More than a year into Russia’s Special Operation, the initial burst of European excitement at western push-back on Russia has dissipated. The mood instead has turned to “existential dread, a nagging suspicion that [western] civilisation may destroy itself”, Professor Helen Thompson writes.
For an instant, a euphoria had coalesced around the putative projection of the EU as a world power; as a key actor, about to compete on a world scale. Initially, events seemed to play to Europe’s conviction of its market powers: Europe was going to bring down a major power – Russia – by financial coup d’état alone. The EU felt ‘six feet tall’.
It seemed at the time a galvanising moment: “The war re-forged a long-dormant Manichaean framing of existential conflict between Russia and the West, assuming ontological, apocalyptic dimensions. In the spiritual fires of the war, the myth of the ‘West’ was rebaptised”, Arta Moeini suggests.
After the initial disappointment at the lack of a ‘quick kill’, the hope persisted – that if only the sanctions were given more time, and made more all-embracing, then Russia surely would ultimately collapse. That hope has turned to dust. And the reality of what Europe has done to itself has begun to dawn – hence Professor Thomson’s dire warning:
“Those who assume that the political world can be reconstructed by the efforts of human Will, have never before had to bet so heavily on technology over [fossil] energy – as the driver of our material advancement”.
For the Euro-Atlanticists however, what Ukraine seemed to offer – finally – was validation for their yearning to centralise power in the EU, sufficiently, to merit a place at the ‘top table’ with the U.S., as partners in playing the Great Game.
Ukraine, for better or worse, underlined Europe’s profound military dependence on Washington – and on NATO.
More particularly, the Ukraine conflict seemed to open the prospect for consolidating the strange metamorphosis of NATO from military alliance to an enlightened, Progressive, peace alliance! As Timothy Garton Ash effused in the Guardian in 2002, “NATO has become a European peace movement” where one could watch “John Lennon meet George Bush”.
The Ukraine war is portrayed, in this vein, as the “war that even former pacifists can get behind. All its proponents seemed to be singing is “Give War a Chance””.
“… especially in the past 12 months, telegenic female leaders such as the Finnish Prime Minister, Sanna Marin, German Foreign Minister, Annalena Baerbock, and Estonian Prime Minister, Kaja Kallas, have increasingly served as the spokespersons of enlightened militarism in Europe … ”
“No political party in Europe better exemplifies the shift from militant pacifism to ardent pro-war Atlanticism than the German Greens. Most of the original Greens had been radicals during the student protests of 1968 … But as the founding members entered middle age, fissures began to appear in the party – that would one day tear it apart”.
“Kosovo then changed everything: The 78-day NATO bombing of what remained of Yugoslavia in 1999, ostensibly to halt war crimes committed by Serbian security forces in Kosovo, would forever transform the German Greens. NATO for the Greens became an active military compact concerned with spreading and defending values such as human rights, democracy, peace, and freedom – well beyond the borders of its member states”.
A few years later, in 2002, an EU functionary (Robert Cooper) could envisage Europe as a new ‘liberal imperialism’. The ‘new’ was that Europe eschewed hard military power, in favour of weaponising both a controlled ‘narrative’ and controlled participation in its market. He advocated for ‘a new age of empire’, in which Western powers no longer would have to follow international law in their dealings with ‘old fashioned’ states; they could use military force independently of the United Nations; and could impose protectorates to replace regimes which ‘misgovern’.
The German Greens’ Foreign Minister, Annalena Baerbock, has continued with this metamorphosis, scolding countries with traditions of military neutrality, and imploring them to join NATO. She has invoked Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s line: “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor”. And the European Left has been utterly captivated. Major parties have abandoned military neutrality and opposition to war – and now champion NATO. It is a stunning reversal.
All this may have been music to the ears of the Euro-élites anxious for the EU to rise to Great Power status, but this soft-power European Leviathan was wholly underpinned by the unstated (but essential) assumption that NATO ‘had Europe’s back’. This naturally implied that the EU had to tie itself ever closer to NATO – and therefore to the U.S. which controls NATO.
But the flip-side to this Atlanticist aspiration – as President Emmanuel Macron noted – is its inexorable logic that Europeans simply end by becoming American vassals. Macron was trying rather, to rally Europe towards the coming ‘age of empires’, hoping to position Europe as a ‘third pole’ in a concert of empires.
The Atlanticists were duly enraged by Macron’s remarks (which nonetheless drew support of other EU states). It could even seem (to furious Atlanticists) that Macron actually was channelling General de Gaulle who had called NATO a “false pretence” designed to “disguise America’s chokehold over Europe”.
There are however, two related schisms that flowed out from this ‘re-imagined’ NATO: Firstly, it exposed the reality of internal European rivalries and divergent interests, precisely because the NATO lead in the Ukraine conflict sets the interests of the Central East European hawks wanting ‘more America, and more war on Russia’ up and against that of the original EU western axis which wants wanting strategic autonomy (i.e. less ‘America’, and a quick end to the conflict).
Secondly, it would be predominantly the western economies that would have to bankroll the costs and divert their manufacturing capacity towards military logistic chains. The economic price, non-military de-industrialisation and high inflation, potentially, could be enough to break Europe – economically.
The prospect of a pan-European cohesive identity might be both ontologically appealing – and be seen to be an ‘appropriate accessory’ to an aspiring ‘world actor’ – yet such identity becomes caricature when mosaic Europe is transformed into an abstract de-territorialised identity that reduces people to their most abstract.
Paradoxically, the Ukraine war – far from consolidating the EU ‘identity’, as first imagined – has fractured it under the stresses of the concerted effort to weaken and collapse Russia.
Secondly, as Arta Moeini, the director of the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy, has observed:
“The American push for NATO expansion since 1991 has enlarged the alliance by adding a host of faultline states from Central and Eastern Europe. The strategy, which began with the Clinton administration but was fully championed by the George W. Bush administration, was to create a decidedly pro-American pillar on the continent, centred on Warsaw – which would force an eastward shift in the alliance’s centre of gravity away from the traditional Franco-German axis”.
“By using NATO enlargement to weaken the old power centres in Europe that might have occasionally stood up to [Washington] such as in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, Washington ensured a more compliant Europe in the short-term. The upshot, however, was the formation of a 31-member behemoth with deep asymmetries of power and low compatibility of interests” – that is much weaker and more vulnerable – than it believes itself to be”.
Here is the key: “the EU is much weaker than it believes itself to be”. The outset of the conflict was defined by a cast of mind entranced by the notion of Europe as a ‘mover and shaker’ in world affairs, and mesmerised by Europe’s post-war prosperity.
EU leaders convinced themselves that this prosperity had bequeathed it the clout and the economic depth to contemplate war – and to weather its reversals – with panglossian sanguinity. It has produced rather, the converse: It has put its project in jeopardy.
In John Raply and Peter Heather’s The Imperial Life Cycle, the authors explain the cycle:
“Empires grow rich and powerful and attain supremacy through the economic exploitation of their colonial periphery. But in the process, they inadvertently spur the economic development of that same periphery, until it can roll back and ultimately displace its overlord”.
Europe’s prosperity in this post-war era, thus was not so much one of its own making, but drew benefit from the tail-end of accumulations hewn from an earlier cycle – now reversed.
“The fastest-growing economies in the world are now all in the old periphery; the worst-performing economies are disproportionately in the West. These are the economic trends that have created our present landscape of superpower conflict — most saliently between America and China”.
America may think of itself as exempt from the European colonial mould, yet fundamentally, its model is
“an updated cultural-political glue that we might call “neoliberalism, NATO and denim”, which follows in the timeless imperial mould: The great wave of decolonisation that followed WW2 was meant to end that. But the Bretton Woods system, which created a trading regime that favoured industrial over primary producers and enshrined the dollar as the global reserve currency – ensured that the net flow of financial resources continued to move from developing countries to developed ones. Even when the economies of the newly-independent states grew, those of the G7 economies and their partners grew more”.
A once-mighty empire is now challenged and feels embattled. Taken aback by the refusal of so many developing countries to join with isolating Russia, the West is now waking up to the reality of the emerging, polycentric and fluid global order. These trends are set to continue. The danger is that economically weakened and in crisis, western countries attempt to re-appropriate western triumphalism, yet lack the economic strength and depth, so to do:
“In the Roman Empire, peripheral states developed the political and military capacity to end Roman domination by force… The Roman Empire might have survived – had it not weakened itself with wars of choice – on its ascendant Persian rival”.
The final ‘transgressive’ thought goes to Tom Luongo: “Allowing the West to keep thinking they can win – is the ultimate form of grinding out a superior opponent”.
In 2023, despite skyrocketing inflation, debt, as well as rising sociopolitical divisions, leadership among both the Republicans and Democrats will always agree that substantially more US taxpayer money, never less, should be poured into the military industrial complex, according to an analysis by Judd Legum.
Case in point, the debt ceiling agreement established between the Joe Biden administration and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy caps military spending at a record $886 billion, exactly matching Biden’s mammoth budget request.
The GOP was seeking large increases in military spending and would only entertain cuts in non-military expenditures. The agreed upon war budget represents a 3.3% increase over the current year. The tentative deal still needs to make its way through Congress, where hawks will fiercely oppose any and all military spending caps.
Half of this money will go to defense contractors with Raytheon, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and General Dynamics receiving the lion’s share. Some of these arms industry giants are currently ensnared in a massive “price gouging” scandal, with a bipartisan group of Senators demanding an investigation be opened at the Pentagon’s highest levels.
Legum highlights the lack of any “peace dividend.” after the disastrous 20 year war and occupation in Afghanistan. “This military spending increase has occurred even as Biden ended the war in Afghanistan, the military’s longest-running and most costly foreign intervention… Each year, the costs go up dramatically,” Legum writes.
He explains that the US has added more than $300 billion to the military budget during the last eight years. In 2015, the Pentagon budget was $585 billion. Half of this obscene increase in war spending and profiteering has been bylined by the Biden administration. Legum continues,
(Had military spending kept pace with inflation, [it] would still be less than $700 billion annually.) Biden has added nearly $150 billion to the military budget since 2021, the last budget approved by President Trump. The budget of the Pentagon now exceeds “the budgets for the next ten largest cabinet agencies combined.” In 2020, Lockheed Martin received $75 billion in government contracts, more than 1.5 times the budget of the entire State Department.
Last year, the United States spent more on its military than the next 10 highest-spending countries combined.
A recent report on 60 Minutes, the CBS news program, saw former Pentagon officials, contract negotiators, and insiders accuse these defense firms of “astronomical price increases” and “unconscionable” fraud.
In particular, the CBS report cites Shay Assad, a 40-year veteran contract negotiator, who says military industrial complex behemoths, such as Lockheed and Raytheon, overcharge for “[everything from] radar and missiles … helicopters … planes … submarines… down to the nuts and bolts.”
The cited experts described these practices, as well as the accompanying rampant unaccountability, as largely the culmination of bureaucratic decisions made during the immediate post-Cold War era.
In the early 1990s, ostensibly to reduce costs, the DOD “urged defense companies to merge and 51 major contractors consolidated to five giants.” This drastically reduced competition and put the big five industry “giants” in an extremely advantageous situation. The War Department “has few options today, and the defense contractors know it,” Legum writes.
