[News] The Strangelove Effect - Or How We are Hoodwinked into Accepting a New World War

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Weekend Edition April 18-20, 2014
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/04/18/the-strangelove-effect/


*Or How We are Hoodwinked into Accepting a New World War *


  The Strangelove Effect

by JOHN PILGER

I watched /Dr. Strangelove/ the other day. I have seen it perhaps a 
dozen times; it makes sense of senseless news. When Major T.J. "King" 
Kong goes "toe to toe with the Rooskies" and flies his rogue B52 nuclear 
bomber to a target in Russia, it's left to General "Buck" Turgidson to 
reassure the President. Strike first, says the general, and "you got no 
more than 10 to 20 million killed, tops."

President Merkin Muffley: "I will not go down in history as the greatest 
mass-murderer since Adolf Hitler."

General Turgidson: "Perhaps it might be better, Mr. President, if you 
were more concerned with the American people than with your image in the 
history books."

The genius of Stanley Kubrick's film is that it accurately represents 
the cold war's lunacy and dangers.  Most of the characters are based on 
real people and real maniacs. There is no equivalent to /Strangelove/ 
today, because popular culture is directed almost entirely at our 
interior lives, as if identity is the moral zeitgeist and true satire is 
redundant; yet the dangers are the same. The nuclear clock has remained 
at five minutes to midnight; the same false flags are hoisted above the 
same targets by the same "invisible government", as Edward Bernays, the 
inventor of public relations, described modern propaganda.

In 1964, the year /Strangelove/ was made, "the missile gap" was the 
false flag. In order to build more and bigger nuclear weapons and pursue 
an undeclared policy of domination, President John Kennedy approved the 
CIA's  propaganda that the Soviet Union was well ahead of the US in the 
production of Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles. This filled front 
pages as the "Russian threat". In fact, the Americans were so far ahead 
in the production of ICBMs, the Russians never approached them. The cold 
war was based largely on this lie.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US has ringed Russia with 
military bases, nuclear warplanes and missiles as part of its "Nato 
Enlargement Project". Reneging a US promise to Soviet President Mikhail 
Gorbachev in 1990 that Nato would not expand "one inch to the east", 
Nato has all but taken over eastern Europe. In the former Soviet 
Caucuses, Nato's military build-up is the most extensive since the 
second world war.

In February, the United States mounted one of its proxy "colour" coups 
against the elected government of Ukraine; the shock troops were 
fascists. For the first time since 1945, a pro-Nazi, openly anti-Semitic 
party controls key areas of state power in a European capital. No 
Western European leader has condemned this revival of fascism on the 
border of Russia.  Some 30 million Russians died in the invasion of 
their country by Hitler's Nazis, who were supported by the Ukrainian 
Insurgent Army, the UPA, responsible for numerous Jewish and Polish 
massacres. The UPA was the military wing, inspiring today's Svoboda party.

Since Washington's putsch in Kiev --- and Moscow's inevitable response 
in Russian Crimea, to protect its Black Sea Fleet --- the provocation 
and isolation of Russia have been inverted in the news to the "Russian 
threat". This is fossilised propaganda. The US Air Force general who 
runs Nato forces in Europe  -- General Breedlove, no less --- claimed 
more than two weeks ago to have pictures showing 40,000 Russian troops 
"massing" on the border with Ukraine. So did Colin Powell claim to have 
pictures of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. What is certain is that 
Obama's rapacious, reckless coup in Ukraine has ignited a civil war and 
Vladimir Putin is being lured into a trap.

Following a 13-year rampage that began in stricken Afghanistan well 
after Osama bin Laden had fled, then destroyed Iraq beneath a false 
flag, then invented a "nuclear rogue" in Iran, dispatched Libya to a 
Hobbesian anarchy and backed jihadists in Syria, the US finally has a 
new cold war to supplement its worldwide campaign of murder and terror 
by drone.

A Nato Membership Action Plan or MAP --- straight from the war room of 
/Strangelove/ --- is General Breedlove's gift to the new dictatorship in 
Ukraine. "Rapid Trident" will put US troops on Ukraine's Russian border 
and "Sea Breeze" will put US warships within sight of Russian ports. At 
the same time, Nato war games throughout eastern Europe are designed to 
intimidate Russia. Imagine the response if this madness was reversed and 
happened on America's borders. Cue General "Buck" Turgidson.

And there is China. On 24 April, President Obama will begin a tour of 
Asia to promote his "Pivot to China". The aim is to convince his 
"allies" in the region, principally Japan, to re-arm and prepare for the 
eventual possibility of war with China. By 2020, almost two-thirds of 
all US naval forces in the world will be transferred to the Asia-Pacific 
area. This is the greatest military concentration in that vast region 
since the second world war.

In an arc extending from Australia to Japan, China will face US missiles 
and nuclear-armed bombers. A strategic naval base is being built on the 
Korean island of Jeju less than 400 miles from the Chinese metropolis of 
Shanghai and the industrial heartland of the only country whose economic 
power is likely to surpass that of the US.  Obama's "pivot" is designed 
to undermine China's influence in its region. It is as if world war has 
begun by other means.

This is not a Strangelove fantasy. Obama's defence secretary, Charles 
"Chuck" Hagel, was in Beijing last week to deliver a menacing warning 
that China, like Russia, could face isolation and war if it did not bow 
to US demands. He compared the annexation of Crimea with China's complex 
territorial dispute with Japan over uninhabited islands in the East 
China Sea. "You cannot go around the world," said Hagel with a straight 
face, "and violate the sovereignty of nations by force, coercion or 
intimidation". As for America's massive movement of naval forces and 
nuclear weapons to Asia, that is "a sign of the humanitarian assistance 
the US military can provide".

Obama is currently seeking a greater budget for nuclear weapons than the 
historical peak during the cold war, the era of Strangelove. The United 
States is pursuing its longstanding ambition to dominate the Eurasian 
landmass, stretching from China to Europe: a "manifest destiny" made 
right by might.

//*John Pilger* is the author of Freedom Next Time. He can be reached 
through his website: www.johnpilger.com <http://%20www.johnpilger.com>//

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