Vucic: All signs point to a major war
The President of the Republic of Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic, interviewed by the Swiss weekly magazine Weltwoche – June 11, 2024
The rhetoric is getting worse by the day and reminds me of the phrase of a famous historian: ”The train has left the station and no one can stop it.”
If the Great Powers don’t do something soon, yeah, I’m pretty sure we’re going to be in for a real disaster.
If you bet that someone is bluffing, it means that you don’t have better hands. You just think that the other person has weaker cards. You are not sure about it because you do not know and have not seen its leaves. I am always very cautious and cautious when assessing Putin’s wishes or potential future move.
What further complicates the situation is that everyone is only talking about war. No one seeks peace. Nobody is talking about peace. Peace is almost a forbidden word!
It is very strange to me that no one is trying to stop the war. There is a different theory – which I can understand.
I’m not saying I approve – that the West thinks they can easily defeat Putin, they want to exhaust him in Ukraine and then they will enter the space and Russia with its current territory will no longer exist and Putin will be overthrown etc. Maybe to be possible, but….
Why do I say that we walk beside the brink of the abyss? Analyze the situation of NATO and the USA. They cannot afford to lose the Ukraine war.
Second, the position of Europe and the collective West in geopolitical terms will deteriorate so much that no one will be able to regenerate and renew it.
Third, this will open a Pandora’s box for more movements and hostilities against the collective West in the future. But take the other side. If Putin loses the war, he will (first) personally lose everything. (Second) He will not have the reputation of someone who created a common denominator for Ivan, Peter the Great and Catherine the Great.
And thirdly, Russia will not exist nor will it have its present form. And then when you have these two sides so far apart in terms of their wants and their expectations, then you see that everything is at stake!
Everything. No one can afford to lose. When you have this situation, we are probably approaching a real disaster. And then we come to another question. Who is ready to lose 1 million, 2 million, 5 and 10 million people? Ask yourself. I am not ready to lose a single person. And we will not participate in it. But that is a question for others.
I can’t say World War III, but I don’t think we’re far from that big conflict! No more than 3-4 months! And there is a risk that it will happen even sooner.
In Europe, the leaders act like big heroes, but they are not honest and they don’t tell their citizens that they will all pay a big price if it comes to war.
The world is changing even though we don’t want to accept and admit it, but it is indeed changing on a daily basis and much faster than ever before. And when you have these kinds of conflicting interests, then you come close to big conflicts and big wars. And I don’t see how anyone can stop it.
I’d like to see it more than anything to be honest. Today I was checking the data regarding our stocks of oil, flour, sugar, salt and everything because I don’t know what tomorrow will bring for all of us.
EU now at a crossroads: Reform or self-destruction
By Martin Jay | Strategic Culture Foundation | June 13, 2024
The EU has just experienced a monumental change, following years of failed immigration policies, which has ushered in a massive number of far-right MEPs in the more powerful EU member states. It’s too early to say whether this will make too much of a change to policy decisions at the highest echelons of the European Union but certainly the European Parliament itself is, possibly for the first time ever, going to be an interesting place with now a quarter of all of the 720 MEPs coming from far-right groups.
Traditionally most people who voted in EU elections were stalwart supporters of the project and the ethos of one Europe united by a policy of free movement of goods, services and people and, for many, a single currency. The few who voted against the mainstream parties – the main bloc made up of Christian democrats and socialists – were those who wanted to use their vote as a throw-away gesture to send a signal to their own elites that they want change. That protest vote in the past was always very small as the EU elite in Brussels always benefited from a voting system which was tilted in their favour. But no more.
The European Parliament, which most sceptics considered to be a fake assembly whose only real role is to rubber stamp draft legislation from either the powerful European Commission or member states (via the European Council), could now become suddenly relevant to the whole project. For the last five years, there has only been two Irish MEPs to take the floor and tackle the European Commission head on, on its genocide in Gaza or its phoney war in Ukraine. But now something like 180 MEPs will use their two minutes speaking time to tackle the commission on its failed foreign policy, immigration and trade deals with China, for example. The Ukraine war could be a central theme which will probably be a thorn in the side of the European Commission and its chief – whoever that might be as, despite supporting statements from the Christian Democratic group in the European parliament, it is not a certainty that Ursula von der Leyen will return as Commission chief.
If she succeeds and stays on as EU Commission president, she will have a tough time in parliamentary plenary sessions as Europe’s biggest countries – who pay the most into the EU budget – have picked up the most far-right seats. Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National scored the most decisive victory, winning 30 of the country’s 81 seats, and more than double the votes of President Emmanuel Macron’s Renew party. That political slaughter pushed Macron to call a snap election. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy won 24 seats and increased her share of the national vote, and the Alternative for Germany (AfD) came second in Germany and snapped up 15 seats. Presently the AfD doesn’t have a pan-European group to align itself to and, under EU rules, benefit from huge amounts of cash from the EU parliament as it was kicked out of one of the two ‘groups’, prompting fears that it will create one itself and invite others to join it. In the European parliament both France’s and Italy’s far-right MEPs are in different groups, but in reality, when it comes to voting, for sure there will be a unified policy on most issues which will give them leverage with the European Commission that we have never seen in the short history of the EU.
It’s important to note that far-right parties topped the polls in Austria and Hungary, too, with important gains in Spain and Cyprus. All of these countries have one thing in common: real immigration problems which neither the mainstream political groups nor the EU has addressed.
But the real issue is the identity and survival of the European Union itself as this shake-up is certainly going to threaten the traditional power structure. Ursula von der Leyen represents the old guard and everything which is wrong with the EU: deluded, outdated views run by elitists who believe the only solution to the EU’s power problem is to take more. Unlike President Macron who wisely stated to the press that the far-right votes were a message which he is listening to, von der Leyen’s statements were more about fighting the new threat.
Behind the Myth of “Billions in Arms” Flowing into Ukraine
By Brian Berletic – New Eastern Outlook – 13.06.2024
In a June 8, 2024, Bloomberg article titled, “Putin Is Running Out of Time to Achieve Breakthrough in Ukraine,” an optimistic prognosis was made regarding the ongoing conflict in Ukraine in favor of Kiev.
