EDT
  
  I don’t expect much to happen until people start freezing.
  
  Nothing like pitchforks to motive the leadership.
- One Tribe on August 01, 2017 · at 8:52 pm EST/EDT
  
  I very much enjoyed this, and the original article.
  Thank you.
  More perspective on it later.
- Tony_0pmoc on August 02, 2017 · at 6:53 pm EST/EDT
  
  Dmitry Orlov is a great writer, and I used to love reading him every week. I even like his boat. However, Dmitry has got some very fundamental things completely wrong, which I find very surprising considering his intellect, and education – but where did he do his physics and engineering? I find it hard to believe it was in Russia.
  
  Try J.F. Kenney instead – or even the university I studied physics and maths in the UK.
  
  How could such a clever bloke get the fundamentals so wrong??
  
  Its basic physics. If he can work out 9/11 and write about it so brilliantly, why does he think that oil is a fossil fuel and bet his life accordingly?
  
  I find that very strange, and for a brilliant writer.
  
  I like boats too, but my kids and grand kids like playing in our back garden and going to school with other kids. That way of life forms relatively stable communities, that boat people rarely achieve.
  
  Otherwise, this article was highly depressing, except for some of the comments.
  
  Its not all doom and gloom, or wouldn’t be if all these psychopaths in control were arrested and put on trial for their war crimes against humanity – and we had a bit of truth.
  
  Populations stabilize and become self sufficient and peaceable, if external forces would simply try and stop bombing, killing and stealing from them.
  
  Tony
  - Anonymous on August 02, 2017 · at 7:14 pm EST/EDT
    
    Agreed. Brilliant guy with some glaring gaping holes. The most glaring of them being he has swallowed the entire climate alarmist propaganda, we are going to fry by CO2 etc, … has swallowed it whold without even blinking. Does not seem to have checked basic things out.
    Regarding oil, I also agree. Astrophysicist and multidisciplinarian Thomas Gold made a very solid case for abiotic oil in his book “The Deep Hot Biosphere” which should be required reading by all oil geologists. Endorsed by none other than Freeman Dyson, who was his long time friend. And his ideas are rooted in a Russian school.
  - Anonymous on August 03, 2017 · at 2:22 am EST/EDT
    
    Tony_0pmoc:
    
    However, Dmitry has got some very fundamental things completely wrong, which I find very surprising considering his intellect, and education – but where did he do his physics and engineering?
    
    He got his education in the US.
    
    … why does he think that oil is a fossil fuel and bet his life accordingly?
    
    If you’re trying to hint at abiotic oil (like the first anonymous commenter) then it would be nice of you if you could provide us with some names of reliable scientists and their scientific papers on that topic. Assumed abiotic oil would exist, then it’s quite astonishing why Canadians are converting parts of their wonderful nature in something resembling moonscape. Wouldn’t it be far more profitable to promote tourism instead of digging everything up?
  - Lumpentroll on August 03, 2017 · at 4:03 am EST/EDT
    
    It goes deeper than that Tony. Orlov is wrong about a great many things. He drones on about his Marxian values, and as with the climate change hoax he promotes certain ideas favoured, if not directly invented, by the finance oligarchy centred on London. To me it is clear he is again engaged in carefully calculated misdirection, following marching orders issued directly by his British oligarch patrons. The US may not have sustainable reserves of liquefied natural gas capable of supplying Europe but Iran and Qatar certainly do, the largest reserves in the world, if I correctly understand what the Pars field represents.
    
    So hold off on the laughing gas, this isn’t a joke.
    
    All of that LNG is in the hands of Western energy companies, no matter the otherwise pointless bickering between Doha and Riyad. Indeed, it is precisely because of these reserves that Saudi and Qatar are bickering, to distract, but already we see nothing will come of it. It was all most likely a very big show with the lead part played by a sword dancing lifetime actor. What happens in the Gulf is for the betterment of Western interests, with the Saudis in particular being otherwise irrelevant.
    
