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Authored by Tom Luongo,

Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini just declared himself the leader of the Europe’s future.  He refuses to budge one inch in negotiations with the European Union over Italy’s budget now threatening to take down the government.

And in doing this he not only speaks for Italians, he is now speaking for that growing part of the European population who sees what the EU is morphing into and recoiling in horror.

Protests in France over Emmanuel Macron’s new tax on diesel have turned violent.  The British leadership has completely betrayed the people over Brexit.  They may win this battle but the animosity towards the Britain’s leadership will only grow more virulent over time.

As the core leadership in France and Germany fades in popularity, held in place because of domestic political squabbling, Angela Merkel and Macron are ratcheting up the rhetoric against the rising nationalism Salvini represents and are now pushing hard for their Federation of Europe before both of them leave the scene in the next few years, at best.

If they lose their battles with Salvini and Hungary’s Viktor Orban they may be run out of office with pitchforks and firebrands.

Bernard Connelly, author of the brilliant expose The Rotten Heart of Europe (which should be required reading) asks the salient question about Brexit no one associated with Project Fear can confront.

If separation from the EU is so complicated, why was no one talking about blockades and economic catastrophe before the Scottish Independence referendum in 2014?

The answer is simple. No one in power expected the referendum to pass and when it didn’t the issue ended.

Now, back to Italy.   

Salvini can do make these bold threats because his Lega keeps rising in opinion polls every time he makes them.

From Zerohedge:

Since then, Salvini has continued to pull ahead of Luigi Di Maio, the country’s other deputy premier, as the public face of hardline opposition to the EU. Salvini’s League party rose to 36.2% in voter intentions in November, the fourth straight poll showing an increase, according to an Ipsos survey in newspaper Corriere della Sera. Five Star, which emerged as the biggest single party in March’s general election, slipped to 27.7% this month, from 28.7% in October.

And that puts Salvini exactly where he wants to be, in the driver’s seat, directing the show down with Brussels over Italy’s future.

But it’s not just Italy’s future he’s playing for anymore.  He knows that Italy is now the standard bearer for resistance to the EU’s particularly odious strain of technocracy.   He soft-pedaled the issue of Italeave on the campaign trail because it was good politics.

Once in office he and his partner M5S’s Luigi Di Maio then went full-steam ahead with an economic package that was equal parts campaign promises fulfilled and a thumb in Merkel’s eye.

Salvini declared with Orban to develop a “League of Leagues” to storm the Bastille of the European Parliament in May’s elections.

And the more he does this the more popular he becomes.

But, more importantly, the more he and Di Maio stick to their guns the more Italians come to see Brussels as the enemy of their future.  And make no mistake, they are looking at how Theresa “Gypsum Lady” May is delivering a Brexit of everyone’s nightmares to Britons and becoming more willing to face the dreaded ‘uncertainty’ breaking with the EU represents.

So Salvini threatening to take down the government he is currently the de facto leader of is a declaration of war against Brussels and the rest of the Italian political establishment who will try to work against him in budget and debt talks.

Lega is currently the junior partner in Italy’s government.  Snap elections could easily see the party top 40% of the vote and have an almost insurmountable popular mandate for taking the confrontational approach to Brussels while scaring his coalition partners, M5S, into following him.

This is a major gambit by Salvini, and if he is successful he will become a lightning rod for Euroskeptics across Europe to break with Merkelism and the consolidation of power around Germany within the EU.

Italy’s debt problems are not solvable within the euro.  Salvini understands this. The biggest impediment to his plans are the Italian people themselves.  They have to come to the conclusion that the short-term pain of leaving the euro is worth the long-term benefits.

I don’t know if Salvini has made that case clearly enough for them to this point, but this is absolutely what he will have to do.  It is something Theresa May refused to endorse any version of which is why she allowed Brexit talks to produce an agreement that was worse than the one Britain already has as a full-member of the EU.

The Goldman Angle

And here is where I’m going to shift gears on you a bit.  Because it’s something we have to keep an eye one.  There’s something serious brewing within Goldman-Sachs.  Martin Armstrong has been all over the potential wipeout of Goldman as part of the European sovereign debt crisis.

Because we have 3 countries now bringing charges and/or suits against Goldman Sachs, it appears that this will mark the beginning of the end for the firm. When the Euro cracks, they will also be blamed for their role in Greece and the rest of Europe. Don’t forget that Mario Draghi is also ex-Goldman Sachs. When the Euro cracks, there will be a microscope applied to every communication that was ever carried out between Draghi and Goldman Sachs. Every trade they have pulled off will be inspected with its tentacles into the European bond market.

