Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered stark opening remarks before meeting with top defense officials and representatives of the Russian military/industrial complex in the annual review session. The meeting, which took place on Tuesday in Sochi, coincided with the announcement that the Russian defense budget for next year will be $49 billion, with $35 billion earmarked directly for Russian armed forces. By comparison, the US defense budget is 10-15 TIMES bigger; and two new US weapons programs — the F-35 new stealth fighter plane and the replacement ballistic missile-carrying submarines — are each more expensive than the entire Russian defense budget.

Putin focused his opening remarks on the threat to Russia posed by the US and allied global missile defense program. Putin said early in his remarks:

Putin noted that Washington persistently claimed that the ABM deployments were related to the danger from Iran, but the deployments continue even after the P5+1 deal. He concluded:

The fact that Putin did not elaborate on "the ensuing consequences" in no way watered down his direct message: Obama, like Bush and Cheney before him, is driving the world rapidly towards thermonuclear confrontation. Putin made clear that Russia is already preparing for such a confrontation by the very work that was the subject of the special annual session he was addressing.

Putin explained:

Putin noted, in concluding his opening remarks, that Russia has been working for the past three years on developing "a number of promising armament systems capable of performing combat missions in conditions of an anti-missile defense system in depth," noting the combat units have begun receiving such new weapons systems this year already.

Not everyone in the US and the West has missed the point. Stephen Blank, a senior fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council recently wrote an article titled, "The West Underestimates Putin at Its Peril." He began,

Julian Borger writing in the Guardian Nov. 10, brought the issue directly back to US nuclear weapons provocations against Moscow. Borger reported on recent warnings by former US Joint Chief of Staff Vice Chairman Gen. James Cartwright, who stated that the modernization of the US tactical nuclear weapons in Europe, the B-61 12, makes that weapon "usable," and this poses a grave danger of a slide into thermonuclear war. Cartwright told PBS "If I can drive down the yield, drive down, therefore the likelihood of fallout, etc., does that make it more usable in the eyes of some — some President or national security decision-making process? And the answer is, it likely could be more usable." Borger noted, "The great thing about nuclear weapons was that their use was supposed to be unthinkable, and they were therefore a deterrent to contemplation of a new world war. Once they become 'thinkable' we are in a different, and much more dangerous, universe."

The Washington Post reported yesterday that Colombia is going through an explosive expansion of cocaine production, with the latest available statistics showing a 44% increase in coca production between 2013-2014, and a projected 55% increase this year. It is anticipated that this will mean a flood of new, cheap cocaine hitting American markets in the immediate months ahead. There is already, according to both the CDC and the DEA, an epidemic expansion of heroin use in America, along with an equal expansion of methamphetamine and other synthetic drug abuse.

Lyndon LaRouche denounced this as part of the "New British Opium War on the Americas." Indeed, the evidence is all there that British agents, starting with Colombian President Santos and U.S. President Barack Obama, are willfully behind the dope offensive.

The first thing Santos did after winning the presidential election in June 2010, was fly to London to meet with Tony Blair, his long-time collaborator and mentor with whom he often consults. In November 2011, Santos told the London Observer that it was time to discuss legalizing marijuana and cocaine; he sent his Foreign Minister to a 3-day House of Lords planning session on the global legalization of narcotics production, use, and trade, coordinated by Lady Fieldings' Beckley Foundation; and then repeatedly championed "discussing" legalization during his Nov. 20-21, 2011 state visit to the U.K.

Santos is today the Obama administration's closest ally in Ibero-America, and drug legalization is at the center of it. Santos insisted that drug legalization be put on the agenda of the April 2012 Summit of the Americas in Cartegena, attended by President Obama, and Obama did not object. In September 2012, Santos announced that he had reached an agreement with South America's largest cocaine cartel, the FARC, to start formal peace negotiations. The White House backed the negotiations the same day, and Blair warmly welcomed them shortly thereafter. In February 2015, Obama appointed retired diplomat (and former Goldman Sachs advisor) Bernard Aronson as special envoy to the FARC-Santos government talks, in support of a deal.

Santos, in addition to his active promotion of dope legalization, created the preconditions for the cocaine explosion. He ordered a halt to the coca spraying eradication program, on "ecological" grounds, effectively shutting down the plan for collaboration between US and Colombian drug enforcement and military agencies. It was this action that facilitated the expansion of coca cultivation, and is now driving the surge in cocaine trafficking into the U.S.

 The Washington Post rationalized the coca expansion by claiming that the deal between Santos and the FARC is close to completion, with an expected deadline of March 23, 2016. Once the deal has been reached, the Post stupidly claims, the FARC — the biggest drug cartel in the country — will "voluntarily" end the cocaine production and allow farmers to engage in crop substitution; to be bankrolled by the U.S. Even the Post, after spinning this lie, had to admit it was far-fetched; and that, at best, it would take years before any crop substitution program would gain any traction.