    Below I post another article, to demonstrate the current Iranian President and the oligarch who controls him, the tandem of Rouhani and Rafsanjani, are intimately tied to Anglo-British interests, for instance the massive secret investment in Canadian infrastructure via the $19 billion dollar 407 toll road north of Toronto, and hidden evermore carefully by Stephen Harper when he severed relations with Iran for no discernable reason.
    
    RE: Mullah Rafsanjani and his family’s foreign investment in Canada
    
    http://iranzamin2500.blogspot.ca/2007/01/re-mullah-rafsanjani-and-his-familys.html
    
    Then according to Thierry Meyssan, the British establishment are organizing an alliance of Iran, Qatar and Turkey with the Muslim Brotherhood, under the guise of political Islam, but if you follow the money, or in this case the liquefied natural gas, it looks as though the fireworks between Saudi and Qatar were most likely made to distract us from the only source of natural gas capable of competing with Russia in the European market, i.e. Persian Gulf fields belonging to Iran and Qatar, controlled by Western companies, which could be transported partly via tanker but mainly via pipelines from Iran to the Turkish gas hub Erdogan has been dreaming about.
    
    A wind of secularism blows over the Muslim world
    
    by Thierry Meyssan
    
    Donald Trump’s speech in Riyadhh has sparked a wave of declarations against terrorism and against political Islam. The Arab world is expressing its thirst for secularism at the very moment that it is being misrepresented in Europe and used against religions. Faced with this breath of liberty, the British are organising the camp of political Islam around Qatar, Iran, Turkey and the Muslim Brotherhood.
    
    http://www.voltairenet.org/article196804.html
Lumpentroll on August 01, 2017 · at 10:02 am EST/EDT

Neoconservatives are agents of British Israeldom, i.e. not a recent phenomenon, with little or nothing to do with ‘the’ Jews, though this multi-faceted religious cult does represent a gathering of the most useful and unscrupulous proxies for oligarchical power over time. Throughout history today’s Neocons have described themselves in many different ways, renaming themselves as is their fashion, for instance calling themselves Hellenes throughout much of antiquity up to the Rennaisssance and so-called Enlightenment, or Bolsheviks in Russia during much of the 20th century. Like Gilad Atzmon, they hate “Jewey Jews,” a phrase he has used on occasion, telling you a great deal about the nature of supposed dissidents who are gatekeepers to a man. Neocons as a group are directly controlled by the Zionist finance oligarchy, centred on the City of London since Elizabethan times.

These things can no longer be hidden, as the carefully timed revelations, falling well short of full disclosure, begin making appearances in alternative and mainstream media. If nothing else we are approaching the end game of the oligarchy.

These oligarchs, self described Venetians partaking in an elite sociopathic subculture thousands of years old — literally the Whore of Babylon of biblical lore, control money and more importantly they control globalist culture. They have made a deal with China to provide technical assistance and ‘manage’ the new Chinese currency as we transition from a US dollar fiat to what is effectively an Anglo-Zionist-Chinese fiat.

As with any change of fiat those left holding assets denominated in a worthless older currency, in this case US dollars, get destroyed while the finance oligarchy, having wads of the new fiat at the ready, buy up everthing in existense for a fraction of its value. This has been done over and over throughout history and it looks as though they are on the verge of doing it yet again, likely after some fancy and perhaps radioactive fireworks in Israel and the Levant to keep everyone distracted long enough to see the deed done.

Then you will get a crack at Iago, the Jewish scapegoat who demanded his pound of flesh, to satisfy your thirst for revenge, but not the Venetians who will be safely ensconced.

So no, it will not be multipolar. BRICS excluding China will be just as irrelevant in the new order as they were in the old, Russia being the most obvious case in point. The Anglo-Zionist-Chinese finance oligarchy will thereafter use their totalizing money power to put everyone on an electronic teet, amounting to more or less what Orwell described in 1984. Europeans will of course have a choice of joining with Russia after their long dark night, something also forseen by Orwell but for now they are also blighted by the Neocon phenomenon and show zero sign of waking from their slumber.