Assad clarifies the effects of this centralization of power, “In the [1980s], there was intense competition amongst a number of companies. And so the government had choices. They had leverage. We have limited leverage now,” Assad said. “The problem was compounded in the early 2000s when the Pentagon, in another cost-saving move, cut 130,000 employees whose jobs were to negotiate and oversee defense contracts.”
Retired Pentagon auditor Mark Owen bluntly told CBS, this is “not really a true capitalistic market because one company is telling you what’s going to happen. [It’s a] monopoly.”
The report highlighted the fact that, before the clamp down on competition, a shoulder-fired Stinger missile, produced by Raytheon, cost $25,000 in 1991. Now that Washington is subsidizing the provision of so many Stingers to Ukraine, as well as Taiwan, the weapon is now priced at more than $400,000. This is an “eye-watering” seven-fold increase, even when taking inflation into account as well as interim technological advancements.
Lockheed and Boeing were found to have yielded an over 40 percent profit on sales of PAC-3 surface to air missiles to Washington and its allies. Assad explained the companies saw a windfall of hundreds of millions on the deals over seven years, and “based on what they actually made, we would’ve received an entire year’s worth of missiles for free.”
The DOD also “caught Raytheon making what they called ‘unacceptable profits’ from the Patriot missile defense system by dramatically exaggerating the cost and hours it took to build the radar and ground equipment.”
Assad demonstrated to the 60 Minutes host that an oil pressure switch was selling for over $10,000, when he claimed the switch should cost $328. The host asked Assad a question regarding the huge discrepancy, to which the former official responded “Gouging. What else can account for it?”
A major aspect of this problem is the Congress and defense contractors’ bribes. As Legum details, the military-industrial complex spent $2.5 billion on lobbying in the last two decades. “During that period, defense contractors employed an average of 700 lobbyists — more than one lobbyist for every member of Congress.”
Though, some Senators just denounced the contractors, in a letter to the Pentagon chief, saying these firms are “dramatically overcharging the Department and U.S. taxpayers while reaping enormous profits, seeing their stock prices soar, and handing out massive executive compensation packages.”
The lawmakers charged that these “companies have abused the trust government has placed in them… exploiting their position as sole suppliers for certain items to increase prices far above inflation or any reasonable profit margin.”
The quest to develop and refine technologically advanced means to commit mass homicide continues on, with Pentagon tacticians ever eager to make the military leaner and more lethal. Drone swarms already exist, and as insect-facsimile drones are marketed and produced, we can expect bug drone swarms to appear soon in the skies above places where suspected “bad guys” are said to reside—along with their families and neighbors. Following the usual trajectory, it is only a matter of time before surveillance bug drones are “upgraded” for combat, making it easier than ever to kill human beings by whoever wishes to do so, whether military personnel, factional terrorists, or apolitical criminals. The development of increasingly lethal and “creative” means to commit homicide forges ahead not because anyone needs it but because it is generously funded by the U.S. Congress under the assumption that anything labeled a tool of “national defense” is, by definition, good.
To some there may seem to be merits to the argument from necessity for drones, given the ongoing military recruitment crisis. There are many good reasons why people wish not to enlist in the military anymore, but rather than review the missteps taken and counterproductive measures implemented in the name of defense throughout the twenty-first century, administrators ignore the most obvious answer to the question why young people are less enthusiastic than ever before to sign their lives away. Why did the Global War on Terror spread from Afghanistan and Iraq to engulf other countries as well? Critics have offered persuasive answers to this question, above all, that killing, torturing, maiming, and terrorizing innocent people led to an outpouring of sympathy for groups willing to resist the invaders of their lands. As a direct consequence of U.S. military intervention, Al Qaeda franchises such as ISIS emerged, proliferated, and spread. Yet the military plows ahead undeterred in its professed mission to eliminate “the bad guys,” with the killers either oblivious or somehow unaware that they are the primary creators of “the bad guys.”
Meanwhile, the logic of automation has been openly and enthusiastically embraced as the way of the future for the military, as in so many other realms. Who needs soldiers anyway, given that they can and will be replaced by machines? Just as grocery stores today often have more self-checkout stations than human cashiers, the military has been replacing combat pilots with drone operators for years. Taking human beings altogether out of the killing loop is the inevitable next step, because war architects focus on lethality, as though it were the only measure of military success. Removing “the human factor” from warfare will increase lethality and may decrease, if not eliminate, problems such as PTSD. But at what price?
Never a very self-reflective lot, war architects have even less inclination than ever before to consider whether their interventions have done more harm than good because of the glaring case of Afghanistan. After twenty years of attempting to eradicate the Taliban, the U.S. military finally retreated in 2021, leaving the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (as they now refer to themselves) in power, just as they were in 2001. By focusing on how slick and “neat” the latest and greatest implements of techno-homicide are, those who craft U.S. military policy can divert attention from their abject incompetence at actually winning a war or protecting, rather than annihilating, innocent people.
For decades now, military officers have expressed outright disdain toward those who dare to broach the topic of civilian casualties. When asked about the Iraqi death toll after the 1991 Gulf War, General Colin Powell infamously muttered, “That’s not really a number I’m terribly interested in.” General Tommy Franks, when asked a version of the same question after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, similarly quipped, “You know, we don’t do body counts.”
Once a war has been waged, “rules of engagement” are specified by military officers themselves, which is one of the reasons why the killing of civilians seen throughout the “War on Terror” has occurred wherever and whenever wars have been fought. In the twenty-first century, however, the problem of designating who is “fair game” for slaughter is far more serious, for the assassination of suspects has been rebranded as targeted killing and claimed by the highest authorities of the U.S. government, including the Department of Justice, to be perfectly permissible, even in “areas outside active hostilities,” i.e., beyond war zones. That the Barack Obama administration somehow persuaded nearly the entire nation to believe that it was not only acceptable but in fact laudable to execute U.S. citizen suspects located outside a war zone without so much as an indictment, much less a court trial, was a remarkable accomplishment, and in some ways unbelievable.
Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden followed the precedent set by Obama in radically expanding the use of lethal drones to target suspects on hit lists drawn up by their own administrations. The normalization of assassination achieved by the Obama administration was well illustrated by Trump’s authorization of the intentional and premeditated execution of an Iranian general located in Baghdad, General Qasem Soleimani (on January 3, 2020), as though this were a matter of business as usual. Indeed, Trump gleefully bragged about having executed a high-profile public figure using a lethal drone, effectively asserting the right to target named foreign officials at the pleasure of the U.S. president. By openly assassinating General Soleimani, Trump essentially put any leader who dares to demur from U.S. policy on notice that they, too, can be eliminated through the push of a button at the caprice of the U.S. executive.
Most of the thousands of victims of drone strikes have been unnamed persons (of unknown identity at the time of their demise) located in areas where “unlawful enemy combatants” were said to hide. After having claimed that they had killed yet another “senior Al Qaeda leader” in northwest Syria on May 3, 2023, officials at the Pentagon emended their report, acknowledging that the victim, identified by locals and his family as Lotfi Hassan Misto, a 56-year-old shepherd, may not have been the “bad guy” they had been pursuing after all. To soften the blow, a Pentagon spokesperson suggested that Misto was nonetheless somehow “associated” with Al Qaeda, a vague assertion backed by no evidence and in fact denied by area residents and effectively refuted by terrorist experts who noted the highly significant absence of jihadist group chatter in the aftermath of the event.
It is most plausible that on May 3, 2023, the “savvy” techno-killers destroyed yet another family like that of Zemari Ahmadi, who, along with nine other people, including seven children, was annihilated by the U.S. military in Kabul, Afghanistan, on August 29, 2021, in a drone strike initially touted by the public relations team at the Pentagon as the successful neutralization of a terrorist attack. Ahmadi, an aid worker, had the misfortune of driving a white Toyota Corolla, which someone in the “intelligence” community had determined was being used by a “bad guy” to plan and perpetrate an attack on the airport. The usual confirmation bias kicked in as Ahmadi was followed around all day by surveillance drones while he performed actions interpreted as “suspicious” by those looking to “get some.”
After the fact of their demise, the victims of U.S. military interventions are essentially fictionalized in the minds of those who ended their lives. This tendency is perhaps nowhere better illustrated than by Vietnam-era Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s response to a question (posed by Errol Morris in his 2003 documentary film, The Fog of War) about “mistakes made” by any commander during the prosecution of a war:
“He has made mistakes in the application of military power. He has killed people, unnecessarily, his own troops or other troops, through mistakes, through errors of judgment.”
Note McNamara’s stunning omission of civilians among the possible victims of commanders’ mistakes.
The fictionalization of civilian victims of drone strikes is especially troubling in cases where the U.S. government offers no explanation of what transpired when named persons such as Abdulrahman al-Awlaki and Mamana Bibi are erased from existence. Abdulrahman was the 16-year-old son of suspected Al Qaeda operative Anwar al-Awlaki, and Mamana Bibi was a 68-year-old grandmother “taken out” by a U.S. drone while picking okra all alone in her family’s fields. In many cases there has not even been a report of any U.S. missiles having been fired when incinerated corpses are discovered by locals on the ground.
The capacity for high-level decision makers in the military to deny any and all responsibility for what have been decried by the public as war crimes has been amply illustrated in case after case. For example, the torture at Abu Ghraib prison was blamed on a handful of “bad apple” low-level grunts, when in fact they were acting in accordance with their interpretations of what they were asked to do. The problem in such cases is two-fold. First, low-level soldiers are required to obey the orders of their superior officers. Second, when officers or bureaucrats redefine key terminology, such as the use of the neologistic “enhanced interrogation techniques” in place of “torture,” which most everyone seems to agree is wrong, then no one should be surprised when atrocity ensues. Similarly, “rules of engagement” said to permit the targeting of any person present (as in Fallujah, Iraq in 2004) will naturally generate civilian deaths. Again, when Reuters journalists were killed in 2007 by soldiers in an Apache helicopter hovering above New Baghdad, film footage of the event made public by Wikileaks (Collateral Murder) was met with the horror and outrage of people all around the globe. The Pentagon concluded its investigation of the killings with the expected announcement that no crimes were committed on that day.
The CIA ran drone operations outside areas of active hostilities for years (most likely to avoid congressional oversight), and it appears that they continue to do so in places such as Somalia, where seven civilians, including three children were killed by a “suspected” U.S. drone strike on January 30, 2023, not claimed by the Pentagon. This is a case where irrefutable evidence of homicide, dead people destroyed by a missile and discovered by bereft family members and friends, has not prompted U.S. administrators to accept any responsibility whatsoever for their actions, no doubt under the “get out of jail free” (a.k.a. “state secrets privilege”) pretext according to which the publication of facts somehow undermines national security.
What facts undermine are spurious claims by warmakers to be accomplishing anything worthwhile for anyone but death industry profiteers in running this nonstop killing machine. Originally the marketing line for unmanned rather than manned combat planes was that the new technology would save troops’ lives. But by using lethal drones, and expanding their use to places where there were no U.S. military personnel on the ground to protect, the presumption against killing civilians was weakened to the point where, today, in many cases, only civilians’ lives are being risked by missiles launched from drones. The victims of drone strikes are labeled “collateral damage,” just as they have been for decades in combat theaters, but according to the lethality maximizers, so long as the killers “intend” to kill bad guys, they never do anything wrong. They may have curtailed the lives of innocent men, women, and children who never posed a threat to anyone, but it was all part of a good faith effort to defend the nation.
This normalization of assassination as a standard operating procedure of warfare not only endangers civilians in order to protect combat soldiers but also flouts widely accepted conventions regarding the proper conduct of war. According to longstanding international agreements such as the Geneva Conventions, soldiers are to be provided with the opportunity to surrender before they are killed. In drone strikes, the targets (usually unarmed) are summarily executed without warning under the assumption that they are guilty until proven innocent, which is of course impossible for them to do ex post facto.
What the military knows how to do is perpetrate mass homicide, and this they will continue to do, if they are not somehow reined in. The revolving door between government administrators and military industry makes it difficult to see how this might be accomplished. The problem is not only one of corruption, although that is a part of the problem. Even more intractable is that the persons who rise in the ranks of the military are precisely those who wholeheartedly agree that conflicts are to be resolved through homicide. (It turns out, felicitously for many of them, that the death industry is also highly lucrative.) It matters little whether military leaders such as current secretary of defense and former Raytheon board member Lloyd Austin are profoundly self-deceived or willfully ignore the carnage and misery which their policies have sown for people far from U.S. shores. They occupy positions of power and advise the president on matters of foreign policy.
Not everyone who joins the military rises in the ranks to become an administrator, having bought into the company line. Certainly drone operators are not always happy to learn that they have been transformed into contract killers, required to execute strangers at the request of “the customer,” and expected to deal with their reservations and guilt for what they have done through dosing themselves with psychiatric medications. Happily for war entrepreneurs, however, machines will solve all of the problems of hesitation to kill and critical thinking about what exactly the guiding strategic objective is supposed to be in “whack-a-mole and all of their family” missions conducted by soldiers at no risk of death when they terminate the lives of fellow human beings.
When computer algorithms have replaced human judgment in decisions about when and where to launch missiles from drones, it will become even more difficult to hold anyone responsible than it already is. When an automated program determines that a swarm of drones should be sent out to kill suspected “bad guys” located in an area inhabited by many civilians, no one will be held accountable when some of those civilians are stripped of their lives. Those who wrote the algorithms will continue to shirk personal responsibility by muttering the usual shibboleths: “Mistakes were made.” “Stuff happens.” Note the absence of an active subject in these sorts of reflexive responses to the military’s commission of war crimes. The move from evading responsibility through the use of passive verbs to the outright denial that any agent of the U.S. government has ever done anything wrong will be seamless once lethal drone missions are computer programmed, for there will be no identifiable moral agent behind any specific decision at all.
It is a single-minded obsession with maximizing lethality which has created the perpetual motion drone killing machine, and the problem will only grow worse with automation. The “drone warriors” have amply displayed their insouciance toward the thousands of innocent victims whom they have already killed, so it falls on people who do not serve as cogs in the machine to pose legal and moral objections to what has been going on now for more than twenty years. This is easier said than done, for citizens have become inured to the atrocities funded by them as a result of the military’s effective management of the mainstream media. With the U.S. government engaged in the suppression and outright censorship of counternarratives, the problem of profligate killing has become even more challenging to address, for citizens and politicians alike are largely ignorant of the crimes committed in their name.
Indeed, the Pentagon exerts such control over the narrative transmitted to the populace today that whistleblowers and others who expose war crimes, such as Julian Assange, are ruthlessly criminalized and persecuted as a direct result of highly effective discreditation campaigns. When the government labels even nonviolent dissidents in the homeland as extremists, then the next logical step will be to “neutralize” them, too, by all means necessary. With artificial intelligence already being used to identify so-called extremists, and the looming specter of automated lethal drones ready to deploy, it has never been more dangerous to defy the government. Nonetheless, we must find a way to turn off this killing machine while it is still possible to do.
Laurie Calhoun is the Senior Fellow for The Libertarian Institute. She is the author of We Kill Because We Can: From Soldiering to Assassination in the Drone Age, War and Delusion: A Critical Examination, Theodicy: A Metaphilosophical Investigation, You Can Leave, Laminated Souls, and Philosophy Unmasked: A Skeptic’s Critique, in addition to many essays and book chapters. Questioning the COVID Company Line: Critical Thinking in Hysterical Times will be published by the Libertarian Institute in 2023.
The 52nd session of the CIS Council of Heads of Security Agencies and Special Services took place in Minsk on Thursday, during which time representatives from the Union State expressed concern that the NATO-Russianproxywar will expand. FSB chief Bortnikov from the Russian side shared his assessment that this bloc is responsible for sabotage in their two countries. He also warned that “The West actively encourages Moldova to get involved in the Ukrainian conflict by cleansing Transdniestria and Gagauzia.”
As for the Belarusian side of the Union State, it was most importantly represented by President Lukashenko, who raised awareness of the West’s impending coup plot against him. According to him, “this is no longer 2020, when girls went to rallies wearing short white skirts and holding flowers. People are ready to come here with weapons.” He said that this is because the West now demands that those “opposition” figures who they’re hosting commit terrorist attacks in order to continue receiving funding.
The strategic reason for going all out like that would be to compensate for the seven key challenges that place Ukraine in a position of weakness vis-à-vis Russia even in spite of the over $165 billion in aid that it’s received from NATO since the start of the special operation. Aware that the counteroffensive will likely fail to meet the Western public’s expectations exactly as unnamed US officials told Politicoin late April, Kiev seems to be preparing a set of spectacular provocations to spin as a success instead.
The potential plan appears to be for Kiev to lash out in those three directions in the hope of achieving a breakthrough across at least one of those fronts, not to mention the Line of Contact (LOC) between its forces and Russia’s in the territory that Ukraine claims as its own. The West wanted Georgia to play a role in this scheme too in order to maximally divide Moscow’s attention, but its Color Revolution agents couldn’t get Tbilisi to go along with this despite trying their best to pressure it to do so in March.
In the event that Kiev gains and holds ground in Belarus, Moldova, Russia, and/or Ukraine’s former regions, none of which can be taken for granted of course, then the West can claim that the counteroffensive was worth it. NATO doesn’t think that the last-mentioned front along the LOC will see much progress, if any at all, which is why it appears to be preparing Kiev for a multifront attack that stands a better chance of meeting the public’s expectations of success.
The scenario of a direct NATO military intervention in Moldova and/or up to the LOC also can’t be ruled out either. The second one would of course spike the risks of nuclear brinksmanship, but since “Biden’s Re-Election Hinges On The Success Of Kiev’s Counteroffensive”, the US’ ruling liberal–globalist elite might gamble with the apocalypse out of desperation if Kiev fails to achieve any success at all. The possibility of Russia reversing the dynamics to achieve its own breakthrough could also prompt that dark scenario too.
The West is in a dilemma since NATO’s “race of logistics”/“war of attrition” with Russia that Secretary-General Stoltenberg declared in mid-February is gradually trending in Moscow’s favor as proven by its victory in the Battle of Artyomovsk. Such an astronomical sum has already been invested in this counteroffensive, which has also been hyped up to an absurd level, that it has to go forward no matter what despite the Washington Post warning in mid-March about how poorly Kiev’s forces are really faring.
It’s therefore politically impossible to do the pragmatic thing by agreeing to a ceasefire that freezes the LOC before Kiev loses even more territory, hence why the West seems to be seriously contemplating the previously unthinkable scenario of escalating along four separate fronts at once. This is being done from a position of weakness out of desperation for something tangible to be achieved that can then be spun as a success in order to partially meet the Western public’s expectations.
The counteroffensive’s full failure would reflect terribly on the ruling Western elite and possibly pose a major electoral challenge to their figureheads the next time that voters go to the polls, which is why they’re ready to do whatever is required to prevent that perception among their people. There’s of course the slim chance that cooler heads will prevail, but the latest developments suggest that Kiev is being pressured by NATO to go all out, which could lead to the proxy war expanding in four directions at once.
The legacy of Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelensky will be turning Ukraine into “a new Afghanistan,” according to former Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov. Azarov was head of government three times and presided over Ukraine’s largest economic growth in its post-Soviet history, thus making his opinion about Zelensky’s legacy, especially scathing.
“Over the years, presidents of Ukraine made promises to turn the country into either a new France or a new Switzerland. However, Zelensky went further than anyone and turned the country into a new Afghanistan, to the delight of the Anglo-Saxons and defence companies,” Azarov wrote in a social media post.
“What do you think? Is there a chance that Washington will get tired of its ‘toy’ in the foreseeable future? Or is the pleasure of playing dirty tricks on Russia more important than the lives of the hostages of the Kiev regime?” the politician asked on Facebook.
It is recalled that Azarov explained in an interview in early May the role played by the US and the UK in transforming Ukraine into a failed state, outlining how since the Euromaidan coup in 2014, the country’s population halved. He also characterised the current Ukrainian president as “an empty vessel” who cares more about profits and popularity abroad than the Ukrainian people, which makes him a tool of Western powers and oligarchic interests.
Azarov is certainly not the first to compare the war in Ukraine to that of the 20-year US war in Afghanistan, with experts believing that both conflicts were prospects for the US military-industrial complex to profit from massive new defence contracts. However, experts also warn that Ukraine could become Washington’s next Afghanistan-style forever war.
It is recalled that analyst Scott Ritter, a former United Nations inspector and US Marine in Iraq, said that President Joe Biden should tell his Ukrainian counterpart that his country realistically has no chance of emerging victorious from its confrontation with Russia and that the US runs from fights as it does not have to deal with the terrible consequences of leaving, just like in Afghanistan and Vietnam.
In this same light, The American Conservative published in August 2022 that “defense contractors shed a tear when America’s war in Afghanistan came to a close […] But just after one protracted conflict came to a close, another came to the complex’s rescue. Though there is little national interest for the U.S. in Ukraine, and everything to lose given Russia is a nuclear-armed power, Biden has vowed that the U.S. will be alongside Ukraine for the long haul.”
It is suggested that the US continues its useless but destructive wars, such as in Vietnam, Afghanistan and now Ukraine, to prop up the American military-industrial complex. The same publication, but in a later article, highlighted that the war in Ukraine was a “new 1980s-style Afghanistan, with the U.S. playing both the American and the Soviet roles at times,” adding that “while NATO countries and others sent small numbers of troops and material to Afghanistan, the U.S. has gone out of its way to make Ukraine look like a NATO show when it is not.”
The comments by Azarov came days before Zelensky said that the start time for the activation of the Armed Forces of Ukraine had been approved. According to Zelensky, at the Headquarters of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief meeting, there was also a discussion on the issue of supplying ammunition to soldiers.
However, Zelensky is merely speaking for the sake of speaking when we consider that we are in the last day of spring and the first days of summer, and the long-awaited offensive never began, which is especially humiliating considering the boastful claims made of soon capturing Crimea and Mariupol from Russia.
It is likely that, just like in the Afghanistan case, military offensive methods will not be used by Ukraine but rather terrorist methods instead, such as reconnaissance, drone weapons, airspace intrusion, and infrastructure destruction. As The Telegraph concedes, Ukrainian troops are exhausted, and Kiev is in a “desperate push to replenish its battle-stricken military ahead of a looming counter-offensive.”
Even though Ukraine has received a lot of NATO equipment and weapons, there is nonetheless a shortage of troops that officials consider key players in the counter-offensive. Recruiters are facing a huge challenge trying to attract the right number of men into the army, and now they are adopting harsher recruitment tactics to find people for the Army. All this points to a similar scenario experienced in Afghanistan, something Zelensky has made Ukraine akin to.
Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
The North Atlantic alliance began military drills hosted by Finland just miles from the Russian border. An American defense official said the war games show the bloc’s commitment to the newest member of NATO.
US Army Major-General Gregory Anderson said on Tuesday, “We are here, we are committed. The US Army is here training with our newest NATO ally to build that capability, to help defend Finland if anything happened.”
About 7,500 NATO soldiers are participating in the exercises – dubbed “Northern Forest 23.” The drills are taking place just a two-hour drive from the Russian border in northern Finland and will run from May 27 to June 2. Reuters described the war games as “Finland’s biggest modern-time land force drill above the Arctic Circle.”
A Finnish Army press release detailed the multiple weapons systems allies will deploy for drills.” The equipment of the international forces will include, among others, Warrior infantry fighting vehicles [from the UK], MLRS rocket launcher systems [from the US and UK] and CV90 infantry fighting vehicles [from Sweden and Norway],” the statement said.
Helsinki is NATO’s newest member. When Finland became a member of the North Atlantic alliance, it doubled the bloc’s border with Russia. At over 800 miles, Helsinki has a longer border with Moscow than any other member of NATO.
Tensions between Brussels and Moscow have soared due to the alliance’s support for Kiev. However, the confrontation between Russia and the West has spread to other regions of Europe as well. Washington has increased its military presence in the Arctic as a show of force eyeing Moscow.
Last week, the USS Gerald Ford – the world’s largest aircraft carrier – made a port call in Norway. The Ford is the first American aircraft carrier to visit Oslo after six decades.
The warship will now travel into the Arctic Circle to conduct war games. A spokesperson for Oslo said, “This visit is an important signal of the close bilateral relationship between the US and Norway and a signal of the credibility of collective defense and deterrence.”
The Russian embassy in Norway denounced the Ford’s maneuvers as unnecessary. “There are no questions in the (Arctic) north that require a military solution, nor topics where outside intervention is needed,” the embassy posted on Facebook.
According to RealClearDefense, citing local sources, Taiwanese foreign minister Joseph Wu announced that the island is in talks with Washington DC about possibly being brought under the US nuclear umbrella. RealClearDefense warns that the move would likely be seen by Beijing as a clear escalation and would likely greatly increase the potential for a future war with China. This assessment can only be considered an understatement, as the Asian giant is essentially guaranteed to respond directly to such escalation. Being under the American nuclear umbrella entails several key changes that would be absolutely unacceptable to China and would certainly provoke an adequate reaction.
The Taipei Times reported that local defense experts find this a “positive for Taiwan”. On May 23, Institute for National Defense and Security research fellow Su Tzu-yun stated:
“Taiwan’s national security doctrine explicitly rejects the development of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction, despite the nation facing the threat of such weapons being used against it. The extension of an ally’s nuclear umbrella over Taiwan would be significantly beneficial to Taiwan’s security.”
The nuclear umbrella is a deterrence policy stemming from the (First) Cold War and entails a nuclear power to guarantee the usage of its nuclear weapons to retaliate if its ally was exposed to a nuclear attack by any third party. This also includes the option of hosting US nuclear weapons, as was the case with countries such as South Korea between 1958 and 1991. Taipei’s Foreign Minister Wu made the comments about this possibility during a session with the Legislative Yuan (Taiwanese parliament). However, he declined to give any details about the talks and whether Taipei itself had asked the US to bring the island under its nuclear umbrella or if the initiative came from Washington DC.
“Regarding the discussion of this issue with the United States, it is not suitable for me to make it public here,” Wu said, as reported by The South China Morning Post.
Most US allies and satellite states/vassals are under the protection of its nuclear umbrella, including Japan, South Korea and every member of NATO, with nearly half a dozen member states (Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey) even having nuclear sharing programs with Washington DC. As previously mentioned, giving the same or similar guarantees to China’s breakaway island province would require the US to use thermonuclear weapons in case of hostilities between Beijing and Taipei. It should be understood that in case Washington DC goes ahead with such an agreement, the question of Taiwan would become much more than just an issue of respecting Chinese sovereignty, territorial integrity and international law.
As per the (rather correct) assessment of The South China Morning Post, this idea is “an unthinkable prospect” for Beijing. Indeed, such a move would further internationalize the Taiwan dispute, as well as accelerate the potential formation of “Asia-Pacific NATO”, while jeopardizing China’s strategic security. Although the US has encountered significant hurdles with attempts to form yet another iteration of the North Atlantic geopolitical monstrosity, the belligerent thalassocracy likely believes that including Taiwan in its global nuclear umbrella would push others in the region to be more accepting of the idea of an “Asia-Pacific NATO”. How likely this is to work is up for debate, however, what it would surely cause is a dramatic surge in the potential for escalation and yet another step toward a world-ending thermonuclear conflict.
A bipartisan group of Senators sent a letter to the Defense Department chief calling for an investigation into major American arms dealers accused of systemic “price gouging,” on Wednesday, according to The Hill.
The letter, signed by the likes of Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Mike Braun (R-IN) Ron Wyden (D-OR), and Chuck Grassley (R-IA), cites former Pentagon officials, auditors, and other insiders who spoke to CBS and accused military-industrial complex giants, such as Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and Boeing, of ripping off the US taxpayer.
During a recent 60 Minutes report, Shay Assad, who worked as a Pentagon contract negotiator for 40 years, cites numerous examples while explaining to the outlet that these firms overcharge the DOD for “[everything from] radar and missiles … helicopters … planes … submarines… down to the nuts and bolts.”
The report said these “astronomical price increases” have worsened sharply amidst Washington’s exponentially rising demand for weapons systems to both bolster Taiwan – in a thinly-veiled effort to destabilize China – and support NATO’s proxy Kiev during its war with Russia.
“Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, and TransDigm are among the offenders,” the senators asserted. Their letter continues, “[these contractors are] dramatically overcharging the Department and U.S. taxpayers while reaping enormous profits, seeing their stock prices soar, and handing out massive executive compensation packages.”
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, the letter’s recipient, sat on Raytheon’s board of directors before accepting his current post. The lawmakers charge that these companies are securing profits ranging from 40% to even as high as 4,000%.
The military budget will soon surpass the once unthinkable $1 trillion mark. The DOD has requested a record $842 billion for the next fiscal year, roughly half of which will go to “the offenders,” just such private defense contractors.
While the Joe Biden administration has asked Congress to approve a nearly $900 billion military budget. The hawkish legislature will almost certainly add tens of billions more to Biden’s proposed budget. For 2023, Congress added another $45 billion to Biden’s already mammoth request for $813 billion, resulting in a finalized $858 billion annual military spending bill.
Even these eye-opening numbers do not tell the whole story, because the real national security state budget is already fast approaching $1.5 trillion.
The lawmakers’ letter also expresses concerns about the Pentagon’s ability to audit, track and mitigate fraud risk. The DOD’s accountability system is completely “broken.” Assad said, “No matter who they are, no matter what company it is, they need to be held accountable. And right now that accountability system is broken in the Department of Defense.”
The Senators complained that, for decades, this obscene, unaccountable spending has been ongoing. The letter cites a 2021 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report which found the Pentagon failed to implement any comprehensive solution to combating this “unconscionable” fraud, as Assad has described it.
“The DOD can no longer expect Congress or the American taxpayer to underwrite record military spending while simultaneously failing to account for the hundreds of billions it hands out every year to spectacularly profitable private corporations,” the Senators declared. These firms “have abused the trust government has placed in them…exploiting their position as sole suppliers for certain items to increase prices far above inflation or any reasonable profit margin,” the letter continued.
“It’s not really a true capitalistic market because one company is telling you what’s going to happen. [It’s a] monopoly,” retired DoD auditor Mark Owen told CBS.
Connor Freeman is the assistant editor and a writer at the Libertarian Institute, primarily covering foreign policy. He is a co-host on Conflicts of Interest.
President Joe Biden has confirmed the US is still mulling over whether to send MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) ballistic missiles to Ukraine. What are these weapons? What are their characteristics? And why has Russia warned that their delivery to Kiev might drag Washington into a direct confrontation with Moscow? Sputnik explains.
“That’s still in play” was Joe Biden’s four-word answer to a reporter outside the White House on Monday after being asked whether the US plans to deliver ATACMS to Ukraine. He did not elaborate.
Made to be used by the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System road-mobile multiple rocket launchers which the US began to send to Ukraine last summer, and older M270 Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (M270s) sent by Germany, Italy, Norway, and the UK, ATACMS have been touted by US media and politicians as one of the most fearsome conventional weapons in America’s arsenal.
What are ATACMS Used For, What is Their Range, How Fast Can They Fly, and How Accurate are They?
Created in the mid-1980s at the twilight of the Cold War and entering into service with the US Army in early 1991, just in time for a US-led war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, ATACMS are a solid-fuel, surface-to-surface ballistic missile with an effective firing range of up to 300 km, and a maximum velocity during boost phase of up to Mach 3, or 1 km/second, making them difficult to intercept using older air defense systems.
ATACMS’ characteristics vary wildly depending on model, block number, and configuration. For example, while they can be armed with 500 pound (230 kg) penetrating high explosive blast fragmentation warheads, they can also be fitted with other explosives weighing anywhere from 160 and 560 kg, including anti-personnel and material cluster “bomblets.”
There are also notable differences in the weapons’ guidance systems, with older variants relying on inertial guidance, while newer missiles include built-in GPS.
Where Have ATACMS Been Used Before and What Countries Have Them?
Along with the 1991 Gulf War, ATACMS were used extensively during the US-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in the 2000s.
Besides the US military, the missiles are operated by just a handful of US partners and clients, including NATO allies Greece, Turkiye, Poland, and Romania, as well as South Korea, Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. Australia, Taiwan, Lithuania, Estonia, and Morocco have either signed contracts on the purchase of the weapons, or submitted formal requests to do so.
How Much Do ATACMS Cost?
ATACMS are pricey. So pricey that the Netherlands decided to shop around for and find an alternative earlier this year. Finland made a similar move in 2014. The US Army – the ATACMS’ main user, decided to wind the program down in 2007, citing high costs, and penning a life extension contract with Lockheed Martin to upgrade the remaining stock of missiles. A specialized “cross-domain” ATACMS proposed in 2016 was also killed off in the fiscal 2021 defense spending bill, due to unspecified “technical problems.”
ATACMS have an estimated cost of over one million dollars (the Pentagon provided an $820,000 per missile price tag in the late 1990s – which would be equivalent to over $1.5 million today, with no newer valuations made available since).
Over 3,700 ATACMS of various modifications were produced between the late 1980s and 2007, with about 600 expended by Washington in its wars over the past 30 years.
What is the Russian Equivalent of the ATACMS?
About half-a-dozen non-US missile systems have been compared to the ATACMS, including the OTR-21 Tochka, a Soviet-made tactical ballistic missile, the 9K720 Iskander, a Russian-made missile, the Fateh-313 – an Iranian-made tactical missile design, and the P-12 variant of China’s B-611 missile. North Korea, India, Israel, and Ukraine have also tinkered with comparable systems, with varying degrees of success.
Iskanders boast superior range and payload characteristics to the ATACMS, but their launchers are only capable of firing their specially designed missiles, whereas ATACMS can be fired from HIMARS and MLRS launchers.
What System is Expected to Replace the ATACMS?
Lockheed Martin’s Precision Strike Missile is expected to succeed the ATACMS. In development since 2016, the missile is expected to have a longer maximum range (500 km or more), and be slim-lined to allow for two to be fitted per carrier.
Why Would ATACMS Deployment in Ukraine Be a Major Escalation?
In light of Kiev’s propensity to use its Western-provided weapons to attack targets inside Russia – including civilian infrastructure in Donbass, Moscow has warned repeatedly that sending ATACMS to Ukraine would dramatically increase the danger of an escalation, and possibly even lead to direct military clashes between Russia and the US.
Earlier this year, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov blasted lawmakers in Washington over their calls to ship ATACMS missiles to Ukraine for strikes against Crimea, calling such proposals “an element of psychological warfare,” and warning that the West’s escalation of the proxy war could have unpredictable consequences.
In late 2022, US media reported that Pentagon officials had urged the White House not to send ATACMS to Ukraine, similarly citing their potential use “against targets inside Russian territory,” and the danger that they could “potentially set off a wider war with Russia.”
There’s hardly a shortage of Russophobia in the political West, whether it’s the previously latent one or the much more blatant hatred unashamedly demonstrated in recent times. In most countries dominated by the United States this has become the “new normal” since February 24, 2022. However, of all Washington DC’s allies and satellite states/vassals, there’s one that makes even such endemically Russophobic countries like Poland or the Baltic states seem “moderate” – the United Kingdom.
In recent announcements, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) said that it could completely cut diplomatic ties with the UK over its extremely escalatory actions such as the delivery of ever more advanced and longer-range weapons to the Kiev regime. In a statement for Russia’s RT, published on Friday, the Russian MFA cited London’s significant and ever-growing meddling in Ukraine, as well as other actions aimed against Russia, particularly when it comes to arming and directly assisting the Neo-Nazi junta forces. Although the MFA stated that cutting ties with the UK might be an “extreme measure”, it was left without virtually any other option, so this move is being considered very seriously.
“The severing of diplomatic ties with the UK would be an ‘extreme measure’, but [Russia] could end up taking the step considering London’s significant involvement in the Ukraine conflict,” the Russian MFA warned on Friday.
On May 18, The Wall Street Journal published a report claiming that “UK special forces from the British Army’s SAS [Special Air Service] and SRR [Special Reconnaissance Regiment] regiments and the Navy’s SBS [Special Boat Service] units are operating very close to the front lines in Ukraine”. The WSJ presented the report in a way that indicates these actions constitute a supposed “split” in policy with the US, as Washington DC has allegedly “held back sending special forces to directly assist the Ukrainians on the front lines of fighting”. However, such claims are rather laughable, especially when considering numerous reports about American special forces and intelligence assets operating in Ukraine.
Worse yet, intelligence sources are adamant that special services operators sent by the US are directly supporting the Kiev regime forces, including by directing their attacks on not just the Russian military, but also targets deep within Russia. The WSJ report implies that the only supposed difference between the US and UK special forces and intelligence assets is that those sent by London directly take part in hostilities on the frontlines while their American counterparts “only provide advisory services”. What’s more, the aforementioned UK special forces are believed to be directly involved in planning and assisting cross-border sabotage operations and terrorist attacks, including the latest one against civilians in the Belgorod oblast (region).
When asked by RT about these controversial (to say the least) reports, the Russian MFA stated: “[Moscow] is well aware of consistent efforts by London aimed at providing military assistance to the Neo-Nazi regime in Kiev.”
“The UK’s support includes the supply of domestically produced and foreign military hardware to Ukraine, the training of Ukrainian troops in Britain and elsewhere in Europe, intelligence sharing, consulting support and likely participation in the operational-tactical planning by the [Ukrainian] military, including sabotage, other operations, direct provision of cyber-security, [and] deployment of mercenaries,” the Russian MFA said in an official statement, further adding: “We can’t rule out that the British participated in the planning, organization and support of terrorist attacks carried out by the Kiev regime on the territory of Russia, including through the provision of intelligence information.”
Deborah Bronnert, the UK ambassador to Russia, has been summoned several times by the Russian government which demanded explanations of London’s unadulterated enmity. However, the policy of escalating confrontation with Moscow, started under former prime minister Boris Johnson, seems to be going on unabated. According to various sources, during the first several months of Russia’s counteroffensive against NATO aggression in Europe Johnson even actively worked to prevent peace talk initiatives between Russia and the Kiev regime, some of which could have stopped the conflict from escalating and causing further bloodshed. Worse yet, the former UK PM also personally and repeatedly urged the Neo-Nazi junta frontman Volodymyr Zelensky “not to give an inch of compromise with the Russians”.
Since then, regardless of who was at its helm, the UK has only escalated its already extensive military support for the Kiev regime. Apart from training the junta’s forces, London was also the first to pledge the deliveries of heavy armor and various missile systems, such as the “Brimstone” (against ground targets) and “Starstreak” MANPADS (man-portable air defense system).
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Aleksandr Grushko recently warned that the West’s possible shipment of F-16s to Kiev “is fraught with colossal risks” for that de facto New Cold War bloc, shortly after which his boss Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov described this scenario as “an unacceptable escalation.” The Kremlin’s assessment clashes with the Pentagon’s, whose Air Force chief Frank Kendall claimed last week that “it’s not going to be a dramatic game-changer…for their total military capabilities.”
Biden’s support at the G7 Summit for training Ukrainian pilots to fly the F-16s and some countries’ like the UK’s plans to assemble a so-called “jetcoalition” for their Eastern European proxy suggest that these opposite predictions will be put to the test after some time unless a ceasefire is reached first. Considering this possibility, it’s timely to weigh the merits of each side’s assessment in order to get a better idea of whether the Kremlin’s or the Pentagon’s will more closely reflect reality in that scenario.
Sky News’ explainer that was published on Sunday provides a good starting point for answering this question. According to military analyst Sean Bell, Kiev will likely receive old F-16s that are “heavily dependent on spares” and urgently in need of being updated with modern equipment. “Anything less” than “Modern air-to-air missiles married to a modern F-16 radar”, which he said “would pose a credible threat”, “risks emboldening the Russian Air Force.”
Before reaching his conclusion, Bell also informed readers that “In addition to radar, modern fighters also need state-of-the-art electronic warfare, defensive aids, infrared sensors, link-16 datalinks, and a computer system to programme and deliver the latest generation of high-tech air-to-air and air-to-ground weapons”, not to mention “trained pilots and groundcrew, weapons, spares, ground planning facilities, intelligence, and a suite of supporting infrastructure are also required.”
Quite clearly, it’ll be an herculean task for the West to make Kiev’s possible F-16 fleet a formidable challenge for Russia’s much more modern one that’s already manned by very experienced pilots. This take therefore extends credence to Kendall’s claim that it won’t be a game-changer. Nevertheless, Kiev reportedly envisages arming the F-16s with Swedish-German Taurus missiles that could reach Moscow with their 500-kilometer maximum range, though it’s unclear whether they’ll receive them.
Even if they do, then this doesn’t mean that they’ll be able to break through Russia’s air defenses. Should they succeed in striking targets near or within that Great Power’s capital, however, then it would certainly be spun by them and their supporters as a soft power coup. This is especially the case if verified footage emerges of an F-16 taking down a much more modern Russian jet. Both scenarios are unlikely, though, but their political significance partially explains why Kiev wants these planes so badly.
The other motivation behind obtaining these systems is for them “to strike the command centers and logistical networks of the Russian forces” in the former Ukrainian regions that Kiev claims as its own according to their Air Force spokesman Yuri Ignat. While it’s obviously better for them to have more capabilities available than less, this use of the F-16s also wouldn’t be a game-changer and could even be counterproductive for the West’s soft power if Russia ends up shooting them down.
On the other hand, there are still plausible reasons for why the Kremlin would regard the West’s transfer of these planes to Ukraine as an unacceptable escalation. For starters, it represents yet another unilateral escalation by NATO in its proxywar with Russia, which could prompt Moscow to respond in ways that risk bringing the conflict closer to nuclear brinksmanship. The Kremlin might feel forced to react more seriously than usual in order to “save face” after yet another of its “red lines” was crossed.
The US is basically taunting Russia to do so at this point per an interpretation of Politico’srecent report. According to their unnamed administration sources, “The Pentagon, including top military officials, have long worried about the potential of escalation on the Russian side should the West take such a step as giving Ukraine F-16 capabilities. But Blinken had observed over the past year that Russia rarely escalates beyond rhetoric, even as the West has introduced more military offerings into Ukraine.”
Russian policymakers might therefore calculate that they finally have to do something meaningful to signal their displeasure if this latest “red line” is crossed, particularly if Moscow gets bombed by the F-16s and/or verified footage emerges of them taking down one of their jets. The odds of that happening would spike if a few of those planes are secretly modernized. In that case, Russia risks becoming a laughingstock if nothing serious is done in response, after which even more escalations might follow.
Other than possibly being placed in this particular dilemma, there’s another reason why the Kremlin considers the West’s potential transfer of these planes to Ukraine to be unacceptable, and that’s the chance that they could be based in NATO states and/or manned by “volunteer pilots” from NATO. The first scenario would already be provocative enough, but could prompt an unprecedented crisis if those NATO-based F-16s are used to bomb Russia’s pre-2014 territory.
As for the second, it would almost certainly entail the most modern F-16s being used since NATO likely wouldn’t risk its “volunteer pilots’” lives by having them fly outdated deathtraps. Furthermore, these planes would then probably be based in a NATO state for additional protection even if they’re only used to hit targets over the airspace or in the territory that Kiev claims as its own. As with the first scenario, that would already be a major provocation, let alone if they’re used to bomb Russia’s pre-2014 territory.
To be absolutely clear, there’s nothing credible in the public domain to suggest that these last two worst-case scenarios are being contemplated, but it’s likely the Kremlin’s concerns that the West’s possible transfer of F-16s to Ukraine could lead to those escalations that it considers this unacceptable. Russian policymakers probably expect that any reluctance to meaningfully signal their displeasure at the crossing of that latest “red line” would embolden the West to eventually think about doing precisely that in time.
They obviously don’t want to be placed in the dilemma whereby they might feel damned if they express such a signal by escalating in response for deterrence purposes and equally damned if they decline. In either case, the consequences are unpredictable and could result in everything spiraling out of control, hence why they prefer for Kiev not to obtain any F-16s in the first place. Nobody can therefore say with certainty what will ultimately happen, which is why many observers are becoming worried about this.
I’ve been wondering for quite some time about whether we are in a War and the resolution of my thoughts on the subject has recently improved.
Oddly enough, I have some standing on the subject.
I lived in Iraq between 1981 to 1991, a period that covered almost all of the Iraq/Iran War and all of the Gulf War, the original, not the sequels.
It was an old school type of war, with two parties fighting over territory and trying to redraw a border. A lot of people died over 8 years and the border stayed the same. But weapons were sold, and internal power was consolidated.
That’s really what war is about, territory. You have something that I want, and I will fight you for it.
So, if this is a war, who are the warring parties and what is the fight over?
The war is between “the state” and “the citizen”. The latter is YOU and ME and it’s easy enough to understand (sort of), but THE STATE is not straightforward anymore and I’ll cover that later.
The border between these two parties is being redrawn. The relationship between the State and the Citizen is being RESET.
When you hear about The Great Reset, that is what “Reset” really means.
Think back to your life, last year in Feb 2020. Think back to how you thought, what you did, what degree of intrusion the State had in your life and what level of control you had over your life and choices.
In Feb 2020 there was a border, a fairly large circle that you stood in the centre of. Everything within that circle was your domain, your freedoms, and your sovereignty.
Now, reflect on your life today, but more importantly reflect on the size of that circle. It obviously is much, much smaller today. The border between you and the State has been Reset.
Within that circle is a second circle that is much smaller, and it surrounds you almost like a second skin. Within this second circle, you have what is your “bodily sovereignty”. What is within your body is YOURS and not the State’s.
If you have acquiesced to the State’s injection, you have surrendered your bodily autonomy to the State. There is no border anymore between you and the State. It’s a depressing conclusion but true.
Your rationalisation for taking it is irrelevant, you wouldn’t have taken it but for the State’s lies and threats. Unless you took the flu vaccine every year religiously, to “protect yourself and others”, you have surrendered to the State. You may have had no choice because you need to make a living and feed your family, so it was a calculated surrender, but a surrender, nevertheless.
But for almost everyone else, you surrendered your bodily autonomy (let alone your current and future health) so that you could go to the pub, go to the hairdresser, go to the gym, see your parents, travel, plus a laundry list of other reasons that the world has used to rationalise its surrender to the State.
It is worth noting, that if you have surrendered your bodily sovereignty to the State, and there is no longer a border between you and the State, what would you ever say no to in the future. If you were not prepared to stand up for your bodily sovereignty, what would you ever stand up for?
But as a friend of mine said the other day, people just don’t know. They haven’t spent the time (for some hundreds of hours) necessary to figure out what is true and what is a lie.
They think the jab is safe (without understanding the meaning of the word).
They think it is effective (that it will protect them from getting Covid or giving it to parents, grandparents and others).
They think the State is truthful (why would they lie?).
They think the disease is exceptionally deadly (because they were told it is).
They think that masks work (when hazmat suits are necessary to protect against respiratory viruses).
They think that lockdowns work and are worth the cost.
They think that social distancing works.
They think that healthy people can spread the deadly disease.
They think that test results are real.
They think that contact tracing works (so they keep checking in, even when nobody is watching or cares).
And they think many other things that all form the framework for the biggest lie ever told to the world.
You need a lot of time to dismantle each one of these falsehoods and unravel the matrix that has been built.
I now would add another leg to this line of thinking.
They think there is no war.
This is a vital point, and I draw on my time in Iraq to understand it.
We knew there was a war. We knew who the warring parties were. We knew there was a border being fought over. We knew that our wants and needs needed to recalibrate to the reality of the war we were in. I don’t remember anyone ever complaining about missing out on all of life’s “nice to haves”. Our wants had recalibrated very tightly around our needs, there wasn’t a gap really. If we and our loved ones were fed and safe for the night and we had a job in the morning that allowed us to be fed and safe for the night, then we were generally happy. To survive war, you need to recalibrate psychologically to it. Of all my friends during those years, I don’t remember any of them being depressed. They had psychologically adapted to the reality of war, and to a climate of having and doing less. Within that recalibration, we were content.
We bunkered down and got through it.
The Iraq-Iran War went on for 8 years. Early on people thought it would be over in a few months, that was just normal human optimism. But after a couple of years most understood that thinking in terms of timeframes just created false hope and wasn’t helpful to having a robust and resilient War mindset. So, we accepted that it would be a long war and stopped trying to guess it’s end. Basically, for our own psychological well-being we settled in for the long haul.
I recommend that you do the same here, start settling in for the long haul. This War is not ending any time soon.
Learn to live with less.
I wrote this short piece many years ago, mainly so that I wouldn’t forget the stories and that my kids would get a glimpse into their history. It was a time where we learned to live with less.
The Generator
The first thing the Americans did was take out most of the infrastructure. They took out the bridges, they took out the TV stations and they took out the power plants. We lost our electricity on the first night of bombing in January 1991.
The war lasted for about three months, 100 days to be precise, and then it took another three months before the lights came back on, so all in all about six months without electricity.
Six months!
I’ve heard it said that society falls apart and anarchy sets after a couple of weeks without electricity. Well, that didn’t happen. Maybe we had other things on our minds.
A lot of things changed quickly when the power went out on that first night of bombing. Sleep cycles for one, no more TV and some candle use initially but that quickly changed to mainly a kerosene gas lantern that we had. It looked something like this.
It had a pump that you would use to pressurise the tank, it would then spray a kerosene mist onto a ball shaped net that burned brightly. It made a sssshhh sound that I still remember. I don’t recall anyone else having one and I don’t remember how we got it but it was our main source of light in the living room during those dark months. It burned white and bright and had a constant, soothing pressured burning sound.
One day a friend and neighbour, Abu Bashar (Father of Bashar), managed to get his hands on an old broken down generator. He asked me if I wanted to have a look at it. Having never before seen a generator in my life, let alone fixed one, I announced my intention to resurrect the machine.
I was asked the question because over the years I had built up a reputation as a fixer, helper and general handyman. I had no idea how to “fix” a generator, especially seeing I didn’t know what was wrong with it. But I loved taking things apart, so I did just that.
It was about the size of a large esky and I spent most of the day dismembering the unfortunate machine. I carefully cleaned every piece and when there was nothing left to take apart, I started to put it all back together again. As evening fell the now cleaned generator was pieced together with only a small collection of “extra” bits and pieces left in my pocket.
It was evening by now, Abu Bashar, his family and the occasional neighbour had been casually keeping an eye on me all day. Anyway, the thing was back together by late evening, it was filled up with petrol and now the moment of truth had arrived. As I was about to pull the starter cable, I remember thinking I had no idea why I thought it might work. I knew that all I had done was take it apart, clean it and put it back together again. I hadn’t “fixed” anything. So, any hope that it might work was clearly without basis. Put simply, it was a Hail Mary.
So, I pulled that cable, hailing Mary… and that beautiful two stoke started first time!! The bloody thing was working! And it was loud. As loud as any two stroke, angry at being silent for years, making up for lost time.
It was late, around nine or ten pm and the whole neighbourhood could hear this monster roaring, but no one seemed to care. There was electricity in the street!
The first thing everyone wanted to do was watch a video of an old Egyptian movie. Anything to take their mind off the misery and drudgery that was their daily life. And so there we were, family, friends and neighbours crammed together in a small living room, watching an old favourite movie, barely hearing a word over the roar of the machine outside. But happy that a little bit of joy and normalcy had returned despite the contrived and temporarily nature of the whole affair.
If you don’t know that you are in a war, and “just want your old life back” then taking a “safe and effective vaccine” to “protect you and your loved ones” from a “deadly disease” seems entirely reasonable. But unfortunately, none of that is true, including the bit about getting “your old life back”.
So, to summarise.
Yes, there is a war.
It is being fought over the Territory and the Border between The State and YOU The Citizen. It’s a land grab.
The State has been winning since March 2020.
The injection is the final step in that War and dissolves the last Border surrounding our Bodily Sovereignty.
In War, a War Mindset is required to survive.
War is a battle between two parties over territory
The state is in open warfare to reset its relationship with its citizens. To move the border
Passports not only move the border but then permit the state to keep moving that border as they see fit
One year ago today: WHO officially declares COVID-19 a pandemic.
Director-General Dr. Tedros: “We’re deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity, and by the alarming levels of inaction.” pic.twitter.com/D0k0wOuYa2
Now, watch this through the lens of War. This was a declaration of War on The Citizen.
It was not clear to most, certainly not to me, back then. It is as clear as daylight today.
What’s interesting about this War, is that REGULAR Compliance is the end game. Not just today’s compliance, but ONGOING Compliance.
Please understand, there is no such thing as “fully vaccinated”.
There is now only non compliant and temporarily compliant.
The unjabbed are the Resistance.
But, not getting the jab, is among other things just a proxy for non-compliance.
So, in truth the non-compliant are The Resistance.
And what’s interesting about that is that if you have surrendered to date, you can Un-surrender.
If you QR Code to check-in everywhere, you could stop doing that. You can deploy a range of evasion tactics.
If you have taken one dose, you can choose to not take the second.
If you have taken two doses, you can choose to not take the “booster”.
If you were “enjoying your freedoms” you can choose to adopt a War mindset.
You can choose at any moment to stop complying with The State and reclaim some of your lost territory.
And while we are on the subject of surrender; just as you can un-surrender at any time, you can also surrender at any time, so do you need to surrender today?
If you have not taken the jab so far, do you need to give in today?
Why not leave your surrender for another day or another week?
I have written extensively about my D.A.D Strategy and a Waiting for Novavax Strategy so why surrender today, wait until tomorrow and then ask yourself the same question. In War, taking things one day and one week at a time makes a lot of sense.
Stuart Lindsay, an Australian retired Federal Circuit Court Judge wrote this wonderful piece:
Strictly speaking, we fell in March 2020 when COVID arrived in earnest, but I date it from my acceptance that my fellow citizens would never stir. You cannot wake someone who is pretending to be asleep. The truth is that whether through cowardice or prolonged conditioning the vast majority of Australians, including many of my close friends and even family members, have manifested since then the absence of any kind of allegiance to their country or their heritage.
Most of those I live among have no desire at all to recover the freedom to speak or to assemble which has been taken from them. What would they have to say anyway? The only public utterances to which they now aspire are those to be roared as part of a crowd at the bread-and-circuses events, such as the football, which they are occasionally granted permission to attend. Then they replace their masks for the drive home past empty shops on patrolled and near-deserted streets.
Stuart has some wonderful turns of phrase, such as this one describing the acquiescing (surrendered) masses:
Netflix, full bellies and a warm place to defecate. That is all most want these days, is it not?
Stuart understands the mindset required for these times, and the years ahead:
I show you the times. Look out of your window if you need corroboration. I show you what you must do to get yourself in order if you want to be of any value in the fight to preserve what is left of your heritage. Here are some other ways to ready yourself for that fight.
Relinquish all of that unseemly longing for the return of unregulated visits to the theatre or the cinema and those beloved restaurants. Accept that never again will such things be free of petty invigilation and that on the worst case outcome they will only be possible if you keep having mRNA booster jabs — now the case in Israel, where three shots are now required even as officials moot lifting it four. If you are wary and reluctant to be inoculated with treatments whose long-term effects remain unknown, as am I, you need to accept that governments intend to make you a pariah for not having a “COVID passport” and be prepared to forfeit such pre-Fall pleasures as dining out. Keep your self-respect instead. Read that long-neglected Cervantes or C.S. Lewis on your bookshelf, help out at a refuge for the homeless or visit your sick grannie. Australia is teeming with sick grannies, so I’ve heard.
