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Ukraine “cannot decide its destiny” because it depends on US political climate

By Ahmed Adel | August 11, 2023

The Ukrainian Army’s high dependence on Western military support to continue its fight against Russian troops has placed Kiev in a position where it cannot decide its path for itself, said an analyst on CNN. The outlet also indicated that after more than 17 months of active combat, the Ukrainian conflict had entered a decisive stage since Kiev now depends on the decisions taken in Washington more than ever, which will be worrying for Ukraine since there is every chance that the next US president ends up being a Republican.

The current situation in Eastern Europe will depend on “outside factors,” such as “shifting political forces in the US, Moscow and European capitals,” Stephen Collinson points out in his analysis on CNN. “One of Ukraine’s greatest tragedies as it pursues a critical offensive that has, so far, failed to meet its own and Western expectations is that it cannot, by itself, decide its destiny.”

According to him, the results of the Ukrainian counteroffensive — which began in June and has shown no progress — “would have particular ramifications in the United States since it could heighten questions over US support for the war that will be pushed into an acrimonious election year.”

In fact, former Republican lawmaker Adam Kinzinger recently acknowledged widespread pessimism within his party about the billions of dollars delivered to Kiev since February 2022.

The CNN analyst also pointed out that the Americans are preparing for a possible election contest between President Joe Biden —a Democrat and radical supporter of Kiev — and former president Donald Trump, a supposed NATO sceptic who has promised to end tensions between Russia and Ukraine in just one day.

Collinson believes that even if Trump does not win the presidential nomination, it is not certain that voters will support Biden because there is increasing disbelief about the growing involvement of Washington in the conflict. In his text, Collinson recalls recently published information on CNN that US officials are receiving adverse reports about the scant progress of Ukrainian troops against Russian forces.

“Ukraine’s struggles – and heavy combat losses – stem in part from entrenched, layered defensive positions, trenches and minefields that Russia had months to construct and the battlefield reality that an attacking force needs a numerical advantage over well dug-in troops,” wrote the expert.

For Collinson, the conflict could end after the US fully enters the electoral process to define a new president.

“There is so far no clear path even to a ceasefire,” he observed. “Ultimately, the capacity of both Russia and Ukraine to sustain heavy battlefield losses will be critical in deciding the point at which either side might be open to a settlement – when the cost of continuing to fight might be outweighed by the rewards of ending it.”

According to the journalist, the stagnation of the conflict could gain more weight in the political debate within the US.

“While foreign policy is rarely a deciding factor in presidential elections and the war in Ukraine is not a dominant issue in the GOP primary, some party supporters in early voting states like Iowa and New Hampshire do raise it and question US generosity after months of high inflation, which, even if it’s cooling, has contributed to persistently dour views of the American economy,” said the expert.

“So when US voters decide their own futures in November 2024, there’s a good chance they will be playing a large role in sealing Ukraine’s fate as well,” Collinson concluded.

The possibility that the Democratic Party could be back out of power next year is hurrying Biden to maximise his opportunities to funnel US taxpayer money into the financial blackhole that Ukraine has become. Biden’s endless attempts to seek the US Congress’ approval to transfer billions of dollars in additional support to Ukraine in a bid to prolong the war against Russia is a demonstration of this, especially when considering that Washington has already transferred to Ukraine at least $76.8 billion in assistance since February 2022.

According to an older estimate by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, Ukraine, by May 2023, had received more than $100 billion in humanitarian aid and military support from more than 40 countries. Of that amount, Washington has contributed around $51 billion dollars, more than half, in military, security, financial and humanitarian assistance.

At the end of July, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Kiev does not have sufficient resources. However, the US, NATO members, and other institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, delivered all the money to Ukraine. Rather, if Zelensky is struggling now, he will have an even bigger problem in the coming months because the money from the West will dry up as the level of support cannot be maintained, especially in the context of the failed counter-offensive.

Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.

August 11, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

White House Steamrolls Over Poll Showing Americans Don’t Want to Fund Ukraine

By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 10.08.2023

The US has sent over $113 billion in military and economic support to Ukraine over the past 18 months, with NATO allies sending tens of billions more. The assistance, which includes nearly $100 billion in military aid, did not endow Kiev with the firepower necessary to mount a successful counteroffensive against Russia.

The White House has dismissed polling showing that a majority of Americans don’t want to send any more money to Ukraine to fund NATO’s proxy war against Russia, ruling out that assistance would stop in spite of public wishes.

“We have seen throughout this war solid support from the American people, solid support from the Congress in a bipartisan and bicameral way for continuing to support Ukraine and we’re going to stay focused on that,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said.

“It’s not just important to people of Ukraine, but it’s important to our European allies and partners, particularly our NATO allies, given that this fighting is on the doorstep of many of those NATO allies,” and to the “national security of the American people,” Kirby added.

The White House spokesman inserted the traditional ‘Vladimir Putin the bogeyman’ scare tactic, telling the Americans who don’t want to continue funding the proxy war that “if we just sit back and we let Putin win, we let him take Ukraine, where does it stop next?”