Unless of course everyone reading this has something to say about it, and is prepared to see that the biggest gangsters in history are finally prevented, once and for all, from continuing to pursue their centuries long crime spree against humanity.
- Ian W. on August 01, 2017 · at 11:43 am EST/EDT
  
  “Neoconservatives are agents of British Israeldom, i.e. not a recent phenomenon, with little or nothing to do with ‘the’ Jews, though this multi-faceted religious cult does represent a gathering of the most useful and unscrupulous proxies for oligarchical power over time.”
  
  Gatekeeping that is irritatingly transparent.
  - Lumpentroll on August 02, 2017 · at 3:55 am EST/EDT
    
    scape·goat
    ˈskāpˌɡōt/
    
    noun
    
    noun: scapegoat; plural noun: scapegoats
    
    1.
    
    a person who is blamed for the wrongdoings, mistakes, or faults of others, especially for reasons of expediency.
    
    synonyms: whipping boy; More
    informalfall guy, patsy
    “find yourself another scapegoat”
    
    2.
    
    (in the Bible) a goat sent into the wilderness after the Jewish chief priest had symbolically laid the sins of the people upon it (Lev. 16).
    
    verb
    
    verb: scapegoat; 3rd person present: scapegoats; past tense: scapegoated; past participle: scapegoated; gerund or present participle: scapegoating
    
    1.
    
    make a scapegoat of.
    
    It almost never fails. Whenever I highlight the British Oligarchy, and suggest we concern ourselves with prosecuting history’s most prolific criminals, someonce comes along with a drive by copy and paste article in the tradition of the Protocols — scapegoating Jewery for crimes with which the vast majority of Jews have nothing to do. I am quite certain a great many self described Jews are involved in the centuries long Zionist crime spree and conspiracy, however, each and everyone of the people you wish us to focus on is an agent of the degenerate diadem.
    
    It is extraordinary that you can write almost anything about da Jews without hearing a peep yet any suggestion that we look more closely at the most powerful people in the world, and consider their past or present behaviour and motivations, draws exactly the kind of response you have given.
    
    Seems I am onto something, doesn’t it?
    - T1 on August 02, 2017 · at 3:43 pm EST/EDT
      
      You’re onto something. It’s about money and control.
      
      Who owns and controls the banks?
      
      If you’re a mob guy where do you take your money?
    - Flonerd on August 02, 2017 · at 3:44 pm EST/EDT
      
      No you’re not, in my opinion.
      
      The British Empire was run by the chosen if you care to look closely enough. The slave trade– guess who? The Opium Trade — guess who? The UK has been a Zatrapy for 100s of years. This British Oligarchy that you conjure up is now mostly kosher. Just a small example — who funded Cromwell’s regime, arguably the precursor to the British Empire?
      
      I’m afraid it is you-know-who all the way down. But sure the Protocols are a hoax and any one who points out the flamin’ obvious (J-power all over the West) is just a rabid anti-semite ;)
      
      Seems you’re on something alright but it aint the truth.
      - Lumpentroll on August 02, 2017 · at 8:59 pm EST/EDT
        
        Even if every peer is a Jew, every Jew is not a peer, nor a part of the conpricacy of the British oligarchy.
        
        Do you not see the flaw in your logic? If you blame ‘the Jews’ you give history’s most murderous criminals an opportunity to hide behind their favoured scapegoats.
        
