Voice of Russia
December 15, 2013
NATO’s claims to surround Russia are propaganda – Bruce Gagnon
John Robles
Audio
For the US/NATO Iran was the excuse for the missile shield that is being deployed to encircle Russia and North Korea is the pretense being used to encircle China. In both cases these are sheer fabrications and the recent agreement with Iran and NATO’s refusal to stop their missile installations with a new pretext of 30 countries that are a threat proves this fact. NATO’s claims are simply propaganda. NATO expansion into Ukraine, Finland, Georgia and other countries is clearly being done to encircle Russia with the end goal being destroying and Balkanizing Russia. Longtime worldwide peace activist Bruce Gagnon spoke to the Voice of Russia on these issues and more.
Hello, this is John Robles. I’m speaking with Mr. Bruce Gagnon. He is coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space.
Robles: Hello, sir!
Gagnon: Hello. How are you?
Robles: I’m very well, nice to be speaking with you. What is your opinion about what’s going on right now regarding the missile shield that was supposed to be designed to protect against an attack from Iran? There is no more threat from Iran and NATO has said, they are not going to stop building the thing. Now there is 30 other countries who, they are saying, “pose a threat”. What can you tell us about that?
Gagnon: I think the “Iran idea” was always hype. The US has clearly been aiming its missile defense system at two countries: one is Russia and the second one is China. And they have used Iran as the excuse for the one that’s today being deployed to encircle Russia and they’ve used North Korea as the pretense to use to encircle China.
And so in both those cases I think those have been sheer fabrications and as you say now that the nuclear threat from Iran is obviously (I don’t think it was there to start with but it is even less there now) after this agreement it’s clear that the United States never intended for it to be aimed at Iran and so now it has to come up with additional justifications as it continues to encircle Russia with missile defense.
Robles: What do you think about this new statement by NATO? This came out earlier today: “30 other countries that pose a threat” now.
Gagnon: It’s crap. It’s just pure BS. It’s NATO propaganda, it’s like everything else you hear from NATO – it’s propaganda and there is no other way to put it.
Robles: Where were these 30 countries two weeks ago, or a week ago, or a year ago, or five years ago? Unbelievable..I mean all of a sudden Iran is not a threat, there are 30 more.
Gagnon: Yeah. Well, you know the military industrial complex has made a lot of money by making people afraid of bogeyman and this is just another example.
When I was a kid, you know, I decided I wanted to be an FBI agent so I took a correspondence course and I learnt about FBI definitions and the one that I remember was modus operandi, every criminal has an “M.O.”, a way of repeating their actions.
And so today what we see with the military industrial complex which I consider a criminal syndicate, they have a way of operating, they have a way of repeating the same behavior over and over again.
They did the same thing with Crazy Horse, the great Lakota warrior was on the reservation in the late 1860s in South Dakota. He was inside his teepee he had had his horse taken away and he had had his guns taken away and the military industrial complex was finding that because of Indian Wars were dissolving “dying out” they weren’t making as much money.
So they had artists and writers create stories of Crazy Horse back on the warpath, attacking women and children, killing them, raping white women. And they planted these stories in the all the major newspapers on the East Coast of the US and of course the American people were outraged and they demanded that Congress do something quickly and they appropriated more money to fight Indian Wars when Crazy Horse was sitting inside of his teepee.
So they’ve been doing this for a long time in this country. They have it down to an art and now they are internationalizing that whole strategy by expanding NATO and drawing in NATO countries to help pay for this very expensive space warfare technology system, that by itself the US can’t afford.
And so by bringing the NATO allies into it now under a program that they call “interoperability” which means NATO allies buy a portion of it, they get to play with it a little bit but it all has to be run through the US satellite command-and-control system. And so this is the way that Pentagon is getting others to help pay for this program, it’s just more the same.
