So Russia wants to invade Latvia. I learned today that NATO collectvely has 13 times the defence budget of Russia and are deplying their wespons (including nuclear) on Russia's border.
Who, exactly, is a threat to whom?
BBC
Whips up Anti-Russia Hysteria to Apocalyptic Levels
BBC
asks: How would you stop the Russkies?
Robert Bridge
8
February, 2016
Originally
appeared at RT
Once
again, Russia is being featured as Dr. Evil Incarnate, the villain
that regularly plays opposite peace-loving NATO nations, in a BBC
program that has Moscow initiating an invasion on Latvia followed up
with a nuclear strike on Britain.
And just
in time for the military-industrial shopping season.
Since
the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia has failed Western analysts
and political pundits in spectacular fashion. Despite a full-court
effort to portray Russia as a barbaric, land-grabbing nation obsessed
with the idea of restoring imperial real estate, Russia has
stubbornly refused to play along.
Why,
even dangling the fat bait of Ukraine before Russia's nose could not
get Moscow to react the way NATO had hoped it would.
In fact,
while NATO has been hot on the warpath against a number of
shell-shocked nations across the Middle East, Central Asia and North
Africa, Russia has gone to war on just one (1) occasion, and that was
against Georgia, and only after the egomaniacal leader of that tiny
Caucasian country tempted fate by stupidly poking the Russian bear
first.
Thus,
the BBC has apparently found it necessary to contrive an altered
state of reality, a veritable twilight zone, to convince its audience
of Russia’s ‘real’ intentions: The result is a military
contractor’s wet dream, an apocalyptic bunker buster, unsubtly
entitled ‘World War Three: Inside the War Room,’ that depicts a
sweat-inducing showdown between Russia and NATO and the beginning of
WWIII.
It's
probably safe to say I would not be playing plot spoiler by revealing
here that Russia has been typecast as the aggressor.
To
briefly summarize: After the Russian military rolls over little
Latvia for no good strategic reason whatsoever, British military
commanders and graying bureaucrats with furrowed brows huddle
themselves in a bunker, deciding whether to launch Trident missiles
at Russia in response.
The
Daily Mail breathlessly described the tax-payer paid performance as
“an utterly realistic 'war game'” which presents “deeply
troubling questions, not least with the current political row over
Government plans to spend £100 billion replacing our fleet of
Trident submarines.”
Eureka!
At the very same time UK military contractors are salivating over the
prospect of winning billion-dollar contracts to replace the Queen’s
collection of Trident nuclear-armed submarines, along comes a
state-funded scaremongering film, starring arch-villain Russia to
lend some credence to the initiative.
Russian
lawmaker Frants Klintsevich told the Russian News Service radio
station the film will give NATO an opportunity to remind member
states that they should crack open their tattered purses and boost
their military spending.
"They
[West] have always demonized Russia trying to show that it is
uncontrolled and non-European. As for what happens recently… we
qualified this a long time ago as an information war, a very serious
and a profound one," said Klintsevich, the first deputy chairman
of Federation Council’s committee on defense and security.
"Today
the US has a very serious problem of rearmament, the military and
industrial sector needs to get financing. A mechanism of the corrupt
American elite has been launched. This was in Iraq, is in Syria and
around Europe," the senator said.
Meanwhile,
the Kremlin has provided a tongue-in-cheek critique of the BBC film.
"Unfortunately,
our colleagues from the BBC have lately resorted to making public
products, of quite low-quality. Therefore, we haven't always been in
a hurry to familiarize ourselves with them," Russian
presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov told reporters when asked
whether the Kremlin has stayed up late to catch the film.
"It's
simply not worth the time it takes to watch," Peskov said.
On the
same day the BBC thriller was released, a report by the totally
unbiased Rand Corporation – invoking sexed-up memories of Saddam
Hussein’s alleged ability to strike the UK in 45 minutes - said
that it would take just 60 hours for Russia to occupy Estonia and
Latvia, and that's not taking into account Riga's rush-hour traffic.
"Across
multiple games using a wide range of expert participants in and out
of uniform playing both sides, the longest it has taken Russian
forces to reach the outskirts of the Estonian and/or Latvian capitals
of Tallinn and Riga, respectively, is 60 hours," Rand said in
its report.
"Such
a rapid defeat would leave NATO with a limited number of options, all
bad."
It might
be worth noting in closing that former RAND chief strategist, Herman
Kahn, once forwarded the insane idea of a "winnable"
nuclear exchange in his 1960 book ‘On Thermonuclear War.’
This led
to Kahn being the inspiration for the title character of Stanley
Kubrick's black comedy satire Dr. Strangelove.
As far
as the BBC's latest anti-Russia production goes, well, it's just
plain stra nge.
Thanks to ru.tube it is possible to watch the original programme
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