More Military Tension between NATO and Russia; Pat Mills Right in ABC Warriors

Mike today put up a very chilling report about the escalation of military tensions between NATO and Russia. Russia has deployed Iskander missiles in its westernmost province of Kaliningrad. Formerly Koenigsberg, this is small Russian enclave between Poland and Lithuania, was formerly part of Pommerania under the old Reich. The missiles are capable of carrying nuclear weapons, and are presumed capable of reaching Berlin, or the various Baltic states.

Russia is believed to be deploying these missiles in response to NATO manoeuvres in eastern Europe, and the stationing of four more NATO battalions in Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. These were in response to Russia sending troops into Ukraine.

Mike states that he recalls either Gorbachev or possibly Yeltsin receiving a promise from NATO that it would not expand into the Russian’s back garden. He is correct. That promise was given. And broken. NATO’s borders are now right up to the very frontier with Russia. Mike asks us how we would feel if the roles were reversed?

That question has been asked by others in America. Left-wing and Libertarian critics of American military expansion have posed the rhetorical question how Americans would feel if Canada broke away and joined Russia. This is the parallel in the Anglophone world Ukraine, which has ties going back thousands of years to the very foundation of Russia, joining NATO.

Actually, it’s not hard to see how Americans would react, as there’s one section of the American conspiracist fringe which actually believed it. FOAFtale News, the journal of the International Society for Contemporary Legend Research, in the 1990s report an urban legend then going round the paranoid American Right, that the Fall of Communism was all a ruse. The Soviets had established secret underground tank bases in Canada and Mexico. When everything had been properly prepared, and they were ready, the order would be given and the Soviet tanks would roll over the border to occupy America. You can bet given the paranoid, extreme-rightwing mindset of the kind of people, who voted for Trump, that if Canada ever had joined Russia in a close alliance, most Americans would believe exactly the same thing.

And Mike reported on Friday that it was feared that rising tensions over Syria could result in a nuclear war with Russia. Mike comments

And on it goes. And we all become a little more nervous every day. And that makes us a little more twitchy, and prone to jump to conclusions, and likely to make mistakes…

Everybody concerned needs to step back.

They all need to have a serious think – and maybe a couple of conversations – about what little they stand to gain by acting on accusations and suppositions.

And how much we all stand to lose.

See: http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2016/10/08/nuclear-missiles-deployed-in-russias-westernmost-area-as-fears-grow-over-syria/

I’ve blogged about this issue previously. In the case of Ukraine, it seems to me that it is actually the Russians, who are this time the injured party. The Orange Revolution which ousted the previous, pro-Russian president was staged with covert funding from the Americans. The new ruling coalition includes real, card-carrying Nazis from the Pravy Sektor – the Right Sector. Their uniforms are those of the auxiliary Ukrainian SS units, who were responsible for pogroms against the Jews, and participated in the Holocaust during the Second World War. During the Orange Revolution, a section of these thugs shot at left-wing protesters on their own side before chasing a group of trade unionists into a building. They were then savagely beaten, and one attempted to escape by jumping from a third-floor window. I’ve also seen footage alleging that the Ukrainian regime is responsible for the ethnic cleansing of Russians and Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the east of the country.

The situation is made even more terrifying by the fact that a former NATO general has written a book, predicting that by May next year, 2017, Russia will have invaded Latvia and we will be at war. George Galloway in his speech the other year to the Stop the War Coalition described how he had taken the general to task for this, when he was on a panel with him at the Hay-on-Wye literary festival. Counterpunch has also reported that Obama has stepped up the production of nuclear missiles, and is trying to develop short-range ‘battlefield’ nukes. This seems terrifyingly similar to an idea going round in the 1980s when I was growing up. This was part of the madness of the ‘New Cold War’ under Thatcher and Reagan, when these idiots believed that a limited nuclear war could be fought in Europe.

Looking at this site’s stats, a couple of people have been looking at a piece I wrote about a year or so ago discussing some of the very astute satirical comments Pat Mills had put in the ‘ABC Warriors’ strip in 2000 AD. This followed the adventures of Hammerstein, Blackblood, Mongrol, Deathlok, Zippo and co during the Volgan War, a conflict between America and Russia for possession of the latter’s oil.

This was clearly aimed at the real reasons behind Gulf War II and the invasion of Iraq. One of the chief war aims was to seize the country’s vast oil reserves, which are the largest outside Saudi Arabia.

And I’m very much afraid the same is true here. Russia possesses vast natural resources in Siberia, and exports much of it to Europe. Some of the former provinces of the Soviet Union – the Baltic states – are extremely dependent on it for their power supplies. When one of the Baltic states was accused by the Russians of persecuting their people, the Russians also cut off, or threatened to cut off, the oil supply to their country, which would have resulted in massive power cuts.

American politics is heavily driven by corporate interests, and particularly that of the oil industry, dominated by the Koch brothers. These two are supposedly worth over $300 billion. They donate to the Republican party, and to organisations which deny climate change, in order to keep those barrels pumping out of the ground. Just as the Iraq invasion was to steal that country’s oil, I can see Pat Mills, the creator of ‘ABC Warriors’ strip, being in this case literally correct about the real reason for the current tensions.

It’s disgusting. I can remember the feeling of relief I felt when Communism fell, and the Soviet empire collapsed. Despite the horrors of capitalism and the poverty caused by the mass privatisation of Russian industry, which wiped out the savings and pensions of millions of Russians, nevertheless it seemed the dawn of a better world. The threat of nuclear annihilation had been lifted just a little. People from both sides of the continent could travel to each other’s countries to work and open businesses. It’s why I don’t really have a problem with eastern European workers coming over here. Our peoples meeting in friendship and peace is far better than the fear and hatred that was whipped up when I was young in the 1980s.

