RUSSIAN MIGHT

PEPE ESCOBAR—Unipolarism – via its demonization matrix – had first accelerated Russia’s pivot to Asia. Now, the U.S.-driven trade war has facilitated the consolidation of Russia as China’s top strategic partner. Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs better get ready to dismiss virtually everyday statements  coming, for instance, from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Joseph Dunford, when he alleges that Moscow aims to use non-strategic nuclear weapons in the European theater. It’s part of a non-stop process – now in high gear – of manufacturing hysteria by frightening NATO allies with the Russian “threat.”

Journalists, including those from other countries, were shown the new Russian military base in the Arctic for the first time. “Northern Clover” on Kotelny Island, it’s 300 miles from here to the mainland. One can get there only with a helicopter. There’s no internet or cell network there. Only polar bears and eternal frost around. It’s comfortable to serve there, though – a modern military base has been built for servicemen.While the above is a straightforward, and non-hostile reporting on the base, observe how the situation changes immediately when the same story is “reported” by a notorious disinformation outfit from the West, the American network CNN.

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MAX BLUMENTHAL—Max Blumenthal (born December 18, 1977) is an American author, journalist, and blogger. He was awarded the 2014 Lannan Foundation Cultural Freedom Notable Book Award for his book Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel. He was formerly a writer for AlterNet,The Daily Beast, Al Akhbar, and Media Matters for America, as well as a Fellow of the Nation Institute. He is the author of three books, one of which, Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party (2009), appeared on The New York Times bestsellers list.

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE—And what’s interesting is that these same facts could have remained exactly as they are and allowed the exact opposite narrative to be constructed. If her plutocratic owners had wished it, Rachel Maddow would have spent every night over the last two years warning everyone that Donald Trump is taking dangerous actions against Russia that threaten to wipe all life off the face of the earth, and it would have worked. If Trump had continued making these escalations in our hypothetical alternate timeline while the mass media was constantly selling the “Trump’s going to get us all killed in a nuclear war with Russia” narrative, all the same blue-checkmarked Twitter pundits you see yelling at Tulsi Gabbard today would be yelling about the dangers of nuclear war in our alternate timeline.