The now multi-country scandal involving Malaysia’s 1MDB fund and senior members of Goldman leaving positions of power, from former CEO Lloyd Blankfein to former Trump economic advisor Gary Cohn Europe’s future is tied directly to Goldman’s access to and abuse of power over the past generation.

And now the resignation of Andrea Vella Goldman’s co-head of Asian Investment Banking. The rot within Goverment Goldman Sachs runs deep.  The destruction of Greec was all about protecting Goldman.

And even if there is no Goldman angle directly related to Italy’s debt and banking situation, which I very much doubt, remember formerPrime Minister Mario Monte, who was installed to stop Silvio Berlusconi from taking Italy out of the euro back in 2011.

I agree with Armstrong that it would be good for President Trump to rid his cabinet of any vestiges of Goldman’s gang, especially Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, lest he get caught up in this, guilt-by-association style.

Because don’t think for one second that Salvini doesn’t know what the real story behind Italy’s debt is and who is hurt worst by exposing it to the vicissitudes of the market.  At this point he’s daring Draghi to stop supporting Italian bond yields.

Let yields rise. Let’s find out who is behind the insolvent Italian banks swimming naked  as the tide rolls out, liquidity dries up and the whole European debt market seizes up.

And if it’s Goldman again then then expect the biggest fight yet for the future of the EU.  If Salvini plays it right, Italeave not Brexit becomes the clarion call for ending the Davos Crowd’s push for global control.

*  *  *

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The wave of anti-Russia hysteria that gripped Britain following the attacks earlier this year on Sergei and Yulia Skripal, who were nearly killed by a deadly nerve agent while visiting a mall in Salisbury, has faded since the international community responded with a wave of diplomat expulsions and another round of US sanctions. The UK swiftly blamed those attacks on Russia – a claim that Russia denied. The investigation ended with charges against two Russian men whom the UK accused of carrying out the attack (though the only laws they were seemingly caught breaking were the laws of physics).

But seemingly right on cue, a senior British military official is trying to revive the flagging narrative.

Recently appointed British Army chief Gen. Mark Carleton-Smith told the Daily Telegraph in his first interview since taking over as head of the army that Russia is now “indisputably” a greater threat than ISIS and Al-Qaeda.

Given the defeat of ISIS in Syria – a defeat for which Russia was responsible more than any other foreign power – and the degradation of Al Qaeda, these threats to UK security have diminished greatly. But Russia is constantly trying to undermine the West by improving its cyberwarefare capabilities.

“Russia today indisputably represents a far greater threat to our national security than Islamic extremist threats such as al-Qaeda and Isil,” he said.

“Russia has demonstrated that it is prepared to use military force to secure and expand its own national interests. The Russians seek to exploit vulnerability and weakness wherever they detect it.”

The general sat for the interview shortly after returning from the Baltics, where the largest NATO exercise in decades was wrapping up. And as NATO troops menaced Moscow from directly across its border, Carleton-Smith warned against being “complacent” about the Russian threat.

“The physical manifestation of the Islamist threat has diminished with the complete destruction of the geography of the so-called Caliphate,” he said.

As a result, Britain and its allies needed to focus their attention on Russia, particularly after the Salisbury Novichok attack earlier this year.

“Russia has embarked on a systematic effort to explore and exploit Western vulnerabilities, particularly in some of the non-traditional areas of cyber, space, undersea warfare,” he said.

“We cannot be complacent about the threat Russia poses or leave it uncontested. The most important conventional military response to Russia is the continued capabilities and coherence of the Nato alliance.”

Militarily, the UK should focus on bolstering NATO, Carleton-Smith said, adding that he wouldn’t support the creation of a European Army like what French President Emmanuel Macron has proposed.

“I would not support any initiative that diluted the military effectiveness of Nato,” he said. “Nato represents the centre of gravity of European security. It has been an extraordinarily successful alliance and, in my experience, we should reinforce success.”

His references to Russia’s cyber-capabilities, of course, relate back to the Russia election hacking scandal in the US. Despite all the furor (and indictments), there’s little evidence to suggest that these “sophisticated” efforts to sway the US election (and Brexit) had any impact on the results.

With this in mind, Carleton-Smith’s remarks sound like just one more attempt by a Western official to blame Russian President Vladimir Putin for the rise of populist movements that threaten the political status quo.