        This is why they invented the holohoax and use it as a cudjel, to encourage resentment and promote cognitive dissonance amongst empathic people taught to love their neighbour. You can’t live by the Golden Rule if you believe that the guy living across the road is determined to destroy you, nor can you get together with him to see your true enemies, sociopthic and genocidal to a fault, are punished for their crimes. This is psycological warfare of the first order and the reason for the existense of the Holohoax religion, which binds Zionists worldwide against empathic people and their values. The whole purpose of British Tavistock media mind control is to keep the peasnats fighting amongtst themselves, and it works. It is they, the British oligarchy, who wanted to see Germany,Russia and Europe more generally deprived of it’s talent, with the rest put to the task of promoting British Zionism.
        
        And it is they, the British oligarchy, who manged to liquidate European Jewery and put those who remained to the task of supporting the project of Zionism. I am certain the Inquisition in Spain, hated enemy of the English and ally of the competing Genoese bankers, was also a project of the so-called Venetians.
        
        So yes, lots of Jews, but not Jews one and all. Make the distinction and stop being fooled.
        
        Lumpentroll on August 02, 2017 · at 9:54 pm EST/EDT
        
        Ooops, I repreated myself,
        
        It bears repeating nonetheless. Zionism binds both the allies and enemies of Imperialism. It turns neighbour against neighbour. As a Jew you can side with International Zionism or with your local community, from where you come. When anti semitism is promoted within your local community it becomes more difficult to feel welcomed by your own society, and the tendency of many Jews, people who are most commonly genetically identical to locals only with a tradition of literacy and numeracy, is to feel alienation and therefore choose to collaborate with the would be conqueror.
        
        The British oligarchy are masters of divide and rule. Stop falling into their traps and all of us, together, will finally overcome.
        
        If you look very carefully, you will see Putin has been pursuing this strategy all along. He and his Siloviki, necessary allies for him and for Russia more generally, understand the British game.
        
        Nils on August 03, 2017 · at 6:42 am EST/EDT
        
        This may be the closest humanity came to understand her own demise. But mass awakening is impossible less some external actor we have not yet accounted for.
        
        Lumpentroll on August 03, 2017 · at 12:20 pm EST/EDT
        
        Don’t be so pessimistic, and thank you btw.
        
        It is disclosure time for Putin, not about fake aliens but rather about the nature of the threat we face, and the nature of the centuries long game played by the Zionists. The mass expulsions of diplomats between the US and Russia demonstrate Putin’s patience is at an end. His press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, has shown himself to be clueless when it comes to dealing with the West, or else the Turcologist and Trump’s trumpeter in the Kremlin, is an agent of Zion.
        
        Read both of the articles by John Helmer below — carefully. Or even two times.
        
        August is for rest, not for soup — even if those in power give you no alternative
        
        http://johnhelmer.net/august-is-for-rest-not-for-soup-even-if-those-in-power-give-you-no-alternative/
        
        James Thurber’s lesson for power — talking to Americans which President Putin hasn’t learned, yet
        
        http://johnhelmer.net/james-thurbers-lesson-for-power-talking-to-americans-which-president-vladimir-putin-hasnt-learned-yet/
Ian W. on August 01, 2017 · at 11:35 am EST/EDT

Thank you for this excellent article on the Merchants of Chaos & Ruin and their agendas. Putin is a godsend; to bad there aren’t more of him.

More on the Neocons: https://mastersofdeception.wordpress.com/2013/07/18/masters-of-deception-chapter-fourteen/
- Anonymous on August 01, 2017 · at 3:49 pm EST/EDT
  
  A good link – thanks.
  
  The author writes “To the delight of the Jewish Media, Gaddafi was assassinated in a barbaric manner by a violent mob of terrorists on the 20th of October, 2011, which the researcher Martin Iqbal has established was carried out at the behest of NATO Special Forces. (“The ‘rebel’ assassination of Muammar Gaddafi: a NATO operation from A to Z,” Empire Strikes Black, Oct. 22, 2011.) ”
  
  A number of videos has surfaced of the immediate aftermath of the drone strike up to Gadaffi’s murder. The first video shows Gadaffi and some other people accompanying him being paraded by ‘rebels’. Everyone other than Gadaffi is grouped together alive, then the camera focusses on Gadaffi. Shots are heard in the background, then as the camera follows Gadaffi being led away, the other group appear in the background, all dead.
  