The White House is seeking Congressional approval to sneak tens of billions of dollars more in additional “supplemental funding” into next year’s defense budget, with the Pentagon coming up with new creative ways to scrounge additional cash from already approved outlays by using accounting tricks.

While most US media and most of the US political class in Washington continue to support funding Ukraine (apart from a handful of MAGA-leaning Republicans), a bombshell poll published last week revealed that 55 percent of Americans don’t want Congress to authorize any more funds for Ukraine. 51 percent said the US has already done enough to help. Nearly 8 in ten expressed concerns about the conflict dragging on, with 59 percent fearing that the Ukrainian crisis could unleash a wider war in Europe. 56 percent of respondents said they continue to see the Ukrainian conflict as a national security threat – down from 72 percent in February of 2022.

Ordinary Americans’ shifting attitudes toward the Ukrainian crisis have been picked up on by presidential candidates from both major parties, as well as independents, with major candidates calling for an end to the conflict, and pointing to the West’s role in starting it.

Former President Donald Trump, the leading candidate among Republicans by a long shot, has promised to end the Ukraine conflict within 24 hours of winning the 2024 election. Democratic Party hopeful Robert F. Kennedy Jr. promises to talk to Russia and has emphasized that the West has “no business putting NATO in Ukraine.” Leading independent candidate Cornel West has also called for a negotiated settlement to the crisis.

August 10, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

US Senate Candidate Says NATO ‘Dinosaur of an Institution,’ Should Be Dissolved

Sputnik – 09.08.2023

WASHINGTON – NATO is a relic and should have been abolished after German reunification, independent candidate for the US Senate from New York Diane Sare told Sputnik.

“I think NATO should be dissolved. I think it should have been dissolved when Germany was reunified,” Sare said. “I think frankly, it’s dead already. I mean, you know, there’s so much dissent within NATO already as it is. It is a dinosaur of an institution. So I don’t think it’s really going to be around that much longer.”

The future of the alliance depends on how long some of its members in Europe “who are bearing the brunt of the insanity of the current American and British leadership want to stick around and play that game having their economies destroyed,” she continued.

The candidate declined to speculate on how the alliance would fall apart, but expressed belief that “it’s simply not going to be able to continue” because “it’s really a dead institution.”

NATO has not stopped expanding since the dissolution of the rival Warsaw Pact and collapse of the Soviet Union, drawing the ire of Moscow. The relationship took a nosedive over a 2014 change of power in Ukraine and Crimea’s accession to Russia.

In December 2021, Russia requested guarantees that the alliance would not expand eastward to include Ukraine and Georgia, but was refused. In February 2022, Russia launched a military operation in Ukraine.

NATO responded by deploying even more troops to the eastern flank. At the Vilnius summit in July this year, the alliance reaffirmed that Ukraine will become a NATO member and removed the requirement for a Membership Action Plan to accelerate its accession after the conflict with Russia ends.

August 9, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Estonian social crisis worsening

By Lucas Leiroz | August 8, 2023

Estonia is in serious trouble due to its irrational stance in the current NATO proxy conflict with Russia. Simultaneously focused on meeting Ukrainian humanitarian demands and the war plans of the Atlantic alliance, the Estonian government virtually excludes its own people from national priorities, which resulted in the aggravation of the internal crisis. Uncontrolled immigration, deindustrialization, economic instability and rising living costs are some of the problems that currently affect the country – and that will continue to do so if the government does not take a sovereign attitude.

Committed to helping solve the Ukrainian humanitarian issue, Estonia has been receiving thousands of refugees every day. Last year, the country received more than 115,000 Ukrainians – 62,000 of them planning to stay there permanently. This year, it is estimated that 300 to 400 Ukrainians are applying for Estonian asylum every week. Not all migrants are really in need of humanitarian aid due to the impact of the conflict. Many of the Ukrainian citizens in Estonia are men of military age who should be on the battlefield according to Kiev’s law, but who fled the country to escape the war.

Despite Kiev’s forced recruitment system being dictatorial and unacceptable, Estonia has no humanitarian obligation to receive people who are simply fleeing their military duties. These refugees get help from the Estonian government, and their stay in the country is subsidized by local taxpayers. So, it would be legitimate for Tallinn to have stricter guidelines on who to welcome into its territory – but it does not. In practice, any Ukrainian can enter the country, and the government remains silent, given its irrationally “humanitarian” stance, which prioritizes foreign citizens over nationals.

The Estonian state’s efforts to receive these refugees have been extremely expensive. In the first quarter of 2023 alone, Estonia spent more than 25 million euros on costs related to Ukrainian migrants. These expenses include benefits such as special protection by the Ministry of Interior’s forces, as well as Estonian language lessons provided by the Ministry of Culture.