Now our leaders seem to be determined to destroy this golden opportunity to create a truly peaceful co-existence between the West and Russia. And despite whatever nonsense Obama’s and Putin’s generals may be telling them, there is no way to survive a nuclear holocaust. As Sting sang, ‘It’s a lie that we don’t believe any more.’

He’s right. And so’s Mike: instead of preparing to launch attacks, everyone needs to step back a little. As one of 2000 AD’s other creations, Judge Dredd, also said: ‘War is sick. War is evil. War is hell.’

Let’s follow the ABC Warriors instead and ‘Increase the Peace!’

George Galloway Speaking at the ‘Stop the War Coalition’ Conference at TUC Congress House, 2015

I’ve been putting up a series of videos this week of George Galloway speaking on particular topics. As I’ve said, I’ve got strong reservations about Galloway, but he is absolutely correct about many issues. He is correct about Jeremy Corbyn not being a Trotskyite. He is correct about Ken Livingstone speaking the truth when he said that the Nazis and the Zionists co-operated to send Jews to Israel. And this is another speech in which he shows that he was also correct about the Iraq Invasion.

This is a video of the speech Galloway gave last year at the TUC headquarters in London to the Stop the War Coalition. He begins by thanking some of the others attending and speaking, and quotes approvingly Dr. Mustafa, who said that they will never surrender. He states that this should be the Coalition’s motto, as they will never surrender criticising and opposing Britain’s participation in this imperialist war. He then says of an American speaker, that he wishes everyone in America were like her, and everyone in Britain like them. He then goes on to describe his last conversation with Tony Blair ‘before I see him at the Hague to give evidence against him’. It was outside the gents’ lavatory in the House of Commons, where he met Blair and Alistair Campbell, whom he describes as a ‘6 foot 3 Goebbels’ tied to Blair’s hip. Galloway states that he told Blair that there were no al-Qaeda in Iraq, but if he goes ahead with the invasion, there will be hundreds and thousands of them, and they will spill over into our streets and countries.

He goes on to state that he’s telling that story, not to say ‘I was right’ but to make the bigger point that if they were lying then – and he states the media has been wrong, except when its been telling bigger falsehoods – then why should we believe them now, when they tell us we should be prepared for further military action in foreign nations. He then tells a story about his reply to a retired general about a possible future war with Russia over Latvia. Galloway speaks every year at the Hay-on-Wye ‘How the Light Gets in Festival’, and he states that ever year the panel gets more and more loaded against him. Last year the chairman and two of the other panellists were against him. But even there, the audience recognises the truth. At that event, the panel and a recently retired general from the NATO secretariat said that British mothers must get used to the fact that their sons may be required to shed their blood in our new front line in Latvia. Galloway replied that he didn’t think many British mothers new where Latvia was, or that it was our new front line. But he knew that they would not accept their son’s lifeblood being shed on his artificial front line.

He also says that at Hay-on-Wye, three of his opponents told him that Russia was the aggressor in the Ukraine, and that there were Russian troops in the Ukraine. He states that there is no Russian aggression in the Ukraine. But there are British and American troops in the Ukraine, and NATO aggression in the Ukraine and all around the borders of Russia. He makes the point that this is a stranger world than Orwell imagined, and these people can tell you that war is peace, and truth is lies, with a straight face and a posh accent.

He states that they have to continue challenging them over their attempts to rewrite history, and point to the fact that the Stop the War Coalition was and is right. He mentions that before he came there he was watching footage on his phone from RT of a 70-year old man being savagely beaten by Israeli soldiers for not leaving his home. How is it, he challenges the audience, that the Palestinians are described as the terrorists, when the majority of the terrorism is committed by the Israelis, and always has been?

He asks the audience to look at what the West has achieved in Syria, where the Jihadis are nearly at the gates of Damascus, and there is hardly a Christian priest, monk or nun, who has survived unscathed by the barbarians. He states that if they take power in Damascus, then no person will be safe from ‘these heart-eating, head-chopping barbarians’. He describes them as the true children of Bush and Blair. He rhetorically asks how proud David Cameron, William Hague and Peter Hammond will be after the caliph comes to power in Damascus, after he has demolished all the churches, destroyed all the historic building, and massacred everyone he wants to massacre. He then recalls how he and one of the organisers of the conference were among the last men standing in the 1980s when they told Reagan and Thatcher that by creating the mujahideen, they had opened the gates to the barbarians. He states the barbarians are using our weapons, and driving around in our Humvees. He says that the government’s crimes could be listed far into the night, but the important point is to remember what the German revolutionaries said nearly a century ago: our enemies are many, but our primary enemy is right at home. He ends by urging everyone to join the Stop the War Coalition, as there are too many people, who agree with them but haven’t joined, or are in organisations that agree, but haven’t affiliated. The current people are getting older, but their brains are still good. However, if people want a Britain and America that still feels like their countries, they should join them.

I’m not a member of the Coalition, but everything he says here about the war, and the preparations for war in Latvia, is correct. It sounds like the general he met at Hay-on-Wye was the same general that wrote the book predicting that by May next year, Russia would have invaded Latvia and we would be at war. Contrary to the line that Private Eye is pushing, it appears very much that it is the Russian population that is being persecuted by the Ukrainians under a far-rightwing government that includes Nazis. There is footage on YouTube apparently showing American and British soldiers in the Ukraine. And both Counterpunch and Lobster have argued that the aggressor in the Ukraine isn’t Russia but NATO. Having turned the Middle East into a bloodbath, they are lying to turn the Ukraine and the Baltic into another.