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Authored by Paul Dijks via VoiceofEurope.com,

A migrant, claiming to be a 15-year-old pupil at Stoke High School in Ipswich, admits to another student he is 25-years-old, married with children.

When the ‘boy’ was introduced to the school, he was presented as a teenager, born in Iran, with an amazing life story.

Forced to flee the Middle Eastern theocracy, he and his younger brother arrived in the UK, claiming asylum as 15 and 12-years-old boys.

The men were informed that as “child refugees” they should remain in full-time education and that the local authority would look after them until they are 25-years-old.

This didn’t sit well with parents and other pupils after pictures of the Middle Eastern migrant was shared on social media with the caption:

“How’s there a 30-year-old man in our maths class?”

The school accused the parents of being racist for their complaints of the 6ft 1ins Iranian whom they’d found pictured on his Facebook with a moustache drinking beer.

One parent who kept his young daughters out of the school until the man’s removal said:

“I’m ashamed both for the school and the Government for allowing this to happen.

“They have both failed to protect our children. The teachers should be sacked.”

The British public have been told that the migrants taken in under the ‘child refugee scheme’ would be toddlers and pre-teens, similarly to the Jewish children brought to Britain before the Second World War.

However, they have turned out to be males over 17-years-old, the limit considered to qualify for the ‘child’ scheme, with many having wrinkles and receding hairlines.

In one year, two-thirds of the ‘child’ migrants were medically tested and confirmed to be adults.

Crucially, when officials are unsure, the principle of ‘the benefit of the doubt’ is applied to the asylum seeker.

And earlier this year, a watchdog report revealed some local authorities had raised concerns that the ‘benefit of the doubt’ policy was being applied ‘too readily’.

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Perhaps “Fort Trump” is making progress? Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said Sunday in reaction to continued EU discussion of French and German to plans for a “European Army” that the United States is the only guarantor of European defense and security. Like the idea of “Fort Trump” first floated by Polish President Andrzej Duda in September during a White House visit, these latest statements out of Poland will be music to the US president’s ears. 

“We would like Europe as a whole to strengthen its military potential,” Morawiecki told a Polish public broadcaster from Brussels immediately after Europe’s leaders approved the Brexit deal negotiated with the U.K. “But at the same time today we emphasize that the only real guarantor of security in Europe, including the eastern flank of NATO, is the U.S.,” he said according to Bloomberg.

Morawiecki called for “a strong Poland in a strong European Union” and emphasized that Poland is both pro-American and pro-European. The two countries have been rapidly bolstering their military ties over the past few years in the face of what both perceive as expanding Russian influence.

Last March Warsaw and Washington signed a $4.75 billion deal to transfer Raytheon’s Patriot missile defense system in a major step to modernize its forces against Russia, the single largest such procurement in Poland’s history. Meanwhile completion of the separate NATO operated Lockheed Martin made ground-based Aegis ballistic missile defense system is not set to be in operation until after 2020 due to technical delays. 

The Polish prime minister’s statements come after early this month French President Emmanuel Macron proposed that Europe extricate itself from US foreign policy and security dependence by forming a common army that would be more than just symbolic, but could legitimately defend European interests and territory. 

While calling for greater independence in European defense Macron had managed to take aim at both Russia and the United States in a Nov. 6 interview, saying “We have to protect ourselves with respect to China, Russia and even the US.” He proposed that European leaders create a “real European army” not only to better defend the continent against Russia, but also to extricate French and European policy from that of the United States.

“We won’t protect Europeans if we don’t decide to have a real European army,” Macron said. “We must have a Europe that can defend itself on its own without relying only on the United States,” he asserted. 

A week following Macron’s controversial interview German Chancellor Angela Merkel appeared to second the idea that Europe should work to form an army, saying before European Parliament: “The times in which we could unconditionally rely on others are over.”

But such a proposal will remain wishful thinking so long as key strategically located former Warsaw Pact countries like Poland refuse to play ball.

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Authored by Andrei Akulov via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

The US announced its withdrawal from the INF Treaty without having an intermediate ground-based missile to deploy. It made arms control pundits wonder what triggered this decision. Even if the China threat were not exaggerated and Russia’s alleged “treaty violations” were true, there would be no explanation for National Security Adviser John Bolton’s statement that the US was leaving the landmark agreement with no land-based intermediate range weapon of its own nearing operational status.

Picking up useful bits of information here and there is the best way to find answers to hard questions. It takes time but the effort pays off.