Obviously, to finance all this, the government needs to reduce investments in other sectors. Unconcerned with the welfare of its own population and prioritizing foreign citizens, Estonia has progressively reduced its spending in the social sphere, which brings serious problems to the domestic situation. The cost of living in the country has been rising, and in 2022 an inflation rate of 19.4% was calculated. As a result, just as thousands of Ukrainians are entering Estonia, thousands of Estonians are migrating to other European countries in search of better living conditions.

In addition to the lack of control over migration, another factor contributing to Estonia’s social crisis is the country’s increasing militarization, both to meet NATO’s demands and to send assistance to Kiev. More than 1% of Estonian GDP is currently being sent in military aid to the Kiev regime, while another 3% is invested in internal militarization to meet the NATO-imposed defense spending goal. So, more money is invested in waging war than in trying to solve social problems, which obviously results in a crisis.

Furthermore, it is necessary to remember that, in the enthusiasm to meet the military interests of NATO and Kiev, Estonia has also generated many problems for its population with the expansion of training camps, affecting local agriculture. Alleging the need for improvements in its defense capacity, Estonia created the Nursipalu Training Area last year and is now trying to expand it. The main problem is that the testing area is located in an agricultural production zone, affecting the regional economy. The Estonian government has not offered local landowners sufficient money or new properties to compensate for the loss of territory from military expansion, thus discouraging agricultural production to favor the interests of NATO.

As we can see, unlimited cooperation with NATO and its proxy neo-Nazi regime has only harmed Estonia and contributed to the emergence of internal problems. In addition to migration and unnecessary militarization, there is also the issue of sanctions. The country has had many problems with decreasing cooperation with Russia in infrastructure. There was a drastic drop in cross-border rail transport, preventing Estonian industrial production from reaching the foreign market. This mainly affected the wood sector in the Võru region and metallurgical production in Põlva, which are strategically relevant points of the national economy.

In fact, all this shows how anti-strategic it is to follow NATO’s guidelines and adopt a policy of support to Kiev. Estonia is entering a serious domestic crisis just because it chose to accept the orders of the Atlantic alliance and engage in anti-Russian war plans. The best way to reverse this scenario and avoid national collapse is to take a sovereign attitude.

Lucas Leiroz, journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant.

You can follow Lucas on Twitter and Telegram.

August 8, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Economics, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Professor John Mearsheimer on the Ukraine War

Why didn’t the West negotiate an Austrian-style neutrality deal with Russia?

By JOHN LEAKE | COURAGEOUS DISCOURSE | AUGUST 6, 2023

The Canadian writer and journalist, Aaron Maté, just published what strikes me as the most intelligent and illuminating conversation about the war in Ukraine I’ve heard thus far.

I have studied European history for forty years and lived in Austria for a total of 15. For the last 18 months I have tried in vain to answer the question: Why didn’t the United States at least try to negotiate with Russia for an Austrian-style neutrality deal for Ukraine?

Consider that if a neutrality deal was struck and the Russians subsequently violated it, THAT would be clear grounds for war. Instead, the United States government has simply and and steadfastly dismissed Russia’s view of the matter—a view that Russia has plainly and repeatedly stated since at least 2008.

Note that the arrogant and dismissive attitude of the U.S. government towards Russia since 2008 was in spite of the fact that Cold War eminences such as George Kennan urged the United States government to abandon its harebrained NATO expansion plan in 1997. As Kennan put it in a February 5, 1997 New York Times essay titled “A Fateful Error:”

Why, with all the hopeful possibilities engendered by the end of the Cold War, should East-West relations become centered on the question of who would be allied with whom and, by implication, against whom in some fanciful, totally unforeseeable and most improbable future military conflict?

[B]luntly stated… expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era. Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking …

Several of Kennan’s fellow Cold Warriors, including Robert McNamara and Paul Nitze, agreed wholeheartedly with him, as is evidenced by their June 26, 1997 letter to President Bill Clinton.

Back to the central question of this essay: for those unfamiliar with the 1955 State Treaty and Austrian Neutrality:

The treaty forbade unification with Germany or restoration of the Habsburgs and provided safeguards for Austria’s Croat and Slovene minorities. Austrian neutrality and a ban on foreign military bases in Austria were later incorporated into the Austrian constitution by the Law of October 26, 1955. The 40,000 Soviet troops in Austria were withdrawn by late September. The small number of Western troops that remained were withdrawn by late October.

Austrian neutrality has been honored ever since and has served the Austrian people very well. The Austrian capital, Vienna, is routinely ranked as having the highest quality of life on earth. To be sure, there is a handful of incredibly stupid and venal people in Austria who claim they wish to abandon Austrian neutrality, but they merit so little attention that I almost didn’t write this sentence.

So, why didn’t the United States government negotiate with Russia for an Austrian-style neutrality for Ukraine? Professor Mearsheimer suspects that only sheer stupidity can explain it. Aaron Maté suspects cynicism.

I suspect it’s a combination of stupidity, ignorance, cynicism, greed, bloody-mindedness, narcissism, sadism, contempt, misanthropy, and recklessness—in a word, depravity. Holders of high political office who prefer to send hundreds of thousands of young men to their deaths without at least trying diplomacy are simply terrible people in every respect.

