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Another take ... Re: Are You Ready to Die?  

By: monkeytrots in POPE IV | Recommend this post (2)
Mon, 15 May 17 7:59 AM | 57 view(s)
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Msg. 25446 of 47202
(This msg. is a reply to 25431 by Decomposed)

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I have read the Saker previously - he offers a slightly differing opinion from 'Are you Ready to Die'. Again- can't agree with the Saker on everything - but this is an extremely illuminating piece - and well written. The Saker does get his facts right (PCR tends to distort history a tad too much for me), and he covers the subject in excruciating detail.

Making Sense of the “Super Fuse” Scare, by the Saker
Posted on May 13, 2017
| 1 comment

Here’s is an entirely different, and better informed, perspective than the one yesterday from Paul Craig Roberts on the chances of great power nuclear war. From the Saker at unz.com:

For weeks now I have been getting panicked emails with readers asking me whether the USA had developed a special technology called “super fuses” which would make it possible for the USA to successfully pull-off a (preemptive) disarming first strike against Russia. Super-fuses were also mentioned in combination with an alleged lack by Russia of a functioning space-based infrared early warning system giving the Russians less time to react to a possible US nuclear attack.

....
Understanding nuclear strikes and their targets

To understand what really has taken place I need to first define a couple of crucial terms:

Hard-target kill capability: this refers to the capability of a missile to destroy a strongly protected target such as a underground missile silo or a deeply buried command post.
Soft-target kill capability: the capability to destroy lightly or unprotected targets.
Counterforce strike: this refers to a strike aimed at the enemy’s military capabilities.
Countervalue strike: this refers to a strike on non-military assets such as cities.

...
For one thing, modern nuclear warfare has, so far, only been “practiced” only on paper and with computers (and thank God for that!)? So nobody *really* knows for sure how a nuclear war would play itself out. The only thing which is certain is that just the political and economic consequences of it would be catastrophic and totally unpredictable. Furthermore, it remains very unclear how such a war could be stopped short of totally destroying one side. The so-called “de-escalation” is a fascinating concept, but so far nobody has really figured this out. Finally, I am personally convinced that both the USA and Russia have more than enough survivable nuclear weapons to actually decide to ride out a full-scale enemy attack. That is the one big issue which many well-meaning pacifist never understood: it is a good thing that “the USA and Russia have the means to blow-up the world ten times over” simply because even one side succeeded in destroying, say, 95% of the US or Russian nuclear forces, the remaining 5% would be more than enough to wipe-out the attacking side in a devastating countervalue attack. If Russia and the USA each had, say, only 10 nuclear warheads then the temptation to try to take them out would be much higher.

This is scary and even sick, but having a lot of nuclear weapons is safer from a “first-strike stability” point of view than having few. Yes, we do live in a crazy world.

Consider that in times of crisis both the US and Russia would scramble their strategic bombers and keep them in the air, refueling them when needed, for as long as needed to avoid having them destroyed on the ground. So even if the USA destroyed ALL Russian ICBM/SLBMs, there would be quite a few strategic bombers in holding patterns in staging areas which could be given the order to strike. And here we reach one last crucial concept:

Counterforce strikes require a lot of HTK capable warheads. The estimates by both sides are kept secret, of course, but we are talking over 1000 targets on each side at least listed, if not actually targeted. But a countervalue strike would require much less. The US has only 10 cities with over one million people. Russia has only 12. And, remember, in theory one warhead is enough for one city (that is not true, but for all practical purposes it is). Just look what 9/11 did to the USA and imagine of, say, “only” Manhattan had been truly nuked. You can easily imagine the consequences.

...
Conclusion 2: the nuclear deterrence system remains stable, very stable

At the end of WWII, the Soviet Union’s allies, moved by the traditional western love for Russia, immediately proceeded to plan for a conventional and a nuclear war against the Soviet Union (see Operation Unthinkable and Operation Dropshot). Neither plan was executed, the western leaders were probably rational enough not to want to trigger a full-scale war against the armed forces which had destroyed roughly 80% of the Nazi war machine. What is certain, however, is that both sides fully understood that the presence of nuclear weapons profoundly changed the nature of warfare and that the world would never be the same again: for the first time in history all of mankind faced a truly existential threat. As a direct result of this awareness, immense sums of money were given to some of the brightest people on the planet to tackle the issue of nuclear warfare and deterrence. This huge effort resulted in an amazingly redundant, multi-dimensional and sophisticated system which cannot be subverted by any one technological breakthrough. There is SO much redundancy and security built into the Russian and American strategic nuclear forces that a disarming first strike is all but impossible, even if we make the most unlikely and far-fetched assumptions giving one side all the advantages and the other all the disadvantages. For most people it is very hard to wrap their heads around such a hyper-survivable system, but both the USA and Russia have run hundreds and even thousands of very advanced simulations of nuclear exchanges, spending countless hours and millions of dollars trying to find a weak spot in the other guy’s system, and each time the result was the same: there is always enough to inflict an absolutely cataclysmic retaliatory counter-strike.

...end of excerpts ...

MAD really is a concept that holds sway, imo. Still exists- and still keeps us safe.

BUT belligerence and agression towards Russia still ain't a smart way to live. The neo-Cons (AND THE DEMOCRATS) with all their HIT RUSSIA, PUNISH RUSSIA, DOWN WITH RUSSIA nonsense need to knock it off.