According to the US Naval institute (USNI), the Navy has set up a program office within its Strategic Systems Programs (SSP) to address the conventional prompt global strike mission handed by the Defense Department to the sea service. According to SSP Director Vice Adm. Johnny Wolfe, who spoke this month at the annual Naval Submarine League symposium, each service will field some sort of hypersonic capability to contribute to conventional prompt global strike.

 “We have a program, we are funded, and we’re moving forward with that capability, which is going to be tremendous to allow our Navy to continue to have the access they need, whether it be from submarines or from surface ships,” the admiral noted.

The sea service is to spearhead the effort by developing the hypersonic glide body that all the services will use. The platforms are yet to be determined as the Navy is intentionally keeping its options open.

The idea is to have a booster going up to the upper atmosphere or outer space and a hypersonic glide vehicle able to maneuver while descending to defy air defenses and strike moving targets. With the Avangard operational, Russia is the only country to have such a weapon today.

Unlike the US Air Force, the Navy has been doing its research in high hush-hush mode during a number of years. The first conventional global strike missile test to collect data on hypersonic boost-glide technologies was conducted by the service on October 30, 2017. Initially, it was planned to be held  till the end of 2016 but had to be postponed. The glider flew about 2,000 nautical miles (3,800 km) from the Hawaii to the Marshall Islands fired from a ground-based launcher. The $160 million test was a success. The Navy could eventually deploy the conventional strike system on either Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines that have been converted to launch cruise missiles (known as SSGNs) or Virginia-class attack submarines equipped the Virginia payload module.

The DOD budget request for FY2019 indicates that it will conduct a second flight test by the end of FY2020.The funding for the program goes to the Navy. The Congressional Research Service report says, “The funding for the program is expected to increase significantly, from a request for $278 million in FY2019 to a request for $478 million in FY2022, for a total of $1.9 billion between FY2019 and FY2022. This is more than twice the amount expected over a five-year period in the FY2018 budget request.” 

If attack submarines can accommodate the weapon, US Navy’s destroyers and cruisers can do it too. One can imagine the number of sea-based PGS weapons in service when mass production process starts running smoothly.

Installed on Virginia–class boats, the missile will be excluded from the verification procedures in accordance with the New START Treaty. The weapon under consideration is a sea-based one. At first glance it has no relation to the INF Treaty but not so fast. The Defense Department said the Navy is responsible for a universal weapon to be used by all services, including the Army. The Hawaii missile was launched from land.

It’s worth to note that by announcing the plans to arm attack submarines with the new weapon the US military actually admits the violation of the INF Treaty because the Romania-based Aegis Ashore uses the same VLS Mk-41 launching pad as ships and submarines. If the PGS weapon is small enough for the MK-41 launcher, or the Virginia Payload Module, it can be installed on a mobile ground platform in open violation of the INF Treaty.

The range of 2,000 nautical miles allows the PGS system to cover most of Russia’s territory, reaching as far as the Arctic archipelago of Novaya Zemlya or the Siberian city of Omsk, about 2,700 km east from Moscow. Deployed in Japan, the land-based version of the weapon can also threaten China, provided Tokyo gave consent. On July 30, Japanese Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera announced a plan to deploy the Aegis Ashore missile-defense system by 2023. The military training grounds in the Akita and Yamaguchi prefectures are prospective sites. 

This is a threat for China and Russia. With the Mk-41 used, one can never tell what missile is going to be launched – an interceptor or a prompt global strike missile reaching as far as Russian Primorski Krai  (Primorye), the Kamchatka Peninsula where the Pacific Fleet SSBNs are based, and Krasnoyarsk, the third-largest city in Siberia, where Russia plans to deploy its new silo-based heavy ballistic Sarmat missiles. With all only land-based deployments in place, the entire Russian territory will be covered by US PGS weapons. Add to it the naval and aircraft-based PGS component. One can only imagine how strong will be the temptation to deliver a first strike to knock out Russia’s key infrastructure and strategic nuclear weapons sites, leaving the US strategic nuclear arsenal intact! The missile might have delivered a 2,000- pound payload over a 1,500-mile range, 80 with an accuracy of less than 5 meters. This would allow it to reach its target in less than 15 minutes. The payload is enough to fulfill the mission. True, the increased 2,000 nautical miles range will require a less powerful warhead but the US is working on a low-yield nuclear weapon.

As a result, the strategic balance will be tilted in US favor to give it the advantage of first conventional strike. Moscow will not watch idly. The weapons President Putin talked about in March were a response to US land- and air-based intermediate range advantage. Russia will do it again, if it needs to catch up. With the INF Treaty no longer valid, an unfettered arms race will start and there is no guarantee the US will be the winner. It has already started. 