Here is a wonderful recent speech by Dr. Julie Ponesse.
She references War a few times, here are the War references:
But it is not only information that is being weaponized, in this WAR; it is a person’s right to think for herself.
… we are in a kind of moral WAR.
But the WARS of the past have had clear and distinct boundaries: the east and the west, patriots, and government.
The WAR we find ourselves in today is one of infiltration instead of invasion, intimidation instead of free choice, of psychological forces so insidious we come to believe the ideas are our own and that we are doing our part by giving up our rights.
As a wise colleague recently said “This is a WAR about the role of government. It is about our freedom to think and ask questions, and about whether individual autonomy can be downgraded to a conditional privilege or whether it remains a right. It is a WAR about whether you are to remain a citizen or become a subject. It is about who owns you, you or the state.”
As someone born in the 70s, I never thought THIS would be a WAR I would have to fight, that the right to bodily autonomy, to the free and transparent exchange of information would be at risk.
Ok, I think it’s time we talk about The State. What does that word mean?
Well, let’s start off by saying that it doesn’t mean what it used to mean, and it doesn’t mean what you think it means.
It used to mean that your government, acting independently of other governments, independently of business and independently of media would try to increase its territorial footprint while reducing the citizens territory. Sometimes they would win and sometimes they would lose and there were checks and balances within the system that worked to reduce the speed and scale of the government’s land grabs.
Well, does that sound like what it is going on today?
If all 200 countries around the world are pretty much all doing the same thing, do you think they are acting independently?
Do you think that business is acting with the government or with you? Do you think business is a check against the government or is business aiding and abetting The State?
Do you think that Media is acting as a check against the government, or is it helping the government disseminate its misinformation and disinformation?
Is the legal profession standing up for you or aligning itself with the government?
Is the medical establishment acting honestly to protect its patients or supporting the government in its campaign?
The State is now a NETWORK and it’s borderless. It’s a Global Network on a scale never seen nor imagined before.
Several months ago, I described it as The MGM Triad
I was saying to my wife last night that in the past the “collapse” of a society happened within contained borders. The institutions of that particular country decayed to the point of collapse and/or takeover by nefarious actors (those that want to dominate others, look after others, “fix” the world’s problems because they know best etc., it is a very real personality type and is always a percentage of the population and they climb the poles of business and government).
Because of the way the globe has been rewired over the last 50 years and especially the last 20 years with ever more powerful global institutions and a communication grid with central points of influence and control, the collapse we are witnessing at the moment is “post-national”, its far higher upstream, all the way at the source of the river, which is why it’s happening everywhere.
Today I can say that I was on the right track, but I don’t think The MGM Triad even does this Global Network justice. It’s a good introduction to the question of “Why is this happening?” to someone just waking up, but there are even more layers to understand.
You will need to use a web translator to read it from the Norwegian website.
Within the article you will find a link and reference to this 169 page document, that does a deep dive into this global network. The document:
… shows connections between the Gates Foundation, Wellcome Trust, WHO, GAVI and other NGOs and Big Pharma. It contains round about 6,500 objects including like Persons, NGOs, Companies, Documents, etc. It also includes more than 7,200 links between them.
A great passage in this essay highlights the immense power of these networks. They have shown that they are able to get the largest governments in the world to heel.
The incredible power of the networks
To give an example of how much power these NGIs and actors have, I would like to show a current example that has hardly been mentioned in the media (nor in the alternative media), but which Mr.X immediately noticed, as he keeps an eye on the “right” NGIs.
On August 3, 2021, an open letter to the Biden administration was published. In this letter, the important NGOs, who – after what we have concluded – have been planning a pandemic since 2017, demanded. We will now take a closer look at these requirements from 3 August 2021.
Global Summit on Vaccinations
In the open letter, for example, one could read the following requirements:
” to host a global presidential-level summit on vaccinations, before the UN General Assembly in September, bringing together leading forces from the public and private sectors from around the world (…) and commits to taking the necessary measures to close gaps in vaccine supply and correct deficiencies in funding and capacity in the distribution and distribution of vaccines, as well as to create demand.”
It took only six weeks for Biden to comply with the claim. In parallel with the United Nations General Assembly, President Biden is currently hosting a virtual summit with representatives from 100 countries, where the president announced just that. And he urged the other countries to follow the example of the United States, as reported by Die Tagesschau, for example.
Do you now understand the power of these actors, when all it takes is for them to write an open letter to the president, and he complies with their demands within six weeks?
Vaccinate 70% of the world’s population
Furthermore, in the open letter it was demanded:
“To get the heads of state and government in the world, before or during the summit, to commit to achieving the goal of vaccinating 70% of the world’s population by mid-2022.”
«As an organizational framework, Biden introduced a transatlantic vaccination partnership. ‘Today we are launching a partnership between the EU and the US for a global vaccination offensive,’ he said, in order to have closer cooperation. The goal is to have vaccinated 70% of the world’s population by September next year.”
Within six weeks, Biden (and also the European Union) pledged to fully comply with the requirements set out in the letter.
This is another good piece fleshing out the role of the WEF (World Economic Forum) network and the many people involved.
What a co-incidence, the World Economic Forum outlines a vision in 2018 for Digital Identity and in 2021 the Australian Government is about to finalise its laws making it a reality.
A wonderful Australian writer fighting the good fight is Alexandra Marshall.
Make no mistake, vaccine passports are a domestic Social Credit System created under the watch of the federal Liberal Party. It is a sprawling government entity that denies rights based upon compliance in the hope that you will obey rather than exercising your democratic right to resist.
Citizens accepted vaccine passports because the government made them a condition of release from unlawful detention. As a population, we have been emotionally damaged to the point that people cheer on the discrimination of their neighbours. Ethics have been replaced by the intense fear of being sent into lockdown.
We are not witnessing a casual overreach of power – vaccine passports and QR check-ins are a complete abandonment of the Western democratic system. They are a threat to the liberty of our children and the survival of Australia’s laid-back spirit.
CJ Hopkins is a wonderful writer; he has written eloquently about his new War.
He describes the core desire of Totalitarianism as wanting:
… to remake the world in its paranoid image; to replace reality with its own “reality”
He goes further:
We are right in the middle of this process currently, which is why everything feels so batshit crazy. The global capitalist ruling classes are implementing a new official ideology, in other words, a new “reality.” That’s what an official ideology is. It’s more than just a set of beliefs. Anyone can have any beliefs they want. Your personal beliefs do not constitute “reality.” In order to make your beliefs “reality,” you need to have the power to impose them on society. You need the power of the police, the military, the media, scientific “experts,” academia, the culture industry, the entire ideology-manufacturing machine.
What I call The State he calls here Supranational Global Capitalism:
And, yes, it is all one ideology, not “communism,” or “fascism,” or any other nostalgia, but the ideology of the system that actually rules us, supranational global capitalism. We’re living in the first truly global-hegemonic ideological system in human history. We have been for the last 30 years. If you are touchy about the term “global capitalism,” go ahead and call it “globalism,” or “crony capitalism,” or “corporatism,” or whatever other name you need to. Whatever you call it, it became the unrivalled globally-hegemonic ideological system when the Soviet Union collapsed in the 1990s. Yes, there are pockets of internal resistance, but it has no external adversaries, so its progression toward a more openly totalitarian structure is logical and entirely predictable.
Naturally, there would be one official reality that you would force everyone to rigidly conform to at any given moment in time, but you would change the official reality frequently, and force everyone to conform to the new one (and pretend that they had never conformed to the old one), and then, once they had settled into that one, you would change the official reality again, until people’s brains just shut down completely, and they gave up trying to make sense of anything, and just tried to figure out what you wanted them to believe on any given day.
He coins the term GloboCap, which is his version of my MGM Triad.
But the goal of GloboCap’s War on Reality isn’t simply to deceive the masses and divide them into opposing camps. Rulers have been deceiving the masses and dividing them into opposing camps since the dawn of human civilization. This time, it’s a bit more complicated than that.
And depressingly this paragraph:
You could experimentally “vaccinate” millions of people whose risk of becoming seriously ill or dying from your apocalyptic virus was minuscule or non-existent, and kill tens or hundreds of thousands in the process, and the people whose brains you had methodically broken would thank you for murdering their friends and neighbors, and then rush out to their local discount drugstore to experimentally “vaccinate” their own kids and post pictures of it on the Internet.
We have watched as the New Normal has done precisely what every totalitarian movement in history has done before it, right by the numbers. We pointed all this out, each step of the way. I’m not going to reiterate all that again.
I am, however, going to document where we are at the moment, and how we got here … for the record, so that the people who will tell you later that they “had no clue where the trains were going” will understand why we no longer trust them, and why we regard them as cowards and collaborators, or worse.
Yes, that’s harsh, but this is not a game. It isn’t a difference of opinion. The global-capitalist ruling establishment is implementing a new, more openly totalitarian structure of society and method of rule. They are revoking our constitutional and human rights, transferring power out of sovereign governments and democratic institutions into unaccountable global entities that have no allegiance to any nation or its people.
That is what is happening … right now. It isn’t a TV show. It’s actually happening.
Whereas 20th-Century totalitarianism (i.e., the form most people are generally familiar with) was more or less national and overtly political, New Normal totalitarianism is supranational, and its ideology is much more subtle. The New Normal is not Nazism or Stalinism. It is global-capitalist totalitarianism, and global capitalism doesn’t have an ideology, technically, or rather, its ideology is “reality” When you are an unrivalled global ideological hegemon, as global capitalism has been for the last 30 years or so, your ideology automatically becomes “reality,” because there are no competing ideologies. Actually, there is no ideology at all … there is only “reality” and “unreality,” “normality” and “deviations from the norm.”
Few others have written as well as CJ Hopkins on how to deal with this New Normal “Reality”.
So we need to adopt a different strategy. We need to make the monster show itself, not to those of us who can already see it, but to the New Normal masses, the Covidian cultists. We need to make Jim Jones drop the peace-and-love crap, move into the jungle, and break out the Kool-Aid. We need to make Charles Manson put down his guitar, cancel orgy-time, and go homicidal hippie. This is how you take down a cult from within. You do not try to thwart its progress; you push it toward its logical conclusion. You make it manifest its full expression, because that it when it implodes, and dies. You do not do that by being polite, conciliatory, or avoiding conflict. You do that by generating as much internal conflict within the cult as you can.
In other words, we need to make GloboCap (and its minions) go openly totalitarian … because it can’t. If it could, it would have done so already. Global capitalism cannot function that way. Going openly totalitarian will cause it to implode … no, not global capitalism itself, but this totalitarian version of it. In fact, this is starting to happen already. It needs the simulation of “reality,” and “democracy,” and “normality,” to keep the masses docile. So we need to attack that simulation. We need to hammer on it until it cracks, and the monster hiding within in appears.
That is the weakness of the system … the New Normal totalitarianism will not work if the masses perceive it as totalitarianism, as a political/ideological program, rather than as “a response to a deadly pandemic.” So we need to make it visible as totalitarianism. We need to force the New Normals to see it as what it is. I do not mean that we need to explain it to them. They are beyond the reach of explanations. I mean that we need to make them see it, feel it, tangibly, inescapably, until they recognize what they are collaborating with.