Video link

August 8, 2023 Posted by | Militarism, Video | , , , | Leave a comment

NATO Instructors Trained Neo-Nazi Azov Battalion Soldiers in 2021

Sputnik – 06.08.2023

NATO military instructors from Denmark and the United Kingdom trained Ukrainian soldiers at a base of the nationalist Azov battalion, despite Azov’s exclusion from US military funding due to its radicalism, according to documents from the Danish embassy in Kiev seen by Sputnik on Sunday.

A note from the Danish embassy dated May 21, 2021, informed the Ukrainian Defense Ministry of the arrival of six instructors for the 56-th Ukrainian army brigade in Berdyansk and Urzuf, where Azov’s main base was located.

“These sites were previously investigated by Russian law enforcement officers, and the materials found there directly point to intensive training of mobilized Ukrainian citizens by Western officers, using criminal methods of warfare, which the Azovs were fluent in,” a law enforcement officer told Sputnik.

The instructors of the UK’s OP ORBITAL training team had already been present in Ukraine before, the document showed.

“Operation ORBITAL is the code name of a UK program to train Ukrainian army servicepeople from the mobilization reserve. I note that these officers, as stated in the text of the document, have access to classified information, which indicates that Ukraine has provided access to information constituting state secrets, including mobilization planning documents,” the officer said.

Despite the fact that the Azov battalion has been recognized by the United States as a neo-Nazi organization, NATO forces were directly involved in training of nationalist armed formations, they noted.

“This is evidence of Kiev’s intensive preparations for active combat operations under NATO’s supervision,” the law enforcement officer concluded.

In August 2022, the Russian Supreme Court designated Azov as a terrorist organization. The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office said that Azov militants use prohibited means and methods of warfare and are complicit in the torture of civilians and the killing of children.

August 6, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

August 6: Humanity for Peace International Demonstration

August 6 from 1 – 4 pm EDT Humanity for Peace (HumanityforPeace.net) will be holding a demonstration on the 78th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima — along with the subsequent bombing of Nagasaki probably the most heinous crimes committed in human history.

Location: Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza, E 47th St, New York, NY 10017

Current list of speakers include:

Gerald Celente – Founder/Director of the Trends Research Institute and Publisher of the weekly Trends Journal magazine.

Mike ter Matt – Candidate for the Libertarian Party presidential nomination.

Scott Ritter – Former U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer.

Garland Nixon – Veteran progressive radio and talk show host.

Diane Sare – Independent candidate for U.S. Senate in New York 2024.

Muhammad Salim Akhtar – National Director of the American Muslim Alliance and the American Muslim Task Force on Civil Rights and Elections.

Jose Vega – Sare for Senate staffer and LaRouche activist/interventionist since 2014.

Ahmadou Diallo – President and founder of the Guinean American League of Friends for Freedom.

Rev. Dr. Terri L. Strong – Chairwoman of the Action and Global Concerns Committee for the National Church Women United Organization.

Aaron Day – Former Chairman of the Free State Project; author of the book The Final Countdown: Crypto, Gold, Silver and the People’s Last Stand Against Tyranny by Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs).

Jude Elie – leader of the Haitian diaspora in the United States; President of the Haitian Salesians of Don Bosco Past Pupils Worldwide.

Malcolm Burn – Grammy Award-winning record producer; host of the weekly “The Long Way Around” radio program heard on Radio Kingston, WKNY in Kingston, NY.

Demands are as follows:

1) The immediate ending of all funding and weapons to Ukraine.

2) Convene immediate unconditional peace talks.

3) The Dissolution of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)

4) A new international security architecture must be created to end the division of the world into blocs, eliminating geopolitics. This new architecture must take into account the security concerns of every sovereign nation, large or small.

The demonstration will be livestreamed by the Schiller Institute at this link and by Humanity for Peace at this link.

Contact us at contact@humanityforpeace.net, follow us on X @4peacehumanity.

Below is the Mission Statement of the demonstration:

The danger of nuclear war has escalated to a point that no thoughtful person on the planet can ignore it any longer. Yet, in this atmosphere, there are still some who think there should be more weapons, more sanctions, and who think that a nuclear war can be won against Russia. It is very clear that those who have provoked the war, and continue to escalate it, do not care about the lives of the people of Ukraine or any other nation on the planet for that matter. This is NOT acceptable to those of us who care about the well-being of ALL of humanity — those who do not wish to see the human race wiped off the face of the earth.

We, therefore, call on the citizens of the world to come together and raise our voices against this madness. Humanity For Peace is building a unified coalition, above ideologies, to stop this unfolding escalation towards nuclear war. We refuse to let humanity perish at the hands of insanity.

August 6 will be the 78th anniversary of the unnecessary and genocidal nuclear bombing of Hiroshima by the United States, which was followed days later by the same crime against Nagasaki. Humanity For Peace is proud to announce that on this occasion, August 6, 2023, an international rally will be held to remind the world that nuclear war should never be fought and can never be won. Humanity is better than that, and we must reject the destiny of inevitable war as a morally repugnant and horribly cynical view.