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Authored by Wayne Madsen via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

America has always fancied itself as a “melting pot” of ethnicities and religions that form a perfect union. The Latin phrase, E Pluribus Unum, “out of many, one,” is even found on the Great Seal of the United States.

However, as seen in a recent blow-up between First Lady Melania Trump and now-former Deputy National Security Adviser Mira Ricardel, old feuds from beyond the borders of the United States can result in major rifts at the highest echelons of the US government.

On November 13, Ms. Trump’s communications director, Stephanie Grisham, fired off a tweet that read: “it is the position of the Office of the First Lady that she [Ricardel] no longer deserves the honor of serving in this White House.” The White House announced Ricardel’s departure the next day, November 14.

Ricardel is a longtime friend and associate of national security adviser John Bolton, who brought her into the National Security Council from the Department of Commerce, where she served as Undersecretary for Export Administration. Ricardel reportedly angered Ms. Trump over seating arrangements on a flight by Ms. Trump to Africa two weeks ago. Ricardel, who was to accompany the First Lady, did not make the trip. Ms. Trump, in an interview conducted with ABC News during the trip, said there were people in the White House she did not trust. Apparently, Ricardel was one of them.

The bitter feud between Melania Trump and Mira Ricardel likely has its roots in their backgrounds in the former Yugoslavia. Ricardel was born Mira P. Radielović, the daughter of Peter Radielovich, a native of Breza, Bosnia-Herzegovina in the former Yugoslavia. Ricardel speaks fluent Croatian and was a member of the Croatian Catholic Church. Melania Trump was born Melanija Knavs [pronounced Knaus] in Novo Mesto in Slovenia, also in the former Yugoslavia. Villagers in the village of Sevnica, where Ms. Trump was raised, claim she and her Communist Party parents were officially atheists. Ms. Trump later converted to Roman Catholicism. She and her son by Mr. Trump, Barron Trump, speak fluent Slovenian. The Yugoslav Civil War, which began in earnest in 1991, pitted the nation’s ethnic groups against one another. There are ample reasons, political, ethnic, and religious, for bad blood between the Slovenian-born First Lady and a first-generation Croatian-American. The “battle royale” between Ms. Trump and Ricardel is but one example of a constant problem in the United States when individuals with foreign ties bring age-old inter-ethnic and inter-religious squabbles to governance.

Perhaps no one in recent memory brought such a degree of ethnic baggage to her job like Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Albright’s Czech roots and the Yugoslav warrant issued for the arrest of her professor-diplomat father, Joseph Korbel, for the post-World War II theft of art from Prague, brought forth extreme anti-Serbian policies by the woman who would represent the United States at the United Nations and then serve as America’s chief diplomat. Albright’s hatred for Serbia was not much different than Zbigniew Brzezinski’s Polish heritage evoking an almost-pathological hatred of Russia, while he served as Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser.

Albright’s bias against Serbia saw her influence US policy in casting a blind eye toward the terrorism carried out by the Kosovo Liberation Army and its terrorist leader Hashim Thaci. That policy resulted in Washington backing an independent Kosovo, a state beholden to organized criminal syndicates protected by one of the largest US military bases in Europe, Camp Bondsteel.

Ties by US foreign policy officials to their countries of origin continued to plagued administrations after Carter. For example, Kateryna Chumachenko served in the Reagan White House and State and Treasury Departments and later worked for KPMG as “Katherine” Chumachenko. She also worked in the White House Public Liaison Office, where she conducted outreach to various right-wing and anti-communist exile groups in the United States, including the Friends of Afghanistan, on whose board Afghan refugee and later George W. Bush pro-consul in Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, sat. Khalilzad, like Chumachenko, worked in the Reagan State Department. Chumachenko was married to Ukrainian “Orange Revolution” President Viktor Yushchenko, and, thusly, became the First Lady of Ukraine. Khalilzad became the Bush 43 ambassador to the UN, where he often was at loggerheads with Iran, Libya, Syria, and other Muslim states. As was the case with Albright and her anti-Serb underpinnings, it was difficult to ascertain whose agenda Khalilzad was serving.

After being fired from the White House, there were reports that Ricardel was offered the post of ambassador to Estonia. That Baltic country was no stranger to hauling foreign baggage into the US government. Former Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves, a bow-tie wearing former Estonian language broadcaster for the Central Intelligence Agency-funded Radio Free Europe; long time resident of Leonia, New Jersey; could have just as easily ended up in a senior State Department position rather than President of Estonia. Such is the nature of divided loyalties among senior US government officials of both major political parties.

