This week:
1. Putin’s Warning;
2. New US Warship to Iran;
3. The Crisis of Europe: French Students Burn Their Schools
PLUS: America’s Barbaric Death Penalty.
Joe Lauria for Consortium News
Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned the world could face nuclear catastrophe if the West attacks the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad. Putin told the Valdai Club outside Moscow Thursday humanity has entered a “completely new and unprecedented reality.”
The historical changes underway aren’t fully understood, he said. But over the long run, the erosion of corrosive Western hegemony should create a more stable, democratic, and multipolar world order — but the transition is fraught with danger.
Putin said exceptional, narrow Western interests fuels the peril. The West forced Russia into a defensive war against Ukraine, its tool against Moscow. The war has escalated into NATO-backed attacks on Russian soil.
Putin warned that a direct attack on Kaliningrad, which is separated from mainland Russia by a land corridor, would immediately put “all the weapons” at Russia’s disposal.
“If it comes to direct attack on the Russian Federation, in this case, we mean Kaliningrad, maybe some other territories as well, of course, naturally, immediately, what will be on the agenda is the use by the Russian Federation of all weapons that are at the disposal of our country. It is unavoidable.”
Putin pointed to a Russian foreign ministry statement on Kaliningrad does not mention nuclear weapons. “It mentions, as I have just said, the use of all means and all forces at the disposal of our country and we’ll decide what it is,” Putin said.
“This escalation is based on arrogance and self conceit, and this is what pushes us to the edge of the abyss,” he said.
Putin also knows that the West will twist this warning into a threat. “What’s a different way to stand up to an aggressor? We’re not threatening anyone, but we’re just saying that we don’t have many tools of self defense.”
Iranian Quicksand
Meanwhile, Trump keeps making maniacal threats to destroy Iran, this time, if Teheran had anything to do with the attempt to hijack the Dubai-Tel Aviv jet. He talks a big game on Iran because he’s losing the big war with Iran with mid-terms a month away.
He’s in danger of also losing both Houses and of being impeached, if not convicted. He’s in danger of being humiliated before the whole world as a Big ‘L’ Loser.
So he sticks his chest out, Duce style, and proclaims: “Maybe I will, maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll kill you all or maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll decide to spare you.” A rank and unstable amateur coming to terms with ultimate power.
So he sends another aircraft carrier to Iran to keep up the illusion the U.S. has the upper hand in the conflict. That Trump can dictate to Iran. The Nov. 3 election will tell how many Americans are gullible enough to believe that.
Aux Barricades!
They are not so gullible in France, which has more or less kept the revolutionary spirit alive since 1789, give or take half the country’s collaboration with the Nazis. This week, Europe’s crisis of cutting off cheap gas from Russia to spite its face; of spiraling out of the control of the establishment parties; of mongering ever more loudly for war with Russia by 2030 – a Europe that sees the consequences of neglecting the most basic functions of government, such as providing education to its children.
So the students of France sat down in front of their schools, because they are falling apart, aren’t cooled aeren’t heated, don’t have enough teachers or books. They are defying a decrepit, corrupt, ancien Macron regime, the vain banker’s garcon.
And then the police were sent in with their teargas against teenagers. And the kids burned their schools so the stench reaches the nostrils of Monsieur Macron.
Meanwhile back in the U.S.A., there’s a woman on a ventilator, artificially being kept alive by the state after the state tried to artificially kill her. Their lethal injections, administered under the laws of Tennessee, failed to carry out the state’s official revenge, years after the crime.
To discuss all this are Patrick Henningsen, editor of 21st Century Wire, and former C.I.A. analyst Ray McGovern.
Forget Face the Nation. Get ready to face the facts on The World This Week.
Guests: Ray McGovern, Patrick Henningsen. Host: Joe Lauria. Producer: Cathy Vogan.