CCI Friends,

Increasingly economists, etc., are emerging to “Speak Truth to Power.” Here another: Ray Kinsella in the Irish Independent. Hopefully these truth tellers will stimulate a bulwark of people power to defeat this dangerous militarization of Europe with NATO on Russia’s borders.

Sharon

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The Irish Independent
July 11, 2016

The militarisation of Europe is a far greater threat than Brexit

Ray Kinsella

The most searching challenge that the EU faces is not the fallout from Brexit – it’s from the militarisation of Europe and the US-led Nato encirclement of Russia, endorsed by the Nato Summit in Warsaw last weekend.

It is as misconceived as austerity and authoritarianism, which are at the heart of the European crisis. But it is infinitely more dangerous. If the Chilcot Report on the war in Iraq proves anything, it is that the momentum towards armed conflict, once started, becomes difficult to contain.

Militarisation will make it much more difficult to deal with the EU’s migration crisis, itself largely a consequence of the catastrophic effects of Western military intervention. A conflagration between US-led Nato and Russia would increase the numbers of refugees in Europe by an order of magnitude. As for the impact of such a conflagration on the European and global economy – well, all bets are off. We could not begin to model the impact – but we can look at post-war Europe and Iraq and Syria and Libya… Only what are euphemistically termed ‘Defence’ industries do (exceedingly) well out of war.

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ROBERT PARRY, Harvard recipient of the 2015 I.F. Stone Investigative Journalist Award, speaks out on the “Bogus Russia Narrative that NATO Reaffirms” — despite the facts showing untruths in each accusation.

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Consortium News
June 11, 2016

President Obama and NATO leaders signed on to the false narrative of a minding-its-own-business West getting sucker-punched by a bunch of Russian meanies, a storyline that suggests insanity or lies, reports Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

It’s unnerving to realize that the NATO alliance – bristling with an unprecedented array of weapons including a vast nuclear arsenal – has lost its collective mind. Perhaps it’s more reassuring to think that NATO simply feels compelled to publicly embrace its deceptive “strategic communications” so gullible Western citizens will be kept believing its lies are truth.

But here were the leaders of major Western “democracies” lining up to endorse a Warsaw Summit Communiqué condemning “Russia’s aggressive actions” while knowing that these claims were unsupported by their own intelligence agencies.

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Following is an article written by Pepe Escobar who is often ahead of the international “news train”––this time regarding the Russia-China trade alliances which are taking place alongside the showdown in Ukraine, Crimea and Syria. I haven’t followed the jumble of trade acronyms listed below, but have come to respect Pepe’s insights and predictions.

His latest piece takes me back to the 90s and early 2000s when I urged Dick Gephardt, Newt Gingrich and other congress members, to drop the Jackson-Vanik Amendment trade restrictions regarding Russia. The rationale was simple: if Washington refused to become trade partners with Russia, her leaders would eventually be forced to seek China and other less desirable partners for trade alliances.

They didn’t heed––and the predictions have now come true. If even half of Pepe’s forecasts below materialize, we in the US will be the greatest international net losers. Nothing can be done now; it’s too late. Washington has literally forced these unintended trade agreements into being by refusing Russia’s attempts to partner.

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