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiEv3FUVgNo
  
  The second video shows the scene later when Gadaffi is being paraded by the ‘rebels’. A US Special Forces/CIA operative appears in the video, very close to Gadaffi filming on a mobile phone/camera. After a few tens of seconds, the SF guy raises his hand and gives a V salute, and moves off scene. The ‘rebels’ then do their business of murdering Gadaffi. The SF guy turns back to look, revealing his face.
  
  The SF guy video (Caution – insanely loud audio, Gadaffi battered and bruised, but alive) SF guys appears at 0:06 – white T shirt, short military haircut, sunglasses, RPG over right shoulder, comms earpiece in left ear.
  
  http://www.nsfwyoutube.com/watch?v=rgfjn127LUY
  
  There is a third video showing Clinton in a meeting where she is informed that Gadaffi has been ‘captured’. She claims it is ‘unconfirmed’, but her sick gloating grin gives the game away. She states ‘unformed’ several times to those around her as cover and to define the official position.
  
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfnwWVCToQ4
  
  This looks like the SF guy deliberately filmed the murder (or at least the immediately preceding period) for Clinton to watch – a modern day version of bringing the head of the enemy on a plate for the King/Queen to see.
Flonerd on August 01, 2017 · at 12:18 pm EST/EDT

I don’t think that US elites are naive, plain stupid or merely myopic. Their puppets in Congress are of course, but the elites that run the place? Nah.

Whatever is going on must be deliberate. Would anyone here deny that US industry and technology was purposefully shipped way-out-east? Nope, thought not. So why should these further inane actions of the US be regarded as anything other than deliberate?

Assigning the blame to madness or random-stupidity is hardly a reasoned argument. Hubris and arrogance are, of course, always the weakness of the great and the strong. However, what about those huge chunks of the economy sent to China? What was that all about? Hubris? Does not compute.

I’m afraid people have to wake up to the reality of the planned destruction of the United States by a certain bunch of supremacists, the same folks who destroyed a few other Christian Empires in the last few hundred years.

The war was always a cultural one and the US lost the battle just over 100 years ago. It has been a Zatrapy ever since and now we’re witnessing its final demise, dressed up as an orange pantomime villain, i.e. a scripted play.

The answer as to how the US was destroyed from within is to be found in the Protocols. But they’re just an anti-Semitic hoax, aren’t they? ;)
vot tak on August 01, 2017 · at 1:18 pm EST/EDT

The neocons make all sorts of claims as to who they are, what they believe, what they believed in previously (before their “neocon enlightenment”), what they want to achieve and why. These claims are as varied as they are inconsistent. But what is consistent about neoconnery is they are all selfish opportunists with no personal moral grounding and they support israel over all other nations.
- Red Ryder on August 01, 2017 · at 2:50 pm EST/EDT
  
  Spot on!
Anonymous on August 01, 2017 · at 2:49 pm EST/EDT

It is funny that the author seems surprised that Israel Firsters can be ‘Trotskyist’ one day and ‘Conservative’ the next. They have no conviction tother than Israel Frist and shift with the wind adapting to current circumstances, but always, always, Israel First. Israel Firsters back both dominant political parties in the US, so that no matter who wins, the incumbent can be guided (via obligations to donors) into putting Israel First.
Peter on August 01, 2017 · at 3:02 pm EST/EDT

Petronas just pulled out of a LNG project on the west coast of Canada. Uneconomical. Need I say more.
Old Ez on August 01, 2017 · at 4:30 pm EST/EDT

