Well, We Know How They Feel About Trump

Donald Trump has nations a bit on edge, even America's friends.

Take the Swedes for example. Sweden is a country with Cold War memories. During those dark years when the Soviet Union vied with the United States, Sweden constructed 65,000 nuclear bomb shelters. That's a lot.

Today, of course, the Soviet Union is gone. So too is the United States, at least in the sense that we once knew it. Today it's Putingrad and Trumpville. And that's got the Swedes on edge all over again. They're taking this pretty seriously, even to the point of planning to expand that already extensive network of nuclear fallout shelters.

Swedish authorities figure the existing 65,000 shelters will suffice for a population of seven million only, today, that still leaves three million with not much better than "duck and cover." Officials are now looking to construct new shelters to protect the overage. Swedish shelters are intended to provide protection against the gamut of WMDs - nuclear, biological and chemical.

If you find the Swedes extreme, the Swiss are way ahead of their Scandinavian counterparts. The Swiss have an abundance of shelters, more than enough to house their entire population.

Whereas confidence among Europeans that President Barack Obama would “do the right thing regarding world affairs” ranged between 70 and 90 percent in a number of surveyed nations during his term, those numbers plummeted after Trump’s inauguration and have only gone down since. Only 7 percent in Spain and 11 percent in Germany now say they have confidence in Trump. Top officials in Germany have also directly contradictedTrump’s North Korea policies, and have voiced concerns that the White House may overreact to nuclear provocations and escalate the war rhetoric being exchanged with North Korea.

Europeans are similarly worried that decades-long nonproliferation efforts could be dismantled virtually overnight, leading to a new arms race. In 2009, the Obama administration negotiated a treaty with Russia in which both countries agreed to cap the number of deployed warheads. Trump reportedly called the agreement a bad deal in his first phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this year, although administration officials have since backtracked.

Sweden’s new shelter locations indicate that at least some of the concerns are connected to Russia. One of the regions where most new shelters are expected to be constructed in the coming years is the island of Gotland, where military defenses were recently expanded with the declared aim of stopping a possible Russian invasion.

Obama Comes Clean. Putin Didn't Plot to Seize Crimea.

Go Ahead, Pick One.

Oh my, my, what comes out of the mouth of that man!

The Western narrative we've been force fed by liars like Harper and his collaborators on the other side of the aisle, is that Vlad Putin plotted to use the unrest in Ukraine to seize Crimea.  Hillary openly compared Putin to Hitler seizing the Sudetenland for Lebensraum.

While we were busy watching the Super Bowl, Barack Obama was on another channel being interviewed by Fareed Zakaria when he dropped this:

“Mr. Putin made this decision around Crimea and Maidan not because of some grand strategy, but essentially because he was caught off-balance by the protest in the Maidan (in February 2014) and (Ukraine’s then-president Viktor) Yanukovych fleeing after we (the U.S. and the European Union) had made a deal to broker power in Ukraine.”

Those who've followed this affair will remember that President Yanukovych was being pressed by Russia to join a new central Asian trade and political bloc envisaged by Putin, while the EU and U.S. wanted Ukraine to join the EU (and NATO).

Believing that the Maidan demonstrations last February had been secretly contrived by the West (easy for Putin to suspect because of the presence of EU representatives, as well as an American Assistant Secretary of State and a visit to Kiev by CIA officials), Putin retaliated by adroitly seizing Crimea, for many years a Russian territory, but Ukrainian only since 1954.

The Russians ...seem to feel themselves under assault by the West, and indeed there are many in Washington who want to see Putin and his government overthrown, convinced that Americanizing the world is the next step in the nation’s destiny.

Nuclear war is considered a possibility by both sides, for the first time since 1990. But why? The U.S. and its European allies have been the aggressors in this whole unnecessary confrontation. They are the ones who can call it off. There is zero gain in it.

Certainly, the Germans and other Europeans are aware of this. As in the old days of the Cold War, the calculations of deterrence and first-strike advantage are relevant. The U.S. seems motivated by the determination to stay Top Dog. The Russians may be motivated by fear.

Great, just great.  We've got a gaggle of neoliberal dickheads scheming to topple the head of a nation that has the second, if not the first-largest nuclear arsenal on the planet.  What could possibly go wrong?

Is There a Nuclear War in Your Future?

Maybe that's why Sideshow Steve went on the down low to get F-35s in RCAF hangars as soon as possible.

Could the planet be headed for the first (and last) nuclear world war?  Noam Chomsky thinks it's a real possibility.  (Hint: he's right).

“It’s come ominously close several times in the past, dramatically close,” he said. “It could happen again, but not planned, but just by the accidental interactions that take place — that has almost happened.”

“It’s worth remembering that just one century ago, the First World War broke out through a series of such accidental interchanges. The First World War was horrifying enough, but the current reenactment of it means the end of the human race.”

“There have been many cases,” Chomsky continued, “not that serious, but pretty close, where human intervention with a few-minutes choice has prevented a nuclear war. You can’t guarantee that’s going to continue. It may not be a high probability each time, but when you play a game like that, with low probability risks of disaster over and over again, you’re going to lose.”

“And now, especially in the crisis over Ukraine, and so-called missile-defense systems near the borders of Russia, it’s a threatening situation.”

We know that Russia's current rearmament programme is nuclear weapon oriented.  A new intercontinental range missile, a new intermediate range missile, a new (probably stealthy) strategic bomber, a new nuclear missile sub. America already deploys the nuclear capable, B-2 stealth bomber and the F-35 is or will be nuclear-weapon capable.  The US is also working on a new strategic bomber.

So, yes, we are upping the nuclear ante even as Cold War II continues to set in. Ain't life grand?  I'm sure a cupboard/broom closet full of nukes would have a powerful appeal to a smug prick megalomaniac like this: