NATO Simulating War Against Russia, Russia Threatens NATO Over Missile Shield, Israel Analysts Shocked By U.S. Position On Sanctions, S-300 Supply

NATO Simulating War Against Russia During Drills

During its military drills, NATO is increasingly often simulating the war with a conditional enemy understood as Russia instead of practicing anti-terror activities, Russian General Staff head Valery Gerasimov said Thursday.

Russian General Staff head said that the number of NATO exercises had almost doubled in 2014.

"While in previous years the issues of crisis settlement and counteraction to terrorism were central at drills, today the priority is military action against a simulated enemy, which could easily be guessed as the Russian Federation," Gerasimov said.

NATO accuses Russia of aggressive foreign policy to justify its own existence and expansion, head of the Russian General Staff said.

"Accusing Russia of aggressive policy on the post-Soviet space and the idea on the need of its [Russia's] containment have become the driving force of NATO."

The defense official added that NATO extensively used the crisis in Ukraine to stir up its activities.

The deployment of US anti-missile defense systems in Europe is yet another step of the United States and its allies at reaching global supremacy and destroying the current system of international security, Russian General Staff head Valery Gerasimov said Thursday.

During an international conference on security, Army General Gerasimov said that this was "one more significant military threats to the Russian Federation and is a growing problem in maintaining the strategic stability in the world."

"In line with this, the deployment of US global anti-missile defense systems is seen by us as an additional step by the United States and its allies to destroy the current system of international security in its striving for world domination."

Cruise missiles deployed by US naval ships threaten all Russian European territory, Valery Gerasimov said.

"Deployment of anti-missile systems is a breach on the part of the United States of one of the most important agreements ensuring strategic stability in Europe — the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty," he said at an international security conference.

Russia is expanding the potential of its military bases in Abkhazia, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan and other countries to maintain stability in these regions, Valery Gerasimov said.

"Within the framework of long-term agreements with Abkhazia, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and South Ossetia, the potential of Russian military bases, located on their territories, is being expanded. They [the Russian bases] are the main guarantor of security and strategic stability in these regions," the defense official said at an international security conference.

Russian strategic nuclear forces are maintained at a level that guarantees nuclear deterrence, Valery Gerasimov said.

"Modern missile systems that can effectively overcome the defense in depth enter service. Strategic bombers and submarines fleet is being modernized. The newest submarine missile cruisers are being enrolled."

The conference comes on the back of Russia's deteriorating relations with NATO over Moscow's alleged role in the Ukraine crisis and increased NATO presence in Eastern Europe.

Russia Threatens NATO Over Missile Shield

-Russia's top general warned European countries planning to host installations for a U.S.-led missile-defense shield that Russian forces would be forced to target them.

"Nonnuclear powers where missile-defense installations are being installed have become the objects of priority response," Gen. Valery Gerasimov said, referring to Poland and Romania.

The comments came at a defense conference in Moscow where a series of high-level Russian leaders repeatedly warned of perceived threats that the U.S. and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization posed to modern Russia.

Together, the speeches formed a fiery rebuke to the U.S., as the conflict in Ukraine has brought the worst relations between Moscow and Washington since the days of the Cold War.

Western leaders have said NATO's long-running project to build a missile defense shield in Europe aimed to deter an attack from Iran rather than Russia, a position the alliance reiterated Thursday.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said such assertions were a lie. "Today it is clear that the missile threat from Tehran that the U.S. and other countries of the alliance invented was a bluff," he said.

Mr. Shoigu also accused NATO of increasing the potential for war in Eastern Europe by practicing "the use of American tactical nuclear weapons deployed in several European countries."

Israel Analysts Shocked By U.S. Position On Sanctions, S-300 Supply

Israeli analysts expressed shock and amazement Friday night at US President Barack Obama’s stated openness to Iran’s demand for the immediate lifting of all economic sanctions, and his defense of Russia’s agreement to supply a sophisticated air defense system to Iran.

There was no immediate official Israeli response to the president’s comments, which were made after the start of Shabbat in Israel, when politicians generally do not work.

“Jaws dropped” around the studio, said the Channel 10 News diplomatic commentator Ben Caspit, as news broke of Obama’s declared empathy for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to supply Tehran with the S-300 missile defense system.

Channel 10 also quoted unnamed senior Israeli diplomatic officials saying the prospect of Israel derailing the deal taking shape in US-led talks with Iran on its nuclear program was now zero. “The Iran issue is finished,” the officials were quoted saying.

In Washington earlier on Friday, Obama said he was surprised that Russia’s suspension of missile sales to Iran had “held this long.”

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has furiously protested the planned supply of the advanced systems, and phoned Putin this week to try to persuade him to reconsider, but was rebuffed. Israel fears the S-300s would complicate any military intervention as a last resort to thwart Iran’s nuclear drive. It also fears Iran could supply the missile defense systems to Syria or Hezbollah, diluting Israel’s air supremacy over Syria and Lebanon.

Obama on Friday also left open the door to “creative negotiations” in response to Iran’s demand that punishing sanctions be immediately lifted as part of a nuclear deal, even though the US has said the framework agreement reached in Lausanne earlier this month calls for the penalties to be removed over time.

How Cash Is Being Outlawed

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Louisiana has moved to criminalize cash! That’s right, as you may have read on any number of websites this week, Louisiana’s state legislature has passed House Bill 195, which reads in part:

“A secondhand dealer shall not enter into any cash transactions in payment for the purchase of junk or used or secondhand property. Payment shall be made in the form of check, electronic transfers, or money order issued to the seller of the junk or used or secondhand property and made payable to the name and address of the seller.”

If this story seems familiar to you, then congratulations; you were probably paying attention when the bill was actually passed back in 2011. That’s right, in another example of that strange internet phenomenon by which a very old “news” story gets picked up as new news by one website and then copy-pasted around the internet, it looks like Louisiana’s anti-cash secondhand goods law just got recycled (appropriately enough) as a secondhand news story.

And why not? The story itself may be old, but it is part of an unfolding agenda to create a cashless society, an agenda that continues to this very day.

Do you remember when the Canadian government stopped allowing payment of taxes in cash at government service centers? Or when Passport Canada did the same?

How about when children’s game manufacturers started pumping out cashless versions of the Game of Life, Monopoly and other classics? Or when companies like IBM started pimping their vision of a cashless future in TV advertisements?

Or there’s the fact that London buses no longer take cash. Same in Sweden.

Did you catch when Visa chief Peter Ayliffe predicted the end of cash?

Or perhaps you’ve noticed that cash is getting increasingly more difficult to withdraw or even deposit into your bank account?

This is hogwash and propaganda, of course. As various sites pointed out with regard to the Louisiana story, the government moving to ban cash is a further encroachment on property rights and due process. It is also a move that disproportionately hurts the poor, who often have less access to banking services or credit/debit instruments. But perhaps more to the point, the future cashless society that the social engineers are trying to bring in is a world of total government surveillance. The government is already reading your emails and listening to your phone calls. Do you really want them correlating all of that data with the data of everything you ever purchase, and to keep all of that on file for the rest of eternity? No, I thought not.

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