In 1981, Ronald Reagan appointed Valdas Adamkus as the regional administrator for the US Environmental Protection Agency, responsible for the Mid-West states. Retiring from the US government after 29 years of service, Adamkus was elected to two terms as President of Lithuania.

One might ask whether Ilves and Adamkus were kept on the US government payroll merely to support them until they could return to their countries in top leadership positions to help lead the Baltic nations into NATO membership.

From 1993 to 1997, Army General John Shalikashvili served as Chairman of the Joint Chefs of Staff. Shalikashvili was born in Warsaw, Poland to a Georgian and Polish mother. During World War II, his father served in the Georgian Legion, a special unit incorporated into the Nazi German “SS-Waffengruppe Georgien.” General Shalikashvili served as commander of all US military forces during a time of NATO expansion into Eastern Europe. It was no surprise that he was an avid cheerleader for NATO’s expansion to the East.

Natalie Jaresko served in positions with the State Department, the Departments of Commerce, Treasury, the US Trade Representative, and Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC). In 2014, she became the Finance Minister for Ukraine. Earlier, she served as a financial adviser to Yushchenko. The United States is not the only “melting pot” in North America that suffers from officials burdened by ethnic dual loyalties. Halyna Chomiak, the Ukrainian-born émigré mother of Canada’s Foreign Minister, Chrystia Freeland, weighs heavily on Freeland’s ability to advance Canada’s interests over those of the nation of her mother’s birth.

Trump’s entire White House Middle East police team is composed of individuals who place Israel’s interests ahead of the United States. Trump takes his Middle East advice from principally his son-in-law Jared Kushner, a contributor to and member of the board of the “Friends of the IDF,” an American non-profit that raises funds for the Israeli armed forces. Kushner was named by Trump as a “special envoy” to the Middle East, while Jason Greenblatt, a former attorney with the Trump Organization, was named as special envoy in charge of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Although the two positions appear to overlap, Kushner and Greenblatt, both Orthodox Jews who have little time for Palestinians, are on the same page when it comes to advancing the West Bank land grabbing policies of the Binyamin Netanyahu government in Israel. Trump thoroughly Zionized his administration’s Middle East policy with the appointment of another Israel supporter, David M. Friedman, as US ambassador to Israel. Friedman had been a bankruptcy lawyer with the Trump Organization’s primary law firm, Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman.

Trump has nominated as US ambassador to South Africa, handbag designer Lana Marks, who was born in South Africa. Marks, who is known only to Trump from her membership in his Mar-a-Lago, Florida “billionaires club,” left South Africa in 1975, when the country was under the apartheid regime. Marks claims to speak Afrikaans, the language preferred by the apartheid regime, and Xhosa, the ethnic language of the late President Nelson Mandela. Because Marks embellished her professional tennis career by claiming, without proof, participation in the French Open and Wimbledon in the 1970s, her mastery of Xhosa can be taken with a grain of salt. So, too, can her ability to deal with the current African National Congress government led by President Cyril Ramaphosa, who had just been released from prison when Marks left the country in 1975. The claims and politics of Marks and every official and would-be US official who failed to shed their biases from their native and ancestral homelands, can all be taken with a metric ton of salt.

Melting pots are fine, so long as they truly blend together. However, that is not the situation in the United States as high government officials have difficulty in consigning the bigotry inherent in family folklore and beliefs to the family scrapbooks.

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Newly-released images show the next-generation Presidential helicopter, the Sikorsky VH-92A, conducting its first landing September on the White House South Lawn, Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) told USNI News last week.

A spokesman for the NAVAIR, which is overseeing development of the new presidential helicopter, said, on Sept. 22, the VH-92A flew over the National Mall and landed on the White House lawn for the first time.

As part of the Presidential Helicopter Replacement Program, Sikorsky was in 2014 awarded a $1.2 billion contract to build a fleet of six helicopters for transport of the US President.

The defense company has outfitted the VH-92A with an executive interior and military mission support systems, including triple electrical power and redundant flight controls.

Six VH-92A had been ordered by the Navy for delivery in 2017. Production of a further 17 aircraft is planned to begin in 2020. The total FY 2015 program cost is $4.7 billion for 23 helicopters, at an average price of $205 million per aircraft

The Drive website first reported the images.

NAVAIR said the landing and take-offs were part of a comprehensive test plan designed to ensure the aircraft meets all operational specifications. The Drive notes that the helicopter’s impact on the White House lawn is an integral part of the testing process.