The article claims that Russia has made “limited progress” along the line of contact, including along the newly-opened front in Kharkov and that as “billions in arms start flowing” into Ukraine, Ukrainian forces will be given the opportunity to “counter-attack.”
The “billions in arms” Bloomberg cites refers to the renewed flow of US military assistance after months of delays in passing funding in the US Congress. However, recalling the flagging impact of US arms transfers to Ukraine even before the funding delays, and a closer look at the actual quantities associated with these packages versus Russian military production, tells an entirely different story.
Bloomberg claims that the renewed flow of US arms is eroding Russia’s military advantage. However, this is simply not true.
Artillery Shells
The most recent US arms package featured, among other items, badly needed 155mm artillery shells and anti-tank weapons including the vaunted Javelin missile. Missing from the Pentagon’s public press release, were the quantities these weapons and munitions were being sent in.
It is well-known that US and European artillery shell production falls short of Russia’s by several times. A May 2024 Business Insider article puts the number of Russian shells produced this year at 4.5 million, while the US and Europe combined amount to only 1.3 million.
The prospect of Western shell production drastically increasing to match or even exceed Russian production numbers is unrealistic, according to a June 7, 2024 Bloomberg article titled, “America’s War Machine Can’t Make Basic Artillery Fast Enough.”
In the Bloomberg piece, various factors are mentioned ranging from limited material inputs, a lack of trained human resources, the need to vastly expand the physical production sites producing both the shells themselves and their various individual components, as well as the need to consistently procure funding to expand each of these factors. All of this takes time.
The article claims that by 2025, the US should be producing up to 68,000 155mm artillery shells a month. Even if Europe was able to match these production numbers, it would represent only two-thirds of Ukraine’s monthly requirements to achieve its 6,000 round daily rate of fire, which still falls far short of Russia’s daily rate of fire, placing Ukraine at a disadvantage.
Artillery shell production is relatively straightforward compared to more advanced weapons Ukraine also desperately requires. This includes anti-armor weapons like the Javelin missile.
Javelin Anti-Tank Missiles
Once hailed as a “game changer” by the collective Western media, the Javelin is now rarely mentioned either in headlines or even buried deep within articles. The missiles were passed over to Ukraine by the thousands during the initial phases of the Russian Special Military Operation (SMO), up to 7,000 or about one-third of the US’ total inventory according to the US government and arms industry-funded Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in late 2022.
Since then, Lockheed Martin, which produces the Javelin missile, claims to have expanded production by up to 15% in a 2024 release, producing up to 2,400 missiles per year or about 200 per month.
2,400 missiles are not being sent entirely to Ukraine each year. The missiles and less numerous command launch units (CLU) that fire them are required by the US, other NATO members, and other Lockheed customers around the globe. But let’s assume for a moment all 2,400 missiles are sent to Ukraine each year, and because US stockpiles are at critical levels, let’s assume Ukraine is sent Javelins drawn from this monthly production.
Does this mean that each month, 200 Russian tanks will be damaged or destroyed, adding up to 2,400 a year? No. According to the US Army’s own studies, even trained US soldiers have a 19% hit rate while utilizing Javelin, TOW, and AT-4 systems, all of which the US has sent to Ukraine throughout the SMO.
This means that even if Ukraine was receiving 200 missiles a month and firing them at Russian armored vehicles, they would be scoring only about 38 hits a month. Out of those 38 hits, fewer still would result in significant damage or complete destruction.
Comparing these overly optimistic numbers with Russian tank and other armored vehicle production puts this into better context.
According to a March 2024 CNN article discussing Russian military production, it admits Russia is producing up to 125 tanks a month. Other Western sources claim Russia also produces up to 250 other armored vehicles per month, for a total of 375 armored vehicles a month.
Compare that with the 38 hits Ukraine would be able to inflict even if the US sent every single Javelin produced straight to Ukraine each month. Russia is producing far more armored vehicles than the US is producing Javelin missiles to destroy them. The story is the same for other anti-armor weapon systems produced across the West (e.g. 1,000 TOW missiles produced per year), all of which face depleted stockpiles and low monthly production rates.
Considering that the number of Javelin missiles and other ordnance sent to Ukraine will be far less in reality than total monthly production, we begin to see the true measure of US (and European) military assistance and how the “billions in arms” now flowing to Ukraine do not represent a significant change in Ukraine’s ability to slow, let alone stop Russian forces as they continue mounting pressure not only along the existing front, but opening entirely new fronts, creating a wider strategic dilemma for Ukraine, stretching an already insufficient amount of manpower, equipment, and ammunition even further.
Empty Rhetoric
Despite Bloomberg discounting its “Putin is Running Out of Time” article with its “America’s War Machine Can’t Make Basic Artillery Fast Enough” article, it and other Western publications’ attempts to convince audiences that the tide is about to shift in Ukraine’s favor is a repeat of this same empty rhetoric used to sell Ukraine’s 2023 “counteroffensive” as poised to shift the conflict.
In reality, the 2023 Ukrainian military operation was soundly defeated by Russian forces who not only decimated Ukraine’s manpower, equipment, and ammunition stocks, but managed to bolster its own numbers and capabilities in the process.
Ukrainian attempts to claw back territory it has recently lost in Kharkov will lead to the same fruitless conclusion its 2022 and 2023 offensives did, a questionable chance of actually taking the territory for a guaranteed severe cost in irreplaceable trained manpower and equipment.
Today’s headlines across the West portending the tide changing in the fighting across Ukraine represent a now familiar cycle of encouraging Ukraine to fight on in what is otherwise an unwinnable conflict inflicting an immense and indelible cost on Ukraine in terms of territory, human lives, and economic prospects well into the future.
