Wars and rumors of wars are now filling the headlines as listed below with the most immediate top-level rumors of war being created by Russia among its own citizens.
Rumors of wars directly from the Kremlin
As tensions between the US and Russia have reached their highest since the Cold War, Russia denounced American duplicity last week and asked its own citizens whether they are ready for a nuclear attack. The Russian government cautioned people to know where their nearest bomb/fallout shelters are and know where their gas masks are in a drill that involved 40 million Russians. The Russia defense ministry explained to the public how the government would run under military control in the event of war. Russia deployed additional nuclear missiles in response to the US missile shield in Eastern Europe and tested new intercontinental ballistic missiles. Not bad for a week's news. (ABC News)
Yet, that was just one small part of the many rumors of war in the past week because the US government also issued top-level rumors of war.
Rumors of war directly from the White House
The Obama administration made formal accusations that Russia is engaged in cyber war with the US by interfering directly in US elections as more of Hillary Clinton's hacked emails went public. Russia slammed unprecedented US threats of retaliation against such cyber attacks, pointing out that the US has never demonstrated any evidence that the hacking came from Russia. Russia vowed to respond to what it said are false accusations but did not say what kind of response it meant.
After US Vice President Joe Biden's formal complaint against Russia, NBC reported that the CIA is planning a retaliatory cyber attack. Sources said the CIA has already begun selecting targets that will harass and embarrass the Russian government. The US has made such plans and then backed away in the past because such a move could launch an all-out cyber war in which Russia could be expected to retaliate with even worse measures, such as a shut down of the US electrical grid, rather than just exposure of embarrassing emails.
The Kremlin's spokesman replied, "The threats directed against Moscow and our state's leadership are unprecedented because they are voiced at the level of the US vice president. To the backdrop of this aggressive, unpredictable line, we must take measures to protect (our) interests." Russia's foreign minister said the claims were "flattering" but baseless. (Yahoo News)
Russian rumors of permanent military presence in Middle East
On Friday, the Kremlin announced that Putin just ratified an agreement with Syria that allows Russia to use one of its air bases indefinitely, creating a more permanent Russian presence in the Middle East. Russia also announced last week plans to build a permanent naval base in the Syrian port town of Tartus. (The Jerusalem Post)
As mentioned in my previous article, Russia also announced during the prior week that it would start shooting down any unidentified jets flying over Syria. These would most likely be US stealth bombers. In response, the UK ordered Royal Air Force pilots to shoot down any Russian jets flying over Syria and Iraq if they feel endangered by them -- pilot's discretion. "We now have a situation where a single pilot, irrespective of nationality, can have a strategic impact on future events." (Zero Hedge)
Other rumors of wars from the US
My article last week also reported that Russia had terminated cooperation with the US on one of its key nuclear disarmament agreements with the US on the basis that the US was not following through with anything it had promised. This after the Obama Admin. said it would (on Friday) be considering direct air attacks against Bashar Assad's regime in Syria -- the first direct moves being considered by the US to overthrow Assad's regime. Previous moves were against ISIS in Syria. (Reuters)
Turkey's deputy prime minister said, "If this proxy war continues, after this, let me be clear, America and Russia will come to a point of war," adding that the world was "on the brink of the beginning of a large regional or global war." (RT)
US proxy war with Iran in Yemen
Nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Enterprise (left) and the
guided-missile cruiser USS Vicksburg (right) being replenished
and resupplied by the fast combat logistics ship USNS Supply in the Arabian Sea.
These wars are now more than just rumors from the top, though it is quite something to be living through a time when there are so many rumors of war that do come directly from the top. We are seeing an expansion of real, hot wars.
Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen fired repeatedly on American ships last week, and Americans returned fire with cruise missiles against the radar towers that targeted them. No US ships were hit, but the attacks and reprisal launched a real two-sided hot war in Yemen that quickly became more than just a US strike against Yemeni terrorists.
Iran deployed war ships in Yemen in response, flexing its own muscles against the US. Iran's moves were seen as being essentially Iranian harassment of the US over control of the Red Sea. Fox News went a step further in calling the war in Yemen a proxy war between the US and Iran since the stations the US struck are backed by Iranian support.
Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook said President Barack Obama authorized the strikes at the recommendation of Defense Secretary Ash Carter and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Joseph Dunford.
As an indication that the fight is about more than terror operations in Yemen, but also over control of access to the Red Sea, a Chinese war ship and Russian intelligence ship were also seen in the same region last week. (Fox News)
Rumors of war in the south pacific tear apart old alliances and forge new ones
Relations in the South Pacific are also going sour for the Obama Administration as the new president of long-time US ally, the Philippines, began boisterously deriding Obama as loudly as if he were Donald Trump. Rodrigo Duterte told Barrack Obama, "You can go to hell" while he also lashed out agains the EU, saying that purgatory would be a better place to be.
Duterte said he was realigning his foreign policy because the United States had failed the Philippines and added that at some point, "I will break up with America." Duterte further suggested he would realign with Russia. (Zero Hedge)
Duterte has also begun realigning with long-time rival China:
China confirmed on Wednesday that Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte will visit China next week, as the Southeast Asian leader's relationship with its traditional ally the United States frays.