The main rally will be held at the United Nations in New York City, NY, from 1-4pm, which will be live streamed over the internet. In solidarity with this, sister rallies will be held in other cities around the world. Please get in contact with us if you are interested in organizing another sister rally.

There are currently over 20 organizations sponsoring the event. If your organization would also like to sponsor the event, please contact us. More information, including the current speakers list, can be found at HumanityForPeace.net.

As President Kennedy said in his famous address to American University in 1963, war is not inevitable — but only if we work instead to create peace. The leadership in the United States and NATO is currently not working towards this goal, but rather are further escalating and inflaming the situation in Ukraine. For this reason, an international chorus of voices must be raised against this policy, and sound the call for peace!

Join us August 6 — we must make this sentiment the dominant voice in the world!

Humanity for Peace – Requiem Concert:

Sunday, August 6, 2023, 6:00 pm – 8:00 PM

Location: The Unitarian Church of All Souls at 1157 Lexington Avenue at East 80th Street, New York, NY

The concert will be free and open to the public.

August 5, 2023 Posted by | Solidarity and Activism | , | Leave a comment

US Long Violating Letter, Spirit of New START – Russian Ambassador Antonov

Sputnik – 03.08.2023

WASHINGTON – Russia in February suspended participation in New START, the only bilateral nuclear arms control treaty in place at the time, and conditioned its resumption of participation on an understanding of how NATO’s combined strike capability would be accounted for.

The United States has long been violating the New START Treaty, Russian Ambassador to Washington Anatoly Antonov said.

“Washington has long been violating the letter and the spirit of the agreement. It has not only abandoned the principles embedded in the Preamble to New START, but also breached the central limits of the Treaty that restrict the number of strategic weapons. It illegitimately removed from accountability under the Treaty about a hundred strategic offensive arms: SLBM launchers and heavy bombers. Russia’s repeated demands to resolve the problem have been ignored,” Antonov told reporters.

He said there was another factor that has led to the current crisis.

“Even more important factor that has led to the current crisis over the agreement is the [US] Administration’s hybrid war against our country aimed at imposing on us a strategic defeat. Washington’s calls for addressing the New START issues separately from the overall geopolitical situation do not stand up to criticism,” Antonov said.

“The real goal of the United States is to gain access to Russia’s nuclear weapons bases in order to obtain information about the development of our strategic arsenal,” he said.

In February, Moscow announced the suspension of its participation in the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), which was signed by Russia and the US in 2010 and envisaged mutual inspections of the strategic nuclear facilities of the two countries.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said in his annual address to the Russian parliament then that the US had demanded that Russia unconditionally fulfill its obligations under the treaty while itself being arbitrary about its own obligations.

August 3, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Vilnius Memo: Who’s Going to Bankroll This War?

By Martin Jay | Strategic Culture Foundation | August 1, 2023

Apparently it wasn’t Abert Einstein who said “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results”. But we like to think it was, so it became a quotation attributed to him. How else to describe the West’s stalwart determination to impale itself further with the agony of the Ukraine war as we are led to believe that NATO and the U.S. are determined now to dig in for a long war. The belief is still upbeat, despite the huge anti-climax of Ukraine’s so-called “offensive” which didn’t even break through the Maginot Line which Russia has built along a 900-km fortified line.

The blinded dogma of NATO members at last month’s Vilnius Summit stems from being drunk on their own fake news which media dutifully pumps out each day from the propaganda factory in Kiev. There’s just so much of it, that it’s hardly surprising that Biden and his European lap dogs overconsume on it without looking at the hard facts. It isn’t simply that Ukraine “has run out of ammo” as Biden put it. It’s more than that. It’s that it has been proven over and over again that they don’t have the will, resources or rank ability to take on the Russian army and that sending more and more military hardware will only delay the inevitable loss. Or at least armistice which is bound to happen on an unofficial level at some point, if an official one can’t be signed.

Zelensky looked worried at the Vilnius conference. And it’s hardly surprising. Even when you look at the pledges made by western countries for military hardware, there’s no question that the speed of these deliveries and the actual quantity has radically dropped. So how can Ukraine or NATO believe that it can win the war, even in years to come? Fighting a war without ammunition is like baking bread without flour, after all.

The truth is that most western leaders already know that the time is up. They know that three key elections are going to play a huge role in putting the brakes on the campaign to continuously supply the Kiev cabal, who by some accounts, are buying 7 million euro villas in Cannes with the money which is being syphoned off. War is a racket after all and Ukraine is one of the most corrupt countries in the world. Should we be surprised that a government minister there has this kind of cash to blow on a wedding present for his offspring?