Robles: That’s a very interesting fact, I’d like to expand on it a little bit because it’s something that you don’t hear too much about in the media regarding the fact: a) That the EU is (in my opinion and I think not only in my opinion) the EU is used as a carrot for the stick of NATO that’s being held and controlled by the US. So anyone who bites on the EU, like Ukraine for example?
The EU doesn’t really need Ukraine, I mean, other than that – they might need resources or need to exploit it financially. But NATO needs Ukraine militarily. Regarding to what you were just saying, if you could give us a few more details on how NATO is exploiting member countries by telling them they are necessary and selling themselves and then…
Gagnon: Well, one of the first things they do when a country joins NATO is they make them buy a whole new generation of weapons systems (US version) because they have to fit, it’s like Legos, they have to fit together with the US military systems, so that they can be again, interoperable.
What we find is that as soon as a country becomes NATO affiliated they then have to begin to cut social spending, to move that money into military hardware acquisition, largely from the US, from Lockheed Martin, from the other big weapons corporations. So that they all can fit together in this global alliance.
So I think that’s what it is. And I know that right now the US is pushing hard to get NATO expansion into the Ukraine, into Finland, into Georgia. Clearly, the agenda is to encircle Russia. I’ve seen references to plans coming out of various think tanks in the US where Russia is Balkanized, in the way that Iraq is today being Balkanized, or Yugoslavia was Balkanized after the Kosovo war.
This is the larger plan of corporate capitalism today. Anybody that doesn’t submit to the full authority of corporate globalization must be taken apart and taken down. And if the military industrial complex can make a bunch of money doing that process; why not? All the better..So that is generally their strategy.
Robles: Can you clarify what did you mean on “Balkanization”?
Gagnon: Break it into pieces, break Russia into various pieces, geographical and ethnic pieces even, break it down.
The Soviet Union was obviously broken down and then following that with NATO expansion, Russia being surrounded. Get to the point where they can force internal division within Russia and begin to Balkanize it – breaking into pieces. Again that was the strategy of the Bush Administration was to break Iraq into three different countries: Sunni, Shia and Kurd, after US “shock and awe” invasion in 2001, essentially they created that program.
Robles: Brzezinski said, 68 republics were planned for Russia, way back when… Back to the Ukraine, how much from your side as an activist and someone who involved in this..How much US meddling “if I can call it what it is” do you see going on in Ukraine?
I mean we have the State Department threatening sanctions, we have… they are calling for, and I think this is unrepresented, for earlier elections, for the President to step down, when he merely made a decision to look to the East, where Ukraine would have been receiving in a seven year period somewhere over a hundred billion dollars in benefits for joining the Customs Union and one billion dollars for joining the EU. It’s a no-brainer. I mean for the country itself, but of course that president has to be gotten rid of. What moves do you see by the West in manipulating this situation?
Gagnon: I think that the US took a public relations hit when it lost on Syria and Iran. And much of my perception is, much of what came out in a positive war out of Syria and Iran. There was a major contribution by Russia. In terms of helping to negotiate those deals and make then happen.
I think the US is very bullying country, we don’t like anyone to get in our way when we have a plan or an agenda and for Russia to have kind of interceded particularly on Syria, I think the US is angry about that. And the US I think wants, like any bully, to punish someone, show them that they shouldn’t do this kind of things.
I don’t have any evidence of this, but again if you are talking about ‘modus operandi’, if you are talking about a way of working over time – what we see happening in the Ukraine, I would not doubt for a moment – is being assisted by the US’s CIA and money from other sources from within the US, from the government and from private sources.
I’m sure that a lot of young people in the Ukraine, a lot of unemployed people (whatever you know, I have some grievances with our government) I think every government today is in a position where is a lot of people unhappy with their particular government but I do think that the US is very likely heavily involved in what’s happening in the Ukraine.
Look at the size of the Ukraine, look at the geographical location of the Ukraine. It’s the prize that NATO really seeks and I think is out to get through the EU and through NATO membership itself.
That was the end of Part I of an interview with Bruce Gagnon, coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, You can find the next part of this interview on our website at Voiceofrussia.com.
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