The new helicopter will be ready for service in the second half of 2020. The White House Military Office will decide on when it will be used by the President, according to NAVAIR.

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Authored by Eric Zuesse via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

The Commission on National Defense Strategy for the US has just released to Congress its report “Providing for the Common Defense”, and it opens:

“In the National Defense Authorization Act of 2017, Congress charged this Commission with providing an independent, nonpartisan review of the 2018 National Defense Strategy and issues of US defense strategy and policy more broadly.”

The report’s co-chairs, Eric S. Edelman and Gary Roughead, say in their accompanying letter to Congress, that “the United States will soon face a national security emergency.”

It doesn’t describe that “emergency,” but uses it to argue that ‘defense’ spending needs to soar and all other spending by the Government — especially for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other “entitlements” — needs to shrink, and/or recipient beneficiaries of those programs need to pay more, and taxes need to increase, so that this “emergency” can be dealt with. They say that the weapons-manufacturers and soldiers need more money, and that this military requirement is an “emergency” but other federal spending is not.

The Executive Summary says:

Rivals and adversaries are challenging the United States on many fronts and in many domains. America’s ability to defend its allies, its partners, and its own vital interests is increasingly in doubt. If the nation does not act promptly to remedy these circumstances, the consequences will be grave and lasting.

The document strongly urges expansion of the US regime’s policing of the world, in the interests of America’s international corporations. 

(EDITORIAL COMMENTARY: Neither the U.N. nor any other international body, has appointed the US regime to police the world. Furthermore, the US regime is the most frequent invader of foreign nations; and always, at least since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, is invading on the basis of lies and in violation of international law. But, the US regime nonetheless — as in “Providing for the Common Defense” — anoints itself the ‘authority’ to be police, judge, jury, and executioner, over this entire planet. This US-Government intention is a well-recognized fact recognized by peoples around the world. Hitler’s Government likewise viewed itself in this way. US President Obama stated this self-anointed global authority for the US, by asserting that “The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation”, which means that every other nation is dispensable. Hitler agreed with that viewpoint for Germany, and frequently expressed it.) 

On page 63 (80 of the pdf), “Providing for the Common Defense” states:

Embracing a Whole-of-Government

Approach to Strategic Competition

This Commission was charged with making recommendations regarding US defense strategy. Yet even if America were to fund the Department of Defense lavishly, and even if all the other recommendations in this report were to be implemented, that would not be sufficient to address the threats and challenges facing the country today. America’s two most powerful competitors — China and Russia — have developed national strategies for enhancing their influence and undermining key US interests that extend far beyond military competition.

It therefore urges placing the US Government on a war-footing, in virtually every governmental department.

On that same page, it states:

Looking ahead, policymakers must address rising government spending and decreasing tax revenues as unsustainable trends that compel hard fiscal choices… Congress should look to the entire federal budget, especially entitlements and taxes, to set the nation on a more stable financial footing. In the near-term, such adjustments will undoubtedly be quite painful. Yet over time — and probably much sooner than we expect — failing to make those adjustments and fully fund America’s defense strategy will undoubtedly be worse.

In other words, according to this congressionally mandated report: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, education, public health, safety-regulations, civilian infrastructure, and all other non-‘defense’ programs, must be severely slashed in order for the United States to be able to buy more of the machinery of mass-murder from Lockheed Martin and the other American manufacturers of the machinery of mass murder, which now form the basis for the American economy, of foreign conquests and coups, which must now be greatly escalated in order to keep America ’safe’ and those weapons-makers’ investors and executives happy. Similarly, America’s soldiers need more money. Furthermore:

Comprehensive solutions to these comprehensive challenges will require whole-of-government and even whole-of-nation cooperation extending far beyond DOD. Trade policy; science, technology, engineering, and math education; diplomatic statecraft; and other non-military tools will be critical — so will adequate support and funding for those elements of American power.

Their top (#1) “Recommendation” is:

The United States urgently requires rapid and substantial improvements to its military capabilities, built on a foundation of compelling and relevant warfighting concepts at the operational level of war.

“Recommendation” #9 states:

Deterring aggression in the Western Pacific will require using focused investments to establish a forward-deployed defense-in-depth posture. To deter a revanchist Russia, the United States and its NATO allies must rebuild military force capacity and capability in Europe.

#11 states:

The Air Force, Navy, and Army will all need capacity enhancements.

#24 urges:

Budget caps were — and still are — harmful to American defense.

