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General News    H3'ed 6/18/19

Flirting with Nuclear Holocaust, US Cyberattacks Russia's Power Grid

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Russia Expert's 2017 Prophecy About The Nuclear Threat Of Russiagate Is Coming True

TheNew York Timeshas published an anonymously sourced report titled "U.S. Escalates Online Attacks on Russia's Power Grid" about the "placement of potentially crippling malware inside the Russian system at a depth and with an aggressiveness that had never been tried before" which could potentially "plunge Russia into darkness or cripple its military," with one anonymous official reporting that "We are doing things at a scale that we never contemplated a few years ago."


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Obviously this is yet another serious escalation in the continually mounting series of steps that have been taken into a new cold war between the planet's two nuclear superpowers. Had a report been leaked to Russian media from anonymous Kremlin officials that Moscow was escalating its cyber-aggressions against America's energy grid, this would doubtless be labeled an act of war by the political/media class of the US and its allies with demands for immediate retaliation.

To put this in perspective, The New York Timesreported last year that the Pentagon was pushing for the US Nuclear Posture Review to include the strategy of retaliating against serious Russian cyberattacks on American power grids with nuclear weapons.

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So that's scary enough. What's even scarier is the information that the Timesburied way down in the 21st to 23rd paragraphs of its report:

"Two administration officials said they believed Mr. Trump had not been briefed in any detail about the steps to place 'implants' software code that can be used for surveillance or attack inside the Russian grid.

"Pentagon and intelligence officials described broad hesitation to go into detail with Mr. Trump about operations against Russia for concern over his reaction and the possibility that he might countermand it or discuss it with foreign officials, as he did in 2017 when he mentioned a sensitive operation in Syria to the Russian foreign minister.

"Because the new law defines the actions in cyberspace as akin to traditional military activity on the ground, in the air or at sea, no such briefing would be necessary, they added."

In an article titled "Pentagon Keeps Trump in the Dark About its Cyber Attacks on Russia", Rolling Stone's Peter Wade described this jarring revelation as follows:

"New laws, enacted by Congress last year, allow such 'clandestine military activity' in cyberspace to go ahead without the president's approval. So, in this case, those new laws are protecting American interests" by keeping the sitting president out of the loop. What a (scary) time to be alive."

So Trump is in a bit of a bind now. The escalation has already been put in place, which will likely see an equal response from Moscow if it isn't scaled back. But scaling it back would mean a whole new wave of shrieking alarmism from the political/media class about the conspiracy theory that just won't die no matter how much evidence is mounted against it: that Trump is a controlled puppet of the Kremlin. All as he's working to build the case for re-election in 2020.

Stephen F Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies at New York University and Princeton University and one of America's leading experts on US-Russia relations, has been warning for years that exactly this would happen. In an April 2017 interview on Democracy Now, Cohen warned that placing political pressure on a US president to never step back from escalations during a showdown between nuclear superpowers could have potentially world-ending consequences should mounting tensions see a situation similar to the Cuban missile crisis again.

"I think this is the most dangerous moment in American-Russian relations, at least since the Cuban missile crisis," Cohen said. "And arguably, it's more dangerous, because it's more complex. Therefore, weand then, meanwhile, we have in Washington theseand, in my judgment, factless accusations that Trump has somehow been compromised by the Kremlin. So, at this worst moment in American-Russian relations, we have an American president who's being politically crippled by the worst imaginableit's unprecedented. Let's stop and think. No American president has ever been accused, essentially, of treason. This is what we're talking about here, or that his associates have committed treason."

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Caitlin Johnstone is a brave journalist, political junkie, relentless feminist, champion of the 99 percent. And a powerful counter-propaganda tactician. Rogue journalist, poet, illustrator, utopia prepper, and proudly 100 percent reader-funded through Patreon (more...)
 

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