So the United States is pulling out of a key arms-control agreement, complaining it is the only party in compliance, and therefore it wants to have the right to deploy short- and medium-range ballistic missiles.

John Bolton, the national-security adviser to President Trump, was in Moscow this week meeting Russian leader Vladimir Putin and other senior Kremlin officials. Bolton huffed that the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty was obsolete from the US point of view.

"There's a new strategic reality out there," said the American official. The INF, signed in 1987, is "a bilateral treaty in a multipolar ballistic missile world."


He was referring to countries like China, Iran and North Korea, which the US claims have built up arsenals of ballistic missiles prohibited by the INF. Those countries are not in violation of the said treaty because the INF was an agreement signed only by the US and the Soviet Union, later becoming the Russian Federation.

All we have to do to highlight the enormous hypocrisy and double standards which are the hallmark of domestic and international politics is to switch the names around.

Here are just a few examples...

Horror Consulate - but damn, it's our ally's!

Just imagine... if a Russian journalist, a vocal critic of President Putin and the Russian government, had walked into a Russian consulate in a NATO member state to obtain papers for his forthcoming marriage and never came out again alive. After Kremlin denials, and several changes of story, it transpired that he had indeed been killed while in the consulate, with claims made that he had been cut up while a 'look-a-like' left the building.

Well, that what's happened to the Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi. And guess what, there have been no diplomatic expulsions of Saudi diplomats from the UK and US - as happened quite swiftly in the Skripal Case, despite Russian government involvement not being proved.

UK Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson has not said that Saudi Arabia 'should go away, should shut up' as he said about Russia (see below). Or if he did, I've missed it.

As Khashoggi's "disfigured face and body parts" are reportedly found in the garden of the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, the party is over for the Western collaborators with Arabian tyranny.

After Khashoggi himself, the main loser from the murder most foul in Istanbul is US President Donald Trump - as I predicted here weeks ago. His declaration that the Saudi cover story was "credible" as the rest of the world laughed at the 'Lady MacBeth' of it all, merely made him ridiculous. The behavior of his own 'crown prince' - his son-in-law Jared Kushner - has been more venal than comic-opera.

As I predicted, despite the Clinton family's own exposure to Saudi largesse, the Democrats and their vast media hinterland have adopted the killing of Khashoggi as their new casus belli displacing their running-out-of-steam 'Russiagate' narrative (in fact the people who filled the American airwaves with Russophobic hatred for the last two years are now throwing their hands up in horror at Trump - Putin's puppet, remember - declaring a new nuclear arms race, against Russia).

Speaking at the 15th annual Valdai forum in Sochi, in-between hilarious exchanges about the benefits of Western sanctions on the Russian cheese industry, President Putin made a number of strong statements directed at his 'Western partners'. These included an announcement that Russia is gradually 'de-dollarizing' its economy for security reasons; a droll warning that, should the worst come to pass and nuclear war break out, at least Russians would go to heaven as martyrs whereas her enemies would drop dead without time to repent; and a reminder that Russia has surpassed its competitors, for the foreseeable future, in hypersonic missiles. Far less publicized was his revelation about a recent incident involving ISIS in the Deir ez-Zor region of eastern Syria:

"We now see what is happening on the left bank of the Euphrates River, our colleagues know that. This territory is under the protection of our American partners, they rely there on the Kurdish armed forces. But they obviously did not work it through, members of Daesh remained in several settlements," Putin said at the annual Valdai Discussion Club meeting in Sochi.

The president further stressed that Daesh had recently started expanding its presence, taking 130 families hostage, which is nearly 700 people, including US and European nationals, in part of Syria controlled by US-backed forces.

"They [terrorists] put forward ultimatums and certain demands, and warned that if these ultimatums are not followed up to, they will be gunning down 10 people everyday. The day before yesterday they executed ten people," Putin stressed.

"Our information shows that several citizens of the United States and [some] European countries were also taken hostage [by Daesh]," Putin added.

You can listen to Putin describe this issue as a disaster, about which Western governments are keeping quiet, in this video, starting from 4:46. The reason they do not wish to talk about it is, of course, that it is not only an embarrassment for US coalition forces, but that it highlights their transparent intention to prevent the stabilization and reconstruction of war-torn Syria.

Yesterday the news broke that Swamp Monster-In-Chief John Bolton has been pushing President Trump to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, the 1988 arms control agreement between the US and the Soviet Union eliminating all missiles of a specified range from the arsenals of the two nuclear superpowers. Today, Trump has announced that he will be doing exactly as Bolton instructed.

This would be the second missile treaty between the US and Russia that America has withdrawn from since it abandoned the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002. John Bolton, an actual psychopath who Trump hired as his National Security Advisor in April, ran point on that move as well back when he was part of the increasingly indistinguishable Bush administration.