The three elections are of course the UK general election, The U.S. presidential elections and the European parliamentary elections. All three will take place at the end of 2024 and it will be the first time people will have a real opportunity to make a statement about the war and the abysmal hardship it is imposing on people in western countries. It’s as though Joe Biden knows also that it will be very hard for him to stand again as president when he has to explain why he has sent over 130 billion dollars of taxpayers’ money to a country that few Americans can even find on a map of the world.

Money matters. Finally, it matters. The argument on the American side that it doesn’t matter as it is being printed and given over to the industrial military complex has some validity, as this secures jobs and keeps these companies buoyant. But it’s public money. And so, rightfully, people will want to know why couldn’t the same money be spent on the very poor.

For the Europeans it’s very different. They pay a very high price for the Ukraine war and the folly of their governments who indulge themselves with the military aid like children gouging themselves on chocolate cake while the parents are away. Germany’s economy is flat broke. For the UK, homeowners are facing losing their house due to colossal mortgage rate hikes with an entire generation now unable to get on the housing ladder. How will these politicians explain this at the polls?

It really is about the money. NATO knows that it needs much more than just the miniscule offering of 2 % of GDP, which in reality only 11 NATO members adhere to. All western countries’ military stockpiles are depleted and so, not only do NATO and its members need to find trillions of dollars of new cash just to bring their stocks back up to what they were, but also trillions more for Ukraine. The numbers just don’t add up. Even on an EU level, Ursula von der Leyen, who is almost certainly going to be NATO secretary general, when her term as EU Commission president runs out in about a year, has her begging bowl out. She is hoping to raise 20 billion euros to be given to Ukraine over 4 years as military aid. For the Ukraine war, it is pretty meagre.

For the EU itself, there is no clear sign how she will get it when she is already asking member states to contribute 30 billion euros more to the budget to pay for another egregious scam of COVID vaccinations, which at one point she was being accused of having corrupt connections to, until colleagues managed to cover the scandal up. Europe not only has no cash or military kit left to offer Ukraine, it has serious financial problems to tackle of its own for its own elites to retain the power they wield. The only respite would have to be much more cash from the U.S. only which is probably not what Biden is planning on. The Europeans have paid too much. We are an empty Amazon warehouse with all the workers at the foodbank.

August 1, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Economics, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Journalist Slams Ukraine for Losing Swedish IFV by Putting It ‘Too Close to Front’

By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 01.08.2023

As the counteroffensive launched by Ukraine’s NATO-armed and trained armies continues to falter, a growing number of Western observers, officials and military commanders have criticized Kiev, suggesting that the latter’s “tactics,” rather than their equipment and support, are to blame for the counteroffensive’s failure.

A German journalist has taken to social media to vent his frustration over Kiev’s loss of a Combat Vehicle 90 (CV 90), an advanced, $10 million apiece Swedish-made infantry fighting vehicle that was recently captured by Russian forces as a trophy.

“The CV 90 was NOT lost during the counteroffensive, for which it was intended to be used, but after being split from the rest of the brigade and used (allegedly together with another CV 90) for isolated defensive purpose in the area of Chervonopopovka,” Bild contributor Julian Ropcke wrote.

“It moved to [sic] close to the front, came into a Russian ambush and was hit by an RPG from far too close. It was then towed to Russian-controlled territory. This is exactly what the German army criticized about Ukraine: 1. Using the provided vehicles for other purpose than required to operate successfully and 2. Dividing powerful brigades into isolated vulnerable platoons,” Ropcke added.

The CV 90, praised by many armchair military analysts as “one of the best IFVs in the world” thanks to its powerful protection, high mobility and multirole capabilities, is the latest piece of Western equipment delivered to Ukraine to fall into Russia’s hands. Dozens of videos and photos have been posted online in recent weeks of Russian troops posing alongside or operating trophy Leopard tanks, Bradley IFVs, M113 armored personnel carriers, and more.

As Ukraine’s counteroffensive approaches its two-month anniversary with little to show for it apart from tens of thousands of lost troops and hundreds of tanks and armored vehicles, a growing number of officials and observers in Western media have expressed frustration over Kiev’s “tactics.” It’s “just a matter of continuing to apply pressure in a combined-arms approach,” one US official recently assured, and not the fact that Kiev is outgunned and faces overwhelming Russian air and artillery superiority.

Ukraine’s use of heavy armor has been a matter of particular scrutiny, with reports emerging in July that the country’s military had pulled Leopard 2s from the front after they got stuck on mine fields in the first stage of the counteroffensive. Separate reports indicated that “up to 20 percent” of Kiev’s NATO-provided armor was destroyed in the first stage of the offensive. In the case of the British Challenger 2, the highly “pampered” tank has not been spotted anywhere on the front, with its appearance limited to flashy propaganda videos. When the decision to send the armored vehicles to Kiev was made in the spring, the British Army’s top brass reportedly pressured their Ukrainian counterparts to avoid deploying Challenger 2s to areas where they might risk capture or destruction by Russian forces.

August 1, 2023 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | Leave a comment

The ‘Scandal Implosion’ Stratagem: Will It Work for Ukraine?