In other words: If eliminating, or at least slashing, non-‘defense’ spending can’t be done, then the Government must go yet further into debt now, in order to be “Providing for the Common Defense.” If necessary in order to address the ‘defense’ ‘emergency’, everything else now must be sacrificed.

#31 is:

Congress should look to the entire federal budget, especially entitlements, as well as taxes, to set the nation on a more stable financial footing.

So: in case not enough money can be extracted from non-‘defense’, and from increasing the debt, then taxes — including taxes on the non-recipients of “entitlements” —  must be increased, in order to be “Providing for the Common Defense.” That’s what an “emergency” is. Only the expenditures for soldiers and for the manufacturers of the machinery of mass murder are to be served, if sufficient extractions fail to materialize from those other sources.

The two chairmen, and the ten other members of the Commission, are all longstanding neoconservatives, supporters of all US invasions and coups and conquests. The first co-chair, the Republican Eric S. Edelman, for example, is so neoconservative that he condemns even neocon Democrats (such as Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden) who pretend not to be neoconservative in order for them to be able to campaign effectively for the votes of Democrats in Presidential primaries. For example, here’s from Wikipedia’s article on Edelman:

In July 2007, Edelman attracted media attention for criticizing Senator Hillary Clinton, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.[10] In a private letter to Senator Clinton in response to a request made to the Pentagon in May 2007 for an outline [of] plans for withdrawing troops from combat in Iraq, Edelman rebuffed her request and wrote:[11][12]

“Premature and public discussion of the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq reinforces enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies in Iraq, much as we are perceived to have done in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia.”

The Associated Press described his criticisms as “stinging”.[10] According to the Associated Press, Edelman’s comments were: “unusual, particularly because it was directed at a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee”.[10] The Associated Press pointed out that fellow committee member Republican Senator Richard Lugar had also called for discussions of withdrawing US troops from Iraq, but had escaped Edelman’s criticism. Clinton has said she is “shocked by the timeworn tactic of once again impugning the patriotism of any of us who raise serious questions” about the Iraq war.[13] 

Senator Clinton needed that anti-neocon pretense in order for her to be able to campaign effectively for the votes of Democrats during the then-upcoming 2008 Democratic Party Presidential primaries. Edelman was that extreme a neocon: he demanded it even of a Democratic Party politician who would soon be running for that Party’s Presidential nomination and needing to fool her Party’s primary voters in order to have any realistic possibility to receive her Party’s nomination.

Edelman was nonetheless appointed by the US Senate on 12 August 2011 to be a Director of the Orwellianly (“Newspeak”) named US Institute of Peace, and he still is a Director of that pro-US-aggression propaganda-organization.

The other co-chair of this Commission, and of its report, Admiral Roughead, is a Director of Northrop Grumman, which is America’s fifth-largest manufacturer of mass-murdering machines, and he also is a writer for the neoconservative Brookings Institution, where, in February 2013, prior to the post-2014 soaring US ‘defense’ budgets, he co-authored a report, “National Defense in a Time of Change” saying:

Our spending [on ‘defense’] now constitutes 46 percent of the entire world’s allotment (IISS 2012, 31). The next highest is China, with a reported budget of $89 billion, although this figure is surely underreported and does not account for disparities in compensation, procurement, and infrastructure costs. A remarkable chasm of commitment to strong military forces exists between the United States and most other countries. Comparisons of defense spending as a percentage of gross domestic product do not capture the magnitude of US spending nearly as well as do per capita expenditures, which give a snapshot weighted by population but absolute in terms of input. Our country spends $2,250 per person on our military forces every year; Russia spends $301 per person, Iran $137, and China $57 (IISS 2012, 467–473).

So, now that this Grumman Director is working under a President (Trump) who is even more neoconservative than was Obama (or maybe even than Senator Clinton), he’s screaming for yet more money for himself and his investors, in the form of increasing ‘defense’-contracts. 

CONCLUSION

That’s whom America’s troops are actually fighting for — the owners, and their executives — people who want more money and don’t care about the millions of people around the world that they help to kill and the millions of others whose continuing lives they make hellish (including even some destitute Americans who need the social services that will be cut in order to fund purchases of yet more bombs and missiles).

America’s masters today are such psychopaths as this. Even 46% of the entire world’s military budget isn’t enough to satisfy them. Most individuals who become convicted and executed aren’t nearly as harmful as these people are, who ride so high the American nation, and (they demand) the entire world. They’re like Hitler’s Nazis, but on nuclear steroids. And the US Congress appointed this Commission.

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