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Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good ...




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The above is a reply to the following message:
Are You Ready to Die?
By: Decomposed
in POPE IV
Mon, 15 May 17 12:47 AM
Msg. 25431 of 47202

Since I'm the one posting this editorial, I should probably state my thoughts: There's nothing wrong with American officials PLANNING a first strike on Russia. I hope we are developing such plans. We should be. Of course, I also hope that they're never implemented. But in the event that they are, I'd want them to be VERY well planned.

What would warrant a first strike? One such situation would be if we had proof that Russia was on the verge of launching one against us. If that were the case, I'd rather that we did it first. But we'd better be right. There's no room for error in something like that. 


May 13, 2017

Are You Ready to Die?

By Paul Craig Roberts
PaulCraigRoberts.org

In George Orwell’s 1949 dystopian novel, 1984, information that no longer is consistent with Big Brother’s explanations is chucked down the Memory Hole. In the real American dystopia in which we currently live, the information is never reported at all.

On April 26—16 days ago—Lt. Gen. Viktor Poznihir, Deputy Chief of the Main Operations Directorate of the Russian Armed Forces, stated at the Moscow International Security Conference that the Operations Command of the Russian General Staff has concluded that Washington is preparing a nuclear first strike on Russia.

See here, here, here, and here.
http://www.rt.com/news/386276-us-missile-shield-russia-strike/
http://www.fort-russ.com/2017/04/us-forces-preparing-sudden-nuclear.html
http://www.times-gazette.com/ap%20general%20news/2016/10/12/russia-china-to-mull-joint-response-to-us-missile-shield
http://themillenniumreport.com/2017/04/us-forces-preparing-sudden-nuclear-strike-on-russia-moscow-security-conference/

The Times-Gazett in Ashland, Ohio, was the only US print media that a Google search could turn up that reported this most alarming of all announcements. A Google search turned up no reports on US TV, and none on Canadian, Australian, European, or any other media except RT and Internet sites.

I have been unable to find any report that any US Senator or Representative or any European, Canadian, or Australian politician has raised a voice of concern.

No one in Washington got on the telephone to tell Putin that this was all a mistake, that the US was not preparing a nuclear first strike on Russia, or ask Putin how this serious situation could be defused.

Americans do not even know about it, except for my readers.

I would have expected at least that the CIA would have planted the story in the Washington Post, the New York Times, CNN, MSNBC, and NPR that General Poznihir was expressing his personal opinion, nothing to be taken seriously. But apparently, Americans and their European vassals are not to even know that such an accussation was made.

As I reported some time ago and more recently in my column about North Korea, the Chinese leadership has also concluded that the US intends a nuclear first strike against China.

Alone either Russia or China can destroy the US. If they act together, the destruction of the US would be redundant. What is the intelligence, if any, and morality, clearly none, of the US leadership that recklessly and irresponsibly invites Russia and China to preempt Washington’s attack on them with an attack on the US?

Surely not even insouciant Americans are so stupid as to think that Russia and China will just sit there and wait for Washington’s nuclear attack.

I lived through every stage of the Cold War. I participated in it. Never in my life have I experienced the situation where two nuclear powers were convinced that the third was going to surprise them with a nuclear attack.

I supported Trump because he, unlike Hillary, said he would normalize relations with Russia. Instead he has raised the tensions between the nuclear powers. Nothing is more irresponsible or dangerous.

We currently are in the most dangerous situation of my lifetime, and there is ZERO AWARENESS AND NO DISCUSSION!

How can this be? Putin has been issuing warnings for years. He has told the Western presstitute media on more than one occasion that they, in their dishonesty, are pushing the world to nuclear war. Putin has said over and over, “I issue warnings and no one hears.” “How do I get through to you?”

Maybe the morons will hear when mushroom clouds appear over Washington and New York, and Europe ceases to exist, as it will if Europe continues the confrontation with Russia as is required from Washington’s well-paid vassals.

Within the last several years I reported the Chinese government’s reaction to US war plans for a nuclear strike on China. The Chinese showed how their submarines would destroy the West Coast of the US and their ICBMs would finish off the rest of the country.

I reported all of this, and it produced no response. The Memory Hole wasn’t needed, as neither Washington nor the presstitutes nor the Internet noticed. This is insouciance to the thousandth degree.

In America and its subservient, crawling on their knees vassal states, the information never gets reported, so it never has to be put down the Memory Hole.

If you convince someone that you are going to kill them, they are going to kill you first. A government, such as what exists in Washington, that convinces powerful countries that they are targeted, is a government that has no respect whatsoever for the lives of its own people or the peoples of the world or for any life on planet Earth.

Such a government as Washington is evil beyond all measure, as are the media whores and European, Canadian, Australian, and Japanese vassal states that serve Washington at the expense of their own citizens.

Despite all their efforts to believe otherwise, the Russian and Chinese leaderships have finally arrived, belatedly, at the realization that Washington is evil to the core and is the agent of Satan.

For Russia and China, the Satanic Evil that rules in the West has reduced the choice for Russia and China to them or us.

http://lewrockwell.com/2017/05/paul-craig-roberts/are-you-ready-to-die/


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