Under Duterte, Manila's relations with Washington have come under strain and the recently elected president has opted to put aside years of hostility with China, especially over the disputed South China Sea, to form a new partnership. (Reuters)
This, at a time when President Obama has been ordering US military ships to maintain a strong presence in the South China Sea, ostensibly in support of Philippine rights to operate in that same area and in support of open international waters. China has been engaging those ships with warnings by fly overs and by bringing other ships close alongside US ships, and now the Philippines turn to China, instead of to the US because of US criticism of Duterte's war on drugs.
Pentagon video gives apocalyptic view of new world order
In the face of such increase of so many real wars and rumors of wars that may begin, is it any wonder the pentagon created the following apocalyptic video about our economic and militant future:
The Pentagon makes the following statements in the video about a rapidly changing world order that is decaying into social chaos and is increasingly vulnerable to anarchist and terrorist attacks in highly populated areas.
The urban environment will be the locus where drivers of instability will converge.... By the year 2030Â ... resources become constrained and illicit networks fill the gaps left by overextended and undercapitalized government.... Growth will magnify the increasing separation between rich and poor. Religious and ethnic tensions will be a defining element of the social landscape. Stagnation will coexist with unprecedented development as impoverishment, slums and shanty towns rapidly expand alongside modern high-rises, technological advances and ever-increasing levels of prosperity.
This is the world of our future. It is one we [the military] are not prepared to operate effectively within, and it is unavoidable.... It is an ecosystem that demands a highly agile and adaptive force to successfully operate within....
Living habitats will extend from the high-rise ... to subterranean labyrinths, each defined by its own social code and rule of law. Social structures will be equally challenged if not dysfunctional as historic ways of life clash with modern living, ethnic and racial differences are forced to live together, and criminal networks offer opportunity for the growing mass of unemployed. This becomes the nervous system of non-nation-state unaligned individuals and organizations that live and work in the shadows of national rule....
Digital security and trade will be increasingly threatened by sophisticated illicit economies and centralized syndicates of crime to give adversaries global reach at an unprecedented level. This will add to the complexities of human targeting.... Alternate forms of governance have taken control....
Urban conflict is written deep into the army's histories, but in tomorrow's conflicts these megacities are orders of magnitude greater in complexity.... Our soldiers will have to operate within these ecosystems with minimal disruption in flow. Our current and past strategies can no longer hold.... The future army will encounter a highly sophisticated urban-centric threat.... The threat is clear. Our direction remains to be defined.
This is the future that the US government and European governments envision and are, for some reason, knowingly creating with their push for more rapid immigration from regions unfriendly to the US. On the one hand the Pentagon knowing warns that immigration is rapidly creating serious social pressures and even disorder. On the other hand, the White House continually announces thatPresident Obama is making executive orders that will expand immigration. So, immigration is both known by the government to be creating social pressures that are a huge military risk and is intentional policy at the same time!
Pentagon's apocalyptic vision of urban dystopias is already happening
Do you think the dystopian future presented in the video seems imaginary? Well, it appears Paris is the first first-world city to openly exhibit this Pentagon-prophesied future precisely because ethnic and racial differences have been "forced to live together" by the EU's immigration laws -- just as the Pentagon video describes. When you watch the following linked video, bear in mind that fifteen years ago Paris boasted that it washed the streets twice a day to keep itself looking as pretty and inviting to its French citizens and its touring guests as possible:
The streets of Paris today (2016)
The city you visited or once hoped to visit no longer resembles the city you imagine in your mind. It is the city of the past that is imaginary, not the dystopian vision of cities that was described above by the US army. The City of Paris you envision in your mind ended when Paris became the capital of immigration from Syria and Africa, made dysfunctional by multiple acts of terror leading to governance by marshal law in a city filled with social tensions from forced immigration. The French are becoming a minority in their own capital:
If it weren't for the somewhat working infrastructure, the scene might as well have been the setting of movie shooting – or a slum in Mogadishu. The streets are littered in garbage, the sidewalks are blocked with trash, junk and mattresses, thousands of African men claim the streets as their own – they sleep and live in tents like homeless people. If no portable toilets are in reach, open urination and defecation are commonplace. Tens of thousands of homeless Illegal immigrants, undocumented or waiting for a decision of their asylum application, waste away trying to pass the time in the city.... They're hoping for a decision that would grant them an apartment, welfare and make France their new home. The conditions are absolutely devastating. The police have given up trying to control these areas, the remaining French people avoid the areas at all cost, crime and rape is rampant, just recently mass brawls and riots made the news as fights broke out near the Stalingrad metro station. (Facebook/Generation Europa)
The future described by the Pentagon is now, and it is not relegated to some decrepit third-world city like Mogadishu. It's in modern France's showcase capital -- La Ville-Lumiere, the City of Light -- where it appears they are no longer leaving the light on for us. Too bad if you didn't visit Paris last year or sometime before that when the now imaginary city you remembered existed. This is the real Paris, the new Paris under marshal law.
And this is an image of the years of Epocalypse that I have been saying lie ahead -- a time of socio-economic breakdown that is spreading unstoppably around the world -- apparently, by design because the Pentagon knows it is coming, knows it is bad, and, yet, the White House keeps pushing to create it. Europe has seen that is is not just coming, but is here, and it still keeps pushing it. So, this is an intended future that is now.
