The US does not recognise the Venezuela elections. Hmmm.... Isn't it strange that for a US administration which boasts of saving democracy, they have said nothing about the fact that Zelensky has failed to hold elections in the Ukraine in flagrant violation of that country's constitution. Now that he has exceeded his constitutional term of office without holding an election, Zelensky has effectively made himself a dictator. This great defender of freedom also thinks nothing of locking up his political opponents. However, there is a deathly silence in the west about all of this. Nobody is allowed to besmirch the reputation of the great hero who happily sends thousands of men to die on the frontline each day in his forever war bankrolled by western governments (i.e., me and you as tax payers folks) but primarily the US.
Already the western press are pointing the finger of suspicion at the Russians and Iranians over the arson attacks on the French rail network on the opening day of the Olympic Games in Paris. Could our favourite Zionist intelligence agency ("murder incorporated") have been behind these attacks I wonder? We really are living now in the dystopian nightmare
George Orwell depicted in his famous book
1984. Curiously that is also the year that the C's have said the Quorum last met to change direction (see above for earlier posts on this subject).
In addition to earlier members' comments as to how that year was a year of major change, I would add that this was also the year that Soviet leader
Yuri Andropov died. His death followed hard on the heels of the death of his immediate predecessor,
Leonid Brezhnev in 1982 and his own successor,
Konstantin Chernenko would die in 1985 paving the way for
Mikhail Gorbachev to usher in the era of 'glasnost'. These three aged Soviet leaders were all communist hardliners and it my understanding that Brezhnev had earmarked 1984 as the year the Soviets were meant to unleash an all out attack on Western Europe but fortunately he died before he could initiate it.
Indeed, it appears from official papers that in 1983, the United States and the Soviet Union did come dangerously close to nuclear war. That was the conclusion of a highly classified report issued in 1990 by the US President’s
Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, or PFIAB.
According to the PFIAB report, the death of ailing Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev in 1982 and the poor health of his successor, Yuri Andropov, who died in early 1984, raised doubts about whether or not the nation’s political leadership would be up to the task of making a timely decision about how to respond if a U.S. nuclear attack were detected. The report states that “
Soviet nuclear release authority during the war scare period (1980-1984) was held captive to the tumultuous series of leadership successions at the very top.”
By 1981, high-level Soviet officials had become seriously concerned that the United States might be planning to start a nuclear war. That May, Andropov, at the time the head of the KGB, announced a new joint KGB/GRU initiative – also termed VRYAN – that made the gathering of strategic military intelligence the two agencies’ top priority. It should also be kept in mind that the Soviets were at that time bogged down in their war of occupation in Afghanistan, which was draining their resources in much the same way that it would for the US during their occupation of that country in the first quarter of this century.
Soviet apprehensions about a surprise US nuclear attack continued throughout 1982 and became especially acute in 1983. According to the PFIAB report, “
there apparently was little doubt at the top of the Soviet intelligence services about where U.S. policy was heading.” KGB headquarters sent a new directive to its foreign residencies in February that re-emphasized the importance of detecting signs of an impending nuclear attack.
What made the war scare so dangerous was the risk that if the Soviets became sufficiently convinced that a U.S. attack was imminent, they would decide to strike first. Indeed, this would have been the most logical thing for them to do. This disturbing possibility is raised several times throughout the PFIAB report.
Fortunately, the 1983 war scare did not lead to a nuclear war, but the danger was quite real.
The PFIAB assessment, declassified only in late 2015, adds a lot to public understanding of this very frightening episode of the late Cold War, but there is still much about it that remains unknown. Researchers are still awaiting the declassification of a 1984
British intelligence assessment on the subject, and Russian archives that might shed light on it remain inaccessible.
For an in depth article on the PFIAB report (first published in 2019 and from which I have quoted above) see:
These Secret Reports How Show Close World War III Was in 1983
I would argue that we now find ourselves in a very similar situation to that in 2024 except this time the ailing leader is a US president and it is the west that is in headlong decline instead of the USSR. In comparison to the geo-political scene in 1984, we now have a resurgent Russia and the emergence of a formidable world economic and military power in China, which is set to eclipse the USA if it has not already done so. Hence, it is clear that over the last 40 years the tables have turned. How much the Quorum has had to do with this reversal and how much it is down to the crass stupidity and wishful thinking of western leaders and the greed of western bankers and multinational companies during this 40 year period is hard to tell. Perhaps Forum members may have their own views on this.
At the time of writing, Joe Biden has not stepped down as US President yet and his vice-president Kamala Harris is now fully engaged in an election battle with Donald Trump. This leaves the west in a very vulnerable position for the next six months or so. It is thus chastening to think that during this period the man with his finger on the nuclear button is a senile old man who is well beyond making any strategic decision on his own. Lord help us
.