But as has been pointed out many times before, feeding Ukraine into an unwinnable proxy war had been a US objective articulated as early as 2019 in RAND Corporation’s paper, “Extending Russia,” which stated:
Expanding U.S. assistance to Ukraine, including lethal military assistance, would likely increase the costs to Russia, in both blood and treasure, of holding the Donbass region. More Russian aid to the separatists and an additional Russian troop presence would likely be required, leading to larger expenditures, equipment losses, and Russian casualties. The latter could become quite controversial at home, as it did when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan.
But warned:
However, such a move might also come at a significant cost to Ukraine and to U.S. prestige and credibility. This could produce disproportionately large Ukrainian casualties, territorial losses, and refugee flows. It might even lead Ukraine into a disadvantageous peace.
Obviously, even in 2019, US policymakers realized Ukraine would not win a US-sponsored proxy war against Russia. The actual objective was to raise the cost of Russian victory high enough to undermine Russia’s economy, divide Russian society, and perhaps even eventually precipitate a Soviet Union-style collapse. While RAND’s predictions of Ukraine’s destruction amid such a proxy war have clearly come to pass, the supposed “benefits” of this policy have yet to avail themselves and do not appear even plausible at this juncture.
Thus, Western rhetoric about Ukraine’s soon-to-be good fortune is not based on genuine analysis of the ongoing conflict, but is instead a point of propaganda aimed at encouraging Ukraine to fight on despite all actual analysis warning of the disaster awaiting in doing so.
Only time will tell just how far this process plays out to where the US and its partners are no longer pushing Ukraine onto the battlefield and are instead taking to the negotiation table. In the meantime, the “billions in arms” flowing into Ukraine will continue to have the same impact they’ve had all along, ensuring “disproportionately large Ukrainian casualties, territorial losses, and refugee flows,” ultimately leading Ukraine “into a disadvantageous peace.”
Fauci’s institute hid mpox gain-of-function plans from Congress and the media
By Emily Kopp | U.S. Right To Know | June 11, 2024
For nearly nine years Anthony Fauci’s institute concealed plans to engineer a pandemic capable mpox virus with a case fatality rate of up to 15 percent, congressional investigators revealed in a new report Tuesday.
In June 2015, a scientist at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases received formal approval from the National Institutes of Health’s Institutional Review Board for experiments expected to engineer an mpox virus with high transmissibility and moderate mortality.
NIAID — the institute Fauci oversaw for nearly four decades and which underwrites most federally funded gain-of-function research — concealed the project’s approval from investigators with the House Committee on Energy and Commerce over the course of a 17 month-long investigation.
A new interim report describes the obstruction and secrecy around the mpox proposal as a case study in how the institute “oversees and accounts for the monitoring of potentially dangerous gain-of-function research of concern.”
The revelations land amid global concerns about whether coronavirus gain-of-function research — research that might generate pathogens with increased pathogenicity or transmissibility — may have contributed to the worst pandemic in a century.
The committee, in conjunction with the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, is also investigating coronavirus gain-of-function research underwritten by NIAID at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and faces similar stonewalling in that investigation, a committee aide said.
NIAID’s lack of transparency surrounding the proposed mpox experiment for nearly a decade undermines Fauci’s assurances at a congressional hearing last week that any biosecurity breach at the Wuhan lab could not have any connection to his former institute. Investigators continue to pursue documentation from EcoHealth Alliance, an NIAID contractor whose funding was recently suspended for failing to properly oversee coronavirus experiments exported to Wuhan.
Mpox, formerly known as monkeypox, caused a public health emergency in the U.S. from August 2022 to February 2023. It is endemic in Africa. The more deadly clade circulates in Central Africa (clade I) while the more transmissible clade circulates in West Africa (clade II). Mpox has infected more than 20,000 people and caused more than 1,000 deaths in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where clade I predominates, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — though some experts believe that is an undercount of true cases. A strain of the clade II virus drove the American outbreak.
The mpox experiment first came to light in a September 2022 article in Science.
The gain-of-function project proposed by NIAID virologist Bernard Moss would splice genes conferring high pathogenicity from the clade I virus into the more transmissible clade II virus. The new “chimeric” (combined) virus could have retained up to a 15 percent fatality rate and a 2.4 reproductive number, a measure of transmissibility indicating every sick person could infect up to 2.4 people on average, giving it pandemic potential.
The committee’s attempts to learn more about the experiment were met with stonewalling.
NIAID maintains the experiment was never conducted, but has never provided any contemporaneous documents to support that claim such as emails or lab notebooks, according to the committee’s report.
The lack of engagement from NIAID, the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Health and Human Services does not comport with the idea the experiment was never conducted and that there is nothing to hide, according to the committee.
HHS and NIH misled congressional investigators for nearly a year and a half, falsely denying that Moss had obtained formal approval for this gain-of-function experiment.
The committee launched its investigation in October 2022 but was only permitted to view key documents in camera in March 2024, which confirmed NIH’s formal approval of the experiment.
The committee lays blame with officials at NIAID, who fund most federally underwritten gain-of-function research, have the subject matter expertise, and may have misled their bosses at HHS and NIH.
For months NIAID and Moss had reported to the committee that the mpox experiment had not moved forward and that Moss had simply been spitballing with the Science reporter in 2022 without serious intention.
However amid the committee’s investigation in May 2023 an approval from the Federal Select Agent Program for a chimera involving both clade I and clade II of the mpox virus was revoked.
NIAID also misled Science and STAT News in saying the gain-of-function mpox experiment was never approved, according to the committee.
Committee aides say they will continue to press for full accountability and transparency, and hope for a culture change at NIAID away from secrecy under new leadership.
Fauci retired after 38 years as the head of NIAID in December 2022; Jeanne M. Marrazzo now serves as director of the institute. Former NIH Director Francis Collins retired in December 2021; Monica Bertagnolli now serves as director of the NIH.
The revelations also come amid a debate about the future of gain-of-function research regulation.
New policy unveiled last month by the White House Office and Science and Technology Policy maintains a largely self-regulatory framework, vesting the responsibility for initiating increased regulation with the researchers and funding agencies such as NIAID.