Leiba Bronstein, a Jewish communist mass murderer and would-be destroyer of Russia once said that the goal of Communism (Judeo-Bolshevism) was to take over the world using a “wave of terror.” The “neo-cons” are just “Neo-Bolsheviks” putting the Jewish plan for world-rule-by-terrorism into play. If you’re someone who still doesn’t know that “Neo-con”=”Neo-Bolshevik” you need to wake up. All the “neo-cons” are Trotskyite-Communist Jews. The Neo-Cons are working for the same thing that the COMINTERN was working for, just in a different way.
Anonymous on August 01, 2017 · at 6:18 pm EST/EDT

The article by Dmitry Orlov mentioned above is a great read. I will comment on this bit:

“The new sanctions bill just passed by US congress […] claims US jurisdiction over EU energy policy and attempts to force European companies to stop doing business with Russia.”
[…]
“In the EU, the extraterritorial nature of this legislation must be addressed because, as a matter of principle, the laws of one nation should have no force on the territory of any other nation. The EU will be forced to draw a line on this vital matter of energy security and reclaim its sovereignty, pushing back against America’s extraterritorial claims.”

This is all true and it is precisely what is at stake in the current struggle to prevent a uni-polar world, which is a euphemistical way of describing what happens when everyone pays “protection” to the same Don.

What is at stake is whether or not the hegemon will manage to claim jurisdiction over the entire planet.

For the moment, the hegemon is increasingly claiming jurisdiction over its vassal territories in Europe.

Europe may complain and make a lot of noise, but don’t underestimate the brutal financial vice-grip the US can exercise over its European vassals when it needs to. When France was slapped with a few billion dollars in “sanctions” over som operations the US didn’t like, even though they were none of its business, those sanctions were just as illegaly based on the imposition of extraterritorial jurisdiction as the current ones. And yet France bit its tongue, made some grumbling noises, and paid up the protection money, like a terrified store owner in a mob movie.
Don’t count on Europe having what it takes to shake herself free of the vice-gripping the US keeps over her, though of course it would be nice.
- Flopot on August 01, 2017 · at 7:34 pm EST/EDT
  
  The US is as much a satrapy of Zionism as is Europe. If the US politicians are acting in a self-destructive manner then they are being ordered to do so by their real masters. In my opinion, the goal is the deliberate destruction of another nominally Christian Empire.
- JJ on August 03, 2017 · at 1:03 pm EST/EDT
  
  exactly–just like French did over Mistral remember….and Russia did all possible to deal with that in a negotiable manner rather than confrontation……which modus operandi might be more on the agenda now?
Anonymous on August 01, 2017 · at 7:48 pm EST/EDT

13 Families Rule Our Planet Earth
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RO0S6j2Zsqo
Wake Up America All Presidents are Related!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghnIgBokfG0
Anonymous on August 01, 2017 · at 9:32 pm EST/EDT

Wisconsin Company First In US To Microchip Employees
http://mankatotimes.com/2017/07/21/wisconsin-company-first-in-us-to-microchip-employees/
Merca on August 01, 2017 · at 10:31 pm EST/EDT

The US has a plentiful source of gas and oil: Venezuela and Bolivia. Also Argentina. Will we witness a new Syria in the region?
Mc Cain french fries on August 02, 2017 · at 3:34 am EST/EDT

US Military Fights 4 Israel – Iran not the Threat! (Part 1)

https://youtu.be/alKvahr22hE

US Military Fights 4 Israel – Iran not the Threat! (Part 2)

https://youtu.be/g-ZyHIhPmw0

http://theduran.com/satellite-pictures-advanced-russian-aircraft-khmeimim-syria/

http://theduran.com/russian-girls-conscripted-military-service/

https://www.rt.com/op-edge/398224-nato-mike-pence-russia-threat/

http://theduran.com/tillerson-says-trump-unhappy-new-anti-russia-sanctions/

https://www.rt.com/news/398253-us-weapon-supplies-ukraine-russia/

https://www.rt.com/news/398188-korea-f16-deployment-washington/

Assumption of US dominance in the world has ended, inevitable imperial decline is looming

https://www.rt.com/op-edge/398234-us-military-dominance-global/

http://theduran.com/warmonger-senator-lindsey-graham-says-us-plan-kill-thousands-north-korea/

https://www.rt.com/news/398237-nato-russia-intercept-baltics-finland/

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/arming-ukraine-is-still-folly/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeQMMsFjUnw

http://www.lanouvellegazette.be/1899000/article/2017-08-01/donald-trump-pret-a-une-guerre-avec-la-coree-du-nord-je-ne-vais-pas-les-laisser
Un discours magistral du député insoumis Bastien Lachaud sur l’oligarchie !