Here is a good example of the tools now available to assault reality and create a new “reality”.
The global assault on reality and the creation of a new “reality” has created a Mass Psychosis, described by Dr. Mattias Desmet as Mass Formation.
John Waters, writes beautifully about a recent Desmet interview.
You cannot extract the Mass Psychosis from the New Totalitarianism. They are two sides of the same coin. Here are some extracts that help explain the phenomenon:
Le Bon it was who observed that the consciousness bestowed by membership of a crowd can be transformative, possessing individual members with ‘a sort of collective mind which makes them feel, think and act in a manner quite differently from that in which each individual would feel, think and act were that person in a state of isolation.’ In such a ‘psychological crowd’, individual personality disappears, brain activity is replaced by reflex activity: a lowering of intelligence, provoking a complete transformation of sentiments, which collectively may manifest as better and worse than those of the crowd’s constituent members. A crowd may just as easily become heroic or criminal, but is generally disposed towards destruction.
‘The ascendancy of crowds,’ wrote Le Bon, ‘indicates the death throes of a civilisation.’ The upward climb to civilisation is an intellectual process driven by individuals; the descent is a herd in stampede. ‘Crowds are only useful for destruction.’
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He says there are four conditions that need to be in place to enable mass formation to occur in a society. The first is the presence of large numbers of socially isolated, atomised, people. The social bonds between people need to have been weakened. This is the most important, and the other conditions follow from it. Secondly, there will be large numbers of people who experience lack of sense-making in their lives and work — people who feel that their jobs are senseless, meaningless. Thirdly, there requires to be ‘a lot of free-floating anxiety’ — i.e. anxiety that is not connected to a mental representation so that the sufferer doesn’t know why he is anxious and afraid. And fourthly, there needs to be a lot of ‘free-floating psychological discontent’ — anger and frustration at, again, apparently nothing in particular.
And you also need mass media — without which mass formation would be impossible. Desmet does not explicitly say so, but of course it is also essential that these media be biddable and readily prone to corruption.
These conditions, he says, existed in Western societies long before the Covid crisis. There was, he says, ‘an epidemic of burnout’. He says something between 40 and 70 per cent of people in modern societies experience their jobs as senseless. He points also to the escalating use of psycho-pharmaceutical medicines to treat anxiety and depression.
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There are, in situations of mass formation, says Desmet, three distinct groups that manifest themselves. Only 30 per cent, he says, are really hypnotised, and cannot be reached in any way. In addition, however, there are about 40 per cent who usually follow the crowd, and from the outset go along with that 30 per cent of total believers. There is another cohort of about 30 per cent who are not hypnotised, who try to speak out and resist. This group, he says, is extremely heterogeneous and disunited. If these people could unite, he says, they could bring the whole thing quickly to an end, but this seldom proves possible.
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Totalitarianism in its full-blown form, then, is something that comes after, but ‘after’ what? It comes after a lengthy ‘preparation’, not necessarily planned with malign intent, in which human beings become isolated, atomised, alienated and lonely — conditions for which the totalitarian has ready solutions in the promulgation of bogus community and imagined bonds of mutual hatreds. The negative undertones of these processes suggests some form of prior error, and this may well have been present, perhaps in the pursuit of greed or exploitation, but this is not any longer admissible. Totalitarianism is like a secondary condition that descends on a society that has first of all been subjected to certain processes of modernity: technologisation, industrialisation, individualisation, atomisation. It is, in a sense, like the lung cancer that ensues from a lifetime of smoking, or the type 2 diabetes that results from an excessively sweet tooth. But it is not ‘secondary’ in the sense suggesting ‘lesser’ or ‘minor’ or ‘subordinate’: When it arrives, totalitarianism announces itself as the actual purpose and destination-point of the entire historical process, the discovery of the actual meaning of history. It follows, but is not collateral to, the events which preceded it. Indeed, its arrival announces a coherence to those previous events that had not hitherto been perceived: It ‘makes sense’ of the drifts and apparent randomness of the past, and in doing so turns common sense on its head and compels man to admit his prior errors of understanding and accept that the true direction of history has now been revealed.
Paul Collits has done incredible work all throughout the scamdemic, and I was lucky enough to come across him early. Here he writes about August Landmesser (look him up):
Two excuses might be proffered for going along with tyranny – we didn’t know what was going on, and I thought I personally would be safe from the tyranny if I played along.
Take the first excuse. Dr Robert Malone, an inventor of the mRNA vaccine, has noted, “… if you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention”. He was speaking of the hideous truths about the jab. Malone’s accusation implies the first excuse. We didn’t know. We perhaps suspected something, but we excused the political class for mere “mistakes”. We made a choice, not to think too deeply about the emerging “new normal”. We didn’t try very hard at all to comprehend what was going on. We found excuses to justify our own compliance. Going against the crowd is too much like hard work. People will think I am … an anti-vaxxer! Thinking hard about difficult issues will only give me the guilts, and make my life complicated, so I will park it.
Here he talks about “strategic obeyers” and how they sustain The State:
Some of this behaviour might be termed “strategic obeying”. This is self-regarding conduct whose aim is to protect the things that are important to us while ceding minor freedoms to the Covid State. Anyone who hates mask mandates but obeys them in order to get the shopping done, rather than risk a fine or risk getting spat at by angry CovidManiacs, is a strategic obeyer. A reluctant obeyer, perhaps, but an obeyer nonetheless. If I just do this, maybe they won’t come for me. If they come for the unvaccinated, maybe they won’t come for me. Strategic obeyers sustain the Covid State. They form a key part of the group that remains silent, and no doubt all the various Nudge Units will have figured this all out.
And:
Those who go along to get along enjoy what Levant terms “the peace of surrender”.
I retweeted this yesterday & now again, so nobody misses it. One of those speeches that might get recorded in history as an important event on its own, because it captured the exact inflection when things started to turn around. 🥊pic.twitter.com/ixtRWGpz0l
This article went viral recently, written anonymously by Spartacus. Personally, I think that Dr. David Martin wrote it as it covers a lot of ground that he is very familiar with. I recommend reading the whole thing as it is a great summary of the story to date.
What is the purpose of all of this? One can only speculate as to the perpetrators’ motives, however, we have some theories.
The Elites are trying to pull up the ladder, erase upward mobility for large segments of the population, cull political opponents and other “undesirables”, and put the remainder of humanity on a tight leash, rationing our access to certain goods and services that they have deemed “high-impact”, such as automobile use, tourism, meat consumption, and so on. Naturally, they will continue to have their own luxuries, as part of a strict caste system akin to feudalism.
Why are they doing this? Simple. The Elites are Neo-Malthusians and believe that we are overpopulated and that resource depletion will collapse civilization in a matter of a few short decades.
Head of the World Economic Forum Klaus Schwab wrote a Harvard Business Review piece titled, ‘Power and Policy: The New Economic World Order’ where he detailed his belief that the industrialised world has been going through an economic revolution. Keep in mind, the article is written in 1994. He correctly lusts after [he] points out the rise of Asia, commenting, “One consequence of the new parity is that the West can no longer hope to dictate the rules of the game.”
In this, he is only partially right. The circumstance he prophesied has only manifested because organisations like the World Economic Forum and the United Nations have trained Western leaders to be weak. It was not an inevitability of trade structures, but rather a matter of ideological infestation. The constant infiltration of socialist rhetoric into the once free world via endless champagne conferences has left it unable to work out what gender it is, let alone present a strong front against the rise of Asia.
By 2018, the World Economic Forum was publishing articles insisting that we must all work together to hasten the rise of Asia and teach ourselves to embrace the New World Order. The United Nations have a similar song sheet. Before Covid, they spoke of the New World Order in the context of a green revolution and the dismantling of old industrialised nations in favour of empowering the third world.
Most of the propaganda coming out of the United Nations these days talks about sustainability, mass-migration, climate goals, and Covid as a singular item – an omini-shambles apocalypse with only one solution: world socialism disguised as environmentalism.
And lastly here is Iain Davis writing about the “global commons”. It’s a good way of further understanding the “territory” this War is fighting over.
While we have been distracted and transitioned by the alleged global pandemic, or pseudopandemic, the Global Public Private Partnership (GPPP), who orchestrated the chaos, have been very busy. They have created the asset rating system that will afford them total, global economic control. This is based upon Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and utilises Stakeholder Capitalism Metrics (SCM).
This new global economic system is what the politicians mean by “build back better.” It is the essence of the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset.
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Stakeholder Capitalism Metrics – SCM – were devised by the World Economic Forum, who describe themselves as the international organisation for public-private cooperation. When combined with the SDGs outlined in the UN Agenda 21 and 2030 frameworks, SCM enable the GPPP to seize the entire Earth, all its resources and everything on it, including us.
In order to control us we are being transitioned into a technocracy with the biosecurity state acting as the central control mechanism. Public health is the new focus for global security and centralised control of the entire system has been established during, and as a result of, the pseudopandemic.
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Again we see the recurrent themes of the GPPP. The planet must be saved from us, we are a pestilence that must be controlled; Covid-19 is, as ever, an opportunity to transform the global economy; our survival and GPPP stewardship of the global commons are one and the same and everything must be transformed.
Put simply:
If the world is being destroyed by humans doing whatever they want (climate catastrophism)
And these humans are grouped together within pesky democracies and pesky borders
Then to save the world we need to build a system that keeps people from doing whatever they want
By changing the democracies and dissolving the borders
It has been a long term project that is coming to fruition today
The role of the CCP within this network is both very real and complex. I’m not going to spend time on it here, god knows this piece is long enough, but you could do worse than follow Michael Senger’s work on the subject.
I will say this though, as long the the Network is useful to the CCP, they will play along. If the Network helps to diminish and destabilise its strategic adversaries, then why not help it along. But if the Network stops being useful, the CCP will simply devour it.
All the players in this Network will one day be long gone, but the CCP will still be around. They are playing the longest game in town.
Just after midnight of June 6, 1968, Senator Robert Kennedy was assassinated in a backroom of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. He had just been celebrating his victory at the California primaries, which made him the most likely Democratic nominee for the presidential election. His popularity was so great that Richard Nixon, on the Republican side, stood little chance. At the age of 43, Robert would have become the youngest American president ever, after being the youngest Attorney General in his brother’s government. His death opened the way for Nixon, who could finally become president eight years after having been defeated by John F. Kennedy in 1960.
John had been assassinated four and a half years before Robert. Had he survived, he would certainly have been president until 1968. Instead, his vice-president Lyndon Johnson took over the White House in 1963, and became so unpopular that he retired in 1968. Interestingly, Johnson became president the very day of John’s death, and ended his term a few months after Robert’s death. He was in power at the time of both investigations.
And both investigations are widely regarded as cover-ups. In both cases, the official conclusion is rife with contradictions. We are going to sum them up here. But we will do more: we will show that the key to solving both cases resides in the link between them. And we will solve them beyond a reasonable doubt. … continue
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The word “alleged” is deemed to occur before the word “fraud.” Since the rule of law still applies. To peasants, at least.
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The global assault on reality and the creation of a new “reality” has created a Mass Psychosis, described by Dr. Mattias Desmet as Mass Formation.
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