The vast majority of gain-of-function research that could generate epidemic and pandemic capable viruses is likely to be exempted from more rigorous scrutiny under the new protocols, according to the committee.
Many of the world’s most public virologists have dismissed the theory that the COVID-19 pandemic may have resulted from a lab accident as a conspiracy theory and have chafed at the idea that the work should be regulated by an outside agency, subject to public input or not pursued at all.
That culture extends to NIAID, too, according to the committee’s investigators, who have also uncovered that top administrators may have illegally evaded federal record retention and transparency law.
Concerns were raised by a committee aide that NIAID exerted undue influence at OSTP to preserve the laissez-faire status quo.
“The new OSTP policy continues to give funding agencies, like NIAID, primary responsibility for oversight of GOFROC and DURC experiments involving potentially dangerous pathogens,” the committee’s report reads. “In almost any other scientific field or industry, this arrangement would be immediately recognized as a conflict of interest, necessitating independent review and oversight.”
Policy improvements suggested by the committee’s report include codifying public input through a community oversight board, which already exist for high-containment biosafety level four laboratories, as well as moving final approval for gain-of-function research out of NIAID.
According to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, the number of labs capable of growing orthopoxviruses like mpox and smallpox from scratch currently stands at less than 100, but could increase significantly as DNA synthesis and engineering techniques improve and become cheaper.
Joe Biden’s Time Interview Should Set Off Alarms
By Ted Snider | The Libertarian Institute | June 12, 2024
On May 28, U.S. President Joe Biden gave an interview to Time. His delivery and content were concerning for a number of reasons. Biden, at times, seemed misinformed and detached from reality. Sometimes, he seemed off message; other times, he seemed convinced by his own talking points. But four answers he gave were especially alarming and deserve to be highlighted.
The first was Biden’s assertion that America is “the world power.” The truth of that claim can be debated, but making that claim is deaf to the changes taking place in the world. Much of the world is angry at the United States for substituting leadership in the global community of international law with the imposition of an inconsistent and hypocritical rules-based order.
If the United States is still the world power, then a multipolar world that includes a rapidly growing BRICS+ and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization is closer and closer on its heels. Biden seems not to have noticed what his CIA director has: that the world is in one of “those times of transition that come along a couple of times a century. Today the United States still has a better hand to play than any of our rivals, but it is no longer the only big kid on the geopolitical bloc. And our position at the head of the table isn’t guaranteed.”
In a disturbing defense of his claim, Biden said that “the reason why I cleared the intelligence so we can release the information we knew that [Putin] was going to attack, was to let the world know we were still in charge. We still know what’s going on.”
It is disturbing that Biden says that he released the intelligence, not to alert and protect Ukraine or to prevent war, but “to let the world know we were still in charge.” It is also disturbing that the United States had that intelligence, and knew Ukraine was about to be attacked, but did nothing to prevent it. Hawkishly, they could have massively armed Ukraine prior to the invasion. More rationally and responsibly, they could have seriously engaged Vladimir Putin on Russia’s December 2021 proposal on security guarantees and discussed a promise that Ukraine would not be invited into NATO. Sociologist Volodymyr Ishchenko of Freie University in Berlin remarks that the United States failing to act on that intelligence in either of those ways “looks sort of strange, and of course very tragic for Ukraine.” It is disturbing that the U.S. impotently released the intelligence, not to prevent war and protect Ukraine, but to show the world that they are still “the world power.”
The second is Biden’s insistence that Putin has clearly stated his intention not to stop at Ukraine but to “reestablish the Soviet Union.” He pulled out a copy of Putin’s February 21, 2022 speech, repeatedly mocking his interviewers, “You probably haven’t read it.” But as Biden explains it to them, and summarizes it as saying “Ukraine is not a neighboring country” but “an inalienable part” of Russia, it begins to sound like Biden has not read the speech, which is highly critical of the Soviet Union.
Discussing the “critical” stage “the situation in Donbas has reached,” Putin references the closeness of the people of Donbas not to justify integrating or conquering them but to justify protecting them. If Biden has read the speech, it must have been a heavily redacted version. As Nicolai Petro, author of The Tragedy of Ukraine, pointed out to me, Biden selectively quotes from the speech while leaving much of contextual importance out.
Biden quotes that Putin “has just laid out, straight out. He said, he said, ‘I would like to emphasize again, Ukraine is not a neighboring country of us. It is an inalienable part of our own history, culture and spiritual space.’” But he then omits, “These are our comrades, those dearest to us—not only colleagues, friends and people who once served together, but also relatives, people bound by blood, by family ties.” Biden picks up Putin’s speech with “Since time immemorial, the people living in the south-west of what has historically been Russia, Russian land have called themselves Russians and Orthodox Christians,” but omits the qualifier, “This was the case before the 17th century, when a portion of this territory rejoined the Russian state, and after.”
Nowhere in Biden’s edited quotation, nor elsewhere in the speech, does Putin hint at going beyond Ukraine and reestablishing the Soviet Union.
As Petro pointed out to me, when addressing Biden’s accusation about “restor[ing] the Soviet Union,” Putin said, “the page has been turned. We look to the future based on the realities of today. There is no need to invent anything and form an opinion about Russia based on these ideas, there is no need to form an image of an enemy from Russia.” He called the “thought that Russia wanted to attack NATO” “nonsense.”
The third alarming answer that Biden gave came when the interviewer asked him if a Russian proposal to end the war is the best Ukraine can hope for when the United States finds itself “facing a difficult situation in Ukraine,” when “the war is stalled,” and when so many Ukrainians are being killed or wounded. Biden accused the interviewer of “skipping over all that’s happened in the meantime,” insisting that “[t]he Russian military has been decimated. You don’t write about that. It’s been freaking decimated.”
They don’t write about that because it’s not true. Biden’s answer is disconnected from reality. After a poor beginning, Russia has improved its battlefield strategy and its methods of dealing with Western supplied weapons and has fought effectively. The war seems to have decisively turned in Russia’s favor. Russia is gaining some ground, and Ukraine is losing huge numbers of soldiers to injury or death.