So, it's three weeks before the US midterm elections, and it looks like we have got ourselves a horse race! That's right, folks, once again, it's time to start playing with those forecast maps on Real Clear Politics and FiveThirtyEight, and obsessively following the fluctuating poll numbers of congressional candidates you have never heard of competing in districts you couldn't locate if someone held a gun to your head. You need to start doing this immediately, if not sooner, as the stakes in these midterms could not be higher. Nothing less than the continued existence of "American democracy" hangs in the balance, so the ruling classes need every last one of us to get out there and vote for somebody!

The fact that it only marginally matters who that somebody that you vote for is should not dissuade you from voting for somebody. Voting for somebody is your civic duty, and is no less important than rooting for a sports team, or maintaining a personal favorite color, or celebrity, or brand of hemorrhoid creme. Remember, if you don't vote for somebody, somebody else is going to win, and we can't afford to let that happen!

The murder and dismembering of Saudi opposition journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul is now all but admitted by the Saudi regime. The deed was so brazen and gruesome, we wondered in our last show if 'rogue operators' did it in order to frame the Saudi Crown Prince, aka MBS. Trump apparently heard us because he subsequently suggested the same, before reminding the world that Saudi money trumps all.

The Faustian Pact between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia - carved out of the Ottoman Empire under the cover of WW1 - and the British, then US, empires in the early 20th century is so fundamental to Western hegemony that it will not be undone, much less 'transformed' or impeded in any way, by public outcry over the fact that the West keeps serial killers for friends.

This week on NewsReal, Joe & Niall discuss the very public exposure of Western 'values', which turn out not to be democracy, human rights and a rules-based global order, but love of money, lust for power, and sadistic cruelty.


Running Time: 01:23:20

Download: OGG, MP3


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Memes. They're modern poetry, aphorism, political cartoonery, social commentary, and idle hilarity all mixed in one. They are also dangerously dehumanizing, apparently. Because some people just can't take a joke. Twitter has banned thousands of joke accounts propagating the NPC meme. It was fun while it lasted. Technically, it's still fun, because you can kill a meme account, but you can't kill a meme. Even if you're very, very outraged. And the NPC meme has its targets literally shaking with outrage right now. How come? Because the NPC meme is such an accurate representation of what it means to be social justice warrior. And the mirror of truth is difficult to behold. Seeing yourself as you actually are is a terrifying thing. The SJWs are being shown to themselves in a mirror, clearly, and they do not like what they see. And their response is humorously predictable: the very behavior being lampooned in the memes they're so offended by.

Today on the Truth Perspective we'll be discussing the 2018 greatest meme, and the surprising psychology beneath it. Why do some people actually resemble NPCs? Why can't they see that they resemble NPCs? Why are they so outraged? And is it possible for an NPC to become 'playable', to grow an actual sense of individuality and authenticity? Dabrowski's theory of positive disintegration has the answers!

Running Time: 01:14:29

Download: OGG, MP3


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According to an article in The Mail, the mother of Sergei Skripal, Yelena, has not heard from her son since the incident on 4th March, and the last time she heard from her granddaughter, Yulia, was on 24th July:

"Recalling her phone conversation with Yulia, Yelena told the Daily Mirror: 'The last time I ­actually spoke to Yulia was on the 24th of July on my 90th birthday. She rang - it was unexpected but it was so lovely to hear from her. She called and was actually with Sergei. She told me: "I'm with daddy he is beside me but he can't speak as he has a pain in his throat". She said he had been in some pain.'"

This is interesting for a number of reasons.

Firstly, we know that during the conversation on 24th July, according to a number of reports (for example here), Yulia told her grandmother that the reason Sergei was unable to speak was because his voice was still weak due to a tracheostomy:

"Babushka, happy birthday, everything is fine, everything is perfect. I am in London with papa. He can't speak because he's got a tracheostomy, that pipe, which will be taken off in three days. Now when he speaks with that pipe, his voice is first of all very weak and secondly, he makes quite a lot of wheeze. So babushka with your poor hearing you would really struggle to understand him. He'll call after the tracheostomy is off."

This was almost 3 months ago. So the tracheostomy was preventing Sergei from speaking; but it was coming off in three days; yet nearly 3 months later and still no call from Sergei? Is that not very odd? Indeed, especially given that Yelena states in the interview that she and Sergei used to speak every week.

Stephen F. Cohen and John Batchelor continue their (usually) weekly discussions of the new US-Russian Cold War. (Previous installments, now in their fifth year, are at TheNation.com).



Cohen comments on the following subjects currently in the news: Intelligence agencies, Nikki Haley, sanctions, and public opinion:

1. National intelligence agencies have long played major roles, often not entirely visible, in international politics. They are doing so again today, as is evident in several countries, from Russiagate in the United States and the murky Skripal assassination attempt in the UK to the apparent murder of Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Turkey. Leaving aside what President Obama knew about Russiagate allegations against Donald Trump and when he knew it, the question arises as to whether these operations were ordered by President Putin and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) or were "rogue" operations unknown in advance by the leaders and perhaps even directed against them.