By Alastair Crooke | Strategic Culture Foundation | July 31, 2023

Biden: “Putin has already lost the war … Putin has a real problem: How does he move from here? What does he do?” Secretary Blinken repeats ad infinitum the same mantra: ‘Russia has lost’. So does the head of MI6, and Bill Burns, the head of CIA, opines, (replete with snide asides) at the Aspen Security Conference, that not only has Putin ‘lost’, but further, that Putin is failing to keep a hold on a fragmenting Russian state, entering upon a likely death-spiral disintegration.

What is going on? Some suggest a psychic disorder or groupthink has seized the White House Team, resulting in the formation of a pseudo-reality, severed from the world, but unobtrusively shaped around wider ideological ends.

The parroting of dubious narrative however, morphs for the informed world into seeming western delusion – the world as the ‘Team’ imagines it to be, or more to the point, would like it to be.

This tight parroting though is clearly no ‘coincidence’. A clutch of high officials speaking to script and in concert are not deluded. They are mounting a new narrative. The ‘Russia has lost’ mantra defines the mega-narrative that has been decided. It is the prelude to an intense ‘blame game’: Project Ukraine ‘is failing because the Ukrainians are not implementing the doctrines received from NATO trainers – yet despite this, the war has shown that Putin has ‘lost’ too: Russia too, is weakened’.

This is another exemplar of the current western fixation on the idea that ‘narratives win wars’, and that set-backs in the battle space are incidentals. What matters is to have a thread of unitary narrative articulated across the spectrum, asserting firmly that the Ukraine ‘episode’ now is closed and should be ‘book-ended’ by the demand that we all ‘move on’.

The gist of it is that ‘We’ control the narrative; us ‘winning’ and Russia losing, therefore, becomes inevitable. The flaw to this hubris is firstly that it puts the Administration ‘high priests’ at war with reality, and secondly, that the public long ago lost trust in mainstream media.

Jonathan Turley, a recognized legal scholar and Professor at Georgetown, who has written extensively in areas ranging from constitutional law to legal theory, draws attention to: “the last ditch effort of the members of Congress and the media to get the public to just ‘move on’ from the Biden corruption scandal”. The message, he writes, “is clear … Everybody needs to back off! … [However] as evidence and public interest increase, it is a bit late for spin or shiny objects”.

“This week, the scandal is likely to be even more serious for the Bidens and the country. The media is increasingly taking on the appearance of Leslie Nielsen in Naked Gun yelling that there is “nothing to see here” in front of a virtual apocalyptic scene of fire and destruction.”

What is the link to Ukraine? Well, a year ago, Professor Turley wrote that the political and media establishment would likely use a ‘scandal implosion’ approach to the corruption allegations as the evidence mounted. There would be an attempt to ‘cap off’ the scandal with Turley suggesting that the Justice Department would secure a ‘light plea’ by Hunter Biden on a couple of tax counts, with little or no jail time.

Well, that’s exactly what has occurred one year later. Then came the predicted ‘scandal implosion’: Hunter pleaded guilty to having delayed due tax payments – to a chorus of House members and the media shrugging off all other corruption allegations, and firmly declaring the scandal ‘closed’, together with the demand to “move on”. Turley notes however, “the media’s desire to “move on” from the scandal is reaching an almost frantic level, as millions in foreign payments and dozens of corporate shell companies are revealed – and incriminating emails are released”.

It is not clear that the stratagem will work. It is already in trouble.

The key elements to the ‘implosion stratagem’ are revealed as outright, unflinching denial that there is any ‘problem’ at all, and an obstinate refusal to concede even a scintilla to the notion of there being any type of failure. No need to look in the mirror.

This too was the modus operandi in respect to the Nordstream débacle (the destruction of the gas pipeline to Germany): Admit to nothing, and get the CIA to rustle up a ‘scandal implosion’ scenario. In this case, a nonsense diversionary story of a yacht with a few nefarious sub-aqua divers descending to 80-90 metres, without special equipment or using specialised gases, to lay and detonate explosive devices. No real investigation; ‘Nothing to see here’.

But as events in Germany indicate, the story is not believed; the coalition in Berlin is in deep trouble.

And now, the stratagem is being applied to Ukraine: The ‘Chorus’ cries out, ‘Putin has lost’, in spite of Ukraine messing up its chance to weaken Russia decisively. The hope is plain – that ‘Team Biden’ can steal away, undamaged, from devastating defeat, with ‘a scandal implosion’ mechanism already being primed (for after NATO’s summer ‘deadline’ to achieve a ‘win’):

‘We gave them everything – yet, the Ukrainians turned ‘their back’ on our expert advice for how to ‘win’ – and consequently have achieved nothing.

“Ukraine’s counter-offensive is failing to make progress because its army is not fully implementing training it has received from NATO, according to a leaked German intelligence assessment … Ukrainian soldiers trained by the West are showing “great learning success”; but they are let down by commanders who have not been through the [NATO] boot camps, it adds … the Ukrainian military favours promoting soldiers with combat experience, over those who have received NATO-standard instruction”.