Far from being decimated, General Christopher Cavoli, the commander of United States European Command and Supreme Allied Commander Europe has reported to Congress that “the Russian ground force…is bigger today than it was at the beginning of the conflict.” He added, “Much of the Russian military has not been affected negatively by this conflict…despite all of the efforts they’ve undertaken inside Ukraine.” On April 3, Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said, “We have assessed over the course of the last couple of months that Russia has almost completely reconstituted militarily.”
On April 11, General Cavoli explained the Russian army is reconstituting “far faster” than initially projected and that “[t]he army is actually now larger—by 15 percent—than it was when it invaded Ukraine” and that it is growing by 30,000 soldiers a month. Rather than being decimated, Cavoli reported that Russia is on track to “command the largest military on the continent.”
The fourth answer was, perhaps, the most confused and alarming. When asked what the “endgame” was in Ukraine, Biden seems to have answered that the endgame was a Ukraine that is not in NATO. Biden said peace means making sure Russia never occupies Ukraine. But that, he said, “means we have a relationship with them like we do with other countries, where we supply weapons so they can defend themselves in the future.” But that relationship, he explained, “doesn’t mean NATO.” He then explained that “I was the one when—and you guys did report it at Time—the one that I was saying that I am not prepared to support the NATOization of Ukraine.”
In his confusing and surprising response, Biden seems to say that the American security arrangement with Ukraine will be that of a partner supplying weapons so they can defend themselves and not of an ally in NATO.
That last response was only the most alarming of several alarming responses that either come as a surprise or seem misinformed or disconnected from reality.
Orbán strikes deal with NATO, Hungary will not be forced to participate in military action in Ukraine nor finance the war
Remix News | June 12, 2024
At a press conference following the meeting between Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, Hungary walked away with guarantees that it will be allowed to maintain its pro-peace stance.
“Today we have received guarantees that in the case of the Ukraine-Russia war, we will not have to take part in any military action outside the territory of Hungary and that Hungary will not give money to this common burden, nor will it send men to this war, nor will Hungary’s territory be used for the purpose of joining this war. We have been granted everything that we have found necessary,” announced Orbán.
He added that Hungary continues to be an active participant in NATO operations, highlighting the 1,300 Hungarian soldiers on NATO missions; air policing activities in Slovakia, Slovenia, and the Baltic states; and its role as a liaison across Central Asia and Africa.
For his part, Secretary General Stoltenberg reiterated Hungary’s right to autonomy while also guaranteeing that Orbán will in no way stand in the way of other NATO members’ decisions to become more involved in the conflict.
“Prime Minister Orbán has made it clear that Hungary will not participate in these NATO efforts, and I accept this position. (…) No Hungarian personnel will take part in these activities, and no Hungarian funds will be used to support them. At the same time, the prime minister has assured me that Hungary will not oppose these efforts, enabling other allies to move forward,” stated the NATO secretary general.
Throughout this conflict, Orbán has maintained the position that Hungary, as a NATO member, is under no obligation to send troops or facilitate military operations on the ground in any way. Today, Secretary General Stoltenberg confirmed this, stating:
“It’s not a NATO obligation to participate in all NATO missions and operations or activities, as long as all NATO allies adhere to the core obligations in the Washington Treaty, our collective defense, our security guarantees.”
Delivery of jets to Kiev was ‘illegal’ – NATO member
RT | June 12, 2024
The previous government in Bratislava had no right to donate the Soviet-era MiG-29 warplanes to Kiev, State Secretary of the Slovak Ministry of Defense Igor Melicher has said.
In March 2023, the interim government of Prime Minister Eduard Heger authorized the delivery of 13 MiG-29s, according to the Slovak national broadcaster TASR. The new government led by Robert Fico has since requested a legal review of the shipment.
“The MiG-29 fighter jets were delivered to Ukraine illegally,” Melicher wrote on Facebook on Tuesday. He added that the Defense Ministry is “preparing a legal action.”
Melicher made his statement after ombudsman Robert Dobrovodsky, who was tasked with reviewing the delivery of the aircraft, revealed that the government has failed to find the required legal analysis of the possibility of donating the MiG-29s to Kiev.
“The ministry recently told me that it was trying to comply with the request and find the analysis. However, it said that neither it nor any of its branches had the analysis at their disposal,” Dobrovodsky told TASR on Tuesday. “It also stated that the analysis isn’t even registered in its databases in any form.”
Melicher has argued that Heger’s caretaker government had no right to make final decisions on delivering the planes abroad. “The Constitution forbids an interim government to take major steps in foreign policy, and sending fighter jets worth more than €500 million ($537 million) is certainly such a step,” he wrote.
Prime Minister Robert Fico, who survived an assassination attempt by a pro-Ukrainian activist last month, has opposed sending arms to Kiev and insisted that the conflict should be resolved through diplomacy.
Defense Minister Robert Kalinak has also criticized his predecessor, saying in May that the previous government had acted “in the most irresponsible way when it handed over [the weapons] that we needed for our own safety.”
Kiev has been pressing its Western backers to expedite the planned delivery of US-made F-16 fighters. Politico magazine reported this month that Ukrainian officials were “frustrated” with how the existing training programs in the US and other countries had not been producing enough pilots for the F-16s.
Russia, for its part, has warned that no amount of Western military aid would deter its military operation in the neighboring state.
China Intercepts Dutch Chopper Near Shanghai, Lambasts Netherlands for Provocation
By Sergey Lebedev – Sputnik – 11.06.2024
People’s Liberation Army fighter jets escorted a Dutch helicopter that violated Chinese airspace under the auspice of a UN mission. Beijing warned the Netherlands to avoid such incidents in the future.
The Dutch military has created a dangerous situation in the East China Sea after using a UN mission as a cover, Chinese Ministry of Defense representative Zhang Xiaogang has said.
He added that Beijing urges the Netherlands to limit any activities of their armed forces in the region and vowed decisive counter-measures in response to provocations near China’s territory.