https://youtu.be/HivWZUqRSZU

http://news.antiwar.com/2017/07/31/furious-us-complains-of-russias-expulsion-of-diplomats/

http://original.antiwar.com/paul/2017/07/31/north-korea-iran-will-president-trump-attack-first/

Over 80% of Russian youth support Putin’s policies, poll shows
Society & Culture
August 01, 16:09UTC+3
Eleven percent said they somewhat disagreed with it, and just 3% do not support it completely, according to the poll

More:
http://tass.com/society/958588

http://www.opex360.com/2017/08/01/le-pentagone-envisage-de-livrer-des-missiles-antichars-lukraine/

http://breizatao.com/2017/04/04/bruxelles-menace-la-pologne-et-la-hongrie-detre-exclues-de-lue-si-elles-refusent-daccueillir-les-clandestins-musulmans/

The US establishment against the rest of the world
by Thierry Meyssan

http://www.voltairenet.org/article197288.html

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=19654#.WX7otM__x5s.facebook

http://www.globalresearch.ca/america-declares-economic-war-against-europe/5601722

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-08-01/us-air-force-test-launch-icbm-california-tonight

https://sputniknews.com/politics/201708011056089264-mccain-new-anti-russian-comments/

“Thankfully more people in Russia’s policy circles and media have come to the realization that Trump’s hands are tied, and that he is largely a powerless empty suit serving a joint military-industrial/ Wall Street Junta with an almost mummified one-party Congress which could be called the Republocrat War & Wall Street Party,” Mercier pointed out, commenting on Moscow’s countermeasures to the US sanctions bill aimed against Russia and Iran.

The notion of Deep State implies that there is some sort of dark and hidden force at play. In reality the dark forces in question are very much in the open and have been ruling the United States of America like a mafia crime syndicate since the 1980s with the rise of former CIA Director ‘Don’ George H.W Bush. It has been 37 years and counting. The vague hope that the election of Trump had given to some people overseas and some Libertarians in the US of a challenge to the gangster US imperialist doctrine has been rightly shattered,”

“It seems to me, that independently of pseudo-political party affiliations, the Orwellian monstrosity that is the War & Wall Street Party has completely overwhelmed the US power apparatus, and finally imposed its rule on the United States of America,” Mercier concluded.

https://fr.sputniknews.com/international/201708011032486363-trump-coree-nord-solution-militaire/

https://sputniknews.com/europe/201708011056088321-us-plan-dangerous-ukraine/

Livraison d’armes à la junte de Kiev,l’Ukraine de l’Ouest et la Géorgie dans l’Otan et se sera une déclaration de guerre à la Russie et au Monde.Ils sont prévenus les Macron et Merkel.

The Russians Have the Sanctions Hammer

Russia controls more than 45% of the world’s Uranium enrichment capacity. The U.S. imports 90% of its nuclear fuel. Do the math

https://dnipress.com/fr/posts/du-donbass-au-venezuela-en-passant-par-lasie-la-cocotte-minute-mondiale-commence-a-montrer-des-signes-inquietants-de-surpression/

Un seul et unique combat celui de l’indépendance nationale car sans indépendance rien n’est possible pour le peuple.
Vive Maduro qui a pris le bon chemin il n’y en avait pas d’autres à prendre.
Le peuple n’est le peuple qu’en arme.