Well, well? Like Afghanistan?

The war in Afghanistan was a sort of crucible, too. In very real terms, Afghanistan was turned into a testbed for every single innovation in NATO technocratic project management – with each innovation heralded as precursor to a game-changing future. Funds poured in; buildings were thrown up; and an army of globalised technocrats arrived to oversee the process. Big data, AI and the real-time utilization of ever expanding sets of technical surveillance and reconnaissance were to topple old ‘stodgy’ military doctrines. It was to be a showcase for technical managerialism. It presumed that a properly technical and scientific way of war clearly would prevail.

But technocracy as the only means of constructing a functional NATO-style military birthed instead, in Afghanistan, something thoroughly rotten – “data-driven defeat”, as one U.S. Afghan veteran described it, that it collapsed in a matter of days. In Ukraine, its forces were caught between Scylla and Charybdis: neither the armoured fist thrust taught by NATO to break the Russian defences, nor the alternative light infantry attacks were successful. Ukraine is suffering rather, a NATO-driven defeat.

Why then, opt to take reality ‘head-on’, with the snide insistence that Putin ‘has lost’? We do not, of course, know ‘the Team’s’ internal rationale. However, to open negotiations with Moscow in the hope of obtaining a ceasefire or a frozen conflict (to bolster the ‘Narrative’) would likely disclose a ‘Moscow’ as insistent only on Kiev’s full capitulation. And that would sit awkwardly with the ‘Putin losing story’.

Perhaps the calculus is to hope that between now and winter, public interest in Ukraine would have been so diverted by other events that the public might have ‘moved on’, and with blame clearly hung around the necks of Ukrainian Commanders showing “considerable deficiencies in leadership” which lead to “wrong and dangerous decisions” – by ignoring NATO-standard instruction.

Professor Turley concludes,

“None of this is going to work, of course. The public has lost trust in the media. Indeed, the “Let’s Go, Brandon” movement is as much a mocking of the media – as [it] is a targeting of Biden”. “Polls show that the public is not “moving on” [from the Hunter allegations] and now view this as a major scandal. A majority believes that Hunter has received special protection in the investigation. While the media can continue to suppress the evidence and allegations within their own echo-chambered platforms – truth like water has a way of finding a way out”.

In effect, ‘events’ are marching forward – with or without the media.

And here is the crux: To the degree that Turley estimates the Biden affair constitutes a putative ‘apocalyptic site of domestic U.S. destruction’, so the West faces a yet more strategic defeat segueing out from its Ukraine project – for that defeat encompasses not just that of the Ukrainian battle-ground – It has destroyed the myth of NATO omnipotence. It has upended the story of ‘magical’ western weaponry. It has burst the image of western competence.

The stakes were never higher. Yet did the ruling-class think this through when they so lightly embarked on this ill-fated Ukraine ‘project’? Did the possibility of ‘failure’ even enter to their consciousness?

July 31, 2023 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

Hungarian parliament fails to approve Sweden’s NATO bid

RT | July 31, 2023

The ruling Hungarian Fidesz party has boycotted the Monday session of the parliament, which resulted in a vote to ratify Sweden’s membership in NATO failing due to low attendance.

While the overwhelming majority of opposition MPs who attended the extraordinary session voted to admit the Nordic nation into the US-led military bloc, the lawmakers from the ruling party, which holds a two-thirds majority in the chamber, did not show up, according to Hungarian media.

Only two members of the 31-strong alliance – Hungary and Türkiye – are yet to ratify their national laws on Swedish membership. The accession will not be finalized until all nations do so.

Some Hungarian news outlets suggested that the party of Prime Minister Viktor Orban wanted to delay the vote until September, when the legislature returns from recess. Türkiye is expected to approve Swedish membership in the autumn as well, though Ankara’s position on the issue so far has been mercurial.

Ahead of the vote, the opposition argued that the ratification must pass because Hungary’s reputation with fellow NATO members would be hurt otherwise. The government argued that there was no reason to rush.

Gergely Gulyas, who heads the prime minister’s office, said last week that the Orban government supports the NATO bid, but added that some members of Fidesz were less enthusiastic about it.

Orban and his cabinet have broken with the dominant narrative within the alliance, which urges for continued military support for Ukraine in its conflict against Russia. Budapest has called for unconditional peace talks, highlighting the cost of the hostilities to all parties involved, including members of the EU that were hurt by their own sanctions on Russia.

“The Americans can pull out a lot of money with all sorts of financial manipulations, but the euro is a different story, it’s not suited for that,” the prime minister said in an interview on Friday, explaining his opposition to protracting the conflict.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared his support for Sweden’s accession during a summit of NATO leaders in Lithuania earlier this month, pledging to send the relevant legislation to MPs for consideration.

Previously he and other senior officials criticized the European nation for a number of issues, including what they described as harboring wanted terrorists from Türkiye on its soil and allowing the burning of the Quran during political protests.

July 31, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

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