The statement came in response to Amsterdam saying that one People’s Liberation Army helicopter and two fighter jets had approached a helicopter assigned to a Dutch frigate in the East China Sea.
The Dutch claimed that the incident happened in international airspace and that the vessel was overseeing the implementation of a UN Security Council resolution on North Korea sanctions. Beijing debunked these claims, explaining that the helicopter assigned to the Tromp-class frigate of the Royal Netherlands Navy entered its airspace east of Shanghai.
The command of the People’s Liberation Army had to use its fighter jets to expel the helicopter from the area after warning its crew.
“[These steps] were legal and purposeful, everything was done professionally and according to standards. It is the Netherlands not China who created the dangerous situation,” Zhang underlined.
He added that the Netherlands had used the UN mission as a pretext for power projection in regions that are under the jurisdiction of other countries.
“Dutch statements and activities have a malevolent nature, we condemn them and we’ve sent a demarche,” he stressed, adding that China will take decisive countermeasures on any future violations or provocations.
Russia ready to strike NATO airfields hosting Ukrainian jets – MP
RT | June 10, 2024
F-16 fighter jets and any airfields they are based at will be legitimate targets for the Russian military if they participate in combat missions against Moscow’s forces, the chairman of the Russian State Duma Defense Committee, Andrey Kartapolov, has warned.
The comments come as Kiev prepares to receive the first delivery of US-made fighter jets from its Western backers, after Ukrainian pilots were trained to fly them.
In a statement to RIA Novosti published on Monday, Kartapolov clarified that if the F-16s “are not used for their intended purpose” or are simply held in storage at foreign airbases with the intent to transfer them to Ukraine, where they will be equipped, maintained, and flown from Ukrainian airfields, then Russia would have no claims against its “former partners” and would not target them.
However, if the jets take off from foreign bases and carry out sorties and strikes against Russian forces, both the fighter planes and the airfields they are stationed at will be “legitimate targets,” according to Kartapolov.
“As for [our ability] to shoot [them] down, we can shoot down anyone, anywhere,” the MP insisted.
Kartapolov’s statement comes after the chief of aviation of Ukraine’s Air Force Command, Sergey Golubtsov, stated in an interview with Radio Liberty on Sunday that some of the F-16 fighter jets donated to Kiev by the West would be stationed at foreign airbases.
He explained that only a portion of the jets would be stationed directly on Ukrainian territory, corresponding to the number of pilots trained to operate the aircraft. The other jets would be kept in reserve at “safe airbases” abroad so that they are not targeted by the Russian military.
Golubtsov stated that so far four countries have agreed to transfer F-16s to Ukraine, namely Belgium, Denmark, Norway, and the Netherlands. While he did not specify exactly how many aircraft would be donated, he claimed it was between 30 and 40 planes, with potentially more to come in the future.
Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has also warned that Moscow would perceive the deliveries of F-16 fighters to Ukraine as a nuclear threat, given that the jets have long been used as part of the US-led bloc’s joint nuclear missions.
At the same time, the minister stressed that the US-designed jets would not change the situation on the battlefield, and would be shot down and destroyed like any other foreign weapons supplied to Ukraine.
US defence industry struggles to manufacture basic artillery for Ukraine
By Ahmed Adel | June 10, 2024
The United States arms industry is not producing the basic ammunition required to sustain support for Ukraine and Israel, Bloomberg reported on June 8. This is an extraordinary situation since Russia’s arms industry is booming despite facing major Western sanctions.
According to the outlet, the US defence industry gave priority to the manufacture of high-tech ammunition and halted the production of basic artillery such as 155-millimetre ammunition, the most used in the wars that are being fought today. The US is also facing a shortage of basic products, such as gunpowder or trinitrotoluene (TNT), to produce these munitions and have had to turn to other countries, such as Poland and Turkey, to obtain supplies.
At some point an attempt was made to replace the 155-millimetre ammunition with higher-tech projectiles on the battlefront in Ukraine, but the effort failed because the new weaponry was neutralised by the Russian military.
“Higher-tech shells that were intended to replace the traditional 155mm munitions failed an early test in Ukraine, when their targeting systems were thwarted by Russia,” Bloomberg reported. “The prospect that future wars could resemble the grinding combat taking place there has stirred fears that the US arsenal could someday be stretched to the breaking point.”
“The writing has been on the wall for a while,” Stacie Pettyjohn, a senior fellow and director of the defense program at the independent and bipartisan Center for a New American Security, told Bloomberg. “It has just taken the war in Ukraine to really shock Pentagon officials and members of Congress out of their complacency.”
Since the end of the Cold War in the 1990s, the Pentagon has divested or neglected facilities once used to manufacture everything from projectiles to gunpowder, focusing instead on transforming warfare with high-tech weaponry.
“What’s left is crumbling infrastructure, outdated machinery and a tiny workforce that can’t keep up with growing international demand,” the outlet highlights.
Before the special military operation in Ukraine, American production was 14,400 shells per month. Now, the US is spending more than $5 billion to overhaul aging factories across the country with the goal of producing 100,000 155mm shells a month by the end of next year.
As the agency stresses, it is a mobilisation that, due to its speed and breadth, is unlike anything since World War II.
As part of this effort, Congress has appropriated $650 million for a TNT production plant that will take two years to build, according to Doug Bush, the Army’s top weapons buyer. And Washington will have to finance purchases of whatever the renovated facilities produce, possibly for many years.
But, as Bloomberg noted, getting the money may also be the easiest obstacle to overcome.
“The US must bring old buildings up to snuff, build new ones, buy updated machinery and hire and train workers. Environmental regulations stand in the way. And the Pentagon will need to ensure that plants can be run safely — munitions-making is prone to fires, explosions and other accidents,” the outlet noted.
Bloomberg concludes, “Boosting munition production is a costly and time-consuming business, and the US is playing catch-up at a time of growing tension in Europe, the Middle East and the Pacific region.”
