FOREST COMMENT

No sooner was the second world war over than Churchill proposed an attack on the Soviet Union - it was called 'Operation Unthinkable' and gave rise to the Cold War and NATO. The plans were 'top secret' and only revealed in 1998. Anybody who thinks that it was all the fault of the nasty Russians is a fool or a neo-Nazi. Shades of Ukraine today....

   Like Hiroshima, Gaza changes everything.....It rips away the 'liberal'  mask of the west. 'We' are complicit.

  In the UK and the USA there is NO mainstream Left and Right anymore. The terms are meaningless.  ALL the mainstream parties and the media support neo-liberalism and export it violently. The Liberal mask is just the new face of Imperialism. 'Human Rights' and 'Democracy' are now parts of political satire.

The main body of Ukrainian insurgents, and in particular the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, had already been linked directly to Nazi atrocities in the region. “They were Nazis, pure and simple,” one CIA operations chief said. “Worse than that, because a lot of them did the Nazis’ dirty work for them.”

  The big issue that this article doesn't address is Israel's possession of the bomb - and the associated Samson doctrine. Otherwise it makes the simple point - Iran gave Israel a bloody good hiding, and can do so again.............. In sum, the Zionist entity is a beast encircled, reduced to lashing out through desperation, not strength. Its ability to flail against not merely Iran, but the wider Axis of Resistance, without further endangering its already precarious position is extremely limited, if not non-existent. Wholly dependent on  foreign support  at a time polls indicate it’s the most hated ‘country’ on Earth, Tel Aviv still presumes the capability to make the next move against its adversaries. INSS’ report strongly suggests this could be its very last.

  The League of nations condemned aerial bombing as a 'war crime'. One day it may be used again against the UK. You can guess what 'we' will be saying then....

  This is how Trump intends to subdue internal discontent

  This post looks at how and why the USA collaborated in the creation of ISIS with its agent Israel...

  Excellent article by Sylvia Demarest outlining Trumps 'achievements' after 7 months in office...  

 

  It is (apparently) OK to show a poster from your front window opposing genocide about Palestine Action - but not 'outside' in a public space....

How the USA (aka the American Empire) seeks to deal with Globalisation and Trumps role within it.

There is a huge amount of press coverage that China is about to collapse and President Xi is about to be deposed. It is nonsense and betrays the fear that 'the west' has of China - paving the way for support for the US to attack it.

The brilliant Aurelien comments on the situation in Ukraine. What Putin wanted was an agreement to end the conflict. The Europeans (and Ukraine) wanted a freeze to stop and re-arm. But what next? 'The fundamental approaching crisis is less that the war in Ukraine has been “lost,” than that the US will have forfeited, unmistakably, unnecessarily and very publicly, much of its ability to influence events in the world. For their part, it’s clear that the Russians would prefer a less confrontational and more normal relationship with the US, but it’s equally clear that they are not prepared to sacrifice anything of importance to bring it about. I’m not sure that the US political system, disorganised, delusional and fragmented as it is, can cope with all this......The all-purpose slogan of Liberal politicians, with no real political programme except mindless managerialism, is: if you think we’re bad, look at the other guy. This creates the continued demand for enemies whom you can boss a...

  This review of Mackinder was in Naked Capitalism...

  There Are No Words On some level, it doesn’t really matter whether or not Israeli officials are doing all this intentionally ( though   they   unambiguously   are ) or whether or not the war counts as a genocide ( though it   most   certainly   does ). As even skimming these facts and figures makes clear, what Israel is doing to Gaza, however you want to define it, is intolerable and world-historically awful. There are other wars that have had  bigger death tolls  or even  larger proportions  of civilians killed. There are  other   countries  that have had more explosives dropped on them. Other governments have  killed  more kids and sadistically  tortured  them. Other  countries  have been similarly physically destroyed and environmentally poisoned. Other  wars  have seen health care and aid workers killed and hospitals destroyed. There are  other conflicts  that ha...

The US changed its nuclear strategy a few years ago to include the possibility of a pre-emptive strike. Is it planning one? There have been attacks on Russia's nuclear strike force (in the Ukrainian Operation Spiders web) and by Ukrainian drones on the early warning system in southern Russia. These are areas that the US and Russia have always kept away from. What was the point in doing this? The targetting has to have been informed with the use of US intelligence. Trump 'moving' two Ohio class submarines 'closer' to Russia could be used as an initial strike force according to former National Security Advisor John Bolton who is a die-hard war hawk who is still largely sane but has nothing but contempt for Trump who he believes (correctly) is an ignoramus. Why is this important now? It's my belief that if Trump doesn't achieve a 'ceasefire' in Ukraine on his terms he will escalate threats - quite a number of escalatory actions have already been taken -...

The dropping of nuclear bombs on Japan was militarily unnecessary - this was widely known. I haven't heard or seen any evidence that Oppenheimer himself gave information to the Soviets - but this article hints that he did. I knew the USA was preparing to launch an all-out attack on the USSR with the connivance of the UK (christened Operation Unthinkable by Churchill) that involved a pre-emptive nuclear attack (Operation Dropshot) by the USA that the USA didn't have enough bombs to launch at the time but was building its stockpile up. It was only when the USSR succesfully tested a nuclear weapon that the plan was dropped - and so it is possible that Oppenheimer did tip the USSR them off. 'Many in Truman’s administration wished to use the atom bomb against the Soviet Union as well. President Truman, however, worried that the destruction of Moscow would lead the Red Army to invade and destroy Western Europe as a response. As such, he decided to wait until the U.S. had enough w...