http://www.investigaction.net/fr/depuis-caracas-lexemple-du-venezuela-pour-le-monde/#sthash.h2LxjRtP.gbpl

http://www.alternet.org/right-wing/vijay-prashad-trump-setting-dangerous-confrontation-iran

http://www.dedefensa.org/article/ah-dieu-que-la-guerre-est-nombreuse

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2017/07/31/witch-hunt-donald-trump-surpasses-salem-witch-trials-1692-93/

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2017/08/01/trumps-choices/

http://news.antiwar.com/2017/07/31/germany-urges-eu-retaliation-over-us-sanctions-on-russia/

https://fr.sputniknews.com/international/201708011032484901-poutine-vainqueur-bataille/

http://robinwestenra.blogspot.be/2017/08/war-with-north-korea-is-inevitable-even.html?spref=fb

https://sputniknews.com/politics/201708021056095755-deep-state-force-trump-russia-sanctions/
- Anonymous on August 02, 2017 · at 2:37 pm EST/EDT
  
  Thierry Meyssan is coming out of the closet as a Trump propagandist. In his article linked above, he ludicrously asserts that Trump is actually Europe’s best “ally” and that it is only Congress that is responsible for imposing these Russian sanctions.
  
  But Trump has specifically stated that he will *support and sign* this latest Russia sanctions bill, which is essentially an American declaration of economic war against its European vassals… I mean… democratic allies.
  
  Ultimately, Trump represents the American Empire–just like Congress, the US War Machine, its spook agencies, and Fake Free Press.
  
  There is no faction of the American ruling class that does not seek to impose American dictates on the world. This includes Mafia Don Trump with his phony “non-interventionist” veneer, who is no better than his predecessor, Barack Obama, in this regard.
  - Anonymous on August 03, 2017 · at 2:35 am EST/EDT
    
    Anonymous:
    
    But Trump has specifically stated that he will *support and sign* this latest Russia sanctions bill, …
    
    You should read other sources as well. Trump had been boxed in. A veto would’ve been “proof” for those who are attacking him as being president thanks to “Russian hacking”. Others pointed out that a veto is impossible, because an overwhelming majority of Congress and Senate voted for that bill. Does Trump have any other choice than signing the bill?
Amir NOUR on August 02, 2017 · at 9:06 pm EST/EDT

Those who have liked this article may want to read this other piece by the same author:

/the-western-roots-of-middle-eastern-terrorism/
- Anonymous on August 03, 2017 · at 1:12 pm EST/EDT
  
  One really extreme, stupid, and crazy neo-con, even by their standards, has been fired from the Trump admin:
  
  National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster has fired a member of the National Security Council today, senior director for intelligence programs Ezra Cohen-Watnick.
  CIA officials didn’t like working with him.
  Cohen-Watnick is close to Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner.
Nelson on August 07, 2017 · at 10:33 am EST/EDT

The world is experiencing moments of confusion. The international relations are exposed to tremendous threats, not only terrorism and violent extremism, but also from negative ideas of a certain school of thoughts that are spreading culture of hate and intolerance. The ideology of evil with its legacy of denial is structured in a way that human being are not equal, so that the price to pay to eliminate millions does not matter.

The idea of Pr Nour is to enlighten us on the consequences of Neo-conservatism and the power of the most impassioned advocates who are running the world are imposing and implementing their policy to counter the values of living together in peace and shared prosperity. The recourse to wars and asymmetric conflicts reveal the dangerous gap between reconciliation and respect of common values and the permanent turmoil.

The world is evolving to the unknown. The takeover of power of the neoconservatives frightens more than its reassures. The international community cannot go another world war just to serve the interests of a powerful group. We all stand for peace and prosperity. We use raw materials to develop not to destroy our civilization. We send our children to school to learn the meaning of human values, not to disseminate culture of hate. We respect each other thought the level of development is. Let us meditate and make the human being the pillar of our relations and solidarity.