Washington naively believed that the sweeping sanctions against Moscow would collapse the Russian economy and therefore its military operation against the Kiev regime. Instead, Russia not only overcame the sanctions but is now producing artillery shells at a rate that the West cannot keep up with.
It is recalled that Estonian Defence Minister Hanno Pevkur admitted in November 2023 that Russia was firing 70,000 rounds a day, meaning that an equivalent of a year’s worth of European production at the time was fired by the Russian military every 10 days. The crippling shortage of artillery was also referred to by Ukrainian Defence Minister Rustem Umerov in January, who revealed that Ukraine was unable to fire more than 2,000 shells per day.
Due to a severe worldwide shortage of artillery shells, Western analysts admit Ukraine will likely be outgunned by Russia for at least the remainder of the year, but even with Kiev’s allies ramping up production, realistically Russia will hold the advantage for the duration of the war.
Even though Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said recently there were no reports of artillery shortages, in an interview on May 21 with Reuters, he called on Western allies to speed up aid, saying every decision they’ve made on military support for Ukraine has been “late by around one year.” Even in this most desperate stage of the war, from Kiev’s perspective, Zelensky cannot but be ungrateful and entitled, even when the West struggles to overcome its industrial failures, particularly since Russia’s military industry is a resounding success despite the sanctions.
Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
NATO ‘crossed red line’ – Austria
RT | June 9, 2024
Ukraine’s Western sponsors have crossed a boundary when they allowed Kiev to use their weapons to strike at targets in Russia, Austrian Defense Minister Klaudia Tanner said in an interview to Die Presse published on Saturday.
Several NATO members have openly supported the use of Western-produced armaments for cross-border strikes against Russia in recent weeks, ostensibly in a limited manner. The West insists that it is still not a party to the conflict, and only supports Kiev’s efforts to stall Russia’s push into the Kharkov Region, which Moscow launched to move the line of contact away from the border to prevent further Ukrainian attacks on Russian civilians.
“A red line has been crossed,” Tanner stated when asked about the US, France and Germany’s permission to use their weapons in cross-border strikes. When the interviewer asked how else Kiev could stall the Kharkov operation, the Austrian Defense Minister replied that “as a militarily neutral state, it is not our place to judge.”
The Austrian defense chief added that at least she was “very pleased that NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has clarified that NATO will not be sending troops to Ukraine.”
Stoltenberg claimed that the US-led military bloc has no plans to deploy ground forces to Ukraine in a press conference on Thursday. Despite this, French President Emmanuel Macron announced on Friday he was almost ready to finalize an international coalition to officially send Western military “instructors” to train Kiev’s forces in Ukraine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has stressed that Moscow has long been aware that Western military personnel are already fighting in Ukraine, under the guise of “mercenaries” and “volunteers.”
Western-produced long-ranged armaments used by Kiev in cross-border strikes are also often controlled and serviced by these foreign troops, the Russian president said last month. And even if Ukrainians are pulling the trigger, the US and its allies are the ones providing Kiev intelligence on Russian targets, Putin noted.
Moscow has warned that Western-backed long-range attacks on Russian territories will amount to direct Western participation in the conflict, and that Russia can respond in kind. “We can respond asymmetrically,” the Russian leader said on Wednesday, suggesting that Moscow could supply similar weapons around the world, where they could be used against Western
US-Waged Middle East Wars Were ‘Pointless and Genocidal,’ Reflects Navy Veteran
By Svetlana Ekimenko – Sputnik – 08.06.2024
Whether it is Joe Biden, the current incumbent of the White House, or those preceding him, like 44th president Barack Obama, manipulative militaristic rhetoric results in senseless wars waged and paid for by the US, a US Navy veteran told Sputnik, recalling his own rueful experience.
Joe Biden slipped into his default mode of manipulating historical facts and crowd emotions in his D-Day anniversary remarks on Friday.
Russia was typically presented as ‘the enemy’, while the US on the ‘right side of history’ as it continues to fuel the Ukraine proxy conflict.
Biden had no qualms about drawing a cynical comparison: if we do not help Ukraine against Russia, we will betray the memory of our grandfathers who fought the Nazis.
“We will not walk away. Because if we do, Ukraine will be subjugated and it will not end there. Ukraine’s neighbors will be threatened, all of Europe will be threatened,” claimed Biden. The Democrat added that to “surrender” would mean “forgetting what happened here on these hallowed beaches. Make no mistake, we will not bow down. We will not forget.”
At the same ceremony, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was more blunt, saying that, “if the troops of the world’s democracies could risk their lives for freedom then surely the citizens of the world’s democracy can risk our comfort for freedom now.”
Austin is an old hand at dissimulating when it comes to Washington’s true goals in pursuing the Ukraine ‘project.’ Testifying in front of the House Armed services Committee, he claimed the long-term strategy for propping up the neo-Nazi regime in Kiev was to make sure Ukraine remains “a democratic, independent, sovereign country.” He served up the batch of outright lies without batting an eye.
With his recent rhetoric, Biden may as well have taken a page from the pretentious and meaningless language used by former president Barack Obama in his speech at West Point Military Academy in May 2010. Obama explained why it was necessary to send 30,000 more US troops to Afghanistan without any clear strategy.
“We toppled the Taliban regime, now we must break the momentum of a Taliban insurgency and train Afghan security forces. We have supported the election of a sovereign government, now we must strengthen its capacities,” he said. We know only too well when and how the Afghan debacle ended for the US, with America’s humiliating withdrawal from Kabul in August 2021.
The US launched its invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, weeks after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. At the time, Washington justified the move on the basis that Osama bin Laden had masterminded the attacks, and that the Taliban had offered sanctuary to members of al-Qaeda. The US invasion and occupation claimed the lives of thousands of US soldiers, and more than 100,000 Afghan troops, police, and civilians.
Before entering the White House, then-Senator Obama had campaigned on a vow to give the US military a new mission: ending the war in Iraq.
The US-led coalition invaded Iraq in 2003 without a UN mandate, falsely accusing then-Iraqi president Saddam Hussein of possessing weapons of mass destruction. That war cost the lives of over 4,700 US and allied servicemen, and hundreds of thousands — or even millions — of Iraqis.
One of those who fell for Obama’s campaign rhetoric has regretted it for the rest of his life.
Mike James, a navy veteran and a Mass Communication Specialist Petty Officer who served in Iraq in 2008, told Sputnik he was “inspired by all of Obama’s rhetoric” to join the military.
“I was 25 years old when I joined the military. So I was a little bit older than most of my peers,” he recalled.
“Leading up to that time was the end of the Bush presidency, and Obama was campaigning as the president who was going to end the wars, … on drawing down the war [in Iraq],” James said. “So I thought that it would be a good time to join the military. And I was inspired by all of Obama’s rhetoric. I joined the military.”
The gullible young man who set off to boot camp in 2008 was in for a rude awakening. He ended up witnessing both of the “pointless, genocidal wars.”
“I thought, man, both of these wars that I participated in were stupid and pointless,” James said. “And all the Iraqis and all the Afghans that I met were nice people, gracious people, hospitable people. And for me to show up as an Imperial stormtrooper was wholly inappropriate and, frankly, genocidal.”
While he “never fired a shot in combat,” instead using his camera to document what was going on around him, the former naval officer said he felt “complacent,” an “actor in these imperial genocidal projects.”
“I fundamentally regret it. It’s embarrassing. I don’t brag that I’m a veteran. I don’t talk to people about my veteran status unless they ask,” said James.
‘Complacent actor’ in US’ ‘imperial genocidal projects’
To this day, Navy veteran Mike James regrets ending up being complacent in senseless wars waged by the US in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Turning to Washington’s current belligerent stance amid the ongoing NATO proxy war in Ukraine, James speculated that the “age of the American military hegemony is over”. Furthermore, he noted that from what he could see around him, the Western economy, “built on its ability to inflict violence anywhere in the world at any given time” was on a cliff edge.
“Everything is propped up on that… I mean, there’s very little industry around me of all the people I know. I don’t see factory workers like I don’t see people going out and getting jobs and doing well,” James noted. “Everybody I know, everybody I see is, is just barely hanging on in this economy. Everybody’s piled on with debt with loans and car bills and just trying to get by.”
“The true believers within the Pentagon and the military brass and the contractors, all these fascistic private contractors that are ruling the world right now, once they realize… that it’s over, I can just see the bottom dropping out on this thing and the economy really changing for the worse,” he concluded.
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Book Review
“Davos Can Really Replace the UN”
Inside the book that maps the architecture behind global governance — from the Epstein files to the Pact for the Future
Lies are Unbekoming | April 1, 2026
On June 13, 2019, the United Nations and the World Economic Forum signed a partnership deal to “accelerate the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.” That same evening, WEF president Börge Brende — Norway’s former Foreign Minister — had dinner with Jeffrey Epstein at Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse. The Epstein files, released January 2026, contain an exchange between the two from the previous year. Epstein to Brende: “Davos can really replace the UN. C21, cyber, crypto . genetics… intl coordination.” Brende back to Epstein: “Exactly — we need a new global architecture. World Economic Forum (Davos) is uniquely positioned — public private.”
The next day, the UN General Assembly adopted the framework for restructuring global governance.
That sequence — the partnership signing, the Epstein dinner, the candid admission about replacing the UN with a public-private architecture, and then the formal adoption — opens Jacob Nordangård’s The Digital World Brain. Pages two and three. Footnoted to the UN resolution number, the Epstein files, and the General Assembly record.
I keep coming back to it because it captures what this book does that almost nothing else in the independent research space manages. I’ve followed Jacob’s work for years now and interviewed him about his research. Each book peels back another layer of the same institutional architecture, and each time I think he’s reached the limit of what can be documented, the next one goes further. Nordangård doesn’t speculate. He doesn’t editorialize much. He lays institutional actions next to each other in chronological order and lets the pattern announce itself. … continue
Blog Roll
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- “Davos Can Really Replace the UN”
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- If Americans Knew
- Trump poised to “blow everything up” (ie. commit war crimes) in Iran – Daily Update
- In Iran, Israel-US take aim at “reason, research, and freedom of thought” – Daily Update
- US loses planes over Iran, Israel downgrades Lebanon war goals – Daily Update
- Israel Is Blocking Palestinians from Easter at Church Where Jesus Resurrected
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- Prominent New York synagogue hosts presentation on why U.S. Jews should support the ethnic cleansing of Gaza
- Tapper vs. Piker: Is the CNN Anchor Auditioning for David Ellison?
- Shouldn’t Democrats Be Able to Condemn Genocide?
- Israel-US kill negotiators, destroy civilian structures, but Iran’s military capabilities still largely intact – Daily Update
- ‘War crime’: Global condemnation as Israeli ministers celebrate death penalty law targeting Palestinian prisoners
- No Tricks Zone
- An Inconvenient Tree: Uncovered In Alps… Europe Much Warmer Than Today 6000 Years Ago
- New Study Reports A 60% Slowdown In Greenland’s Ice Loss Rate In The Last Decade
- Low Intensity Tornado Wrecks Major Solar Farm, Creating A Potential Toxic Dump
- New Study Finds Warming Saves Lives…Cold Temperatures 12 Times More Deadly Than Excess Heat
- German Science Blog Accuses PIK Climate Institute Of Hallucinating Climate Tipping Points
- Devastating Assessment Of Comirnaty Vaccine By Former Senior Pfizer Europe Toxicologist
- New Study: CO2 Is ‘Effectively Negligible’ As An Explanatory Climate Change Factor Since 2000
- Former Pfizer Toxicologist Dr. Helmut Sterz Tells Bundestag Hearing Pfizer Vaccine Should Have Never Been Approved
- Energy Expert: Germany’s Nuclear Phaseout Was A “500 Billion Euro Mistake”
- New Research: South Australia’s Mid-Holocene Sea Surface Temperatures Were 4°C Warmer Than Today
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